One benefit of living in the oil patch in ND was found in our local grocery store. To entice oil workers who came up from Lousiana and other southern states, the Cashwise store made a point of having a wide variety of very fresh and frozen seafood.
I don’t care at all for oysters or shrimp (shrimp is no better than eating mice, in my opinion) but the cod, salmon, lobster, clams, mussels, halibut, and crab were wonderful. I especially came to like Chilean Sea Bass.
I am somewhat disappointed with the seafood choices around our new town. The local grocery store has no fresh fish. The larger stores in Sioux Falls are better, but no sea bass. When did tilapia become so popular? I like to make a North German Fischgulash with cod or sea bass, shellfish, and scallops. The sea bass makes it particularly good.
Tuesday Husband and I made a quick SF grocery run and went to a specialty gourmet grocery and there was sea bass! I bought 3 pounds of filets and they are all safely frozen.
Our town had an ice fishing derby for kids and adults on February 14 at a spring-fed pond in town. It was 60° but the ice was 10 inches thick. They hauled out pounds and pounds of crappie, bluegill, perch, and carp. I am not sure if it was catch and release or if some of them were kept and eaten. I won’t eat freshwater fish because of all the contaminants in the ponds and lakes. The seafood I eat is probably not much better, but I can only hope.
Who is the pickiest eater you know? When was the last time you went fishing? What is your favorite fish to eat?
Husband started guitar and cello lessons, and also attends OT to improve an injured wrist. He enjoys all his activities and finds they are mutually beneficial.
The other day he mentioned feeling disconcerted because he suddenly realized that all his teachers, helpers, and guides are younger than he is. His cello teacher is in his late 20s. His guitar teacher is 40. He went on a nature hike on Sunday led by a very young naturalist. He tries to share experiences, music, recipes, etc, with them that they don’t know about or haven’t had. They are very interested in the things he talks about. He sees himself as having experience without expertise, while they have expertise without experience. He hopes that he and the others are all learning together. He says It’s like being an old book in the library that is still good but no one takes out anymore.
I don’t know why it took Husband this long to finally feel his age. Perhaps working full time until he was 71 had something to do with it.
What kind of a library book would you be? How old do you feel these days?
This past weekend has been one of fun and simple excess. My birthday is February 1. Son’s is February 10. We decided to celebrate together this past weekend.
Son had arranged a Valentine’s Day treat for his wife in Sioux Falls including a live production of Moulin Rouge at the Washington Pavillion and dinner at a really exquisite Italian restaurant. We watched the 7 year old and the 6 month old while they were in Sioux Falls. We celebrated with birthday cake when they returned after dinner and the musical. They all spent Saturday night with us.
Son and I agreed that we wanted a German/Central European cake to celebrate, and he found a lovely recipe for Schwartzvald Kirschtorte. It was a fairly easy recipe for an experienced baker, and I baked the three cake layers on Friday. Grandson and I assembled the cake on Saturday afternoon after I had made the massive amounts of sweetened whipped cream, excessive chocolate ganache, chopped dark, sweet cherries, and kirsch syrup that completed it. Grandson loves to bake and cook. He really loved licking the spoons. It was a 9 inch cake that served 12 people. The header photo is all that is left after we all had second and third helpings on Sunday. It was a decadent cake..
It was also decadent to spend so much time with grandchildren. Granddaughter frequently fell asleep in our arms after her bottles. She smiled and blew raspberries and cuddled. Grandson was so excited to play basketball and Scrabble with his Opa. He also got to roast marshmallows in our fire pit on Sunday morning. How decadent is that?
What is the most decadent thing you’ve eaten or done lately? When was the last time you took care of a baby?
Way too warm for February. But the chickens sure enjoying having some grass and sunshine. The dogs, too. And if we can get rid of some of the ice between the house and shed, maybe Luna will chase the ball over that way instead of standing here watching it go.
I’m thinking I’ll use the tractor loader and try to move some of the piles of snow and gravel from the grass back onto the the road. Although I’m pretty sure we’ll get some more snow this winter. I mean, it’s only February. We just never know anymore.
At the college I had to create a new computer password. The muscle memory has not formed yet and it takes me four tries to log in.
At the local school district, their passwords have to be 15 characters plus all the special stuff. Seems like sometime last summer I couldn’t get logged into email and I kinda forgot about it. I don’t get that much email on that account so it didn’t really matter. Every now and then I’d try to log into a computer and get frustrated and just give up on it. Eventually I got around to trying to get the password reset. I can’t do that from home, it has to be on a district computer. So I tried that, and it still didn’t work. I talked to my boss who had me contact IT. That guy looked me up in the system and said “Huh!”. Hate it when people say that in regard to me… He said I wasn’t in the system and eventually sent me to HR. HR said I wasn’t assigned to a department and therefore, I ceased to exist. Well, I beg to differ! I use to exist. Yep, they knew that, but I don’t anymore. So it was a whole thing to start over and get back in the system. I got a new ID badge complete with a photo of my choosing from my phone, because the lady in HR readily admitted their camera takes lousy photos. So that was nice.
Another guy in the room said he hadn’t seen an ID badge as old as mine in a long time. I was two versions behind. Huh!
A while ago.
So now I’m able to log in, using a password that’s a practically a short sentence. And no way to see it as you type (they’ve had some security issues in the past). I check my email more often and I get a lot more emails too. Be careful what you wish for.
This weekend is the 60th Annual National Farm Machinery show in Louisville KY.
It’s the largest indoor farm show in the world, with over 900 booths on “27 acres of interconnected indoor exhibit space”. Admission is free if you’d like to pop in. Expect to be overwhelmed. Many of the YouTube farmers I watch are there. Of course this has all the newest big shiny equipment on display. Oh, there’s a few older tractors for show, but this is the place to show off the latest and greatest.
I spent a couple hours Friday in a meeting at the local Soil and Water Conservation office meeting with Angela and Jenna. After clearing all the tree’s and reshaping the waterway two years ago, I learned I really should have talked to them first. So last year Angela and I looked at a few areas of the farm and she put together a plan to stop the erosion and repair this gully in the pasture.
Another project in the works
At the top, a small dam would be built, about 4 feet tall and 150 feet long. An upright pipe would be installed at the front with a drainage line running about 50’ downhill. That structure would collect the water funneling into this area, slow it down, and release it over several hours. That in turn, would prevent the erosion happening further downhill. At the bottom, the gully would be filled in, the area re-shaped, and a proper waterway built. There are some springs down there which would be directed into the new waterway once fully seeded and established.
Because our farm is in the Zumbro Valley Watershed area, cost sharing would bring our actual cost down to about 10% of the total. Well that sounds like a plan!
I also asked about a program called RCPP. Regional Conservation Partnership Program. I heard about this program last week at the soil health meeting. I have part of one field edge that has a pretty good slope too it, and every spring I get a small gully along the edge. The edge of a field where a person turns for the next pass, those areas are called headlands. I’ve tried to create a berm to keep the rainwater off the headland rows, but every spring I get a new gully. The RCPP program would do some cost sharing to create a permanent grass area there so rather than working up the ground of the headlands, I’d be turning on the grassy area.
And since the office is having their annual tree and shrub sale, Kelly and I were discussing where we could plant some trees. One thing we thought was to plant a wind break where we put the snow fence. Guess what? Cost sharing for that too! It was a very good meeting!
Check out the spurs on this rooster.
You’ll poke your eye out with those things!
He is one of the roosters who’s kind of a bully to the hens. He’s pretty though. And isn’t that the way? All looks, no class.
Last weekend I got the new shop exhaust fan wired up, and I put a new gasket under one toilet this week (a project I put off for two months because I’d never done it before and I had some concerns.) In the end, I spent more time cleaning off the old wax gasket and cleaning the floor around the toilet than the actual repair took. This weekend I’ll be changing the kitchen faucet spray wand and tubing. This is the fourth one I’ve ordered. The first three were wrong. Now we’re changing the hose as well. Kudo’s to Moen and their lifetime warranty for admitting their mistake and shipping parts to me no charge.
WHAT WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD PHONE NUMBER?
WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING FOR WHICH YOU NEEDED A PASSWORD?
I continue to be amazed by the speed at which we can access goods and services here. Our town in ND was 20,000 people. Our current town is about 4,900 people. You would think it would be easier to get things done in a bigger town, but that has not been the case.
A couple of weeks ago I finally had it with the front right tire on my van losing air with sudden temperature changes. This has been going on for a couple of years. No one in ND had offered a solution. We randomly chose a tire shop here to deal with the matter. The nice young mechanic/owner explained how he would fix it, and then told us he could probably squeeze it in that afternoon. What? I didn’t have to bring it in the following week? Well, he fixed it in a couple of hours. There was a leaky pressure sensor that needed to be replaced. I then figured out from his last name that his grandmother and my mother had been members of the same sewing club, that his parents lived across the street from us, and that I graduated from high school with his aunt. The tire has behaved admirably ever since.
Wednesday I was feeling awful with a flare-up of diverticulitis. I phoned the medical clinic at 9:50 am. They said they had an appointment for me at 10:15. I took it. This was the actual clinic, not Urgent Care. There is no Urgent Care here. The clinic is a 3 minute drive from our home. By afternoon I was feeling better.
The wired-in smoke detectors on our new home were all a faded, aged yellow. They looked original to the home, which was built in 1998. They should be replaced every 10 years. When our son tried to brown the Thanksgiving turkey at 500°, the upstairs was filled with smoke yet none of the smoke detectors went off. Yesterday at 12:15 pm I phoned an electrician to get them replaced. He told me he could come over that afternoon. He was at the house by 12:40 pm, and by 1:10 pm all seven of them had been replaced. They are white, not yellowed.
What are the wait times for you to get goods and services? How are your smoke detectors? What is the longest you had to wait for a medical appointment?
For the holidays, YA gave me a marvelous (albeit completely unnecessary) gift:
Since the discovery that I could get Libby to work through my hearing aids, my reading has been up a bit and I was happy when I had hit 14 by January 31. I was thinking that maybe it might be a banner year.
Another gift that I received this year was also an unnecessary bit of fun. When I visited my friend Susan in Madison last year, one of our conversations was about television and all the shows we liked. I mentioned that I loved a lot of the British shows that I could find and that I wished BritBox wasn’t so expensive; I’m just not willing to pay anymore for tv in our house than I already do. When I opened the envelope from Susan, I expected a gift card; it turned out to be a coupon for two months of BritBox paperclipped to $22 cash. I laughed and laughed.
I launched the two-month gift on February 1st. I took the book counter photo yesterday morning. Not one book added since January 31. That’s because I am flippin’ LIVING on BritBox – part of my psyche says I should get as much seen as possible while I have this two-month gift. Death in Paradise (Season 15), Vera (just a few shows…on the edge of too dark for me), Ludwig (the whole first season – can’t wait for Season 2 later this year), Hamish Macbeth (only a couple of these), Poirot – Death on the Nile. I’ll stop here. So far I haven’t wandered off the murder mystery path, but I’m sure I will eventually.
It’s actually really enjoyable since I’m pretty good at skipping shows I don’t like. Heaven knows there are enough available. I turned off Riot Women 10 minutes in; ABC Murders lasted about that long as well.
Truly the only regret I have about having this two months is the hit it’s taking to my reading. Truly, if it weren’t for cds and Libby when I’m doing errands in the car, I wouldn’t be reading at all!
Do any of your hobbies/past-times fight each other for your attention?
Husband and I quite regularly purchase specialty foods from a Spanish and an Italian importer, as well as things now and then from Amazon. We also order quite a bit from King Arthur Baking Company. I usually ignore the pleas from these entities for reviews of our purchases.
I mostly have better things to do, and I would hope my continued ordering would let them know we are happy with their products. I know the reviews are all in the aid of marketing.
The other day, though, the King Arthur Baking Company hooked me with an offer of a possible $100 if I reviewed our recent purchase of all-purpose flour. I really do like their flour. I told them it is the only all-purpose flour we use. It was impossible to submit the review, however, and I finally gave up in frustration.
What products do you order on-line? Ever submitted a review? What products would you like to honestly review?
In 1986-1987 Husband and I and our son lived in far southern Indiana in a place nicknamed “The Athens of the Prairie”. We were only there for a year while Husband did his 12 month psychology internship, We were at 624 feet above sea level there.
I flew to Luverne with my son in the summer of 1987 to leave him with my mother while my dad and I drove to western ND to find a house to rent. Husband had just secured a full time job there. Luverne is 1463 feet above sea level. Winnipeg, where we moved from to Indiana is at 700 feet above sea level. Dickinson, ND, where we eventually moved, is 2460 feet above sea level. I remember being amazed at how different the sky looked in Indiana compared to Dickinson. It was as though I could pluck the clouds out of the sky in ND. We lived there from 1987 until 2025.
Husband and I are noticing differences between living in a tallgrass prairie in Luverne as opposed to a mixed grass prairie in Dickinson 1000 feet higher. The weather, humidity, and vegetation are much different. Jim Brandenburg, our local celebrity nature photographer dedicated about 1000 acres of tallgrass prairie just north of town as a nature preserve. It is named “Touch The Sky”. Look it up. It is wonderful. Much of the Twin Cities, by the way, seems to be in an oak savannah. Look that up.
Where are the highest and lowest places you went to. Ever read Giants In The Earth? Look up The Athens of The Prairie.
Husband has installed five bird feeders just adjacent to our deck. He tries to entice fiches, cardinals, juncos, and other smallish birds. Late last week he exchanged one feeder that seemed to be too squirrel friendly, since the backyard furry thieves were emptying it daily. The dog is disappointed since he loved chasing the squirrels off the deck.
Over the past couple of weeks we have seen the little birds suddenly take flight from the feeders en masse, and the silhouette of a much larger bird flying over or else perching on the new fence. I finally got a good look at it, and it seems to be this one:
It was blue-grey with a pink breast. We determined it was a Coopers Hawk. I finally got a closeup view as it was standing in the yard devouring a small bird. The little birds eventually all return, especially when it is sunny..
There are hawks and other large birds here we didn’t see often in ND. It has been fun to try to identify them. There is at least one Bald Eagle that flies over our neighborhood. We also saw some ravens. I also think we saw a snowy owl fly out of a ditch as we were coming back from Sioux Falls.
What is the rarest bird you ever saw in the Great Outdoors? What are your favorite wild birds?
I attended a soil health meeting on Thursday. It was a program known as the ‘I-90 Soil Health Tour’ with four stops across Southern Minnesota. A real nice free lunch was included. And this wasn’t a “free” lunch with the purchase of something, it was a free seminar WITH a free lunch!
There was a lot of data presented. We talked a lot about what makes good healthy soil. How much is water, how much is open space, minerals, and how a plant is able to use minerals once they’re bound with the soil. We talked about how quickly some fertilizers or minerals bind with the soil, which means the plant has to use a different process to utilize those minerals.
One way to test the biological activity in the dirt is to bury a pair of cotton underwear about 6” deep. Dig it up a couple months later and see how far it’s degraded. Healthy soil with lots of microbes will have it just about all gone. I may have to try and remember that this spring.
Once the soil gets to a certain point and we begin to understand the different ways minerals are accessible, a farmer can use less fertilizer, which means less money of course, which everybody likes.
One of the speakers was a soil scientist. He works with farmers all over Southern Minnesota. This gentleman really needed to just lighten up and have a little more fun with his entire presentation, because while the subject was interesting, his presentation was about as dry as dirt. This guy started off trying to get the group to speak up and throw out some answers and apparently he was gonna stand there and wait until he got them. Come on buddy, read the room. Are we just gonna sit here and stare at each other while you’re waiting for an answer? It was during his presentation that I spent a lot of time looking around the room and thinking about what I can use to write this blog.
He talked about a drop of rain, falling at potentially 45 MPH and the impact that drop can have on one grain of sand, but that got me thinking, how fast DOES rain fall? So I googled that. Generally rain falls at 15-25 MPH.
There was maybe 150 farmers in the room. I had a good time watching the room, the body language (the guy across the table from me was drifting), a lot of arms crossed, hands on chins, a few elbows on the table with head resting on palm. There was 5 women in the group. One guy limped in with a cane. Maybe he was 85 years old. He had good comments. One thing he pointed out was to get a soil potentiometer first thing. Check for soil compaction and a hard pan before anything else.
It felt good to see all these farmers interested in improving the soil.
One of the things I always hope when I write these blogs are to give you some knowledge of farming and how much farmers do care. We have to take care of the soil.
For our farm, I’m looking at how long I think I could be farming yet, knock on wood, (I’m 62. Have I got 10 years left? 20?) and what I can afford to implement and change. Of course we always hope the farm and soil diversity would outlast us.
These quotes were said at the meeting:
“In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” – Baba Dioum, Senegalese forestry engineer.
“Dirt is dead, soil is alive”.
“We’ve always done it this way” are the most expensive words in agriculture.”
These quotes I found online:
“To be a successful farmer one must first know the nature of the soil.” — Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 400 B.C.
“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery and the other that heat comes from the furnace.” — Aldo Leopold
And of course these:
“Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and many accomplishments, owes the fact of his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”
—Attributed to Paul Harvey
“One teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than there are people in the world.”
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Out in the shop, I got the new ventilation fan wired up last weekend, and I replaced the jaws on the vice on the welding table. Years of beating on things had broken off the ends.
New jaws, broken jaws, and tools used for replacement.
Took me a while to find 4.5” Craftsman jaws for replacement. But then I lubed the bolt and frame and it’s just like new.
The table this vice is bolted too, I made in 12th grade welding class. Still using it.
It’s an Electric table!
The current chickens have started laying a few more eggs, and I’m even getting a green one now and then. I don’t know what’s become of the green egg laying hens. Have they just been taking the winter off? We’re back to just one chicken in the garage.
The coyotes seem to be making the rounds again. The dogs are often out barking at 3AM or 5AM. And then sniffing around the crib. Course it’s too dark to see anything. I may just start shooting into the dirt to scare off whatever is out there.
I started looking at ordering chicks for spring. My usual place doesn’t have any available until May. That’s later than I like. There’s another place I have used a few times and I’ve got some coming on March 31st. $260 for 50 chicks. Four different breeds including 20 ‘Easter Egg’, ten ‘hatchery choice’, ten Silver Laced Wyandotte, and ten Lavender Orpington. Mabel from a few weeks ago, I think she is a Lavender Orpington. The chicks will be coming from Willmar, MN.
Trail Baboon 