Category Archives: Uncategorized

2026, crops, Farming Update, History, Mysteries, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

This Week

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This week’s Farming update from Ben 

I think it’s really interesting that aluminum foil in the oven doesn’t get very hot. I can pull it out with my fingers. So I googled it. And learned this: 

  • Extreme Thinness (Low Mass): Standard foil is incredibly thin (about 16 micrometers). Because there is so little metal, there isn’t enough total heat energy to warm up your thick, water-filled skin. The instant you touch it, your cooler fingers absorb the tiny amount of energy, dropping the foil’s temperature immediately.
  • High Conductivity: Aluminum is an excellent heat conductor. Heat passes through it and dissipates into the cooler room air almost instantly.

Isn’t that interesting!

Wednesday was my first day of half summer vacation. I work half time at the college until June, then I’m off for a couple months.  I worked at home ALL DAY Wednesday. 

I had my annual performance review at the college the other day. As I prepared for that and looked for a paper copy of last year’s review I found a phone book on my desk. I guess I kinda knew it was there. I haven’t opened it in a while. It was from 2014. I put it in the round file finally. 

This is a phone book, kids!

I finished planting soybeans last Saturday. 

Sunday I drove over it all with the drag. The fields look great! Smooth and even. Hopefully they get lush and green soon. 

It was sprinkling late Sunday evening when I was out with an old hand cranked seeder spreading grass seed on one of my new field boundaries. 

This thing has hung in the basement as long as I can remember. Asking my siblings, we all played with it but no one remembers seeing anyone actually use it. I’m thinking dad used it to seed grass around the house after it was built. But I’m sure I’m just making that up. 

The directions are on the bottom:

img_6307

I have a few thoughts. I don’t know what 2.5 MPH is when walking, and a spread of 18 feet?? You gotta really be cranking that thing to get 18 feet! Man, I don’t know how the old guys did it back in the day seeding acres and acres with this thing.

I am planting ‘BLM #4’. It’s a quick growing pasture mix commonly containing ryegrass, tall fescue, and Kentucky bluegrass.

At home Padawan and I got a lot done this week. Cleaned out the seed and power washed the corn planter. Parked it outside for the moment and pulled out the seed wagon. Cleaned that off and parked it away. As we were rounding up flowerpots for Kelly, we got sidetracked by crap in a corner of the old shed and ended up hauling out a gator load of scrap iron and a gator load of garbage. 

Tired

I’ve wanted to clean up that corner, just didn’t intend to do it then. It was clean back in 1968 when we were living in the machine shed, then it turned into the tire storage corner. I’m down to about 5 old tires to get rid of, and 3 good spares I store there. And once you start a spare tire corner, it becomes a junk corner real quick. Padawan cut the top off a tote while I was cleaning the planter so we can use a second tote for scrap iron. I forgot about a zoom meeting on Wednesday. Had it on my calender… even knew about it in the morning. Then got a text from someone asking if I was coming to the meeting. I joined from the tractor. 

Padawan and I made a fence and got the adolescent chicks out. 

We put mulch around the seedling trees and starting making a, sort of, ‘tent-fence’ to keep the deer from eating the tree’s and peeling bark off the tiny little things. Stupid deer! These little tree’s are costing us a lot of money! Water totes, pump, hose, fencing, Mulch was free, then more fencing and more posts… jeepers. And who knows how they’ll survive next winter. I don’t have high hopes. 

I need to clean out the grain drill yet. 

Oops. Forgot to turn on the drill in time there.

Right up at the end of our driveway there’s this gap in the oats field.

It’s the first thing you see driving in. I’ve seen it coming all spring, I need to get out there and replant that. Course it will always be a month behind. But a bare spot allows weeds to grow. And I have several bushels left in the drill to clean out so I may as well go plant that and fill in a few light spots in another field. 

Padawan has gotten a new job. He’ll be working 11:00 AM – 8:00PM Tuesday – Saturday. I’m gonna miss him. He and I have really connected the last few months. I enjoy having him around and he kinda likes having us as his surrogate family. In fact, he listed me as “Family Friend / Dad” on the job application. Awwwww…

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Welcome to summer!

ARE YOU A FAST WALKER OR A SLOW WALKER?

EVER CRANK STARTED ANYTHING?

2026, Kids, Media, Music, Uncategorized, Words

Childhood Misunderstandings

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As I drove to Brookings this week I heard MPR play a recording by Van Cliburn. I remembered my confusion, as a child, regarding his name. I could never figure out why no one ever mentioned his first name. My confusion stemmed from growing up in an area heavily populated by Dutch immigrants. There were Vanden Hoeks, Van Neuenhuizens, Van Roekels, etc, so I thought Van Cliburn was his full last name. Imagine my surprise when I realized Van was his first name and he wasn’t Dutch!

This memory triggered another language based misunderstanding regarding Offenbach. In one of my first piano books I had a very simple piece written by Offenbach, but I didn’t know that was a formal name. I thought it was a German word that meant that you had to stand up when you played the piece, getting “Off the bench or off your backside”. I remember my piano teacher trying not to laugh when I explained my reasoning for why I stood up to play the piece.

A few weeks ago I was complaining to my daughter in law about my dislike for my exercise class, but how it was helping me improve my strength and stamina. Grandson was eying the Tylenol bottle at the time, and asked why, if I took Tylenol and it said “extra strength” did I even go to my class, since the Tylenol would give me extra strength. We explained it was the Tylenol that was strong, but it didn’t make me strong.

I think my favorite childhood misunderstanding was that held by a good friend from college. He was an accomplished oboe player from a small town in Eastern ND. The summer after he graduated from high school he travelled to Europe with a concert band from the International Music Camp (located on the ND/Canadian border). They played a concert in Washington, DC before heading overseas. He told me his confusion hearing the length of time the flight to Europe would take from DC, because it seemed so short, and his embarrassment realizing that his entire life he thought Washington, DC was in Washington State, hence the shorter travel time!

Any memorable childhood misunderstandings?

2026, animals, Family, Gatherings, Nature, Uncategorized

Zoo Happiness

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Neither of my folks liked crowds. Long lines, throngs of folks – count them out.  I’ve never been sure why I can take lots of folks but whatever propensity I have, it has been handed down to YA. 

The two busiest days at the Minnesota Zoo are always the last Saturday and Sunday of their very popular Farm Babies program.  They have all kinds of activities and music out at The Farm and there are always plenty of babies; this year baby cows, llamas, goats, lambs and piglets.  YA and I had other things going on for the first four weekends so it was this past weekend or no Farm Babies program until next year.  We’ve been to the last weekend of Farm Babies before but it was even more crowded than we remember. 

Of course, almost everybody was a young family with kids (and those proverbial strollers – I promise I’m not whining about strollers, despite the photo above).  It was, however, truly amazing to see the number of strollers, especially when they were “parked” in several locations.  Wow!

YA and I have different modus operandi at the zoo.  She will walk at my pace but doesn’t always stay right at my side if I dilly dally.  I am more than able to stand and watch a moose do basically nothing for 10 minutes but if I do this, sometimes YA will wander off to see something else.  Conversely, she can pet a baby cow forever.  On Saturday, there was a restaurant chain sponsoring a scavenger hunt.  There were three stations that you had to find and have you little map stamped.  I thought it was a hoot but YA didn’t want to play (this was when she went off to pet that baby cow).

One of the projects in the Activity Barn was making homes for mason bees who apparently are solitary bees that don’t live in hives.  I thought this was very interesting and I let the volunteer tell me everything.  When I was done there, I found YA petting goats.  The one time we were perfectly synced was when we got hungry for lunch! 

Toward the end of our day we stopped at the Service Desk – I wanted to ask when Llama Trek was going to open and to find out if the snow monkeys (whose exhibit is being re-vamped right now) were still here in Minnesota or if they were hanging out at a different zoo until their habitat is finished.  The guy behind the desk was talkative and I’m not even sure how we got from the snow monkey habitat discussion to the Kodiak bear who broke the window at the zoo several years back.  Or how the zoo has multiple possible plans for adding new bears now that there is only one left. 

As we were leaving YA said “I didn’t think he was ever going to stop talking.”  I laughed and said “I could have stayed and listened to him talk about the zoo all day.” 

I guess it’s different strokes for different folks.  But neither of us were bothered by the big crowds!

When was the last time you visited a zoo?  Any favorite zoos?  Zoo animals?

2026, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

Low Alto

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When I was in high school I was fortunate to have wonderful music teachers and choir/ band directors. My favorite choir director, Mr. Phelps, was a Concordia College, Moorhead grad who eventually settled in the Twin Cities, where he was equally beloved by students there.

Mr. Phelps, aka Showboat Phelps to other local directors, really knew how to put on a show, be it musicals or difficult choral pieces. One Christmas we did The Messiah. It is a demanding piece with a very high First Tenor part. Mr. Phelps had no qualms about enlisting the Second Altos to sing First Tenor in the Messiah as well as on any other song the Tenors struggled with. I am a Second Alto, and to this day I still know the First Tenor part from The Messiah much better than the Alto part.

My speaking voice isn’t particularly low, but singing Tenor in high school as my voice was maturing kept my singing range really low. My voice breaks at the C above Middle C, and I am able to get down comfortably to the D below Middle C. That is pretty low.

Last week in church choir the Bass section was having a hard time with a couple of measures that had several accidentals. it was identical to the Alto part an octave higher. The director joked that it was too bad we couldn’t sing the part with the Bass section in their register. I told her I could, and I did. The Sopranos were astounded I could sing that low. I was the only one who could sing the measures correctly. Thanks, Mr. Phelps. It’s just too bad you didn’t have me sing along with the Sopranos as well as the Tenors. Think of what my vocal range would have been if you had!

What were your best/worst school music experiences? What is your vocal range?

2026, Family, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

YA Cave

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Claustrophobia, agoraphobia, hydrophobia, hemophobia, acrophobia, Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.  There are a LOT of phobias out there.  Luckily I’m only stuck with two that occasionally bug me. 

Acrophobia bugs me the most.  I don’t like to take the escalators at the Mall of America.  I don’t like to stand near the edge of anything and a couple of those tall tall buildings in London did throw me for a loop.  Three weeks ago, my next-door neighbors got a new roof and after a couple of hours, I had to take my book and move downstairs because watching them work out of my bedroom window was giving me the heebie jeebies.

My claustrophobia is milder and mostly manifests in my deep desire to not be underground or in a cave.  Oh, and I don’t care much for curtains – give me a good valance any time.  I’ve passed twice on the underground river at Xcaret in Mexico and doing the big cave on Gibraltar really got my heart going.  I even stopped reading the Anna Pigeon series after a book set in a cave.  Ish. 

YA doesn’t have a titch of claustrophobia and years ago hung curtains in her room in addition to window shades (I am NOT a window shade kind of gal).  Yesterday a package got delivered and she swooped on it immediately.  Curtains.  When I asked why she needed new curtains she said that her shades had started to curl on the edges and she decided black out curtains would be better.  Black out curtains.  I’m not making this up.   If she only pulled these curtains during the night, when we have a lot of ambient light from living on a county street, I could kind of understand, but like her previous curtains, these have been pulled shut 24/7.  It’s dark in there.

I’ve never wanted a cave of my own so it’s hard for me to get her desire for one, but it’s her room so if she feels the need to have a grotto of her own, so be it!

Any fears you’ll cop to?  Do you like serious darkness for sleeping?

2026, Art, Business, Gatherings, Uncategorized

A Crafty Friday

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Crafts shows are a favorite of mine.  I love to see all the stuff that people make and it’s fascinating that other people buy all this stuff.  The Arts & Crafts show at Canterbury is huge – not normally my favorite kind of craft event, but I’m fond one particular vendor so I wait in line, cough up my cash (I get two discounts – one for being old and one for getting a coupon ahead of time).   

The lines are pretty intense so I get their pretty early.  It’s good people-watching in line.

The vendor I like make quilted objects – I met the mother/daughter duo years ago at the State Fair.  I ordered some oven mitts from them and the entry fee to the fair is cheaper than the shipping that’s why I went this year.  I also wanted to check out their inventory of a couple of other items because they are closing their business at the end of the year.  Marie is 84 and ready to retire!  I got my mitts and some toilet tank toppers and a couple of table runners since it’s the last time I’ll be seeing them.  They gave me the last two popcorn bags for free, since YA and I adore those. 

Of course, as long as I’m there, I wander through and look at everything.  This year I ended up getting a couple of dip mixes – they tasted good sampled w/ pretzels.  I also stopped and got some fudge from a vendor I’ve purchased from before.  The Turtle Sundae fudge is very good.  Tried the baked cheese guys this year (won’t do that again).  AND, I got a massive bag to popcorn… a combo of kettle corn and caramel corn.  Normally I don’t get popcorn like that but from where I was standing in line (for almost an hour), the popcorn stand was directly in my line of sight and when they let us in, I was just pulled right to the stand.  Took me six days to finish it.

Without Marie and Stanna, I won’t be going back to this Arts Fair.  Not enough vendors that I’m that interested in.  I’ll still do my Rubber Stamp event in July though and if they have a popcorn vendor, I’ll be all in!

Any arts/crafts events you’ve taken part in?  Any vendors you gravitate to?

2026, Family, home, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

Power Washing Premonition

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For quite some time, I avoided Hudson & Rex, a Canadian tv show about a cop and his partner, a beautiful German Shepherd Dog.  But I’ve gotten hooked; it shows on a couple of different cable stations so when I find it showing, I’m all in.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that one of those two stations plays a few ads A LOT.  One of those is about a power washer.  You know the kind where some guy says “after using this, I threw out my old power washer”.  Blah blah blah.  I mute it a fair amount.

Imagine my surprise when a box was delivered yesterday and I came downstairs to find YA assembling a little power washer.  It isn’t the power washer from tv (thank goodness); she bought it with award credits from the merchandise side of her company’s business.  No money actually changed hands.

She had it out yesterday afternoon, doing the side of the garage and the driveway where we had all the mulch piled up for the last couple of weeks.  I guess it works pretty well; she informed me of a couple of other projects she is thinking about. 

I’m glad she likes to take on these kinds of projects because it would never have occurred to me but I am a little spooked that the tv seemed to predict the power washer entering our lives.

Any cleaning projects lately?

2026, animals, Automotive, crops, Farming Update, Music, Science, Theatre, Uncategorized, Weather

POLISH THE SILVER

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This week’s Farming Update from Ben

Hang on tight, I feel like this blog is more ‘all over the place’ than most of them.

I’m so close! A couple more big days, and that will be it for spring work. I finished planting corn about 9:30 PM Thursday night. Just in time as I had to get back to ‘work’ work at the college. Commencement next week. Hung lights over where the stage will be, so the stage can be placed over the weekend.

Things have really moved fast this last week in the farming world. With the nice weather, THOUSANDS of acres have been planted.

I still don’t know which day is which yet.

Last Saturday I spent all day working an event at one of the high schools.

Sunday and Monday I think I farmed.

Over on the rented ground I run, it got fertilizer applied on Tuesday while I was out with the guys doing Township Road inspections. (The roads are all still there. Need a culvert replaced on one road, and some tree’s trimmed, and some ditches cleaned). Wednesday I dug up the fields again, to incorporate the fertilizer, and get it ready for planting. Hoped to have Padawan digging so I could plant, but he’s not a big fan of the tractor. And I don’t want him on the highway. I found him other work to do.
I mentioned he was all about cars. One day he said, again, “What should I do about my car?” I said, “Get a girlfriend?” He didn’t like that answer.

He spent 5 hours figuring out what was rolling around under my car. Eventually he found a golf ball had gotten under the seat somehow, and then under the frame. Well. Clearly I put the golf ball in the car at some point… one of those from the tractor and I must have put it in the car. Then forgot about it…

My collection of golf balls

I cut off the stumps of the dead Ash tree’s that were cut down earlier. Got a company coming in to grind them off on Tuesday, then will plant the Larch tree’s. …. pause for us all to say, “The Larch”.

 Kelly and I moved a couple of the windbreak shrubs, just to fill in some places we missed. And we rigged up a barrel and hose to water them. That worked but it was kinda slow. I have ordered a 12V pump but it won’t be here until Monday. And then I went up a hill and the barrel slid out the back and busted off the hose attachment. Oops. Should have put a strap behind that… Wonder why I didn’t think of that at the time. Woulda Coulda Shoulda.


I listen to podcasts in the tractor. Smarter than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus is a favorite. Then The Moth. Or a lighting one called Light Talk, modeled after Car Talk. Smarter Than Me is really good; highly recommended.

I listened to Arturo Sandoval for a while. I knew a couple of his songs, then heard an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Since I was a trumpet player, I listened to Maynard Ferguson, one of my musical heros. His birthday was May 4th. I believe I have a good embouchure and breath control from all those years of trumpet playing.

Wednesday late afternoon I got over to the last 35 acres and started planting. Got about 2 acres in when a gauge wheel fell off the planter. That’s an important part. It was 5:45PM. Called John Deere and they had the part. Drove the planter back home, drove to Plainview for the parts, (after hours, they leave parts in a metal locker out back) (and got sandwichs at the sub place in town), $130 for that part. had it fixed in about 10 minutes and called it a night.

Thursday Morning Padawan got a different car. Maybe that will calm down some of his talk. Maybe.

But Thursday I got all the corn planted! Friday the co-op applied fertilizer for soybeans and they will be next.

When we replaced some points on the digger last week, I used special, ‘Long-lasting’ points. Supposedly they’re extra hard. And I notice the steel looks different once shined up by the dirt:

Interesting pattern on the long lasting points.
Regular points
There goes the profit.
Oats is growing.
A flat tire filled with mud. Hmm…..that’s weird. I had to cut it open because it was so dang heavy we could barely lift it. Well that explains why.
Trying to follow the line.
Me and that guy.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms!

EVER HAD TO POLISH THE SILVER?

ANY STORIES OF A SAMOVAR?

2026, Food, home, Uncategorized

All Is Revealed

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Our kitchen is very long and runs east and west. The living room is at the east end, and an open area where we keep the piano, media cabinet, and musical instruments is at the west end. There is a window on the far west wall. The photo below shows the west window by the media cabinet, and was shot ftom the livingroom.

Our kitchen cupboards are stained a dark walnut brown. They usually don’t show much dirt or spills. We try to keep things pretty neat and clean when we cook, but spills do happen and we wipe them up, of course.

I generally feel pretty good about the cleanliness of our kitchen, and a casual glance most times of day would support that assessment. However, when the sun shines through the far west window, it illuminates every spill, smudge, smear, and dust particle on the cupboard doors that makes it look as though we have been flinging food all over the place and leaving it to it drip down and dry. That is a lot of cupboard front to wash regularly, but the revealing afternoon sun keeps me on my alert. It is one of my least favorite cleaning chores. I suppose I could just shut the blinds to block the sun, but the Dutch in me couldn’t live with the knowledge that the cupboard fronts need cleaning.

What housecleaning tasks do you dislike the most? What do you like or dislike about your kitchen cupboards.

2026, Automotive, Kids, Travel, Uncategorized

My Way

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Sometimes I think maybe I should have gone back to school to get a PhD in family manipulation.  I got my Masters training from the master – my mother.  Even when I could feel her working her magic on me, I succumbed time and time again. 

The inheritance of this talent is a two-edged sword.  It certainly works wonders sometimes but then I occasionally feel guilty.  I should probably feel badly that I don’t feel THAT guilty.  Some things are a slam dunk… if I ask YA to clean in the bathroom directly, she might or might not.  But if I leave a wet wash cloth on the edge of the tub or some hair from my brush on the counter – voila!  Bathroom cleaned in no time.  In the dining room (where she works from home on Mondays and Fridays), if I spread all her stuff (bills, junk mail, computer mouse, keys, etc) all over the table, then she cleans it up lickety split.  If I just organize it into a pile myself, the pile will sit there forever.  I never ask her to come help me with yardwork but if I ask for one thing – like moving a bag of mulch from the back to the front, she almost always stays to work.  My latest discovery is that if I just rinse out the kitty fountain and mention that I’ve done it, she will take the fountain apart and do an extremely thorough cleaning.  The funniest thing about all this is that if you saw her room or the sink after she’s been working in the kitchen, you couldn’t imagine she would have any cleanliness streaks in her.

We had two weeks between my mom’s passing and when we went down to St. Louis to clean the condo and have her service.  During that time, YA had two trips, one long work trip to Cancun and another for-fun trip to Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms.  She had planned it a couple of months back and was scheduled to get home on Sunday night and we were leaving very early on Monday morning for St. Louis.

A few days before she left for Washington DC, she told me that I should get the car washed and vacuumed before our trip.  Luckily I was on my game at that moment so I said “well, I’ll try but I have a lot to do for the service and getting ready for the trip.”  Three hours later, I looked out the back window and found her vacuuming my car – see the header photo.  Heaven forbid she should have to travel to Missouri and back in what she considers to be a health hazard.  (Brekke is NOT a health hazard unless you compare her to YA’s car, which is clean enough that you could eat off the seats!)  After she was done, I volunteered to run the car through the little car wash down on 54th while she was in DC. 

Win/win, right?  What chores do you prefer to outsource?