Category Archives: Seasons

2025, gardening, home, Nature, Seasons

It’s Not Nice….

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This year is my fifteenth anniversary of straw bale gardening.  I happened upon this way of growing veggies while I was looking for workable alternatives for growing tomatoes.  In yard wasn’t working (dog and bunny damage), pots didn’t work for me at all (never did figure out why) and one year I even tried something called Topsy Turvy which was more or less a hanging basket for tomatoes.  Believe me when I say that was an unmitigated disaster.

Anyway, in all these 15 years, I planted my bales mostly on Mother’s Day, occasionally a few days later, like this year.  But in all this time I think I’ve gone out and covered my plants due to low overnight temperatures…. maybe five times.   And I’ve never had to cover them more than once in a season when it’s happened.

So I’m not all that happy that with the overnight temps dropping below 45°F the last two nights, I’ve been out there with my assorted “dog towels” and clothespins twice.  And this is also the first year in quite some time that I’ve had six bales, so I had to scrounge up a couple more crappy towels.

I understand that climate change is creating bigger swings in weather but it chaps my shorts that we had three days in the very high 80s last week and now I’m covering plants.  Looking at the forecast, I may have to cover two more nights this week as well.  It makes me think of one of my all-time favorite commercials from decades ago:

My little neighbor Marie came over to the fence as I was draping the towels to find out what I was doing and letting me know that some of towels are funny looking. I have to agree.

Any “special” towels at your place?

2025, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, Seasons, Technology, Theatre, Uncategorized

To Park or Not to Park

19 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Wrapped up another academic year by celebrating commencement this past Wednesday. I will be employed at the college until June 2 as I have some rentals coming through. I’ll be going to half time to allow myself a little more time farming while I still finish up odds and ends at the college before starting back this fall.

The oats are up! And I see the neighbor’s corn is coming up. Mine will be coming out any day now.

We’re at 452 GDU’s – ‘Growing Degree Units’ for our area for 2025. About double what normal is considered. I did get some corn planted last weekend and the co-op spread the last of the corn fertilizer and I’ve gotten all the fields dug up at least once. Mechanical tillage helps with weed control, and I was afraid if we got too much rain the next few days the weed population would explode. There was a few late nights with me and Bailey in the tractor.  

I planted oats and grass in the waterway that was built last fall. A little rain would be nice and helpful, and it would be especially helpful if we didn’t get any heavy rain for, well really, the whole summer, but at least the next couple of months until it is established and gets some good root structure down. Before I could get the waterway planted there was a couple of logs out there that needed to be picked up. I had told Kelly “We’re only doing the ones as big as my head and 4 feet long.“ But, of course then it’s hard to pass up the ones as big as my arm and 2 feet long. And if you’re gonna pick up those, you may as well pick up the ones as big as my wrist and a foot-long.

Kelly picked up a lot more sticks than I did just because I was in the tractor dealing with other stuff. She did several loads like this.

Kelly and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary on Monday. It was a pretty low-key celebration as I spent the day at the college getting ready for commencement and she was working. Back in 1999 I wrote a card for her, wrote on the front not to open until 2025 and tucked it in my dresser. I kind of forgot about it over the years and every now and then I’d find it again. I know I looked at it just a few months ago, and then I put it… “somewhere safe”. It took me a good half an hour to find it on Monday. Life was sure different for us 25 years ago. I kind of wish I had written more about just what was going on in our lives. I’ve wondered if I should do the same thing again? Do I dare do I make it for another 25 years? I realize no one is guaranteed tomorrow, and as we are both in our 60’s now, 25 years might be pushing our luck.

I planted corn Saturday and Sunday.

The load in for commencement was pretty uneventful this year, both for me and the IT guys hanging a large projector, screen, and setting up multiple cameras, and the sound system. Monday was the biggest part of that job for me as I picked up the rental lights, got them hung and cabled, and set up the laptop and lightboard to control them.

It kind of turns into a free-for-all on Monday and as I parked, I thought ‘Well if this doesn’t completely sum me up”:

Tuesday was stage decorations, curtains, banners, flowers, my floor lighting for all those things, and finalizing cues, and making sure everything worked. Wednesday morning was a walk-through, a nurse pinning ceremony, the main event at 6 PM, and it all came back down and packed up in about two hours and I was home by 10 PM

The obligatory ‘Head in the clouds’ photo:

I’ve got a lot of stuff to put away back at the theater, and I’m still checking my budgets and verifying expenses the Business office has compared to my Excel spreadsheets and catching up on things that I’ve let slide the last couple weeks. Depending on the weather, I may get out and do some more fieldwork this weekend. I might be able to finish planting corn if everything goes smoothly.

Chicks are growing and doing well.

Found a couple deer antlers while doing fieldwork.

And that one field that always ALWAYS grows big rocks came through yet again. Kelly and I dragged it home behind the gator. It took a long bar, two shovels, a chain, a 20’ long ratchet strap, and Kelly’s ingenuity, but we got it home and added it to her collection. “What are you going to do with it?” asks my one sister. We’re gonna admire it! …what a question… like everything needs to be practical.

You can tell it was a busy week because I needed a pen, pencil, red sharpie, and chrome ‘dress’ sharpie.

SIGNS WITH RED AROUND THEM ARE OPTIONAL. TRUE OR FALSE?

2025, Family, home, Mysteries, Seasons, Technology

Mystery Theme

35 Comments

In the past Renee has mentioned that she has post-it notes stuck around with ideas for the Trail.  This doesn’t work for me because if I’m out and about, by the time I get home to the post-it notes (of which I have many….), I’ve forgotten what I wanted to note.  Yep – seriously sad.  I remember that I thought of something but for the life of me, I can’t conjure it up when it’s time to write. 

To make up for this I use a post-it note app on my phone.  I have a bunch of separate notes and one of them is my Trail note.  You’d think this would solve my problem but….

Looked at the app three days ago and one of the entries is “first fire”.  That’s it.  Nothing else.  It took me the last three days to figure out it must have to do with YA making the first fire of the season in our fire pit last week.  Of course, it doesn’t explain WHY I put this note in the app.  There really wasn’t anything different about this fire except that it was the first one this year.  YA is still in charge of the fire.  She has a stash of newspaper and different piles of wood in the back corners of the yard – one for kindling sticks, one for larger sticks and one for logs.  She makes the fire, feeds the fire, pokes the fire with her special fire-poking stick. 

I’ve searched my memory and I can’t think of one single reason why you all have to read about our first fire.  So maybe it was something else?  A metaphor for our current world situation? 

What do you think I should be writing about with the theme of “first fire”?  How do you remind yourself of stuff?

2025, Automotive, Business, Farming Update, Kids, Nature, Seasons, Songs, Uncategorized, work

Dirt

32 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I heard a snippet of a blog and they said, “A person will work three jobs so they can go home and farm. You never hear of a person working 3 jobs so they can open a plumbing shop.” Sweeping generalization alert there. I’ve been thinking about that since I heard it. And while I’m in the tractor I think about what it is that makes farming so entrenched for us. What exactly is it that calls us to it? For me, it’s a lot of things: I like the machinery, I like working on the tractor or changing the oil, and learning, and having the skills and tools (and shop!) to work on stuff. A sense of achievement. I like working up a field and watching the soil turn black. Stan Rogers says it best in ‘The Field Behind the Plow‘ “Watch the field behind the plow, turn to straight dark rows. Put another season’s promise in the ground”.

I like being this close to the seasons and the circle of… everything. The growth, a faith in something bigger I guess. It’s deep and it pulls in my chest.

I’ve had a few late nights. Working at the college, then home and it might be 6 or 7:00 before I get out in the tractor and to the field. But it’s my time and I got nothing else at the moment. I feed the chicks, talk with Kelly. Daughter asks me to sit on the deck with her. We play with the dogs. Going out half an hour later doesn’t matter. (unless there’s rain in the forecast)

Daughter, turning 30 chronologically, but maybe 16 developmentally, she gives lots of hugs, but when we say “Love You!” she responds, “yep” or “OK” or maybe just “Bye”. And it makes me chuckle. That is when she doesn’t roll her eyes and simply walk away.

So, I’m in the tractor. One night I listened to Joni Mitchell. I haven’t had her albums or listened to much of her stuff. Just the hits. We saw Ben Folds in Rochester on Wednesday night and I listened to his stuff. I did some classical MPR. On the weekends it’s MPR News and their great programming: Wait Wait, Moth, This American Life, Radio Lab. It’s all so interesting! And some podcasts. In the tractor is the only time I can really do that, when I can listen and pay attention.

Best of all, I found some podcasts of TLGMS!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mpr-skits-from-the-morning-show/id104720092

It has been so fun to hear all these characters again. Cap’n Billy, Bubby Spamden, The Bowzer Bed, Wally’s Sherpa, Dr. B. Marty Barry and his bottomless Well of Wellness, Spin Williams, Congressman Beechly, Genway, and that wonderful cure-all pill, Purplex from Spendy Popper. I cannot get over what an amazingly creative writer Dale is! How he came up with all these ideas! We didn’t know what we had at the time, did we?

Me and Bailey enjoy our tractor time. She’s 7 1/2 years old and I have to boost her up into the tractor. Every few minutes she sits up and put her head against my knee and I scratch her ears and she lays down again.

It was a busy week. Filled the big tractor with fuel. It only needed half a tank.

Ordered more diesel and gasoline for the barrels.

I’m using the boating app again to find my place in the fields. And how can I take the linear distance to make it acres? (13.6 miles x 5280 feet divided by 24′ digger divided by 43,500 sq feet / acre = ? Hmm, that doesn’t come out right. Seems like it should make sense.

Did a lot of math figuring what 18, 50 lb bags of oats, at 32 lbs per bushel and I want 3.5 bushels / acre will do how many acres. And if I ran out at 6 acres, how much did I really apply?

Went back to Meyer Seeds on Wednesday morning and bought 12 more bags. Remember last year when I ran out 1/2 acre short of finishing with rain in the forecast and I said I would order extra seed next year so I didn’t run out?? I DID order extra! But I got a different variety of oat seed and the rate changed so… back for more.

After planting, this year I had time and cooperative weather to go over the oat ground with the drag (harrow) to smooth it out and help cover the seed in the tractor tracks that don’t always get covered.

Got the old 630 running pretty well. And I’ve ordered a new exhaust pipe and muffler for it. I’m looking forward to working on that after the spring rush.

Parked the tractor in the shop and changed oil, engine air filters, (there’s two) and cab air filters. Two tall, narrow ones outside, and two small ones inside the cab.

The new exterior shop lights are great!

Finished planting oats on Friday while my brother was out working up corn ground. The Co-op applied corn fertilizer on Thursday, and I hope to be planting corn on Saturday.

When I’m planting, I’m travelling at about 5 MPH. Faster than that and the seed spacing gets messed up. And seed spacing is really critical in some crops. Corn it’s extremely important. Soybeans it’s moderately, and oats doesn’t matter so much.

Fancy newer ‘high speed’ equipment carries a seed to the ground using a brush belt to gently place the seed in the trench. New planters are capable of 10 MPH. Time is money you know. It’s fascinating how fast some of these parts are moving to drop a seed every 6″ at 10 MPH. There’s some math for you. Bill, how long does it take to go 100′ at 10MPH and how many seeds does it drop if they’re 6″ apart? That mechanism is really moving!  

Getting ready for commencement at the college. Hung some of the fixtures over the stage, before they place the stage. Had the gym to myself and it was pretty nice.

Will look a lot different this time next week.

Got the laptop and ‘Hog’ console set up and doing all that math / prep work. Or trying. Thursday afternoon the laptop didn’t want to play nice. But Friday morning all was well. I have a plan B and C. It will be fine, FINE I tell you!

HOW MANY JOBS HAVE YOU WORKED AT ONCE?

FOR WHAT GOAL?

2025, Family, Food, Seasons, Weather

Orange Freeze Redux

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One of the very few things that I miss about Missouri (where I grew up) is Steak & Shake.  S&S is a hamburger joint.  No drive-through, just order and take it home or stay and sit.  Booths with individual juke boxes. 

I always ordered the same thing.  Shoestring fries and an orange freeze.  Normally my mom didn’t fuss that I didn’t have an entrée; if she did, then I added a grilled cheese.  An orange freeze was basically an orange creamsicle shake and I adored it.  When I moved away from Missouri, I lamented the loss of the orange freeze.  The orange Julius just didn’t cut the mustard.  (I did find shoestring fries at the Convention Grill that stand up to S&S.)

For forty years, every time I visited family in St. Louis, we would always have one meal at S&S.  This was OK until last year when we visited and discovered that S&S had DISCONTINUED the orange freeze.  Truly awful news.  Only my mother’s wish to not make a scene kept me at the table.  Grilled cheese, shoestring fries and diet coke just wasn’t’ the same.

Fast forward to yesterday.  YA and I were headed for grocery shopping and decided to make a stop at Dairy Queen.  While it’s not technically summer, a few nice warm days have a way of lulling you into believing it’s close.  As we were waiting in the drive through, I noticed something called an Orange Cream Shake featured on the menu with a lovely picture and a huge notice that it was new.  Cynic that I am, I didn’t consider it for a minute, but YA said “hey, that looks like that orange thing you like – let’s get a small one so we can taste it.”   Guess I’ve mentioned the orange freeze just a few times in her life. 

Well, glory be.  It’s perfect.  If I closed my eyes I could just imagine sitting in an S&S booth, sipping away.  YA was lucky to get half.   We’ll see how long the orange shake lasts on the DQ menu but I’ll have a few in the meantime.  Now if only I could get Dairy Queen to make those fabulous shoestring fries!

Do you have any favorite summer time treats?

2025, animals, Automotive, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons

May

56 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The barn swallows are back.

Often we get one that stops in about this time of the year, just as the scout, and then it’s gone again until about May 6 when they generally return to stay. This year we had one back on April 26. I joked that mom came back as a barn swallow. And a few days later, she brought dad with her. And this pair moved into the usual nest on top of the Windchime next to the front door. They seem to be here to stay.

I’ve been saying I couldn’t remember what day it was for the last month. Heck, throw in a funeral and I’m totally discombobulated now. 

Finished our spring play at the college last weekend, then had a spring concert this past week. Commencement isn’t until the 14th, so this coming week, maybe I can farm a bit between other things. 

It has rained enough I haven’t gotten much fieldwork done or anything planted yet. I think the damp conditions are Gods way of telling me just to relax, it will be OK. Ha! “Relax.” Clearly God isn’t aware of how my mind works.

We moved the chicks to a bigger pen. They’re enjoying that, eating A LOT and growing well. Just starting to get some tail feathers. 

After cutting down all those trees, last week I got them all cleared off the fields. That was more involved than I expected, but it’s done. And I didn’t break anything on the tractor nor hurt myself. 

I did some repairs on something I had bent on one of the tractors last winter, and I graded the road. The chickens sure love a fresh pile of dirt or even if it’s gravel. The first grading of the spring, I’m pulling in rock from the edges, and cutting down the edges so rain water will run off the side and not down the road. It kinda makes a mess for a while. It will get better. Eventually.

I got my final rabies shot got so I got my rabies tag now.

You all know, with any death there is a lot of details. There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, Mr. Magorium‘s Wonder Emporium, where one of the characters says he’s just the guy that makes sure all the papers are in order. I kind of feel like that sometimes. I made a lot of phone calls this week. I thought when mom passed away I would be complete blubbering mess. But honestly it was a huge relief. It felt like such a weight off. And I’m lucky that I have such a supportive family and we all get along so well. (Well, there’s that one… we’ve had enough together time for now.)

We laugh together at the meeting at the funeral home, we laugh over stories with the minister during the meeting at the church.

I asked the funeral home director for a tour. He said he couldn’t give me a tour. I told him I didn’t want to see a dead body, I just wanted to see the “backstage” areas, so he did show me the garage. I remember when Dad died, there was a framed picture of Bea Arthur in the casket room. I couldn’t figure out if she was the celebrity spokesperson or what?? Her picture isn’t there anymore. And the guy wouldn’t believe me that it was there before. But I know what I saw!

Mom had requested a private burial and then the service will be in a few weeks because all the grandchildren were already planning a “cousins reunion” and we didn’t want them to make two trips this close together.

So we’re at the cemetery for a quick little service, and I’m looking at dad‘s headstone “over there”, but the casket and hole over here. And somebody else questions that as well. Finally I get the attention of the funeral director. He went pale for a second, and he started to sweat, and then we realized they had moved the headstone in order to dig the hole and get the mechanism in place for the casket. Oh. OK, that makes sense. He teased me I was gonna give him a heart attack.

Kelly and I stayed after and talked with the cemetery crew and watched them lower the casket into the vault. It’s all part of the process.

And the world just keeps on going round.

IS THERE A CELEBRITY SPOKESPERSON YOU’D BELIEVE?

2025, animals, Family, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

Let the Sun Shine

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Most years, our first foray to the zoo is during Farm Babies, which usually starts towards the end of April.  The zoo opens up the Farm and there are usually some baby animals to pet.  It’s not a big a celebration as it was in years’ past, but who can resist petting baby goats.  Not us.

This year, YA broke tradition by waking up last weekend and suggesting we go to the zoo that day.  I didn’t have any plans, so off we went.

Our normal routine is to start with the inside exhibits – first the Tropics and then the Minnesota Trail.  We skipped the Bird Show as they re-jiggered the winter show last year and we didn’t care for it too much.  Then we walked on the lake bridge to see the tigers, caribou and moose then around the Northern Trail – the Bactrian camels were all out sunning together – it looked like they were at a symposium:

The two takins that were out were having a great day, chasing each other around; we’ve never seen them that active.  One of the snow leopards was also enjoying the sunshine (see the header photo).  In fact, that did seem to be the theme of the day; many of the animals were enjoying the sunny day. 

After winding back to the main building through the Grizzly Coast, we had our lunch, augmented with french fries.  Had to hit the gift shop, although we almost never purchase anything.  Then sea lions and weedy sea dragons and sharks before we headed home.  A wonderful day.

How do you like your sunshine?  Porch?  Adirondack chairs?  Chaise lounge?  Hands and knees in the garden? Sun lamp?

2025, animals, Family, Farming Update, home, Mysteries, Seasons, Uncategorized

What’s the Point?

31 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Another Wednesday, another blizzard warning and snow day.

For good measure, the three of us took Thursday off as a snow day as well. Wanted to make sure we gave the roads time to improve. And really, on the north side of Rochester we only had about 2 inches maybe, and most of our driveway didn’t have any snow on it. Credit to my dad for having the road built up like he did 50 years ago. I remember maybe 30 years ago there was a snow storm every Thursday for about a month. I would plow the driveway before milking in the morning, Kelly would take the kids in and go to work, and then before they came home, I’d clear the driveway and again wait for them out at the highway. Must’ve been before cell phones, and in one of those odd little memories that sticks with you, I remember sitting in the tractor with the door open while one of the sheriff deputies that we were friends with, stood outside and we talked for half an hour. I remember watching his ears get more and more red and thinking “I’m sure glad I’m in this tractor cab.“, and “why doesn’t he end this conversation and get back in the car already??” Maybe Kelly finally came home, I don’t remember. Maybe he wasn’t cold. Maybe I should have had him get in the cab out of the wind at least. Don’t know.

Daughter and I have the place to ourselves this weekend as Kelly flew out to Boston to staff a booth for some work-related event. Flew out Saturday, works Sunday, back on Monday. I don’t think you can even call that a working vacation. Sounds like just plain ‘work’ to me.

I think I have finally finished farm bookwork and can get our taxes done now. The software I use generates a Year End report that will be 31 pages this year. About half of it being farm related expenses, and the other half being household expenses. There’s no profit on the farm this year and that’s primarily expenses related to the farm shop. I always enjoy looking at the final tally of these expenses. The dogs cost us $3000: Half is vet expenses, the other half are dog treats, joint medications, and frisbees. Pretty astounding how much we’ve spent on groceries.

I have finally, I think, finished all the construction in the shop. In fact, I moved the miter saw and table saw off to storage corners. I started moving bolts to the new bolt shelves and placed another order for more storage bins and dividers. I am throwing out a lot! A lot of not only old, rusty, bent, things, but just bolts that I’ll never use. For example, a box of nuts and bolts from my father-in-law when he had a grain bin taken down. There’s just not a chance I’m gonna use 1000 round headed, 1 inch bolts, that have a glob of tar on them. I also threw out a box of 3/8 inch flat headed plow bolts. Again, it’s just not something I’m gonna use. I use plow bolts, but they’re ½” diameter and 2 inches long.

I have two boxes of stuff I’m saving for my crafty sister. Just weird little odds and ends that she always appreciates. Although in this case, I’m not sure what she’s gonna do with all this metal stuff without a welder. Maybe I should buy her a tube of JB weld to go with this junk. I mean “these supplies”.  

One of the boxes of dad‘s odds and ends and bits of doo-dads, contained eight sets of ignition points and three condensers. I have no idea if they’re from tractors or cars and it sort of boggles my mind that if he replaced a set because it wasn’t running well, why did he not just throw it right away in the first place??

I saved those for my sister.
Some of you might know what those are. Electronic ignition and everything these days has eliminated the need for these things, but these were a pretty remarkable creation in the history of the automobile and kudos to whoever invented them.

(OK, I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, Charles Franklin Kettering, founder of Delco, and worked for GM, is credited with creating this ignition system. It was first used on the 1912 Cadilac. Huh!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delco_ignition_system

The online auction in Plainview finished on Tuesday. I had taken a small, 4 drawer toolbox that I got for free, a large 5 drawer ‘document’ cabinet that had large, shallow drawers, and the anhydrous applicator toolbar. There were two other, much nicer anhydrous applicators than mine on the auction. I got $200 for that item. A lot less than I paid for it ten or fifteen years ago. I also got $40 for the small free toolbox. So at least all that stuff is out of my hair.

I’ve got 1 chicken laying eggs in the garage.

I’ve chased her out of the garage a couple times recently, so I was keeping an eye out for eggs. Every now and then I get a chicken laying eggs in the garage for some reason. Once they were nesting up on a shelf behind a box of sidewalk chalk. This time she’s on the ground, behind a shovel. I figure that out one day when the shovel was tipped over. Chickens are so weird.

Hey- check out this ‘egg fetcher’ tool I use when the eggs are in the corner underneath the nest boxes:

WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON THING IN YOUR JUNK DRAWER?  DID YOU GO LOOK OR DID YOU JUST KNOW?  WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT MANY OF THAT THING?

2025, Family, Farming Update, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

First False Spring?

41 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I feel like I’ve been really busy the past week. I don’t know why exactly, I don’t know what exactly I’ve been doing, I just feel like I’ve been running from one thing to the next.

However I know spring is coming, I heard a kill deer! And the Sandhill Cranes! And I got out the pot with the chives in it. There’s still some ice on the north side of the house and I saw a small snowbank in a patch of grass, but we’re getting there. As I write this on Friday, they’re predicting thunderstorms for Friday evening. ” They” say, the first frost will be six months after the first thunderstorm. Which gets us into mid-September which, while not ideal, wouldn’t be unheard of either. There was a large halo around the moon Wednesday night. Google says spiritually, some traditions see a lunar halo as a positive omen, indicating a time of good fortune, spiritual alignment, and harmony. Good, let’s run with that one.

I spent Thursday at a meeting on nitrogen management in Southeast Minnesota. A continuing education course of sorts. Focus on the southeast Minnesota region is relevant because of the karst geography and sink holes and how rapidly ground water can enter drinking water. Please know, farmers care a great deal about their farms and the water we are drinking, and our soils as well. Putting on more fertilizer or chemicals than a crop can use is a waste of money. There were a lot of charts, and graphs, and a lot of data presented. If you notice from this picture, commercial fertilizer started being available shortly after World War II and greatly accelerated in the 1960s.

Soybeans came into play in the 1940s.

It’s interesting to think how much of our farm practices are not really that old.

One of the comments made was that we could do a lot better with our fertilizer practices if we could more accurately predict the weather. A lot of fertilizer and nitrogen is applied in the spring as pre-planting or at planting. And yet the following picture shows the plants greatest need for Nitrogen is tasseling through ear development.

While the greatest amount of precipitation and the greatest chance to lose nitrogen happens in the spring.

So why do we apply it in the spring?

Well, that’s kinda just how it works. Corn does need some starter fertilizer to get going from seed. And we do soil testing to know how much nitrogen is already in the soil, and it’s just easiest to do it before anything is planted. I have done some ‘side-dressing’, which is injecting anhydrous nitrogen between the rows when the plant is 18-24” tall, but there’s also more damage to the standing corn when turning at the ends, or not driving straight. And some guys, with the right equipment, can apply liquid nitrogen when the plant is 6’ tall just before it tassels, but that takes tall sprayers, and again, there is crop loss. In my small fields, I’d damage so much turning around on the ends that it would defeat any gains.

 I’m greatly simplifying a lot of this, it’s too much to get into here, but it was all really very interesting.

And much of the data presented yesterday really didn’t show much difference between spring applications and later applications. We just have to know that we are going to have less available for the crop. It was also noted, we see so many new products claiming to save money and time. But if the cost of the new ideas ultimately don’t create much of an improved crop yield, ($$$), then they fall out of favor.

The bathroom! Here is a before photo-

And finally, minus the shower glass yet, the after photo-

It looks really nice. It IS really nice. Kelly has already enjoyed the bathtub several times. I really like the rich color of the cabinets in the laundry room.

The heated floor is nice.

It was hard finding room for towel bars and grab bars, and we probably gave up some storage that we hope we don’t come to regret. But it sure is an improvement.

We had a bidet in the old bathroom, one of those simple ones from Costco that you simply add to the toilet seat. This time around, we ordered an actual bidet seat. It’s quite the deal. Or at least so I’m told. I haven’t used it yet. I haven’t used that function yet.
When you approach the toilet, the lid opens on its own and a nightlight comes on. For us gentlemen, there’s even a light inside, I guess so we can tell what we’re aiming at. Our contractor said he’d seen a lot of toilets, but he didn’t think he’d seen one that fancy before. Lest you think otherwise, it is not gold plated.

Later this summer we’ll start on the downstairs pink bathroom remodel. I do not expect a bidet in that one.

WHAT WOULD YOU ADD TO YOUR BATHROOM? WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN AT NIGHT LATELY?

2025, Automotive, Mysteries, Seasons

Redundancies

30 Comments

The first car that I owned was a 1968 Datsun 510.  I bought it used when I lived in Northfield – in 1977 – for a whooping $400.  It had some rust but ran pretty well.  The owner wouldn’t sell it to me until we test drove it; I don’t think he believed I could drive a stick. 

Back then inexpensive cars didn’t do anything special for you.  No pings to tell you that you haven’t turned off the lights, no messages that your oil life is down to 15%, no back-up cameras, no seat warmers, and certainly no notifications that your tire air pressure is getting low.

Even though my current car is 11 years old, I bought it new from a dealership so I can still take it in when the air pressure light goes on, usually after the first cold snap of each fall/winter. They check the tires and fill any that are low.  No charge for this.  A couple of years ago, a new warning blinked at me, on a cold cold morning in January – a TPMS warning.  I looked it up in the manual and online – Tire Pressure Monitoring System.  Didn’t I already have that?

When I had the car’s check-up in April (right before I drove to Indy for the eclipse), I asked the mechanics to look at it – they said they took care of it.  Unfortunately, when the got cold in December, the light came back on.  I ignored it for a couple of weeks, it warmed up and the light turned off.  When I had the oil changed in January, I asked them to look at it again.  Turns out there are FOUR of these sensors and they not only go wonky fairly often but they run on batteries, so eventually the batteries run down.  They had fixed one of these sensors in April, but now there were two more sensors acting up.  The reality is that they are actually a built-in redundancy, a back-up to the main system, which works just fine.  If the light was bothering me, I could cough up $120 each to have them adjusted and get new batteries for them.  If I wait until the next time I need new tires, it will be a lot less.  So, since the warning isn’t even accurate, I decided to ignore it.  Then when it warmed up… the light went off again.  Sigh. 

Hopefully it won’t come on again until it gets really cold again.

Do you have any “back-ups”, just in case…….