Category Archives: Uncategorized

2024, animals, gardening, Nature, Uncategorized

Rabbit Proof Fence

52 Comments

Our gardening chores were a lot more onerous this year due to a proliferation of rabbits in the neighborhood. It is not only in our neighborhood. I hear people from all over town complaining how the rabbits are eating flowers and garden plants.

Last year the rabbits devastated our strawberry bed in the back yard. They seemed to leave the front garden alone. This year we counted at least five rabbits at one time in our yard. We decided to take no chances and put up bunny proof fences around both garden beds consisting of wooden stakes and poultry netting with garden staples at the bottom to prevent any enterprising bunny to try to sneak under a slack part of the fence. Here is a bunny in the driveway last evening. I took the photo from the stoep, which accounts for the black metal railings.

The Australian movie Rabbit Proof Fence is about institutionalized racism, but it also highlights what can happen when non-native species are introduced into a new ecosystem. Some British guy in the mid 1800’s let loose twenty four rabbits into Australia so he could hunt them, and by the early 1900’s they had to build massive fences across Australia to keep the rabbits from decimating western Australia. There were no natural predators. I don’t like coyotes, but I sure wouldn’t mind a rogue animal to slip into town now and then to dispatch a few rabbits. Kyrill tries to catch the rabbits but they are too fast for him. I am hopeful our fences will do the trick, but they sure made for a lot of work.

What rabbit themed music, literature, or films are you familiar with? What kind of predators in your neighborhood?

2024, Business, education, Kids, Uncategorized

Sidewalk Sales

40 Comments

Photo credit: Ames History Museum

On Sunday, my little neighbors Minnie and Marie came home from errands with their folks and decided to have an “Icee” stand down on the boulevard.  I was weeding in my yard so I got a front row seat to all the proceedings.  First off, “icee” was a misnomer, since they were actually selling those Fla-vor ice pops but they had their signs made so I wasn’t going to quibble.  They also were giving out dog treats free and borrowed one of Guinevere’s bowls so they could have water for dogs as well.

Most of the work for setting this up was done by their folks and then Dad sat up on the driveway with his laptop as they got going.  They were selling the ice pops for $1.00 – a long cry from the 5 cents that was the going rate for a cup of Kool-aid when I was a kid – but that didn’t seem to stop anybody (including yours truly).  Of course, there was also some sampling of their own product as well.  Even on a busy street like ours, a few people actually stopped as they were driving by.  A third neighbor child, Lindsay, joined them for the last hour, although it was clear they were all flagging by then.

Minnie told me that they made $18 and then confided that it was really boring.  They were open for 3 hours total (they took a break for lunch), so that’s 6 ice pops per hour… not terribly rigorous traffic. 

I had several Kool-aid stands when I was a kid.  The house we lived on when I was Minnie’s age was on a corner lot of a fairly busy street.  Like most kid-run stands, my folks paid for the Kool-aid, the sugar, the cups and any other supplies that were used.  One time my father suggested that we kids split the profit with him since he had paid for everything.  Unfortunately this lead to graft and a second set of “books”. He never asked again.

Did you ever sell stuff as a kid?

2024, Family, Food, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Spoiled

25 Comments

I have no problem admitting that Husband, I, and the dog are spoiled when it comes to food. I started to subscribe to Goumet and Bon Appetit when I was in Middle School. That has certainly skewed my expectations for meals in my home ever since.

The dog is spoiled because he will only eat his kibble if we put a spoonful or so of homemade broth on it. This week it is goat broth. He is a happy boy.

Winnipeg is a foodies paradise, with every sort of ethnic restaurant and grocery store you can imagine. Six years there left me unprepared for spartan western North Dakota and only two chain grocery stores. Fargo, the nearest food mecca is 300 miles away.

We have taken to ordering on-line to obtain harder to find cooking ingredients. This Christmas, Husband found a source for all sorts of food from Spain, including wonderful serrano ham, Portuguese linguica, cheeses, chorizo, smoked beef, olives, and Galician sourdough bread partially baked in Galicia and frozen, shipped to the US, then shipped frozen to us. It is lovely bread that we tried, but failed, to reproduce at home. We also order 10 lb hunks of parmesan, olives, and pasta from an Italian importer (the parm lasts for a year and costs less than buying smaller packages in the grocery store) and beans from Rancho Gordo. I also order celeriac by the case from Oregon because we can’t grow it well here and I like to cook with it in soup stock. Daughter just visited the Rogue River Creamery in Southern Oregon and decided we needed 4 lbs of their award winning cheddar and blue cheeses. It will arrive on Wednesday. She and son have similar food attitudes as we have.

I justify all this by noting we don’t travel much, have little to no debt, rarely eat in restaurants, and don’t own a boat, camper, or a lake home. We shall see if living near to Sioux Falls after we retire allows more access to these foods, or if we will still order from afar.

If you lived in the middle of nowhere, and cost was not an issue, what would you order on-line to eat and cook with. Where do you like to find recipes?

2024, animals, Family, home, Kids, Nature, Uncategorized

Fledglings

29 Comments

For the past several weeks Husband and I didn’t go out of our front door. Some enterprising robins built a nest atop the light that illuminated the stoep, hatched four eggs, and were busily feeding their chicks. We didn’t want to disturb them by going in and out the front door. You can see the nest in the header photo.

We could see the chicks getting bigger, and by Saturday, the last of the chicks was perched on the bench below the nest.

I like the baby tufts on his head. He sat there for a day, then flew off. I hope he has a nice adulthood.

I was always pretty independent and left the nest pretty easily, although with lots of anxiety. So did Husband and our children. I have known a few families in town where the children never manage to leave. In Winnipeg, it was typical for young people to buy their first home on the same block as their parents. That would have been pretty weird, I think, but typical for Canadian society.

What kind of a fledgling were you? Got any good bird stories?

.

2024, Farming Update, Uncategorized, work

Lost And Found

34 Comments

Today’s Farming update comes from Ben.

So far, so good this year. Even the last planted crops are coming along. The soybeans are just coming out of the dirt. Most guys, or maybe it’s just the bigger farmers, ‘roll’ the soybeans, with a big steel roller, to push rocks down and make a good smooth seedbed (important at harvest), and also to create optimum seed-to-soil contact. I don’t have a roller, but the last few years I’ve run over the fields with a ‘drag / harrow’ to try smoothing it out. This year it kept raining right after I finished planting, so I didn’t get it done. Not the end of the world.

In the Header photo, the oats are on the left and looking good. Corn is the upper right and it’s coming along. The lower right is soybeans. Can’t quite see rows yet, but it’s coming.

Here’s a photo of my “Parts Shelf” at home.

Most of the boxes are filters for two tractors. Then there’s a new set of lawn mower blades, and a ‘throttle plate’ for the old 630 tractor, and some clips for the gas strut on the passenger door of the gator, and a new beacon to replace the one I broke off when I forgot it stuck up higher than the garage door is tall. There are also some wall brackets for tool storage, and brackets to attach the posts to the concrete when I get to building the fourth wall in my shed.

I am gainfully employed at the college through Tuesday June 4th, then off for the summer. Maybe then I can get the tractor unhooked from the drill, and clean up machinery, and return seed, and cut grass, and get back to working on my shed.

Right now, working on another play, ‘Clybourne Park’ is a sequel to ‘Raisin In the Sun’. Act 1 is 1950, and the black couple is about to move into the area. Act II is 2001, and the neighborhood residents are dealing with the changes to a lot of things. It’s a good cast and well written show. The lighting is pretty simple; just general interior lighting, with some specials for the ending, and a change from 1950’s look, to 2001 look. Think ‘sepia’ for 1950, and brighter, but the house is run down, in 2001. “Dingy” lighting. I’m having fun creating that.

I’m having a problem these days keeping track of my water bottles. I have three in the fridge door, and I take one with me to work or outside. By evening there’s only 1 in the door. I joke that at the college I need a workstudy to keep track of my clipboard and water bottle. And I need a phone case that comes with a guy to carry it for me. Generally, I find the water bottle the next day, out in the shop or in a tractor, or in the garage where I set it down to collect eggs.

Are you drinking too much or not enough?

2024, Health, Mysteries, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

Gabbing From Ear to Ear

40 Comments

Today’s post comes to from Bill.

An article in National Geographic caught my attention recently. The headline read, “Do You Have an Inner Monologue?” It caught my attention because my response was, “Of course I have an inner monologue. Doesn’t everybody?” Turns out not everybody does.

I’m not on any of the social media platforms but I gather that the presence or lack of an inner monologue has been a topic of discussion there. Inner monologue has also been a recent focus of scientific study, one product of which is a name for the lack of one: anauralia. Those studies contend that fewer than half of all individuals—by some estimates only about 30%—possess an inner monologue.

If that is true, I am gobsmacked. My inner monologue never shuts up. It is so integral to who I am that I can’t imagine its absence. Persons who lack that relentless flow of words say they imagine having them would be overwhelming.

The National Geographic article portrayed the inner monologue as self-critical and self-evaluating, a voice that regulates and replays social interactions and situations. As such, the article suggests, it can be inhibiting and destructive to one’s confidence, a source of negative thoughts. That’s not my experience. My inner monologue is not, for the most part, focused on how I appear in social contexts. Rather it’s a source of enrichment and entertainment, whether it’s replaying a conversation I had with someone years ago (those just pop up unbidden), preliminarily composing a commentary like this one, working through matters of personal philosophy, or pondering questions that just pop up out of nowhere, like, “what is the commonality between taxicabs and taxidermy?” (It all goes back to the Greek “taxis”, which means “an arrangement” or “to put things in a certain order”) or “if you describe something as the color of mercurochrome, does it mean anything to anyone under about 40?” All of this mental conversation happens while I’m busy doing other unrelated things.

Another article addressing the inner monologue: https://metro.co.uk/2024/05/16/like-live-no-internal-monologue-20853880/

It provides a simpler and easier to parse way to test for an inner monologue. It asks, “When you read, do you hear the words read, (presumably in your own voice)?” Apparently, those with anauralia do not. That for me is incomprehensible.

Do you have an inner monologue? What does it tell you?

2024, Mysteries, Nature, Stories, Travel, Uncategorized

April 30, 2024: Overboard! 

25 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Krista.

I wrote about our ride on the Doolin Ferry, about how wet it was. It was windy and cold too. The sea wasn’t too rough, but once in awhile a wave would hit the side of the ferry and it was easy to lose your balance.  

Anyway, when I came in from the lower front deck, I had noticed the door that opened onto the sea and was held shut by a simple sliding latch. I passed it by, noting it to another woman who was there. I found a seat inside and sat down. A pregnant young woman sat down beside me. She looked at me and indicated her backpack. I understood that she wanted me to watch it, so I promised I would. I stayed right there until she returned for it, then I went to find my friends. They had found a table near a window, so I joined them. It was really hard to take photos. The windows were all bleary with moisture and my hands were damp and almost frozen. Clouds of mist hung over the Cliffs of Moher, obscuring the best sites. Almost everyone was looking toward the side of the ferry that was moving along the base of the Cliffs.  

Suddenly everyone heard a loud banging which didn’t sound right at all. There were several loud bangs in a row that sounded like something smashing into the boat. There were quite a few people standing up in the central aisle. I noticed the look on their faces – they looked horrified. Suddenly someone started yelling, “OVERBOARD! OVERBOARD!” Some people started screaming, “Oh NO! She fell overboard! She’s in the sea!” Colleen and I looked out our window and there was the pregnant young woman whose backpack I had watched. There she was in the water, holding her backpack and a shoe above her head! The ferry backed up a little and someone threw her a life ring. She must have been shocked and cold, but she was able to slip the life ring over her head. She must have triggered it to release an orange dye. They began to pull her toward the boat. A rescue boat came quickly to assist. I think the woman was in the water for about 5 minutes. It seemed like more, but it probably wasn’t. She really kept her head together. I can’t imagine how cold she must have been. The water there is around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. They pulled her in and got her into the captain’s cabin. 

I don’t know what happened after that. They brought us back to the harbor immediately, and for us the event was over. We went into Doolin and did a little shopping. We talked to others who had been on the ferry, and they said she was seven and a half months pregnant. Everyone was really disturbed by the incident. Someone said she had been on the upper deck and a wave had hit the boat from the side. She lost her balance and fell, sliding, and hit a door similar to what I had seen on the lower deck. The door just popped open and she fell out into the sea! Someone else said that there was a woman who had once worked on a similar ferry who grabbed the life ring and threw it out to the girl. A man said he watched her slip and fall and caught her phone as she went. Everyone was worried about her.  

The roads are really difficult out there. It’s actually a fairly remote area of Ireland. When we came out of the stores about an hour later, we saw the ambulance finally coming from Galway. I hope they were able to help that young woman. 

We never saw a news report about it or heard anything more about it. I wish her the best.  

When have you been deeply concerned about a total stranger? Any cold water experiences to share?  

2024, animals, Nature, Stories, Travel, Uncategorized

April 30, 2024: Inis Orr

29 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from our Krista!

We decided to take the Doolin Ferry to Inis Oirr (Inisheer). We were all pretty excited about this trip. It was a cold, windy, damp day on the western shore of Ireland, near the Cliffs of Moher. We boarded the ferry in Doolin, a place that I will always remember fondly.  

We had paid for a round-trip excursion to Inis Oirr (Gaelic) or Inisheer (English). The ferry took us straight to Inisheer. On the way back, we would be treated to a longer ride along the base of the Cliffs of Moher.  

When we arrived at Inisheer, we were greeted by carriage drivers who were determined to get us to accept a ride in their carriage. Martin greeted us. Martin was an old, tough-looking seaman. He spoke both Gaelic and English and was cheerful about explaining things as well as he could in English. His horse’s name was Jack. Martin was liberal with the crop, and Jack seemed to be used to it and it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on him. He plodded along like he had done this at least twice daily for years. Martin and Jack took us to the edge of the island, where there was a shipwreck. I think we were supposed to be impressed with this. It just looked like an old, rusted wreck, with no interpretation to explain what had happened or how old it was. The ancient stone walls were far more interesting to all of us.  

Martin seemed to want to get as many of these trips as he could. He returned us to the village at the harbor. It was raining and I was really soaked already. My rainwear just didn’t cut it. We asked Martin about the stone walls or fences. He said they repair them as needed, but they really didn’t need much repair. I think those walls are extremely old, perhaps more than 1500 years old. Some may be from the Stone Age. They were everywhere.  

We went into the Ostan Inis Oirr (Hotel Inisheer) for a hot drink. I talked to a man who worked on the ferry. I asked him about the Gaelic language. He said a lot of Gaelic actually comes from the French, which does make sense. He said many of the names for vegetables are actually French. It was an interesting conversation.  

We went shopping for more gifts. I really only wanted to be warm and dry. I was drenched and cold. I bought a sweatshirt from the Hotel Inisheer and put it on. I looked for a raincoat, but I didn’t find anything. There were more Aran sweaters here, of course, but I didn’t need one. 

It was raining steadily, so we went back to the ferry. The next leg of our journey would include include a trip past the base of the Cliffs of Moher. It was stunning but hard to see due to fog, mist, and rain. There were puffins floating around in the sea and flying around past the boat.  

Martin and Jack 

Puffins (blurry photo) 

Seastack (very blurry photo)

It was a cold, wet ride. It was interesting but our views weren’t great and we were wet and cold. I tried to go out on the lower front deck to take some photos but it was very hard to stand up and keep my balance.  

I noticed a door that went directly out to the sea as I was out on the deck. It was closed with a simple sliding latch. I was surprised when I looked at it. I stayed toward the wall of the ferry as I went back inside. I said to another woman, “I hope that latch holds!”  

Describe your experiences with someone who spoke a different language from yours. How did you communicate with them?  

2024, animals, Family, Farming Update, Seasons, Uncategorized

Dun dun dun DONE! 

33 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben. 

Had a nice rain on Friday morning. We got about 4/10th of an inch. Tuesday evening there were some strong storms, with some real strong wind gusts. No issues at our place, but there were a lot of branches down in Rochester, and power out in places, and about 6:30 PM I got a call from a township resident that just north of Rochester, several trees were down across the road. As I’m a township supervisor, part of my job is dealing with issues like this. I called the other supervisors and three of us got to work. Thankfully the county came around with a skidloader and they could push it off the road once cut into chunks. We work with a tree service that has done EXEPTIONAL work for us, and they came around and picked up the pieces the next day.

I’ll leave out the part where I got my chainsaw stuck, then John got his stuck trying to get mine out, and Paul insisted he was NOT going to have three chainsaws stuck when the county boys arrived! We didn’t. Whew! 

I finished planting soybeans Thursday night about 10:00. Here’s my last pass. 

It wasn’t quite perfect soil conditions, it was a little bit sticky, but we are getting late enough in the growing season, and with rain predicted several times in the 10-day forecast, I was willing to push it.  

The University of Minnesota Extension Service says corn should be planted by May 5th to get 100% yield. By May 25th, we’re down to 92%.  

For soybeans, it’s May 1 for 100%, and 91% by May 25th.  

Of course there’s always extenuating circumstances, but those are the general guidelines. One year, due to a loan issue with my bank, I planted soybeans before corn, and it was one of the best crops I’d had. So why don’t we plant soybeans first? Good question. Soybeans are more sensitive to cold or wet soils. Corn can sit for 3 weeks and still germinate well. (As some did this year for the farmers who got going in April. My corn came up in a week because I planted later and had warmer weather). So, it’s always a game and you just never know. 

When Bailey, my tractor buddy and I, got home from planting and backed into the shed, I discovered my extension cords glow in the dark! HUH! Never knew that before.  

The chick’s have gotten their outdoor pen.

This group seems much more active and busy than other years, and, we knew they’d need a 6 foot tall pen rather than the 3’ tall pen. I’m looking at you, Luna.  

I’ve ordered ducklings. Thirty. Will be shipped June 18th. An assortment.  

My Mom turned 98 on Sunday. The immediate family had lunch with her, and then we invited a few close friends. She enjoyed the company and liked visiting. Some church friends, and some of her nieces and nephews and it was a fun visit for all of us.

I’m going to miss having my tractor time. Everything went really well this year, and the only issue was one broken hydraulic hose. I just enjoyed the whole process.  

Using Apple Music, it was fun to pick an artist that interested me that day, and listen to a selection of their music. Some worked better than others.  

Christina Aguilera didn’t last long. Neither did Rodney Crowell. Rush, The Million Dollar Quartet, Willie Nelson, Steve Goodman, Pete Townshend, Postmodern Jukebox, and last night, the Tower of Power. They were all really fun. Meant to try ‘The Wrecking Crew’ but didn’t get there.  

Memorial Day Weekend.  Let’s try to be grateful.  

MUSIC FREE FOR ALL THIS WEEKEND! WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TOO?  

2024, Family, Kids, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

Cool Rocks

27 Comments

Our grandson is now 6 and has developed an interest in rocks. I remember my mom getting me a cardboard box that displayed all different kinds of rocks when I was the same age, some polished and all quite colorful and interesting. I had them until our children were in elementary school and they somehow disappeared after that.

Grandson wants to identify and collect every interesting rock he sees. Our son got him some geodes in a rock shop that they had fun opening with a hammer to see the crystals within. Earlier this week I sent Grandson a set of very heavy and colorful polished quartz bookends we had in the basement. It is a win-win for all of us since they are just what Grandson is collecting these days and now we don’t have to find somewhere for them when we move. They also serve a double purpose as bookends.

What did you collect when you were a child?