Category Archives: Weather

2021, animals, Family, Farming Update, Kids, Nature, pets, Seasons, Technology, Uncategorized, Weather

Planting Corn

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This week’s farm report comes to us from Ben.

Been having some nice rain the last few days. Over an inch now, plus the heat and humidity and we’re almost 200 Growing Degree Units (GDU’s) above normal. I figured we were behind, but we got that warm weather back in April. Crops have almost all emerged, and things are off to a good start.

Back in Blogworld, It’s the end of April and I’m just about to start planting corn. The wild leeks are up so I’ve been nibbling on them. Oats is just coming up, anhydrous fertilizer (nitrogen) is done, planting is next. My brother, Ernie comes out and drives the 8200 tractor and the soil finisher to get fields prepped. He says it’s the first time he’s driven a tractor since he was 18. He joked it was still just as boring going around and around. Plus, it’s hard to get run over by the tractor when you’re in a cab. (Hold that thought.)

I’ve been clearing edges of the fields with the 6410 tractor and loader. We have so many box elder trees and brush and weeds that come in from the edges, it’s a constant effort to keep the edges open or we lose them back to nature. Every year I go around and knock down the big branches, but sometimes I spend time literally pushing back everything, 7’ at a time, (the width of the loader bucket) back and forth, back and forth. Ernie thinks fieldwork is boring? But it’s good to get it done.

Back in the fall of 1968, Ernie was using a John Deere 720 tractor and a 3 bottom plow and his long jacket got caught by the tractor tire and pulled him off the tractor. The 720 is an open tractor and we’d often stand up when driving them. He got pulled off the tractor into the freshly plowed ground, right in front of the rear wheel. The rear tire went right over his chest, and he rolled out of the way before the plow got to him. My parents had just built the new house that summer and they were working on that and painting the roof trim when someone commented that the tractor was going in circles and Ernie was chasing it. Dad ran over there and somehow, they caught the tractor. Took Ernie to the clinic and he was fine; doctors couldn’t believe he was really run over, but he had the dirt on his shirt to prove it. They figure the soft dirt is what saved him. Plus, the tractor wasn’t that big or heavy. Another instance of luck or miracles to grace our family.

I took the loader off the tractor, order the corn starter fertilizer, get corn planter out and greased, get the fertilizer wagon ready, and make a trip to Plainview with Amelia and the dogs for the headlight bezel on the 6410. Pushing the trees off is hard on the tractor; I’ve broken a lot of little things doing that. And sometimes some pretty major things. But this year it was just the plastic bezel around the lights on the cab.

About 4:30PM I get out to plant. I have made some dumb mistakes in my life. Here’s another. The middle fertilizer tank auger is backwards. (My dad taught me to only put a little fertilizer in to start to be sure everything is working.) The tanks hold about 750 lbs each, so I fill it maybe half full or so. When planting corn, there’s a monitor to tell me seeds are coming out each row, and when I lift the planter on the ends, I look to be sure fertilizer is coming out the tubes. There’s a shaft I watch to make sure it’s turning because that’s what makes the fertilizer come out.

But if I put the auger in backwards fertilizer will not ever come out. At the end of planting season, I pull the shafts and augers out, clean and oil everything, and put them back. I try to keep everything lined up so it goes back the right way. And normally, I look in there and make sure they’re all going the same way. Clearly, I forgot that step this time. So, I made 2 rounds to use up some fertilizer, then use 5 gallon buckets to shift some fertilizer from the middle tank to the right, and put the left fertilizer in buckets, because I have to slide the left auger out, and then the middle one out through the left tank to reverse it. Remember back on oats and the shaft broke and I dropped too much fertilizer in a row? Well, now these two middle rows won’t have any fertilizer and I’ll be able to see that too; the corn will miss a boost this starter fertilizer gives it.

A lot of guys are using liquid fertilizer these days. I still use dry; it’s just what I’m set up for. I have a 6 row planter. Small these days of 12, 18, 24 row, or bigger planters. So, I have three fertilizer tanks, each doing two rows

Kelly and Amelia and the dogs take a walk, when they come back Bailey comes across the field to find me so she can ride in the tractor. She’s such a sweetheart. 

Kelly comes out in the field with the gator and gets in the tractor and makes a couple rounds with me. There’s not an extra seat in the 6410 so riding along isn’t that comfortable. The 8200 has an “instructor seat” and it’s more comfortable riding along. Humphrey goes back home. I spend some time checking seed planting depth and spacing; all critical things to a good final yield. You want it about 2½” deep and about 6” apart.

(It’s not 6” deep, that’s just the way the ruler is laying).

The seed is treated, that’s why it’s blue / green to prevent bugs like corn root worm, soilborne and seedborne pathogens, and to keep it healthy if it sits in cold ground for a few weeks before it gets enough GDU’s to emerge. (It takes 100 -120 GDU’s to emerge) and this year it took a few weeks before it finally came out of the ground. The random red color seeds are the ‘refuge’ seeds to prevent corn borer resistance.  

I finish planting at 9:30 PM. Out of both seed and fertilizer. I had added six bags of seed, each bag holds 80,000 kernals. So, 6 times 80,000 kernels equals 480,000 divided by the 14 acres I planted means 33,500 seeds per acre which is a good planting rate.

After they start to emerge, if you measure out 17’6”, that will be 1 / 1000th of an acre and you count how many plants are in that length and that’s your final stand population.

Ever had a seed of an idea that blossomed into something?

2021, animals, Family, gardening, Nature, pets, Technology, Uncategorized, Weather

NEVER LOOK BACK

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This week’s farm update is from our Ben.

This week’s farm update comes to us from Ben.

Into May and corn is all planted and working on beans. Things are going well. Back in blog world I’ve finished oats and working on anhydrous nitrogen for corn.

How good are you at details? Do you pay attention to your surroundings? I think I’m pretty good at that. And yet… I miss the most obvious things sometimes. We still laugh about the truck parked on the driveway with the naked guy asleep inside. And somehow, I missed the naked women sleeping beside him. Huh. I was just so shocked by the man being naked I walked away at that point.

And my previous post about the fertilizer spreader PTO shaft breaking; how did I not notice that? I’m looking right there to be sure the apron is still moving and 12” away is the PTO shaft and I never noticed it break or wobble or whatever it was doing when it broke.

A few years ago, I finished planting oats and was heading back home with the grain drill. Got home, turned to back it into the shed and I have no drill. Huh! Well, it must have come unhooked just up around the corner and…. Nope. Not there. It was ½ mile back up the road. Hitch pin had come out and, thankfully, it’s not a complicated machine so just two hydraulic hoses that pulled out and the hitch dropped and it just rolled to a stop. Thank Goodness it was level there and, on our driveway, and not up on the highway or something. How did I not notice that?? Still can’t believe it. However, I have started using locking hitch pins on everything since then.

My dad made a big point of looking behind and watching the machine to be sure it’s working properly. It was a bit easier on the open tractors and smaller machinery. Nowadays with cabs, monitors, and mirrors, it’s easier to pay attention to all those things and not turn around and look behind me so much. I do watch behind me! Honest! But I still miss something plugging up and suddenly I’ve made a full round and there’s a big trench behind me because I picked up a tree branch or something. Man… how did I miss that?

Sometimes I’m not good at details. Ask Kelly; she could have told you that. Maybe it’s just overload; I’m so busy watching that one thing, I miss the other.

We got a decent rain finally, .4 inches. Definitely too muddy to work in the field. Which is OK because I have straw to deliver to Northfield and made the straw and poo delivery to some of you in the Twin Cities.

Got 45 baby chicks delivered the next week. Was able to use my favorite line at the post office. “I’m here to pick up chicks.” I can hear them ‘cheep cheep cheep’-ing in the back room there. People always look and smile as I carry them out. Sometimes I crack the box open so they can look. 

Applying anhydrous nitrogen isn’t hard, but one has to be extra careful hooking up hoses and dealing with it. It’s nasty stuff so I take a lot of safety precautions and make sure I know what I’m doing. Too add to it, the coop where I get the tanks decided farmers have to pick up and return the tanks ourselves (rather than the coop delivering)  which means my truck has to have a DOT inspection, so that was an extra expense this year, plus the time it takes to go and pick up the tank. However, Kelly and I got a road trip date out of the deal. (Plus the dogs)

I always thought the tanks held 5000 lbs. Turns out it only had 3800 lbs in it, which messed up my math for how far one tank should go at the rate of 150 lbs / acre. Assumptions were made. I should know better.

Saw a pretty cool sunset too.

The sandhill crane pair that had been hanging around for a month finally moved on.

Next up: Burning CRP ground

What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever gotten in the mail?

Business, gardening, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather

Drought and Hail

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Husband is outside getting ready to start watering our flower beds and strawberry patch. It is way too early to be watering, but we are in extreme drought here. I think we would welcome hail like the kind they got this week in Oklahoma as long as it came with several inches of rain.

We are supposedly famous for the high incidence of hail here, but we haven’t had more than one memorable hail storm in the 30 years we lived here. That took our shingles, and resulted in our insurance agent and the roofer almost getting in a fist fight on the roof over some procedural shingle replacement short cut our agent objected to.

What is your experience with insurance claims? Any memorable hail storms? Are you too insured or a risk taker?

2021, animals, Automotive, Business, Food, gardening, home, Nature, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Farming Day 1 Part 1

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Today’s post comes from Ben.

Well not exactly day one. But the first day in the field doing spring work so it’s day one from that point of view. 

Spent the morning doing my usual stuff on the computer: emails, newspaper, moms banking, our banking. A few phone calls, etc. before I’m finally out the door mid-morning. 

I needed to take a couple of tires to get fixed and the one on the grain drill I already had loose. Also had a tire on the four wheeler with a slow leak and that’s easy to put a floor jack under the back end and use the impact wrench and four nuts and that comes right off.

Got both tires in the back of the truck, loaded up all three dogs, and headed for Millville Minnesota. We’ve been taking tires to Appel service in Millville for as long as I can remember. It’s about half an hour away and you won’t find a nicer, family owned business, anywhere. Millville is a town of about 180 people and so far down in the valley you can’t get any cell phone reception. There are a couple of bars, couple of restaurants, one Church, a cemetery where I have several relatives, a gun shop, and in a better year I would’ve dropped off the tires and then gone to get lunch at the Lucky Seven Café. 

When I got to Appels, most of the crew was at lunch so I said I’d come back. They are really good at fixing your tires while you wait but I may as well keep moving. Back up the road a few miles to pick up my Oat seed. It was such a nice day, pretty amazing weather for this time of the year, and we worry that it’s so dry; all the farmers are going hard. mostly applying anhydrous ammonia- Those white tanks you see in the fields. I probably saw a dozen farmers doing that. There was a couple guys ahead of me at Meyer’s Seeds and we stood outside and talked while Meyer’s rounded up seed and bring it out on the forklift. I petted some cats (The camera snap on the phone scared them away) and I got a nice metal ‘stick’ used for checking seed depth. Always wanted one of those.


After I got my 54 bags of oats, I strapped that down in the truck, and then back to Millville. As I pulled up, they were just taking the four-wheeler tire in and the drill tire was done. There’s something pretty interesting about watching a guy change tires. The machinery involved and just the whole process is really pretty fascinating. The guy ahead of me was watching his tires get fixed, I watched them fix my tire, while at the same time trying not to get in the way or look TOO interested. (It’s kinda loud and hard to talk or ask questions).

Just a tube needed in the four-wheeler tire. The grain drill tire is kind of special. It’s about 3 feet tall, and completely smooth except it has two heavy ridges on each edge. That way, going through the field, it makes a real clear mark that’s easy to follow on the next round of the field. I had ordered two tires: they had one in stock, the second hasn’t shown up yet. And that’s OK, this one was worse than the other. $262 for the tire. $13 labor to mount both. The only thing missing was the bottle of grape pop from the café. 

The dogs love riding in the truck. And they don’t miss a chance if they can help it. Although Humphrey lays in the back and looks completely uninterested but he does spend a little time looking out the windows. Bailey bounces back-and-forth between the front seat and the backseat and she spends half the trip with her nose in my face. Allie, the queen of them all will eventually setting in some place where the others don’t walk all over her at least for the moment.

Once we are back on our driveway, I let them all out to run home. About halfway down the driveway there was a squirrel about 75 yards away from the trees and making a beeline back to the trees. The dogs were a good 200 yards away. Missed it by “that“ much. 

Do you like car rides?

Got any stories about tires? 

Food, Nature, Poems, Uncategorized, Weather

You Can’t know the wind

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Last Monday was a wild weather day here, with sustained West winds all day of up to 47 mph, and prolonged gusts of up to 67 mph.  There were periods of whiteout from snow squalls intermingled with sunny periods and dust.  There were some things we needed at the store, so I hazarded a trip to Walmart at about 5:00, just when the wind was at its peak. I saw traffic lights that had come loose from their supports, dangling over intersections. I waited at a red light on the interstate bridge and the van took the full broadside brunt of the wind. I felt the van rock, and I was worried I might get tipped over. 

The wind was cold and horrible, full of dust as I ran into the store.  Of course, I left the grocery list in the van.  I wasn’t about to run back out to the van to get it, so I tried as best I could to remember what Husband had written .  I forgot only one thing, a jar of olives seasoned with smoked paprika. I had to stop at another grocery store anyway, so I thought I could probably get the olives there. Well, there were no such olives there, so I journeyed back to Walmart and struggled yet again in the wind, and I found the olives.  Husband was really hoping I could get these olives (more on the olives in another post). He was grateful, and I was really glad to be home. 

There is dirt from our front yard vegetable garden blown all over our front stoep and front door.  I have lived on the Great Plains most of my life and I don’t think I have been in wind like we had on Monday.  There is a lovely children’s book If You’re Not From the Prairie,  written by a Saskatchewan author, David Bouchard. (What we call the Plains Canadians call the Prairie.)  Here he is reading  it. It really captures life out here. 

What are your memories of wild weather?  Know any good poems, songs, or stories about the wind or weather?

gardening, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

I Can Resist….

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Yesterday Guinevere and I turned right at the bottom of the driveway instead of our normal “to the left” on our walk.  I got a really good look at my boulevard and was so surprised to see not just the daffodils starting to sprout up, but also the tulips, lilies and even a teen tiny peony tip.  And, of course, even a few creeping charlies.  Even though a few baboons have already mentioned that they’ve seen things popping up, it still surprised me to see so much this early. 

At least it still feels early to me; I can’t even keep track of the times I’ve had to cover up my plants in my straw bales after Mother’s Day due to a frost warning.  However seeing everything popping up makes me want to get out there and clear out last year’s leavings, despite knowing that it might not be safe yet.

I’m normally very good at delaying gratification.  I always eat the cake first and leave the icing for the end.  I have no trouble saving gifts until it’s the right time to open them.  Most of the time I’ll pick the ickiest chore to do first and save the things I like better for later.  But now I am itching to get out there with my grubby jeans and gardening gloves, to starting cleaning up and making way for spring.  I’m not sure how to keep myself inside this weekend.

How to you forestall temptation?

2021, Art, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Planters

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Now that we’ve had some nicer weather, I’ve been farther afield with Guinevere.  On the way home from the library yesterday, I passed a display that I had seen several times last year.  The homeowners have two big planters out on their little boulevard, one on each side of a tree.  There are plastic eggs, pretty sticks and butterflies.  The fun part of seeing this again is that the owners have clearly freshened it up.  Instead of dirty and faded as you would expect after the winter, the eggs are new and bright and the butterflies are all intact and fluttering in the wind. 

This is not a display that can be easily seen from the house; the homeowners must have decided at some point to make sure the planters are cheerful and welcoming for folks who are walking by.  I feel like it’s a gift to me and other pedestrians.  This is important to me; in today’s environment that seems so overwhelmed by hate and nastiness, I am really trying to pay attention and acknowledge when people are intentionally kind (well, unintentionally too I guess).  I’m thinking about leaving a thank you card in their mailbox.

We talked a out Little Free Libraries last week – books, produce, treasures, even sticks.  I hope that everybody is seeing other acts of kindness as they go about their business and that it inspires us all to try to step up to kindness when it’s needed.

Any other kind/nice stuff that you’ve seen lately?

2021, animals, books, holidays, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Little Library

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Now that I don’t have to layer up too much, I’m out walking the dog again.  It’s been fun to see the neighborhood anew, although I have to admit, it doesn’t seem as if much has changed in the last few months.

What has changed are the books in the Little Libraries.  These are the little nooks that people have put up in their yards, encouraging folks to take a book or leave a book.  We have a good number of them in the couple-of-mile radius around my house.

I almost never take a book from a Little Library, although occasionally I’ll take one out to flip through it a bit.  I did take an Italian workbook once – no one had done any of the exercises – I work on it occasionally.  I’ve taken a couple of kids books and then returned them to a different little library when I was done with them.  But it’s fun to look.

I have a friend down on the parkway who takes the Little Library concept to a new level.  She actually curates her collection, changing out titles to fit the season or upcoming holiday.  Right now there are a bunch of Easter and Spring titles – she always has some good books for kids.  She has also installed some little string lights in the box, although I’ve never seen it at night to know if it actually lights up.  There is also a tin of dog treats (home made) in her little library and in the summer, a bowl of water underneath for passing dogs. 

So it should have come as no surprise that there is a new addition to her library this week.  A stick library for dogs – photo above.  I couldn’t convince Guinevere to take a stick – she keeps quite busy sniffing while we walk to bother with a stick – although I suppose I could take a stick for her to play with once we get back to our yard.  I did snap the photo and send it off to my friend with a little note of thanks. 

I’m looking forward to this spring and summer to see what else becomes part of the Little Library landscape!

Have you ever taken a book from a Little Library?  Left a book?  Do you have a Little Library at your house? 

2021, gardening, Kids, Nature, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Winter Attitude

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It’s not spring yet… it’s not spring yet… it’s not spring yet. 

It’s my mantra right now.  Most of the snow and ice is melted from the yard.  I’m able to get out (without a coat or even sweatshirt) and walk the dog.  The footprint of my bales, where there is not grass, is showing.  YA has mentioned plants for the garden this year as well as some solar light that she thinks we need in the back.

But I’m cynical and am waiting for the other shoe to drop.  It’s just too unbelievable that spring is here.  Didn’t the groundhog see his shadow?  My winter attitude does well for me.  I was able to run errands this past February (when it was hovering around zero) with a sweatshirt, scarf and gloves. So I’m a little skeptical that I can break out the zorries and tank tops.  If I lose my winter attitude, what happens if spring is just jerking us around?

How do you handle the changes of season? Do you have a favorite?

2021, Family, Kids, Nature, News, Uncategorized, Weather

Good Gifts

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Our daughter’s best friend since childhood currently lives in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area where she  attends  North Texas State University for graduate study in vocal performance.  She has a beautiful soprano voice and we are very proud of her.  She is like a second daughter to us. She has sent frequent updates on the storm.  As a North Dakota native, she is probably better accustomed to managing the cold and the bad roads than most folks in Texas right now.  She lost electricity/heat  off and on the past several days, and Wednesday night her apartment complex lost all water due to a busted water main. She got to the grocery store for provisions yesterday.

I was gratified to learn that she kept warm when the heat was off  by wrapping up in a down comforter we gave her for a high school graduation present nine years ago. It was a real good one with a high fill power. I was happy to know she still had it and that it came in handy. How clever of her to take it with her to a place where you never imagine needing that kind of warmth. I hope all the things I give as gifts are so useful.

What have been some of the most useful gifts you have given or received? Any advice for Texans right now?