Today as you read this, Husband and I are making the first of two trips to Luverne over the next two weeks. The main purpose of this trip is to go to our 2 month old granddaughter’s baptism in Brookings on Sunday. The other reason for the trip is to bring to the new house as much food from our freezers and liquids the moving company won’t transport.
Wedged in the back of our van, surrounded by coolers filled with frozen food, boxes of home canned tomatoes, cans of olive oil, and jars of fancy vinegars will be our cat, Luna, in the dog crate. We decided to move her on this trip since it seemed rather too stressful to move both the cat and the dog at once.
The last time Luna made this trip was nine years ago when she was a kitten and had been rescued by our son and daughter-in-law from underneath a deck in Brookings. Our daughter was visiting them at the time and drove the cat to Dickinson after staying with Daughter and her college roommates in Moorhead a few weeks. Her only trips since then have been excursions to the local vet. It is a 550 mile trip to Luverne. Once we get her there she will be boarded at the Rock County Vet Clinic until we are moved into the new house on the 22nd.
We are going to try to make her as comfortable as possible with a litter box, soft blankets, and a small water bowl in the dog crate. I am not optimistic about her being happy at all with this trip and then being subsequently boarded. I will let you all know how it is going as the day progresses.
What are your experiences traveling with pets? Any advice for us today?
When I started the rough draft of this blog Thursday, I didn’t have much farm stuff to talk about. Now Friday afternoon and I’ve got a few farm related things.
I needed some straw bales for Friday. First of the 2025 crop to be used and climbing up into the straw pile and trying to hit the truck bed was a challenge.
Trying to aim under the rafter and get the bales in the truck bed.
We hosted daughters group, PossAbilities, and gave them a wagon ride through the fields. Kinda cold and windy, but they had blankets, Kelly made hot chocolate for them when they returned, and they enjoyed it.
I hauled in the scrap iron on Thursday. The wagons I pulled out of the trees and scrapped last week.
The net weight of the scrap was 3200 lbs.
The cranes are always fun to watch. My goodness, the amount of scrap is overwhelming. Juxtaposed with such a pretty blue sky!
I took secondary roads there, and I took gravel back roads most of the way home. I saw two Bald Eagles eating something that left a pretty good sized red spot in the field. I saw more of those ‘Bigfoot’ silhouettes. A few farmers are starting to chop some corn, and lots of guys are doing 3rd or 4th crop hay.
A couple months ago when our fridge died, we purged a lot, and moved a lot to the basement chest freezer and spare fridge downstairs. I still haven’t figured out why the new freezer section upstairs is so empty. What happened to all that stuff?? I thought we needed it? Isn’t that a story for our times…”But, I need that!” No, evidently, no you don’t.
One of the things missing from the upstairs freezer was the last loaf of chocolate chip Amish friendship bread I had made back in March. Most of us freeze and savor those summer time flavors in January. Here in September I’m remembering last winter. I didn’t think I’d have thrown it out as I know the chocolate is bad for dogs. The chickens would have loved it, but I just didn’t remember doing that. Took a month, but I found it in a bag in the chest freezer and I’ve been enjoying it. It’s not as dried out as I thought it might be, and I look forward to baking more this winter.
When I was researching how to remove those old tires last week, I saw one video where the guy talked about using diamond tipped cutting blades. The cheap abrasive cut-off blades I can buy at big box stores wear away quick. They’re about $3 each, but as the name implies, ‘abrasive cut off’, meaning they wear out as fast as they’re cutting. Cutting off the 16 tires I used 4 small, 4” wheels, and one 7” wheel. So I went shopping online for diamond tipped wheels. An “Indestructible” wheel comes in a 5 pack. Well, Huh. You see where I’m going with this? If… then why…?
I ordered a 3 pack of diamond tipped cut off wheels. We’ll see what happens when I get to the next set of old tires.
(There might be a photo here if I remember to go out to the shed and take a photo)
I REMEMBERED!
Abrasive disc on the top, diamond disc on the bottom
Kelly and I have a joke that I can’t find anything if you’re going to put it under my nose. This morning it was my cell phone. It was 6” away from where I was looking. No wonder I couldn’t find it. I had to borrow daughters phone to call mine and track it down. I was the kid with my mittens attached to my sleeves…Why is that getting worse instead of better?
We’ve talked before about that magic ten minutes in the morning. Every. Morning. It was later than usual one morning. Daughter and I got in the car to leave and she says “I was pretty fast this morning, wasn’t I.” Uh. Not really. But I don’t know why. Maybe it was petting the dogs longer than we should have. Which seems like a pretty good excuse. One night she was mad at me for not letting her do something. She begged and pleaded and then stormed off yelling “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!” I replied, “Actually, biology has nothing to do with this.” and then I got the giggles. She didn’t think it was so funny but a few minutes later we talked it over. She gets over stuff quick. I like that. 
Last weekend Kelly and I attended a wedding in St. Paul. It was at a relatively new wedding venue called Le VENERÉ. A pretty nice place. Newly remodeled. The Groom told me when they toured it in February it was full of scaffolding. It is an old building with a really cool stone foundation. They had a 1920’s ‘Speakeasy’ theme and encouraged people to dress the part. I wore sleeves. And after looking up 1920’s styles, just decided to order a cheap 1970’s style ruffled shirt like I had in high school. It came with a bow tie that wouldn’t fit around my fat neck, so I just wore it on my sleeve. Kelly and I drove up Friday and had a weekend vacation. We had a great time at the wedding with friends.
You’ve probably heard me say that the only good things to come out of Covid were working from home and drive-up service. I know that many businesses are making people come back into the office but hopefully drive-up service is here to stay.
With a sore knee, running errands wasn’t the top of my to-do list the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, you can’t just keep putting off errands or else your household starts to sag at the edges. As I started to list things that just needed to get done, I realized that drive-through was going to be my friend. Here’s what I managed to do without getting out of the car:
Aldis
Target
Value Village (this was a drop-off, not a pick-up)
Post office (again, a drop-off)
Bank ATM
Dunkin’ Donuts
Caribou Coffee
There was one more errand that did require me to get out of the car – returning a library book. The only library with a drive-through return in the Hennepin system was the Southdale Library – and as of this past week, the drive-through is no longer available:
I can’t remember a time when I had so many things I could do without exiting my vehicle. I do like drive-up and drive-through!!
I’ve noticed some soybean fields just starting to turn yellow. Kelly says the barn swallows are grouping up. And acorns are dropping. All that probably means something.
Crop prices keep dropping, too. Due to predictions of good yields across the corn belt. Locally, corn is under $3.50 / bushel, and soybeans are under $10. That’s a tough place to be. My direct costs to grow and harvest corn is roughly $400 / acre, and for soybeans about $300 / acre. Not knowing how the fall will shape up, or what drying costs might be, we’re speculating on final yields and prices. Making conservative estimates of $3.00 / bu final price means I’d need 133 bu / acre to cover costs. And that should be doable. Optimistically I’d have 180 bu / acre. That would leave me $273/ acre to cover repair costs, fuel, interest, crop insurance, pay off the loans, make payments on long term debt, ect. Soybeans work out the same way, just different numbers. Neither is in the bin yet, so we’ll see. This is why I have a few other jobs. To support my farming hobby. (eye roll)
Last weekend Padawan and I did a bunch of stuff. We packed the wheel bearings with grease and took the other wheel hub apart to replace those bearings. Both rear tires were wore out; one was on borrowed time. A few days later I went to Appel Service in Millville MN with the two wagon tires, a tire from the plow I had replace this spring, and another tire I found in the shop that I haven’t remember what it’s for yet. I’ve talked about Appels before; we’ve been taking tires to them for years and years. It’s about 25 minutes away. Great guys and a great drive.
I forgot to buy the dust seals for the axel hubs, which I picked up on Monday, but I had padawan reinstall the hub, even without the dust seal, just so he could see how you tighten it up and put the cotter pin in it. He had no idea what a cotter pin was. If you don’t know, it’s a split pin, length varies: length and the diameter as needed, and once through the hole, you bend the sides to prevent whatever you’re holding from coming off. I have some pins that are 1/4” diameter and 2” long and some tiny ones 1/2” long and 1/32″ diameter.
Then we drained the coolant and he replaced the radiator hose on the old John Deere 630. I had him pull the carburetor off. He is too young to know what a carburetor does. We changed the oil, oil filter, and the air filters on the big tractor, the 8200. It has two air filters; The biggest is about the size of a 5 gallon bucket. He was really impressed with that. Then a smaller inner air cleaner. He went home and cleaned up, and came back out with his girlfriend, who chased down her pet chicken, and they stayed for pizza with us. The kids, not the chicken.
I have been working on the 630 exhaust manifold. Got the bolts out and the manifold off! Heated it with a torch, just like my friend Tim J. said. Would you believe there’s another Tim J?? He’s not too much like this tim j. but that one knows a lot about old tractors. The two bolts that were broken off, I welded nuts on the top (to make a bolt head again) and they came right out! I couldn’t believe it!
Heating the castings to break the rust
Nuts welded on the broken boltsUh, this looks broken…
Took me a while to find my welding stuff as I haven’t needed that in the new shop yet. the old welder on the bottom, newer welder on the top. That old welder, maybe from the 1950’s? has taught several of us how to weld. Dad taught me and some of my nephews. The oxy-acetelyne torch to the right, I’ve had since 1982. I learned how to use a gas welder in high school shop class and mom and dad bought me this one for my 18th birthday.
WELDERS
Friday morning I went to pick up a really nice long reach 5 ton hydraulic floor jack that I got at an auction.
Then to Millville to pick up the 4 tires I had dropped off earlier in the week. I took a random gravel road, 592ndstreet out of Millville, and had a great drive, all by myself, following the Zumbro river to the North. It was a great drive! I wasn’t sure where I was, and there was no cell signal down there along the hills, but eventually the road looped back to the south and I found my way home.
MEANDERING
The truck seemed to be riding rougher than it had earlier and the tread was separating on a front tire. Thankfully it got me home, and I jacked it up (using the new jack) and went back to Millville with the truck tires. Another great drive with no one else on the road, Just the way I like it. It was about 4:15 on Friday when I got there and the shop was pretty quiet. Paul and Dan took the tires off, Jim got me two new ones, and they mounted and balanced them, and I was headed back home in about 20 minutes. I sure do like going to Millville. Good thing I’m employed again since I spent $1200 on tires Friday.
My brother came out and we took 100 bales of straw off the wagon with the broken front end, and put them on another wagon. Then I put 20 bales in the truck for delivery on Saturday, and the last 52 bales on a trailer. Perhaps Saturday I’ll get the front wheels off and see what’s really broken on there. Right after I put the two new tires back on the other wagon.
And I pulled out a disk I’m not using anymore to take to an auction next week. I pulled a bunch of junk out of the trees last week. Two old flare boxes, an old elevator, an old digger, and a 24’ bale elevator that I will also take to the auction. There wasn’t trees growing through them when I parked them there… that’s how long some of it has been there. Time to go.
Music this week is Nina Simone. I recently heard ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
I finished lighting the show in Chatfield last week, in time to fly out on Saturday with Kelly and our daughter. Kelly had a work conference and we got to travel along and amuse ourselves for a few days. I was under the impression that taxi drivers were always better than Uber / Lyft because they are more professional and know the roads better. But that plan falls apart if they’re all independent taxi’s and they all seem to need to enter the address in their phones anyway. And they tell me they’ve lived here multiple years, so it makes me wonder why they don’t know their way around yet? But whatever. Our first driver was crazy; drove like a maniac and told me he liked American women and big boobs! Second taxi was a nicer driver, but his car broke down and when daughter and I came out of the Butterfly Pavilion he was sitting right where he had left us. He called a friend of his to take us back to town. And the taxi back to the airport was a nice guy with sheet metal screws holding his car door together. Resourcefulness!
Daughter and I had a good time walking around downtown and there was lots to see. I took lots of photos of old buildings. The day we saw the butterflies, that only took an hour. We never got going too early in the day, because we were on vacation after all. I was surprised that I could out-walk daughter. It was as hot there as it was back in MN, but less humidity, so that was nice. I didn’t expect it to be that hot. I found it interesting so many restaurants and bars had wide open windows or garage doors and yet there was very few bugs. One bartender told us they really spray the place down at night, but she said there was less flies this year than usual.
On Wednesday Kelly gave a presentation on Laughter Yoga. I snuck in the back and watched. It was well received, the group liked it, and she had several good loud laughers, so that got the rest of the group going.
She picked up some swag for me with the catch phrase: “Wicked Smaht Pathologists” and a link to their group. It makes me laugh. If you need a pathologist, you’re gonna want one that’s Wicked Smaht.
We had a young lady staying at the house to deal with dogs overnight while we were gone, and some other friends that would take care of chickens and eggs and amuse the dogs during the day. They said, “Bailey and Humphrey make us want dogs. Luna reminds why we don’t have a dog.”
And on the way home, in the MSP airport, the gate agent was a girl I went to high school with and hadn’t seen in 40 years. We had a little reunion right there at the gate for 15 seconds. It was nice to see her again.
Last week as I was headed to Chatfield one night, I saw, walking on the side of the road, three nuns in full black habits with the veil and headpiece. I had to double take, and double take again. This was out in the country. A few days later, Facebook, of course, provided the answer. There is an old order Catholic Church in the area and they have been seen coming from there. Well that explains it. Sure did make me wonder though. And then, ten days later, I saw two more nuns in full habits. But that was outside a Catholic Church, and they were selling baked goods at a street fair. Although when I saw them, they were packing up. I saw them pulling the totes with the collapsible tents up the street. I hadn’t seen a nun in full habit for years and now here was twice!
You all had that big storm come through on Monday night with high winds… the oats got beat up. Yep, sure did. Maybe 50% of it down. We didn’t get any hail so nothing threshed out on the ground, it’s just broken off and lying down and it makes it more difficult to pick up for harvest.
The plan is to start harvesting Friday. Going to try taking it straight- meaning I don’t swath it and lay it in windrows first. A lot of guys do take it straight. When we have tried it in the past it didn’t work so well… we shall see. I have the swather ready just in case.
The soybeans are waist tall and looking good. At least some of them. They don’t all look this good, but some of them.
There’s a guy on YouTube goes by ‘Bushel Billy’, from the Ohio area and he was talking about a corn issue with a certain variety, in extreme weather conditions, having “tassel wrap” meaning the last leaf doesn’t unwrap from the tassel. So of course if the tassel can’t open up to shed pollen, it’s going to be tough to get all the kernels (silks) pollinated. It takes 90,000 kernels to make a bushel. Hence 90K pollen grains to 90K silks are needed. He pointed out how after pollination the silks turn brown and detach from the kernel after pollination. I didn’t know that and I had to check it out myself.
Notice how many silks are loose. Just a few on the tip still stuck.
HUH! Sweet corn would be so much easier if the silks would detach.
Yesterday Husband declared that after we move to Minnesota we are taking a trip to Alexandria so he can buy a canoe.
Husband has wanted a canoe for decades. He chose the Alexandria shop on the recommendation of someone from the Wenonah Canoe Company. While Luverne isn’t close to any reasonably sized lakes, there are several navigable but smaller rivers nearby that he is excited to explore. The rivers in our current location are either too shallow or too big (The Missouri).
He wants a one person canoe. That is fine with me. I had a truly wonderful and exhilarating experience on a BWCA canoe trip with my church youth group in 1974, and that was all I needed to have a happy life. We canoed in Manitoba during our courtship and early marriage, but my canoeing days are over. He can take his day excursions on the Rock River and Big Sioux River, and I will sit comfortably at home with the dog, drawing on my Dutch roots and practicing niksen.
What are your most interesting canoeing or boating experiences? Does niksen hold any interest for you?
I have often written about Husband’s frets and worries, but if I am completely honest, his anxiety doesn’t hold a candle to mine.
This has been a sleep deprived week for me due to progress we made toward moving to Minnesota. A local realtor is coming to the house today to give us the lowdown on what we can sell this place for, and I got some financial stuff done so that we can contact a realtor in Luverne next week to start looking for a place for us there. We plan to buy in Luverne before we list this place in Dickinson. I even found a Dickinson moving company that will move us.
My anxiety comes from getting too far ahead of myself. I woke up at 1:00 am on Wednesday worrying how my best friend, who is moving in with us, would get a Real ID driver’s license if none of the utility bills in Luverne are in her name. This is completely irrational, and it shouldn’t be a problem, but that is how far ahead of myself I am getting. I keep telling myself “One step at time!” to slow myself down. The progress we made toward moving is good, but it also makes real all the unknowns about what is going to actually happen. I hate not being in control!
Do worries wake you up at night? Who have been memorable control freaks in your life?
Having YA living here makes me ruminate on almost a daily basis about how much the world has changed.
She’s in San Antonio now, at a conference. For once she is a participant, not a staff and she is enjoying that juxtaposition. One of the things that has changed significantly in the travel/meeting/conference world is the choice of activities. I organized a group in San Antonio once and the activity options were golf, tennis and the San Antonio city tour (with lengthy stop at the Alamo). Golf was the activity of choice on almost all trips except Hawaii, where the catamaran tour was always the big winner. As the years went by, people got more adventurous and wanted more options. Golf fell out of favor and “experiences” got more popular. Cooking classes, art encounters, biking, kayaking, horseback riding, ATV adventures. Zipline infrastructure grew and grew as did the number of folks wanting to try it.
The activities that YA had to choose from included morning walks, morning jogs, the traditional city tour, Seaworld and…. puppy yoga!
I’d never even heard of yoga until I was in college – heard a talk about transcendental meditation and Ram Das and yoga. That was it for probably over a decade. Once onboard a ship with a client, I did a session of yoga with her and promptly pulled a muscle in my back that took weeks to feel better.
Now there are multitudes of yoga types (Kundalini, Kharma, Buti, Tantra) but lots of stranger versions that I’ve seen. Hot yoga is done in an overheated environment that encourages sweating. Naked yoga – well, I don’t have to explain that. Goat yoga. And, of course, the popular puppy yoga. YA signed up for puppy yoga on both of her allotted activity days. She has sent quite a few photos and it doesn’t look like any yoga is getting done at all. That’s my girl!
Have you ever tried yoga? Do you have a favorite activity when you’re traveling?
Several of the most remote and sparsely populated counties in ND were included on a list of municipalities across the country alleged to be “Sanctuary Jurisdictions” by the Department of Homeland Security.
This came as quite a surprise to the generally law abiding citizens of Slope, Billings, and Golden Valley counties. Those counties are just to the south and west of where we live. Slope County has a whopping 703 residents, and boasts the second least populated county seat in the country with a population of 24. (Brewster, NE beat them out with a population of 17.) There is no police department in Amidon, the county seat. There is a police car parked on the side of the road on the main highway into town, with a mannequin seated in the driver’s seat. It always reminds me to slow down when I drive through! I guess that is how all those immigrants are sneaking to and fro.
Golden Valley County has 1700 residents. Billings County has 1000. These are mainly ranchers and farmers. Townspeople are the service providers for the agricultural sector. Some of the towns don’t even have schools. I am sure they are all scratching their heads wondering where all the immigrants are hiding. The sheriffs of all three counties are demanding apologies and retractions from Kristi Noem. She used to spend a lot of time in Pierre as SD governor, and you would think she would know something about southwest ND. I hope Clyde can comment today, as his daughter was the pastor for several churches in those counties and he is familiar with the places.
What laws are you most likely to bend? Do you obey the speed limit?What is the population of your county seat?
When I packed for the book festival, I went about it like usual. I printed out my packing list (that I keep on the computer), filled it out and started to pack. I was gone two and a half days (six hours of which was driving) and two nights. Since I was wearing jeans and t-shirt to drive down, all I really needed was two t-shirts, two undies, two pairs of socks, pjs, a pair of zorries for relaxing at David’s and assorted personal hygiene stuff.
Obviously I didn’t need a big bag for this so I pulled a small bag from the attic and threw everything in. 15 minutes from beginning to end. Except then the conversation started:
YA: Are you taking that bag?
VS: Yep.
YA: What are you taking (picking up the packing list and perusing it).
YA: No extra socks or underwear?
VS: Nope.
YA: What two t-shirts?
VS: The coral t-shirt with books on it and the black rocket sheep for breakfast with the boys
YA: Nothing else?
VS: Nope.
YA: What if you decide you want a different shirt?
VS: Then I’ll suffer from my poor choices.l
YA: What about shoes?
VS: My blue tennies.
YA: No other shoes?
VS: Not for 48 hours.
YA: (sighs and walks away)
When I was traveling for work, I packed a little more robustly. Having an extra shirt or pair of socks can’t hurt when you’re on a business trip, but I’ve always been a fairly minimal packer. YA is completely opposite. She packs her work uniforms then at least one full non-work outfit for each day. Multiple pairs of shoes. For a couple of years she used that cube system, in which you packed all your stuff into individual cube/cases and then put the cube/cases into your bigger suitcase. Personally I never thought this was a big help to the packing process, but to each their own. She got the cases free from work; they were popular as pre-travel gifts a few years ago and there were always extras laying around. I haven’t seen her using those the last year.
My packing strategy worked out perfectly. When I got home from the festival, all I had to do was dump the contents of the bag straight into the clothes hamper. Hygiene stuff all lives in one zipper pouch together so that’s easy to put away as well. Two minutes to unpack.
I’m pretty sure I packed and unpacked in less time than it took to talk to YA about it!
What about you? Over-pack or under-pack? Do you have a “process”?
Trail Baboon 