Now that we are retired and are getting to know more people, Husband and I are participating in groups for coffee. We never had the time or inclination in ND.
Every Sunday after church a group of about 16 meets in the basement for coffee and cookies. Husband and I are the youngest participants. The women sit at one table and the men at another, and the men have to make sure all the coffee pots are filled. Conversation is brisk and somewhat gossipy.
On Wednesday morning Husband goes to a men’s bible study where they drink coffee, and then afterwards many of them go out for coffee at a local coffee shop for more secular conversation.
Husband now attends exercise class with me. The other men who attend the class invite him for coffee after class. He has yet to go but is touched by the offers. I had forgotten how much men here like to get together to talk and drink coffee. My father ran a coffee shop here for many years and it was always full of guys talking and drinking coffee. After he retired he met every day with a group of fellow WWII veterans at a local snack bar for coffee and treats. They were officially known as The Last Man’s Club. They even had by-laws written up. Governor Pawlenty’s wife came to Luverne to meet with them.
I have been more of a homebody than Husband, so my coffee klatsch participation is more limited. Maybe after my 50th reunion in September I will find local former classmates to meet up with.
Got coffee buddies? Any unwritten rules for participation? Where do you like to meet?
Today Husband and I are going to the local travel agent to have her make airplane reservations for a late September trip to Denver. Husband’s siblings decided that we all needed to get together in Denver for their stepmother’s 90th birthday. It is a straight flight from Sioux Falls to Denver with no layovers. The travel agent is a high school classmate of mine.
I am the person in our family who goes on-line and makes all the reservations, books hotels, plans things, makes arrangements, etc. I look forward to the Denver gathering, but I found myself strangely reluctant to make the plane reservations, and I put it off all week. On Friday I finally forced myself to go to the United website to book the flights and found it impossible to navigate. I told Husband that we were going through the travel agent instead. I felt immediate relief. Husband agreed. He doesn’t want the stress, either.
It dawned on me that I am tired of being brave. I have been a “do it myself” sort of person all my life, and I think I am done. I don’t want the anxiety that goes with independently spending large amounts of money on difficult to navigate websites. I spent almost 40 years dealing with other people’s crises in my professional work, managing suicidal and homicidal people, testifying in court as an expert witness, managing our move here, and generally dealing with and solving problems and finding solutions. I finally convinced myself that it is ok to let other people do the work. I am embracing my inner coward and relaxing!
Is it easy or hard for you to accept help from others? When have you had to be brave?
Daughter recently purchased a condo, and she has been busy nesting and settling in. We still have quite a bit of her stuff, including a collection of Russian nesting dolls and her baby china. I hope we can get it to her in Tacoma and get it out of our basement.
We have her French Horn in our basement as well. It is a lovely Conn French Horn we got for her in Middle School. She was a really good French Horn player, and even made it into Junior High All-State Band. Then disaster hit and she needed braces on her teeth. She never could play all that well again, but she played all through High School.
I asked her the other day if I could donate her horn to the local high school. It is truly a lovely instrument, and would be greatly appreciated. She surprised me by saying she wants to start playing it again. She said many of her middle school therapy clients talk about their band and orchestra experiences and she realized how much she missed playing her horn.
The horn hasn’t been touched for more than 12 years. Husband and I took it to a music store in Sioux Falls on Tuesday and upon examination they said it was in great shape. The valves all worked and everything was movable. They are going to clean it all up, though, and lubricate it. We will ship it to her after that. Now that she hasn’t braces on her teeth, perhaps she really will play again. I also hope this means she will start playing her violin again.
Did you have braces? Did you play in band or orchestra in school? If you have kids, still have their stuff in your home?
One my birthday Tuesday, more than one of my peeps said that they hoped I was able to not cook and just take it easy for the day.
My perfect day absolutely had cooking in it! The weather was perfect for it, lovely and cool, but I would have cooked anyway. Cooking is a gift I give myself. Being overrun with tomatoes just cemented my desire. There was a Sheet Pan Roasted Tomato Sauce recipe that I found in my Simply Tomato cookbook that I was looking forward to. Here’s that recipe:
1 ½ lbs of tomatoes (all different varieties is fine), cut into chunks
1 large red bell pepper, cut into chunks
1 small onion, thinly slices
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
A few sprigs of fresh thyme
¼ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon chili flakes
Salt & pepper
½ teaspoon dried oregano, parsley, basil
Vegetable broth (if needed)
Lemon juice (if desired)
Pinch of sugar (if desired)
Mix the tomato chunks, bell pepper, onion and thyme in olive oil
Spread the veggies on a large rimmed baking sheet
Sprinkle dried spices over the veggies
Roast for 35-40 minutes (stirring a couple of times) until everything looks nicely roasted
When cool, pick out as many tomato skins as your patience will allow.
Scoop everything into a blender and blend on medium until you get the consistency you like. This is where you can add some veggie broth if the sauce is too thick.
When I weighed the tomatoes out, it seemed like such a small amount that I doubled the recipe. You’d think that after cooking 3 pounds of tomatoes, that my tomato stash would have at least a dent in it…..There are already three tomato dishes in the fridge so I froze the whole batch. I’m guessing that within a couple more days, I can probably do another batch of this sauce (it’s really good) unless I find another recipe that looks good.
Any new recipes you’re tried out recently? Any over-abundance of produce in your world right now?
When we lived in ND we could always count on this guy from Mott, ND, just south of us, to bring fresh Washington and Montana fruit to town. He picked the fruit himself, and the peaches in particular were always wonderful.
I have yet to see Washington peaches in the stores here, only California peaches which I never like very much. They never seem very juicy. Ditto for Georgia peaches.
Boommate is a connoisseur of Colorado peaches. They are now just starting to show up in stores and fruit trucks. She is so fussy, though, that she will only eat Colorado peaches from the Palisades area of the state, preferably grown by Talbott farms. A fruit truck came to town last week selling Colorado peaches but she couldn’t tell what part of Colorado they came from. We were lucky to find some in Sioux Falls yesterday and now they are ripening in paper bags. Boommate insists that I must make at least one crumble with them.
I have made a couple of crumbles this summer, one with nectarines and one with peaches. I have some more nectarines almost ripe enough to bake, and I plan to make them into a crumble with some sweet cherries. My crumbles are pretty simple. I just put about 6 cups of sliced fruit into a buttered 9 × 12 baking dish, mix up 2 c of white flour, 2 c of firmly packed light brown sugar, 1/2 t cinnamon, 1/4 t nutmeg, and a cup of butter in the food processor until it is crumbly, sprinkle it on top of the fruit, and bake at 375° for 30-40 minutes until it is nicely browned and the fruit is bubbling thickly.
Crumbles are my go to desserts in the summer. I don’t have the patience to can peaches or make jam from them. We bought two more bags of brown sugar yesterday so we are well provisioned for a few more crumbles this month.
What foods are you the most fussy about? Where do you like to buy your seasonal produce? Do you care where your peaches are from?
The last time I was at the MN State Fair was 43 years ago on our honeymoon. It has been even more years since I attended the Rock County Fair. It was always an exciting time, and it got even more fun after I joined 4-H. I did horticulture and sewing projects. When I was in Grade 8 I got Grand Champion on my terrarium project, and that led to my first trip to the State Fair.
Last week Husband, Boommate, and I went to the Rock County Fair. It is held in Luverne. Boommate hadn’t been there for many years as well, and neither of us recognized the fairgrounds with all the new construction and exhibit buildings. There was the same collection of carnival rides and food booths. The Rock County Pork Producers had a stand selling great bacon wrapped pork tenderloin. Like the State Fair, we also have a machinery hill, but on a smaller scale.
I remember my cousins showing their Chester White pigs at the fair, dousing them with baby powder to make them pretty. It was fun to be in the animal barns and see all the livestock up close.
We also toured all the 4-H and open class exhibit building to see all the prize pickles, garden produce, tallest field corn, photography, and 4-H educational projects.
Husband spent more time at the fair than I did since he helped the county DFL group set up their stand in one of the commercial buildings and hand out brochures. . My paternal grandfather was one of the founding members of the Rock County DFL party, and I am tickled Husband is getting involved with them.
Our fair isn’t all pigs and canning. The following photos show what else went on. I thought the cannon display was interesting.
I don’t think we will make it to the State Fair this fall, but the County Fair was a delight and I am really glad we went.
What are your early fair experiences? Were you in 4 -H or similar organizations? Ever been to a tractor pull?
This was our first veggie garden in our new home and our first attempt using raised beds. I am happy to report that things are working out well. We had no weeds and no garden pests.
Our raised beds are 3 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and 6 feet long. We planted tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and chard. The chard has been a real success. It is a white chard variety.
To date I have froze 7 lbs of leaves and made a Provencal chard and zucchini tart. The leaves will be used in an Italian pie of greens from The Splendid Table. The chard shares its space with basil.
I bought more pint jars last weekend for more pesto.
The eggplants have done well. We made Eggplant Parmigiano and also roasted and froze several eggplants for use in soup and curry. The leaves are enormous. The eggplants share a space with roma tomatoes and serrano peppers, King of the North red bell peppers, and an Italian frying pepper.
We planted Cherokee Purple, German Johnson, and Roma tomatoes in the third bed . They are doing well,
We tied up and trimmed them after I took their picture. I expect we will have a load of ripe tomatoes in about a month.
We plan to get two or three more raised beds next year. There wasn’t enough room for spinach, and I think we could swing a butternut squash bed as well. I am also happy to report that the pie plant (aka rhubarb) has taken nicely to its new digs.
How is your garden growing? What would you do with too many eggplants and hot peppers? Is it pie plant or rhubarb in your family?
*Thanks to JimEd Poole for the phrase and T-shirt suggestion.
The vacation is over. Farming sucked this week.
The highlight of my week was putting a new windshield wiper on my car because it actually clicked into place and stayed there when I turned on the wipers. I’m calling that a win.
To sooth my mood, I listened to the music of Les Paul. Are you familiar with him and his wife, Mary Ford, and their multi track recording of “How High The Moon? It’s really pretty cool.
He’s a pioneer of the solid body electric guitar, and his use of recording techniques such as over dubbing and multi track recording was revolutionary.
Mary Ford was an outstanding musician herself. Reading about her reveals 4 marriages, alcoholism, and sadly, died at age 53, of complications from alcohol abuse, after eight weeks in a diabetic coma. Kind of broke my heart…
One of my favorite recordings is “Chester and Lester”, Les Paul and Chet Atkins. Which leads me to “Neck and Neck”, Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler. Which takes me to Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris and “All The Roadrunning”.
And that’s all the duos’s I can link because I don’t have any other Emmylou Harris.
So the farm.
Last Saturday the neighbors came out to combine oats. They made a round and a half, plugged up the combine with the grass, (remember, I said that was going to be a problem) And then, I think they were hot and dirty and mad and they went home. I’m sure he was as hot and frustrated as I would’ve been. I said that I thought they started on the worst field, and they should try some of the other fields because there was a lot less grass in them. And I don’t know why, but they never came back and they told me I’d have to cut the oats, sort of the traditional way of swathing it and then picking it up from there. That gives the grass a chance to dry out. Well if I’d have known I was going to swath it, I’d have got my swather ready before we went on vacation for a week. I tried Saturday afternoon to get the swather started and it’s always a bugger to get going at first. Sunday I was working on a show all day. And Monday was hot and humid and miserable and it was a Monday all over. I went to three different auto part stores, and I know I’ve talked about this before; the swather has a Chrysler ‘slant 6’ engine in it. These things were bulletproof and there was a million of them around back in the 70s. But the trick now is finding a mechanic old enough to know what a slant 6 is. And that’s been my problem. I’ve gotten a lot of parts that don’t fit and we can’t seem to find ones that do fit. John Deere doesn’t carry parts for the motors anymore. And I was in quite a foul mood most of Monday. By Tuesday I had mellow out a bit and by Wednesday hired a couple of guys to come and swath the oats for me. What’s a couple more hundred bucks to hire them…
Hired guys swathing oats
And now, of course, after a month of no rain, now it’s raining on Friday. Need the rain, just not right now. Because now my oats is laying down. But at least the oats was standing well when it was cut! Yay! I’m afraid it’s dried up to nothing, so maybe some rain will help it rehydrate. And then eventually the swath will dry and then we’ll get it combined and then I’ll get some straw baled. The neighbors have had their Oats and Straw done for two or three weeks. But we’re not talking about that. 
It was a nice gentle all day rain, and we have over an inch. I did bookwork, and other computer stuff, then organized the pencil drawer in the shop, and fixed a crack on the hood of one of the lawn mowers.
That’s better
I did take a couple hours of one afternoon, when I wasn’t doing anything else, and painted our downstairs bathroom that’s almost done being remodeled. It’s done except for the countertop and sink, and toilet. The countertop is coming August 10 and I would expect a plumber a day or two after that. And while I was painting over the pink bathroom I was singing to myself Lou and Peter Berryman’s “Why Am I Painting My Living Room“.
The padawans were out and we started replacing boards around the bottom of the pole barn. It was hot and one of them complains a lot. Eventually I give him a new rule: “No Bitching”. Then he gets moody but I can handle that.
Front boards done; working on the side. And the door needs to be rebuilt.
I had rock delivered for the road. Ten loads of 18 tons each. Spending money hand over fist again. Can’t take it with you.
Never underestimate the value of a good driver who knows how to spread rock.
I also got stung by a bee working with the boys. Cripes. No allergies or anything, just another annoyance.
I cleaned the radiators on the big tractor, (AC, hydraulic oil, and water radiators) and worked up a small field that a friend plants for a deer plot. (His theory is the deer will eat that instead of my crops. It’s a nice thought that doesn’t work). And after the oats and straw is finally done, I’ll be planting cereal rye as a cover crop.
cleaning the radiators.
Chicken mama is down to 3 chicks… but the co-parenting guinea mom still has around maybe 15? She keeps them out of site most of the time and it’s hard to get a good count of them.
Guinea moms and babies
I mowed some more weeds. I finished lighting one show and started another, and this one is a drag show and a lot of fun.
There was a turkey buzzard sitting on a fence post one day. I thought, ‘well if that doesn’t sum up my week.”
I’ll end with this:
WHAT GETS YOU OUT OF A FOWL MOOD?
HOW MANY YO-YO’s DID YOU HAVE AS A KID? COULD YOU DO TRICKS? 
We had a lovely time over the July 4th weekend in a Airb and b near La Crosse, WI. Our place was pretty remote and up at the top of some tree covered hills. We had a huge deck overlooking the forest.
One evening I was on the deck and I heard some very harsh meowing coming from the woods. It sounded like a cat in distress. I was just about to head into the woods when I remembered our grandson telling us that there were catbirds in the woods nearby, as the bird song app on his parents’ phone had identified their call. What a lousy trick for that bird to play on me!
Further research on catbirds revealed that they are really good at mimicking other birds and do so quite frequently. They like to sing when well hidden in bushes and trees, unlike other song birds that prefer to sing in the open in tree tops. Much easier to fool people that way. Their well developed vocal chords allow them to make two sounds at the same time. They are described as brave and nosy, and as liking to be around people. Sitting in the catbird seat means you are in an advantageous position and have the upper hand.
I don’t think we had catbirds in western ND. They like being where there are lots of trees. It has been really nice hearing all the different bird calls here in MN. If I were a bird I would want to be a catbird. Think how much fun it would be to mimic catalog and other birds and sing multiple notes at the same time. There is something to be said be said, though, about the nightingale.
What are your favorite bird songs or songs about birds? What kind of a bird would you want to be?
Yesterday I got an email from MPR inviting me to download an e-book titled 2026 Minnesota State Fair New Foods e-book. I signed up and they sent me the e-book within a few minutes. Gotta love computers. The email also said starting Saturday I’ll be getting the Minnesota Today Weekend Edition newsletter. If there’s any State Fair news, that will be fine, otherwise it will get discontinued.
I don’t really need to have three weeks to get prepared for State Fair. We have all our tickets already. I have a little checklist for things to take. But after getting the e-book, I couldn’t help but do a little more. So I printed out the actual tickets (back-up in case the whole cell-phone-wallet thing doesn’t work) and downloaded the two fair apps. One is the official Great Get Together app and the other is called Minnesota on a Stick. We don’t use these heavily but every now and then they come in handy with show times and locations of various food stuffs that we’re looking for.
My state fair t-shirts are all folded nicely in one section of my t-shirt drawer. Back before I was retired, I would wear one every work day in August. Guess I can still do that, just at home. I have 11 shirts at this point – short sleeve. I also have one long-sleeve with a loon on it, but I’m not wearing that in August, so I don’t count it. (It doesn’t even live with the other fair shirts; it lives with my long sleeves.)
I probably won’t be able to keep myself from going to Cub in the next day or so to get our Blue Ribbon Discount Coupon books. And I might have to print out my checklist! Good grief.
Any big events coming up for you? How long do you need to get ready to hear VS drone on and on about state fair this year?
There are already three tomato dishes in the fridge so I froze the whole batch. I’m guessing that within a couple more days, I can probably do another batch of this sauce (it’s really good) unless I find another recipe that looks good.
Trail Baboon 