It’s another time of year for polarization. Candy corn or no candy corn! Hamlet said it best:
To corn, or not to corn, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of autumn candy treasure,
Or to take arms against a sea of sugar
And by opposing end them. To gorge—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand sugar shocks
That taste buds are heir to: ’tis a corn consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.
I’ve always loved candy corn. I know that many folks do not – in fact really really do not. It took me a few years after I became a vegetarian to realize that my fall favorite is not a vegetarian product; the Brachs autumn staple is made with gelatin. So sadly at about the age of 22 I gave up candy corn.
About 15 years ago I discovered a few smaller companies who make candy corn (and also the little pumpkins) with no gelatin. You kinda had to hunt for it. For the last five years I’ve been able to find it at Hy-Vee but this is dangerous. I drive all the way to Hy-Vee and then can’t seem to just get the candy and go; I always spend way to much at Hy-Vee.
This year Target is carrying a non-gelatin brand of both the plain candy corn as well as the pumpkin mix. Woo-hoo. I got a container of each (and didn’t end up spending a small fortune on other items).
When I got home YA gave me grief about buying candy corn and disparaged candy corn in general. But I’ve seen her dip her hand into the candy bowl more than once since then. Guess she’s on team candy corn whether she admits it or not!
Do you have something you just can’t stand? (Besides VS hi-jacking Shakespeare to validate her yearning for candy.)
You all know my weakness for seasonal goodies – so does Trader Joes. There is normally a slew of new items each season, most of which won’t be back when the season is over. YA and I went out a couple of weeks ago, right after the latest Fearless Flyer (Trader Joe’s newsletter) arrived in my mailbox. There are plenty of things we like to shop for but looking at and maybe picking up some of the seasonal stuff adds to the fun. In this respect, the YA apple didn’t fall far from the tree!
We tried fall leaf tortilla chips and potato crisps in the shape of ghost and bats. A big jar of harvest soup, a bag of apple granola. Pumpkin pasta. At the last minute we tossed a box of apple shortbread cookies into the basket. Normally the seasonal items we pick up are nice but nothing that makes me sad knowing they won’t come around again. But this year is different. The tortilla chips, the ghost potato crisps and the apple shortbread were all winners. I even whipped up some fresh salsa to have with the tortilla chips. YA ate most of the apple shortbread before I even got one.
Over the weekend, I had to pick up a couple of things at Michaels… and when I came out of the store and headed toward my car, my eyes lit on the Trader Joes on the other side of the parking lot. I didn’t even hesitate; headed right over and picked up more of the chips, crisps and the shortbreads. YA was very happy to have two more boxes of shortbread but thought that my extra bags of chips and crisps boarded on “hoarding”. She also suggested that I shouldn’t be eating the ghost/bat crisps until it’s a little closer to Halloween.
Considering that the world has been celebrating Halloween for a couple of weeks; the scary movies started up on October 1st on the dot. I like the fall and Halloween, but I prefer not to have my wits scared out of me by scary movies and creepy designs. I do like most folks yard decorations at this time of year; how do they keep those giant skeletons standing up?
So we’ll be enjoying our fall goodies for a few more weeks; I’ll probably have to make more salsa!
Do you prefer the cozy side of Fall or the spooky side of Halloween?
We talked about the first false fall the other day. And now the box elder bugs have arrived.
Egg production is down.
Last year’s chicks are finally aging out. The header photo is monthly dozens. This year’s chicks have started laying practice eggs. Takes three small ones to equal two regular eggs.
I heard about this on MPR. Made me think about Bart from the Morning Show. We know his cell phone is dead by now. Heck, it probably wouldn’t even work on the networks anymore. Trust us Bart, we’re not fat-shaming. We know you’re stocking up for winter.
I’ve seen a lot of farmers out combining soybeans. The big farmers are worried about that forecast of an early snow, so everyone will be pushing hard. Me? I just wait for the neighbors who harvest mine to get too it. But I’ll be hoping they’re pushing hard to get theirs done so they can get to mine. It will be what it will be.
Last week I pulled out a fence post in preparation for some stump grinding and I cleared some brush. In the process of clearing said brush, I somehow knocked a front tire off the rim. I think I hit a log or stick and broke off the valve stem. Had Appel Service out on Monday to repair that. Just needed a new valve stem.
Even though it’s tech week at the Rep, I’ve gotten a little work done at home. To prepare for the shop heater I am having installed, I met the LP gas dealer, and we discussed where to put the LP tank. (I just had to google ‘LP vs Propane’ because this is all new to me and I learned they’re the same thing with different names. Since we live out in the country and don’t have natural gas piping in the area, and we have all electric heat in the house, I’ve never dealt with an LP tank. I guess in our old house we used fuel oil.) Depending on size, an LP tank has to be 10 feet from structures. It can be right next to the gas or diesel barrels, but 10’ from a building. We decided to put it behind the shed. Out of sight that way. I scraped off some dirt and made a level spot. They will bury the line from the tank to the building, then it can run along the edge of the steel siding. Easier than trenching across the driveway. And as long as I remember to fill it before there’s two feet of snow back there, it will be fine.
Then I used the tractor loader and finally got the brush mower on a trailer and hauled it to a welding shop so they can fix it. Hard to explain, but the four large bolts holding one of the gear boxes came loose. It vibrated and rattled so bad it enlarged the bolt holes, and the vibrations led to multiple cracks. Repairing it was more than I could handle. Last weekend I used the forks on the loader and pulled it out of the weeds and tipped it up so I could take off the blades and related parts in preparation of the repair.
Using my extensive knowledge of picking things up, I managed to lift it up, work on it and then, again with my extensive knowledge, inadvertently tip it over backwards – on to the trailer wheel well. Huh. Oops.
From there I was able to tip it back up and get it back on its bottom. The only real damage was to the hydraulic hose which I’ll have to replace. And then from there, yet again using my extensive knowledge of redneck farming practices, I picked it up and got it on the trailer.
Luna got a ride in the truck ALL BY HERSELF that day being as the other two dogs still have a faint skunk aroma too them.
I was able to get a little work done in my shed. Started framing in the double door.
Friday, Olson’s Tree Service was out to grind out those stumps that was clearing last weekend. Glad to have that done. I can check it off the list now.
We could use a little rain. The winter rye is off to a good start but doesn’t seem to be growing too fast. Rain would really help.
There’s a new bakery that opened on my route between dropping off daughter and me going to work. They have a Mexican version of rosetta’s called ‘Bunuelos De Viento’. Oh my are they good.
So, a little bit of a lot going on this past week.
Anyone grow up with frost on their bedroom ceiling nails? What are you stocking up for winter?
I don’t know what happened to this week, it was one of those weeks that feels like it just kind of disappeared even though last weekend was a long time ago.
I did the usual college stuff, plus homework, went to play rehearsals Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights. Saturday morning I have a theater board meeting and I’ll do some work at the theater Saturday afternoon. Sunday we’re going up to see “Back to The Future” the musical. It got a pretty decent review with special emphasis on the technical stuff so that will give me something to look forward to.
tim was in Rochester so he picked up some eggs.
I did finish planting rye last Sunday afternoon, and on Thursday I returned the seed that I didn’t use.
I took Thursday off from the college so I could work on my machine shed. I snapped a chalk line on the floor from the two existing exterior posts that will be the ends of my new wall, and then I spent quite a while figuring out the bottom plate and where doors will be and how much room there will be in the middle between the doors. I decided I need to get going on this wall because I was getting anxious about it, and I’m avoiding it, and doing a lot of putzy other little things, and walls don’t get done that way. Meaning there’s nothing to do but to do it.
A few dairy guys have started chopping corn silage (something I always enjoyed and I kinda miss), and I’ve seen a few bean fields that are losing their leaves. It means Fall and harvest is coming. Daughter was talking about Christmas the other day; she’s got a few items in mind. I had to laugh that I wasn’t thinking about Christmas yet, but she pointed out Halloween is next month, and then it’s just 2 months. Yes, yes it is. The circle is coming around.
This spring when I ordered all those baby chicks, remember the batch of roosters that I mistakenly ordered? I guess I was too busy most of the summer to really pay much attention, and now at night when I’m throwing out corn and all the chickens are gathered around, I’m starting to count quite a lot of roosters.
They are kind of pretty, but I think I’ve counted 13 new roosters, not to mention the four older roosters we already have. And that’s far too many roosters. I had found a place that would butcher them, so maybe I really need to get back in touch with them and get something on the schedule. These are called Blue Lace Wyandotte and they’re really pretty. Although the females are large and kind of ornery. There’s been one sitting in a nest box most of the summer and even with daughter’s milk jug shield, she won’t usually reach under that one for eggs.
I went to Savers for more shirts. I thought I was going to have to use the sleeve I cut off to add the second pocket, (I have one shirt that has very shallow pockets. I can’t even put a pen in the pocket. Eventually I cut a hole in the bottom of that pocket so my pen and pencils will fit.) That’s why I need a second pocket.
I struggled with the question of “why” this week. Since I broke the brush mower last week, (did I mention I broke it? I talked about it rattling, and the bolts coming loose, and then… I don’t know what happened, but it started to shake itself apart. I couldn’t see anything obviously wrong, and I just parked it and walked away. I gotta deal with other stuff for a while and then I’ll come back to it.)
Consequently I was mowing weeds with the lawnmower and was asking myself why I felt the need to mow these weeds. There are some places I can justify, like in the oat fields the waterways are full of tall grass and weeds and they make it a problem for swathing, they’re a problem for combining, and they are a problem for baling, so it makes sense to mow them. But then I get off in the pastures or field roads and yeah, there’s some weeds that it’s good to take down like thistles, buttonweeds, (velvet leaf), ragweed, and wild parsnip, but if it’s just grass, why am I mowing it?
The larger question of “why“ can be applied to illness, sicknesses, the political party of your choice, or any host of things.
So that’s what’s been on my mind.
Daughter and I also talked about making decisions and why that’s so hard sometimes. It’s a learned skill, isn’t it?
Earlier this week, I was a bit anxious because I should have already been cutting oats. I was anxious about how the swather was going to run, I was anxious about the weather, I was anxious about how the Oats would do, and how to get it hauled to the place in Iowa.
And let’s face it, I was scared. Scared the swather would break down, scared I wouldn’t be able to fix it, scared of just the whole thing. But eventually I put on my big boy pants, and started cutting oats. And yep, it quits after an hour and a half. It’s like it got a vapor lock or something. An hour later I can start it again and cut some more. And I’m working on a trucker, so we still just wait to see on the weather and how the oats does and it will all be OK, won’t it?
A few of the ducks were out one morning and having a good time in the taller grass, so the next morning we opened the fence and let them all out. Generally, that’s kind of how it works; They get out themselves and then we decide it’s OK to let them go. And they are having a really good time in the deep grass and finding bugs and they look very very happy. I know I counted 26 ducks one day and then there only seemed to be 24, and the next day I counted 26 again. I don’t know how that works.
The dogs cornered a raccoon up in a tree for the third time in about two weeks. They appear to be fairly small raccoons so they must be young. I suppose along the same lines of me wondering where the ducks go when they get freedom, some raccoon mother somewhere is wondering what becomes of her children when they venture out on their own someplace.
The show in Chatfield that I’m lighting is “SpongeBob SquarePants The Musical”.
You’re probably not familiar with SpongeBob, we are all too old to have seen it as kids, you might be aware of it from Mall of America, or grandchildren, or neighbors, and it’s just silly fun. I haven’t looked too hard for a message in this musical. (turns out there are some!) I’m just making big bright colors. The woman who is designing some of the scenery, Vicky, did some really cool things with pool noodles and expandable spray foam. The guys who built the structure run a welding and machine shop and they can build just about anything. (They can fix my brush mower too!) It’s not done the way I would do it as a “theater professional” but it is certainly good enough for a show.
Driving to Chatfield gives me 20 miles of country roads to see how the crops are doing. There are a couple different ways I take to get there but generally, I take the straight shot back home on Hwy 52. Especially when it’s dark.
I started working in Chatfield’s Potter Auditorium in 1987 and I built the sets there for about three years, then took a break for a long time before coming back to light a few more shows. I feel a deep connection to this place. The people are great to work with. It is a true community theater in every sense of the word. There will be a big potluck lunch on Sunday before we have our first dress rehearsal.
WHAT MESSAGE OR STORY FROM A SONG HAS ALWAYS STAYED WITH YOU?
I was glad to see how tall Ben’s corn is last week. The summer has been good for me – after last summer’s blisteringly dry heat, I’m enjoying the slightly milder temps and the rain. I haven’t even had to get the sprinklers out of the garage yet.
And Iowa must be doing OK as well. My next-door neighbors were gone for about 10 days – visiting the grandparents south of the border. When they travel in the summer, I always water their outdoor plants; it’s easy as they just pull all the pots over to the fence and I can just apply the hose to them whenever I am watering my bales.
I’m happy to do it and I don’t think of it as an onerous chore (especially when it rains so much) so I was surprised when they came home with a bag full of corn for me as a thank you. Straight off the farmstand corn and the pretty kind I like best – yellow and white.
The only problem with 12 ears of fresh corn is when you are the only one home for over a week. YA was away on a work program. There was no way I was going to waste all that gorgeous corn so I rolled up my sleeves and dived in.
I saved two for just eating and de-kernelled (is that a word?) the rest. Froze one bag then made a double batch of corn salsa (froze some), a lovely fresh kernel cornbread and then a fun garden veggie pizza with ricotta as sauce. All done in three hours!
So now I’ve processed cherries and corn this summer. Wonder what else will come my way?
What kind of foodstuff would you like to have too much of?
The weather is changing. The rain has stopped and the temps and humidity are up. I’ve turned on the chickens fan, and got the ducks in their outside pen. The ducks are at that awkward stage where a gallon of water last them half a day, everything‘s wet, and they chewed off the string on the bottom of a brand new sack of feed so then I had an open tube that used to have 50 pounds of feed in it. It was time to get them outside.
This was a mixed assortment of ducklings so I don’t really know what I’ve got yet, although six of them are all black, a couple are twice the size of a couple others, and like most teenagers, we just gotta get through this phase.
It takes a while for the ducks to learn how to get back in again at night, which means for now, Kelly and I have to wrangle them back inside. Everything is still wet down there, and it is stinky mud, and they’re not the smartest animal on the farm, so it’s kind of a whole big thing, but this too shall pass. Eventually.
I went out with the tractor and loader and moved the downed trees off the edge of the fields. The soybeans were sprayed with fungicide and broadleaf preventer on Thursday. I wanted the tree in the bean field out of the way for that. I’ll be mowing weeds in a week or two, and oats will be ready in 3 weeks or so. I moved two trees out of the oats field. I saw the neighbors cornfield just starting to tassel Friday afternoon
I’ve been spending a lot of time rebuilding the stage at the Rochester Repertory Theater. The old stage had been there since we moved there in 2007, and it was built of used lumber then, so it was squeaky and kinda wonky and wore out. Last year’s ‘Give to the Max’ campaign raised money for this new stage. I had a good group of volunteers come in to cut up and haul out the old one. We loaded it on a trailer and I hauled it to the recycling center. I didn’t expect it to cost $450 for disposal. Ouch. There went my budget.
Of course, what’s a project without a few extra items thrown into the mix? We are creating a tool room out of the former elevator room, we are insulating some windows, and we are making the control booth window larger too. All good stuff!
Except that I’m not getting much done on my machine shed shop project. I get a little done, it’s just slow going. I got steel wrap and the window trim done on one window, so I can get back to the steel siding. I did change the windshield washer pump on my truck and I need to replace one nozzle. And I cut off a tree root and reset some rocks interferring with the wellhouse door. And I got to use a pickax and a grub hoe.
I’m just not getting the shop work done.
Thursday, Kelly and I took a road trip to Golden Valley to ‘Monkey Wrench Productions’ and picked up some lighting stuff.
A new lighting console for the Rep theater (thanks to a very nice grant from the Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation) and with all the construction on Hwy 52 that we ran into, we decided to take a different way home. Came back through Hastings, and had lunch at the ‘Lock and Dam Eatery’. Walked down to the river, and had a nice talk with a photographer.
A few days ago we took the four wheeler down through the woods. There’s a trail that a neighbor keeps mowed and I had been on part of it, but not all of it before. Although there were places I remembered checking fence 35 years ago when I still had beef cows down there. Like this gate; people would open it in the winter and if not closed again, cows ended up in their yards and they didn’t like that. Guess they never learned the rule to leave the gate like you found it. But that only works for the first person.
You gotta take your adventures where you can get them.
What’s the most money you’ve paid to get rid of something?
I received a text from Daughter on Tuesday in a panic because it was 93° in Tacoma, her apartment was hot except for her bedroom, where she has a portable air conditioner, and her refrigerator had stopped working and everything in her freezer/fridge was melted. She had to throw out eight grocery bags of food. Only the cheese was salvageable.
I immediately went into problem solving mode, inquiring about rental insurance, repairs, etc. This was not what she needed or wanted. She just wanted me to commiserate and console. It turned out to be a problem with the fridge shorting out the fuse panel in her apartment. She just needs to keep an eye on it.
Very few people in the Pacific North West have air conditioning because it rarely gets that hot there. There have been unusual but increasingly frequent heat waves there. I am a person who is always cold, so no matter how hot it is, it rarely bothers me. I could probably do ok there. I remember how excited my parents were when we got an air conditioner installed in the dining area of our house when I was in about Grade 1. It only kept the livingroom cool, but it sure made them feel good.
I have never had to deal with a freezer or fridge that went on the fritz. I often wonder what we would do if we had an extended period of electricity loss given all the freezers we have in the basement. I think I would gets lots of ice to keep everything cold and get a gas powered generator to fill in for the loss of power.
When did you first have air-conditioning? Ever had to deal with a freezer or fridge that malfunctioned? What kind of help do you want when you are upset?
After all the days of rain, YA and I couldn’t wait to get out into the yard and get dirty. I decided that it had been too long since I cleaned up the edges of the yard and boulevard along our front sidewalk. This is a two-part job. First I run my edger along where I think the sidewalk should be ending. Second I sit on the sidewalk and pull up the bits that are overgrown.
So there I was sitting on the sidewalk when a neighbor from up the street, along with her son, stopped to chat. Since they had their dog, who is on the small size, I stayed on the sidewalk to pet the dog while we talked. Blake (son) and I talked about llama day, which had happened at the library the week before. Blake had been to the farm where the llamas come from and knew one of the llamas that was at the library.
We also talked about school finally being over for the summer and I asked him if he had any plans. He’s 10 so his short “just camps” answer didn’t surprise me; I followed up with “what kind of camps this year”. He mentioned a science camp and a viking camp. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know all the kinds of camps there are, but a viking camp seemed different. I asked if it was a football camp or some kind of history camp. He laughed and said “BIKING”. If I’d had any liquid, I probably would have snorted it up on the spot.
When I was a kid you just hung around the neighborhood for the summer and bothered your mother. Maybe if you knew someone who knew someone you might end up at a vacation bible study camp for a few days. If kids were doing organized anything, I never knew about it. So even though Blake will be biking for one of his camps this summer, I love the thought of viking camp. Not even remotely sure what we would do at viking camp, but I’m positive I would love the outfits!
How did you spend your summers as a kid? Any camp you WISH you could have gone to?
Had a nice rain on Friday morning. We got about 4/10th of an inch. Tuesday evening there were some strong storms, with some real strong wind gusts. No issues at our place, but there were a lot of branches down in Rochester, and power out in places, and about 6:30 PM I got a call from a township resident that just north of Rochester, several trees were down across the road. As I’m a township supervisor, part of my job is dealing with issues like this. I called the other supervisors and three of us got to work. Thankfully the county came around with a skidloader and they could push it off the road once cut into chunks. We work with a tree service that has done EXEPTIONAL work for us, and they came around and picked up the pieces the next day.
I’ll leave out the part where I got my chainsaw stuck, then John got his stuck trying to get mine out, and Paul insisted he was NOT going to have three chainsaws stuck when the county boys arrived! We didn’t. Whew!
I finished planting soybeans Thursday night about 10:00. Here’s my last pass.
It wasn’t quite perfect soil conditions, it was a little bit sticky, but we are getting late enough in the growing season, and with rain predicted several times in the 10-day forecast, I was willing to push it.
The University of Minnesota Extension Service says corn should be planted by May 5th to get 100% yield. By May 25th, we’re down to 92%.
For soybeans, it’s May 1 for 100%, and 91% by May 25th.
Of course there’s always extenuating circumstances, but those are the general guidelines. One year, due to a loan issue with my bank, I planted soybeans before corn, and it was one of the best crops I’d had. So why don’t we plant soybeans first? Good question. Soybeans are more sensitive to cold or wet soils. Corn can sit for 3 weeks and still germinate well. (As some did this year for the farmers who got going in April. My corn came up in a week because I planted later and had warmer weather). So, it’s always a game and you just never know.
When Bailey, my tractor buddy and I, got home from planting and backed into the shed, I discovered my extension cords glow in the dark! HUH! Never knew that before.
The chick’s have gotten their outdoor pen.
This group seems much more active and busy than other years, and, we knew they’d need a 6 foot tall pen rather than the 3’ tall pen. I’m looking at you, Luna.
I’ve ordered ducklings. Thirty. Will be shipped June 18th. An assortment.
My Mom turned 98 on Sunday. The immediate family had lunch with her, and then we invited a few close friends. She enjoyed the company and liked visiting. Some church friends, and some of her nieces and nephews and it was a fun visit for all of us.
I’m going to miss having my tractor time. Everything went really well this year, and the only issue was one broken hydraulic hose. I just enjoyed the whole process.
Using Apple Music, it was fun to pick an artist that interested me that day, and listen to a selection of their music. Some worked better than others.
Christina Aguilera didn’t last long. Neither did Rodney Crowell. Rush, The Million Dollar Quartet, Willie Nelson, Steve Goodman, Pete Townshend, Postmodern Jukebox, and last night, the Tower of Power. They were all really fun. Meant to try ‘The Wrecking Crew’ but didn’t get there.
Memorial Day Weekend. Let’s try to be grateful.
MUSIC FREE FOR ALL THIS WEEKEND! WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TOO?
Trail Baboon 