It has been a real eye opener moving here from the middle of nowhere on the Northern Plains. The weather here is far more changeable and unpredictable. Pickup trucks are fewer and smaller. Lots more bugs.
Sioux Falls is our “big town ” for shopping. It is only 24 miles away as opposed to Bismarck, our former “big town” that was 100 miles away. Trips to Bismarck were few and far between. Even so, we really don’t want to be running to SF all the time for things we need that we can’t get in Luverne. That means more ordering on-line.
We have been astounded by the speed on-line orders are delivered to us. The other day I ordered some bookends at about 10:00 am. They were delivered by 6:00 pm the same day. Other orders come overnight and are delivered between 5:00 am and 8:00 am. Is this normal? Does this happen elsewhere? I think if folks back in western ND knew this was possible, they would protest the wait times for their deliveries!
I wonder, though, how long deliveries across the country will be quick and speedy. The other day I got an email from a produce company in Oregon I often order celery root and savoy cabbage from. They were offering a $500 bonus to any customer who could recommend a CDL trucker who could deliver their produce. There seems to be a trucker shortage. Hmm. I wonder why?
Do you get orders delivered fast? Tell some delivery stories. Know any truckers?
Husband and I have very tall ceilings in our dining room, and kitchen. Most of the lights are recessed. These are the lights in the kitchen:
We haven’t had any bulbs burn out, but when we do I am afraid I will have to phone an electrician to come and change the bulb. We haven’t a tall enough ladder, and I can’t manage heights any longer.
The living room also has a very high ceiling with a large fan that works well to circulate air and keep the house cool. You can see it in the header photo. It is little too rococo for my tastes, and like many appliances in our new home it needed to be repaired. I had the electrician come over on Thursday to fix it. The fan worked, but made an intermittent grinding, scraping noise that was maddening to listen to. Sometimes it was quiet, sometimes it wasn’t. It is also very high up, and there was no way we could check it out ourselves.
The electrician figured out that one of the blades was not flush and was making the scraping noise. He told us it needed a very thin shim to raise it up, and that he would “MacGyver” something to solve the problem. It was quite a process to take the globe and other internal parts off to get to the blade turning mechanism, and he did it while standing atop a very tall ladder. He intended to use a very small, thin piece of wood as a shim. He inadvertently broke off the tip of his screwdriver in his attempt to raise the blade mechanism to put in the shim. To his surprise the metal tip stayed under the blade and was exactly the size shim he needed to keep it from scraping. Now it runs really quietly.
I was able to wash out the glass globe before he reassembled the fan. It hadn’t been cleaned out for a very long time. The electrician couldn’t “MacGyver” how to change the direction the fan blades circled, but at least it is quiet.
What have you had to “MacGyver”? Broke many tools? Got ceiling fans?
To say I have a love/hate relationship with my cable company is to overstate half of that equation. After many many years of being disappointed by them (service, price, communications), I pretty much approach any interaction with them with trepidation.
A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail and then a couple of texts about upgrading my gateway. Since I wasn’t even sure what that was, I ignored the texts. Then a few days later, I got two more texts. These day, I hardly click on any links that are sent to me…. way too many scammers… so last Thursday, I made a quick appointment and headed over to their store. I wanted a straight answer about what this was, was it really necessary and the most important, if there was a cost attached. I wanted a live person to look me in the face to give me the facts and then hand me their business card so I had their name.
Turned about to be fairly easy. Although they’re calling it an upgrade for me, it was clear that they are trying to get everybody on the same platform with the same connections/software so it will be easier/cheaper for them. But since it wasn’t going to cost me anything, I said “OK”. But before he went to get the new modem, he launched into a pitch for getting my mobile phone service. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this so I fended him off pretty swiftly. I got the new modem, went home and set it up. It went better than I expected.
Next morning, I had to take the old modem back; I got to the store at 10, their opening time. A different young man waited on me. I told him I wanted a receipt, since I don’t have much faith in their ability to keep track of whether I’ve returned equipment (previous bad experience). He looked me up to get the receipt and then promptly headed down the mobile phone service path. I cut him off and said I wasn’t interested and I had told my salesperson just yesterday that I wasn’t interested in “putting all my eggs in *_____*’s basket”. He kept going so I had to amp up a bit. I said “we’re still paying down our phones (not true) but even if we were not, I STILL wouldn’t give you all my mobile business.” He did stop at that point. Sigh.
In a perfect world, I won’t have to confront the dragon again for about a year but I’m thinking that I’ll wear a namebadge that says “Please don’t ask me about my mobile service.”
Have you had to handle any pushy salesfolks lately?
Yeah, I know. When I was planting crops I commented on how nice it was to have good lights on the tractors and lights outside the shop so I could keep working after dark. But now that the crops are in, and I’m on the rest of my ‘to-do’ list, it’s a good thing it gets dark so I know enough to quit and come in the house.
Sometimes that happens because I’m still at the college so I don’t get home and doing anything until 5:00, or the last few days it was so hot I didn’t go out until late in the afternoon, I worked in the office and did bookwork and fought with websites and dealt with government bureaucracy in the morning, and then I went out and fixed the hole in the bottom of the feed room door and finally got half of the larch trees planted, and weed barrier around them one night, and then the next night rounded up the weed barrier that had blown away, got them all stapled down and found some hoses and gave the trees a good watering. I gotta find a good place to put about 10 more larch trees.
Kelly and I worked one night, finishing the mulch around the seedlings, and building the deer fence over the windbreak seedlings. The deer sure like the Ninebark. They aren’t bothering the gray dogwood, but they’re peeling the bark right off the Ninebark. Stupid deer. When we finished that night Kelly had 6, SIX ticks on her! And she had applied tick repelant! No one hates Hates HATES ticks more than Kelly. She still shivers when we talk about it. I said it’s because she’s irresistible.
I got a 12Volt pump hooked on the large water tote and that’s working pretty slick. Now one person can water the trees from the cab of the gator.
The dairy guys are working on that first cutting of alfalfa. Good weather for that. Some guys are making hay from cover crops they planted last fall, and will get soybeans in after they take that off.
I’ve got a contractor out and he’s gonna fill in a gully and construct a couple berms to help control erosion. And then fill in another gully, and get a tile inlet and perforated tile installed to prevent a gully from returning in a place that has springs. As dry as it is, the springs are pretty well stopped for now. It’s all part of the Soil & Water projects that I’ve got going this year.
I’ve got the last of my college rentals on Saturday, and then Tuesday is officially my last day for the year, but there is an ongoing project that I’ll stop and work on throughout the summer. It’s no big deal, doesn’t need to be done until fall. It’s sound baffling for the music department.
Padawan had a minor hiccup with his job so he’s still helping me out for a while. At least that’s what he says, that there was a minor hiccup. We believe 98% of what he tells us. “Trust but verify“
Soybeans are finally up enough we can see the rows.
They need some rain. I was talking with one of the agronomists from the Co-op the other day and she said everyone is in the same situation. Just waiting for rain.
Growing Degree Units: to Date 631, Normal is 370. 261 above normal… jeepers. Need some rain. The corn is looking real good, it’s about a foot tall. The co-op was out and sprayed for weeds on Thursday.
The chicks are enjoying being outside. They’re about half full size. They’re big enough to get OUT of the fence, but can’t figure out how to get back IN the fence. Unless Luna is “following” them, I’ve seen them freak out enough they fly over.
Chickens always look so ticked off.
Stop taking pictures and put me back in the pen!
GET THAT CAMERA OUT OF MY FACE!
Last week I worked a GOP debate at one of the local high schools. They brought in 3 candidates for governor. Three that “agreed to abide by the Republican Convention endorsement and support the candidate who the convention endorses”. Well, that left out a few.
Wasn’t much of a crowd to be honest.
I just turned on the lights and let the local TV station crew and the schools IT guys sort it all out. The technology of live broadcasting has really changed from the days of the Van with the big tower coming out the top. So that was kind of interesting.
In the past I have mentioned the monitor that works with the corn planter to alert me if a row stops planting seed. It’s a box with 6 light bulbs and orange covers over them. This is 1980’s technology and they’re like old flashlight bulbs. Well, one burned out on row six, and I really hoped it wasn’t row six that ran out of seed first. I was almost done planting and I didn’t have a spare. So I figured I’d get LED versions of those bulbs. And then trying to get a bulb out of the unit, I dropped the bulb in the tractor cab and it vanished. I thought for sure I saw it in a tote I carry in the tractor and I took out the paper towels to get the bulb and it still wasn’t there. Don’t you hate that? Where could it go?? Well, no matter, I took out another one. And then I found out I can get PURPLE replacement bulbs. Well, yes, Please and Thank you! Now I’m looking forward to planting crops next spring with my purple light bulbs. I hope they work. Sometimes, because LED’s take so much less power, it messes up the circuitry and things don’t work right… In theater lighting, sometimes we have to put a ‘dummy load’ backstage, just something like a 15 watt incandescent bulb to pull enough current to make the LED dim properly. New technology has mostly solved that, but it’s not unheard of to need a dummy load in addition to the LED. In regard to the planter box. I may need to leave one row as an old bulb. We’ll see.
In the last 12 months I have cooked and baked on four different stoves/ovens. Each has been very different from the others, and the cooking experiences have been challenging.
In Dickinson we had a quite old GE electric oven with a glass stovetop. We decided we couldn’t in good conscience saddle new owners with it. The glass top was scratched and uncleanable. The oven baked really slow and we needed to increase the temperature to get things done. We replaced it with a Bosch electric stove/oven which worked very well. It definitely was a positive selling point for the house.
As soon as I had figured out all the niceties of the new stove we moved to our current home. It had a 15 year old Kenmore gas oven with gas top burners. The previous owners had no problem saddling us with it, even though the control panel shorted out everything we started a top burner when the oven was lit. I didn’t like baking in the gas oven since things singed on the sides of the pan closest to the burners. I struggled baking with it, trying to adjust rack levels and temperatures. This was quite a trick in November and December for Christmas baking.
We finally got a brand new, dual fuel LG oven/stove that I really like. The oven is electric. The stovetop is has gas burners. Saturday night I made a apple pie with a crumble topping and found the the oven must burn hot as the crumble topping and crust got too dark, and I probably have to lower the temperature about 10-15 degrees when I bake. Sigh! I suppose most appliances have their individual quirks, but I am pretty tired of trying to figure all this out.
What would you feel you had to in good conscience, replace in your current home before you sold it? What have been the easiest and most difficult appliances/machines to learn to use?
Husband’s hearing aids are the sort that are battery operated. At least once a week he has to replace the batteries, those tiny round ones that come in a round plastic case and that are impossible to remove from their packaging. Husband has very poor fine motor skills at this point, and it has become increasingly difficult to change the batteries. I am always worried he will drop one and a dog will swallow it.
We decided it was time to move up to rechargeable hearing aids. We visited an audiologist last week and ordered these high tech, state of the art hearing aids. They come in a nice red color that are easy to see when not in his ears. They are somehow hooked up to an AI program that causes them to mainly pick up sound from the dominant environmental sound source. They sound so wonderful I almost want to give them names and have a welcome home party. They also cost a bundle, so Husband better not lose them.
I find the emerging AI presence in our world disturbing, but I can see the benefit if used for things like hearing aids. We pick them up next week in Sioux Falls. I hope they live up to their hype.
I didn’t have a big to-do list yesterday. Normally when this occurs, I fill in with other little tasks around the house or I plant myself in my studio but for some reason sitting on the sofa and watching tv. Three episodes of Perry Mason and then a handful of Columbo.
I’ve seen them all repeatedly. I know who the murderer is in every Perry Mason and, of course, you know who the murderer is on Columbo from the get-go. Since I don’t have to spend any mental energy on figuring out the mystery, I can while away the time looking at small details and wondering at how the world has changed.
Yesterday what stood out the most was that no matter where Perry or Columbo happen to be, somebody can always get ahold of them. Perry is interviewing a suspect; the phone rings and it’s for him. Columbo is at his dog’s obedience academy; the phone rings and it’s for him. It happened all the time.
Now Perry had Della to call him however the calls weren’t always from her and quite a bit of the time she was with him. Was there a whiteboard with all of Perry’s stops left in his outer office? For many years, there was Gertie who took calls. Maybe she was letting folks know where Perry was?
But Columbo? He was always portrayed as such a loose cannon – if there was some administrative assistant somewhere back at headquarters, it was a highly kept secret. Did he really leave the phone number of the dog obedience academy with someone somewhere?
It made me think about the scene in Woody Allen’s Play It Again Sam in which Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts are leaving Woody’s apartment:
Dick:
I’ll be at 362-9296 for a while; then I’ll be at 648-0024 for about fifteen minutes; then I’ll be at 752-0420; and then I’ll be home, at 621-4598. Yeah, right George, bye-bye.
Linda:
There’s a phone booth on the corner. You want me to run downstairs and get the number? You’ll be passing it.
Obviously these days detectives and lawyers are never without their cell phones, so the whiteboards with everyone’s every move and destination are not longer necessary. Of course, now that I think about it – they probably hadn’t been invented yet?
Do you have a whiteboard? Whiteboard equivalent? What do you use it for?
My car (Honda Insight) is 12 years old. She has held up remarkably well but I wasn’t overly surprised when a couple of weeks ago, I had to push my key fob repeatedly to open the car. But it only happened twice, so then I forgot about it.
Then three days ago, the key fob quit locking. It would unlock but not lock. I tried the old key fob – that one was deader than dead. A quick trip to the hardware store and two new batteries didn’t fix the problem; the internet search listed about 10 possible causes, only one of which was something I could fix on my own. And that fix didn’t work. *&#^^%@$.
With YA coming home Sunday night, I was worried that if I messed around too much, locking the car the old fashioned way, that I might not then be able to open it. Since I needed the car to pick up YA and also needed the car to take a friend downtown yesterday morning, I didn’t want an issue.
Then I made my big mistake; I texted YA about the situation. What I really wanted to know was where her keys were, in case I needed to use her car to pick her up.
What I got was:
Directions on how to change to batteries in the fob. (Thanks, did that on my own already)
You know you have the old fob in the drawer? (Yep, been there, done that)
Why don’t you leave it until I get home. (Really, you don’t trust me to drive your car to the airport and back?)
You know, you can lock the car with your key. There’s a key hole on the door. (I am not making this up).
Fortunately, the fob is now working intermittently so the short-term issue is on hold although I’m sure I’m going to have to deal with this in the coming month. Not sure how to let YA know that back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the ONLY way to lock a car was with the key in the door!
Did you know how to drive a stick-shift? Did you learn on it or teach yourself later?
Man, it feels like it was a tough week. The emotions are all over the place. We know a person who is a Sergeant in the Minneapolis police force. That person cares so much for the men under their watch; making sure they get rest, and standing up for them when admin says they’re not responding to 911 calls fast enough. Thankfully things didn’t get too crazy for them, shifts returned to normal after a few days, and everyone got some time off. Still, it stresses us out and I have a hard time staying focused and we find ourselves grumpy all day.
As has been said, this is supposed to be our escape, our safe place, our happy place.
So here’s some chicken pictures!
This is a Phoenix chicken we got from a friend several years ago. They’re really nice chickens.
This is Marge. I just made up that name. Go ahead and suggest names for her.
Hello girls. And boy.
I asked the computer to generate two chickens in a photographic style. They sure look grumpy. Next time I’ll ask for happier chickens.
I asked the computer to generate a cartoon chicken..
I’ve been doing a lot of bookwork. And I got a new desk lamp that’s really nice. I have been using a farming specific software called ‘PCMars’ since getting our first computer in 1994. Getting it all entered in the computer is one thing. The other half of the job, after I pile the receipts on top of the second desk drawer, (and throwing away anything not farm / business related) is sorting them out and putting them in the tote that I’ll put downstairs for the next 23 years. I couldn’t get the drawer shut anymore, so I sorted out what I had. Then I can enter some more into the computer. I don’t save as many receipts as I used to, because so much is available online.
I haven’t decided if it’s easier or harder having electronic receipts. Those receipts I move to a file that’s either farm or home related. Then I go through them and enter them into the program. And some still need to be saved, so they go to another E-file. We talked about paper checks on here one day. Kelly wrote four checks out of her home checkbook in 2025. And three were for the bathroom remodeling.
Which, by the way, we’ve finally signed a contract and written another check, to redo the basement bathroom from 1968. So long pink wallpaper.
I know this will be an affront to Renee and some of you, but I picked up two cans of Chef Boyardee Beef Ravoli. Haven’t had it since I was a kid. When I’m out shopping, saving big money, I’m tending to buy more and more groceries there. I bought soup, Spam, and the ravioli. I made soup for supper that night and Kelly asked me how my discount soup was. It was brand name chicken and dumpling, but, it wasn’t that great. Too many carrots and not enough dumplings. The broth was good. With the cold weather predicted this weekend, I may have to make a can of ravioli as comfort food.
One day out in the shop, I made a storage place for my really large sockets. These are 3/4” drive sockets. I got tired of them being all in a jumble in the drawer. Sockets can be 1/4” drive, 3/8”, 1/2”, 3/4” or even 1” drive. I use 3/8” and 1/2” most often. The 3/4” drive stuff is for the big serious stuff. The square hole of these is the 3/4″ I was referring too, and the related ratchet or handles have a corrresponding drive on them. The largest I have are 1&7/8” and 46mm. I have a whole set of standard and metric 1/2″ drive sockets in a different tool box.
I need better labels than the sharpie that was going dry.
Monday is a holiday for some of us. The college is closed. I wonder what I can find to get into.
On Thursday I collected the mileage and hours from vehicles and tractors then put it all in my ‘Yearly Mileage’ spreadsheet. Everything was about average. We used the lawn mower 31 hours, put 43 hours on the big tractor, and 127 hours on the other tractor. Drove the 4-wheeler 22 miles, and put 306 miles on the gator using it 48 hours.
Egg count for 2025 was 419 dozen. 5028 eggs. Plus a few dozen that froze or got broken.
On Tuesday daughter and I took a road trip to Potsdam and Meyer’s Seed, then John Deere in Plainview. And got sundaes at DQ and then back to Rochester for a stop at Barnes and Noble. She thanked me for the adventure.
At Meyer’s the oat seed for 2026 is ordered and paid for, and corn and soybean seed has been ordered and financed, at 0% interest with a 4% savings. (6% savings would have given me prime -2%). $11,700. A bag of seed corn now is over $300. I ordered 25 bags. That’s a separate loan from the $43,000 for fertilizer and spraying. I got TWO free seed corn hats!
You know how you’re supposed to save receipts for seven years? I brought up a box from 2002 and sorted through that. Oh my goodness. We’d been married 12 years. Kelly was making $17 / hour. We had 2 kids in daycare, and $36 in our savings account. I’d get a milk check twice a month. It totaled maybe $2200. I owed the vet $1000, the breeder $500, the feed co-op $500, plus there was always other bills and expenses. I got anxious just looking back through this stuff. Once I saved the important stuff, I took the unneeded stuff out in the snow and burned it.
It was a small fire; not much stuff. And I just used my gloved hand to ‘swish’ it around to get all the papers to burn. Evidently the cheap nylon mechanics glove I was wearing have a lower melting point than the flame of even a small fire. I didn’t get hurt or anything, it just melted the sides of the fingers of the glove. Daughter came over to see what I was doing. I pointed out that she shouldn’t use her hand to stir up a fire. She looked at me like I was a complete idiot. And she basically said, “Well duh!”. Oh good. A win on the parenting front! She knows enough not to stick her hand in a fire.
The wedding we attended on New Years Eve was really very nice! The bride was stunning, the groom looked sharp in his black tuxedo. They were both relaxed (or at least looked that way) and the ceremony was low-key and they wrote and read their own vows and had fun. We had a full three course meal, and there was a live band. I got a lot of compliments on the fact I was wearing sleeves. I did have to dig to the back of my closet for this shirt, and one cuff was a slightly different color than the other. Solved that problem by rolling them up a bit.
For Christmas Kelly gave me this hat:
I picked up oil filters and grease tubes at John Deere. I changed the engine oil and filter in the 630. I was looking in the operators manual for the tractor and realized I’ve never checked the oil level for the transmission. On modern tractors there’s the engine oil dipstick, and then a dipstick, or sometimes a site tube, showing transmission and hydraulic oil level. On the 630, there’s a dipstick for the engine oil, and one for the hydraulics and I remember always checking that as a kid. I don’t know what fascinated me about that dipstick, but I checked it often. And then there’s a check “LEVEL” plug for the power take off. And on the side, according to the book, another check “LEVEL” plug for the transmission.
HUH!
Never seen that before.
I had to scrap some dirt off to find this.
You take the plug out and add oil until it starts to run out the plug, then it’s full. I don’t remember Dad checking that. I’m sure he did, I just didn’t know about it. Now the tractor is good to go come spring.
And the 1940’s music station is back on my car radio.
Trail Baboon 