Three weeks ago while I was folding up clean laundry I discovered that one of my green fuzzy socks was missing. I’m pretty thorough about shaking out clothing to make sure socks are hiding but even after checking the usual suspects, I didn’t find it. The remaining green sock went to live in the “single sock box”; it was the only inhabitant.
On Saturday as I was getting ready for the day, I noticed the poor lonely green sock – usually if I don’t find a sock within three weeks, I never do and I was lamenting the loss the green sock. I love all my various fuzzy socks.
Five minutes later, as I pulled clean sheets out of the closet, the errant green sock cascaded out of the fitted sheet. I hadn’t found it because I cycle through my flannel sheets and had not pulled this set out since the sock had gone missing. As I was happily re-joining the fuzzy pair I pondered the coincidence that I hadn’t thought about the missing sock for three weeks until just a few minutes before it returned to me. Part of brain says “coincidence”. Another part of my insists (fairly adamantly) that it has to be some weird confluence of the universe. I can’t imagine why the universe would care about my socks.
How long do you keep a solo item that is missing its mate? Where do you keep them?
I feel like I’ve been really busy the past week. I don’t know why exactly, I don’t know what exactly I’ve been doing, I just feel like I’ve been running from one thing to the next.
However I know spring is coming, I heard a kill deer! And the Sandhill Cranes! And I got out the pot with the chives in it. There’s still some ice on the north side of the house and I saw a small snowbank in a patch of grass, but we’re getting there. As I write this on Friday, they’re predicting thunderstorms for Friday evening. ” They” say, the first frost will be six months after the first thunderstorm. Which gets us into mid-September which, while not ideal, wouldn’t be unheard of either. There was a large halo around the moon Wednesday night. Google says spiritually, some traditions see a lunar halo as a positive omen, indicating a time of good fortune, spiritual alignment, and harmony. Good, let’s run with that one.
I spent Thursday at a meeting on nitrogen management in Southeast Minnesota. A continuing education course of sorts. Focus on the southeast Minnesota region is relevant because of the karst geography and sink holes and how rapidly ground water can enter drinking water. Please know, farmers care a great deal about their farms and the water we are drinking, and our soils as well. Putting on more fertilizer or chemicals than a crop can use is a waste of money. There were a lot of charts, and graphs, and a lot of data presented. If you notice from this picture, commercial fertilizer started being available shortly after World War II and greatly accelerated in the 1960s.
Soybeans came into play in the 1940s.
It’s interesting to think how much of our farm practices are not really that old.
One of the comments made was that we could do a lot better with our fertilizer practices if we could more accurately predict the weather. A lot of fertilizer and nitrogen is applied in the spring as pre-planting or at planting. And yet the following picture shows the plants greatest need for Nitrogen is tasseling through ear development.
While the greatest amount of precipitation and the greatest chance to lose nitrogen happens in the spring.
So why do we apply it in the spring?
Well, that’s kinda just how it works. Corn does need some starter fertilizer to get going from seed. And we do soil testing to know how much nitrogen is already in the soil, and it’s just easiest to do it before anything is planted. I have done some ‘side-dressing’, which is injecting anhydrous nitrogen between the rows when the plant is 18-24” tall, but there’s also more damage to the standing corn when turning at the ends, or not driving straight. And some guys, with the right equipment, can apply liquid nitrogen when the plant is 6’ tall just before it tassels, but that takes tall sprayers, and again, there is crop loss. In my small fields, I’d damage so much turning around on the ends that it would defeat any gains.
I’m greatly simplifying a lot of this, it’s too much to get into here, but it was all really very interesting.
And much of the data presented yesterday really didn’t show much difference between spring applications and later applications. We just have to know that we are going to have less available for the crop. It was also noted, we see so many new products claiming to save money and time. But if the cost of the new ideas ultimately don’t create much of an improved crop yield, ($$$), then they fall out of favor.
The bathroom! Here is a before photo-
And finally, minus the shower glass yet, the after photo-
It looks really nice. It IS really nice. Kelly has already enjoyed the bathtub several times. I really like the rich color of the cabinets in the laundry room.
The heated floor is nice.
It was hard finding room for towel bars and grab bars, and we probably gave up some storage that we hope we don’t come to regret. But it sure is an improvement.
We had a bidet in the old bathroom, one of those simple ones from Costco that you simply add to the toilet seat. This time around, we ordered an actual bidet seat. It’s quite the deal. Or at least so I’m told. I haven’t used it yet. I haven’t used that function yet. When you approach the toilet, the lid opens on its own and a nightlight comes on. For us gentlemen, there’s even a light inside, I guess so we can tell what we’re aiming at. Our contractor said he’d seen a lot of toilets, but he didn’t think he’d seen one that fancy before. Lest you think otherwise, it is not gold plated.
Later this summer we’ll start on the downstairs pink bathroom remodel. I do not expect a bidet in that one.
WHAT WOULD YOU ADD TO YOUR BATHROOM?WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN AT NIGHT LATELY?
On Sunday, Kelly and I did our usual gator farm tour. This week we went down in the pasture and down to the creek, which was still frozen over, walked around down there for a bit.
The next day I took the truck to Plainview, which meant I have the dogs with me, and after we picked up daughter, they all walked home.
Dealing with mud again, which is never my favorite. And it’s gonna get cold, and it’s gonna snow, and then it’s gonna get muddy again, so we’ll have to do this cycle a few times. Just something else to get through.
I took the anhydrous applicator up to an auction in Plainview. It’s an implement I use in the spring to apply nitrogen to the corn ground. Nitrogen in the form of anhydrous ammonia. I pull those white tanks behind it. The last year that I used it was 2021, and since 2022 I’ve had the co-op applying nitrogen in the form of urea, which is a granular product.
When I was working with my dad, the story was he had gotten a heavy whiff of the ammonia quite a few years ago and he never liked it and couldn’t stand being around it anymore. So I’ve been applying the anhydrous probably since I was 18 years old. We used to rent a smaller machine to do it, and then as the tractor‘s got bigger I could rent a little bit bigger applicator bar. And when the co-op stopped renting that equipment and they sold them off, I bought this one. I don’t remember the price anymore, it was probably 10 or 15 years ago.
This is also the machine that I had a little incident with back in 2018.
Anhydrous can be really nasty stuff; it can kill you, it can burn you, it’s gotta be treated with respect and handled carefully. And I have always been careful, making sure I’m parking into the wind, working up wind, wearing heavy gloves, and a face shield.
So this one day the hose was dragging on the ground between the wagon and the applicator.
I stopped, I closed the valves, I started to disconnect the hose, and the valve did not seal properly. I remember that it was very difficult to open, it had been really cranked shut. So it made sense that it was leaking a bit now. There was very little breeze that day, next to nothing, so I couldn’t get up wind of it. I debated what to do. I debated just holding my breath and rushing in there to crank it shut. And finally thought, I just need somebody with a respirator, it’s not an emergency, I just need somebody that can get this closed. So I called the nonemergency number for the fire department and explained the situation. Well, when the first of three firetrucks showed up, and I was still sitting in the tractor waiting for them, they parked a half mile up the road and suited up and a guy in full gear walked down to me. I’m sure they were all bent out of shape that I was still hanging out down there. All they were told was that there was an anhydrous leak.
It turned into a whole big thing. Ambulance, incident command vehicle, and a sheriff deputy, all out on the highway, and the three firetrucks were on our road.
I had to call a chemical spill hotline who thought I had lost the entire tank of 5000 gallons. No, it’s just a few drips and a very minor vapor leak. But, it was good training for the fire department: they went down with a wet towel, sampled the air, wrapped a towel around the valve and was able to get it turned off tight using a pipe wrench so that I could then disconnect the hose. Always glad to help them out, I said. They even gave me a bottle of Gatorade.
I had to attend a safety workshop, and I had to replace the hoses that are only good for 10 years and of course mine were out of date by a few years because it’s expensive and nobody pays any attention to the replacement date. I think it cost me $1500 for new hoses and a valve.
And now it’s 2025, stamped on the hose it says ‘replace before 2025’, and I took it to the auction and it’s not my problem anymore. When I pulled it out of storage, one of the tires was low. Not flat, just low so I pumped it back up. Pulled it the 20 miles to Plainview, and as I walked into the office I could hear a hiss and air leaking from this tire. Well, not my circus, not my monkey anymore.
The dogs all got pup cups at the Dairy Queen and I had a blizzard.
WHATS YOUR FAVORITE CLEANING PRODUCT? ANY MONKEY STORIES?
We have been at our son’s home since Friday, and the cold weather has made for a great deal of family time. Son, Daughter in Law, Daughter, Husband, me, and Grandson are all here together. There has been lots of time playing Uno, putting together jigsaw puzzles, doing art projects with grandson, cooking big meals, watching the first two How To Train Your Dragon movies, playing with the Westie and the cat and sleeping late.
I have been a nervous wreck since before we drove here on Friday. The cold frightens me more than it used to. I have developed great anxiety anticipating driving in this cold weather, mainly surrounding the van breaking down in the middle of nowhere and then freezing to death. We were supposed to go to see my 93 year old aunt yesterday in Watertown, SD, about 40 miles north of Brookings, and I was so relieved when she phoned in the morning to say she had a cough and a fever and we shouldn’t come. Husband has been going out to start the van at intervals and even drove it into town yesterday, so he is keeping the engine warm.
This cold weather is unprecedented in my experience, and I am really worried about the trip home on Tuesday. The subzero windchills aren’t supposed to let up until Wednesday, and I might try to convince Husband to stay another day and leave on Wednesday. We have lots of blankets in the event of a breakdown. The van is working well, but you never know!
What do you have in your winter survival kit in your vehicle? How are you coping with the cold? What are your favorite indoor family activities?
Watching out the bus window on my way downtown, I saw a young man sitting on the roof of a porch, facing the sun, wearing a pair of shorts. Nothing else. It was 12°. I thought maybe it was some strange life-size blow up doll but then he moved.
The bus kept going but I haven’t been able to get him out of my head and I haven’t been able to come up with even one far-fetched reason he would have been sitting up there, basically naked, on such a cold day.
My guess is that I’ve thought more about jury duty than most folks. With my dad being a trail lawyer and our shared love of Perry Mason, I’ve known about juries from childhood.
About 35 years ago I got a summons for jury duty but despite sitting patiently in the basement of the Government Center every day for a week, I didn’t get impaneled. On Friday afternoon they released me and said I didn’t need to return.
Right before Christmas I got the Summons in the mail. Things have changed somewhat in 35 years (doh!). The biggest change is that you don’t have to show up on Monday morning and sit all week. You get assigned a group number and twice a day you check online (or call in) to see if your group needs to go in. One thing that hasn’t changed much is the stipend. It’s not enough to pay for parking downtown (which is just outrageous) so if you are on a fixed income, if you drive and park, it’s like you’re paying to get on a jury. I took the bus.
My group didn’t get called in until mid-day on Thursday (12:15 notice that you have to be at the Government Center at 1:30). The waiting area is now on the 24th floor and is referred to as “The Jar”. Hmmmm. There were 33 of us in the room; orientation took 15 minutes and at 2 p.m. they pulled the first group of 22. That left 11 of us, not enough for a jury. I assumed at some point 10 folks would come back and then there would be enough of us if they needed to call a new group. Nope, at 2:15, the 11 of us left in the room were sent home and told we didn’t need to come back in the morning or the following week. Our service is complete – we won’t be eligible again for 4 years. (This puts me above the required age limit so I can decline with no reason if I get called again.)
45 minutes of jury duty. I spent more time on the bus than doing my civic duty. And if you add all the time I spent researching how it works these days, rates at downtown parking ramps, bus routes and senior discounts not to mention the weather….. way more prep time than jury time.
I’m not begrudging the time – I do actually think of it as my civic duty. I know I wouldn’t want to be on trial and have it go wrong because you couldn’t find enough folks for a jury. Although I do think it would have been more fun to actually get impaneled and see a real trial!
Every time I went outside this past week I’d say “Hooo Doggie!” like Jed Clampet. It was kinda brisk.
No one was very interested in going outside.
The chickens were very happy to just hang out in the coop.
The guys working on the tower didn’t come back until Wednesday morning, and then Thursday they had a crane helping them.
Taking daughter into town one morning and I was telling her about a dream I had. (I have a lot of theater and lighting dreams). I was expounding on dream interpretation, when she said, “Okay Dad”. Ah. Point taken. I stopped talking. And I thought she was hanging on my every word.
The bathroom remodeling is in the dusty ‘sanding drywall’ phase. The guys are doing a pretty good job putting up plastic and sealing things, but that dust…it gets everywhere. Kelly taped baffles over the gap at the bottom of the doors, and even that didn’t help. I picked up my computer mouse and there was a dusty outline of that. And that was at the far end of a room with the door closed. Sigh. Part of the deal. This too shall pass. That’s Humphrey peeking through the plastic in the header photo, he’s just wondering when this will finish. Kinda like daughter. The guys know it’s not personal when she comes out of her room and yells, “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO BE DONE!??” It’s just messing up her routine.
I’m making progress organizing the shop. Construction is basically done, other than adding shelving or cabinets, and I do have to finish installing some screws on the ground row (because I hate getting down on the ground unless I must, I put off installing those screws) and a couple other places I realized I forgot to install screws. I’ve mounted an air hose reel inside, and finished the wall outside, and moved some toolboxes. There’s a couple things I’m not sure I should mount until the electricians are finished. I’ve ordered some fancy dancy lights: A bunch for inside, a couple big ones outside the shop doors, a small one over the walk-in door, and two over the work bench.
Luna the dog. Short for ‘Luna-tic’. When we go outside, she’s so excited to be out doing something, she spends most of the time hopping on her back legs chewing on my hand. We learned a new trick where she bites a big stick, and I can spin her in circles. Well, I myself can’t spin too many circles before I fall over, but she loves it.
Bailey hates to be left out.
And all three dogs love eating the corn I throw out for the chickens. Luna will eat right out of the bucket while I’m dumping it out.
They’re all so weird.
Last week I got seed ordered for spring. This week all the necessary fertilizer and chemicals was confirmed. My goodness, nothing is getting cheaper. $30,000 this week. It’s only money!
Saturday is the Met in HD opera movie. ‘Aida’. It’s a long opera, 3 hour 15 minutes. I’ll be getting the large popcorn. And taking a nap. During the movie I mean. I can’t stand the music, but I enjoy the “production” of it all.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD TO EAT RIGHT OUT OF THE CONTAINER?
I took a couple days off work at the end of the week with the warmer temperatures to finish a couple of outside things in the machine shed. Replaced a tire on one of the trailers and finished the last corner of the shop wall, with the exception of the last piece of steel that the electrician told me to hold off installing until they run conduit.
On Wednesday I went to Meyer’s Seed in Potsdam and ordered seed for this year.Trying a different variety of oats called Rushmore. Oat seed is $16 a bushel, and I got a bit of a discount for ordering early. I ordered 80 bags. Retail price on a bag of corn seed is $360. Again there was several discounts so I am not paying nearly that much, and thankfully I only needed 20 bags. Soybean seed, depending on whether it’s treated or not, is somewhere between $50 and $60 per bag.
I don’t need to get into all the different weights of the seed bags, and seeding rates, I’ve talked about that every year. When I left Meyers, I turned left on 70th Ave. and took that gravel road for 10 miles straight south until I came to County Road nine, took a right there which brought me right to the college. We had a commencement planning meeting. Couple of months the school year will be over and we’ll be dealing with commencement. Five miles down that 10 mile road, I parked in the middle of an intersection to take these photos. Probably could’ve parked there for an hour and not bothered anybody.
I got a free hat when I ordered seed!
Although with these cold temperatures I think he’s gonna want the stocking cap back.
About 10 years ago we bought a new washer and dryer. It has an automatic soap dispenser, so every couple of months we fill the reservoir with soap and don’t have to think about it. A few years ago when my mom was still in independent living, we were doing laundry for her and at one point in time one of my siblings made some comment about the detergent and if the rest of us were using the liquid or the powder. Gee, I kind of forgot about detergent, I hadn’t been adding any. I remembered that story this week as I did two loads of laundry at our neighbors house while they’re on vacation and our laundry room is still torn up. Kelly came with me as I swapped the second load from the washer to the dryer and I showed her the detergent I was using. She pointed out it was fabric softener. Well, now that you mention it, it was blue. It sure did smell nice. What I noticed was a big jug on top of the washing machine with a little cup and spout just like the red detergent container has. Once again, the best of intentions tripped up by my lack of attention to details. Remodeling update: On Friday, the guys started installing sheetrock. The electricians spent three days here, we got three new fans, code requires hardwired smoke detectors in all the bedrooms now, (not just in the hallway outside) so got four new ones to replace two battery ones we had. We also had them run two Cat 6 ethernet lines from the utility room to the TV and office. And a coax (antenna cable), to the TV. That way I can replace the line that’s been running over the roof, down the front of the house, and in our front window for 40 years. Kelly is almost as excited about getting rid of that wire as she is about the new bathtub. I’ve been watching some guys working on a cell phone tower along our driveway the last few days.
I sure hope they finish before it gets any colder.
IF YOU WERE GOING TO WORK OUTSIDE, IN THE WINTER, AT THIS HEIGHT, WHAT WOULD YOU NEED TO GET FOR FREE?
Although I grew up in Missouri, I spent many summer and winter vacations in northern Wisconsin, either at the family homestead or at relative’s cabins on the Eau Claire lakes. When it was time to pick a college, I announced to my parents that I would only apply to schools in Wisconsin or Minnesota. When I had been in Northfield for two months, I took my first trip to the Twin Cities. All it took was that weekend – I knew this was where I wanted to be. After wasband finished graduate school in Milwaukee, we hightailed it here. After 40+ years, I’d like to consider myself a Minnesotan rather than a Missourian.
It is partly the weather that drew me here so I’ve been surprised by what seems to be a trend the last several years of many Minnesotans over-reacting to the weather before the weather even gets here. So many times there is an alarming forecast and people almost burrow in, stocking up and preparing not to leave their homes. Then, of course, 8 out of 10 times, the dreaded weather never arrives.
This has happened to me once already, when snow was forecast for the week before Christmas. On that Tuesday, my book club baled on our rare in person meeting which was scheduled for Thursday. There was snow on Thursday but not nearly what was threatened. Main road and highways were fine.
Now I’ve gotten an email from a friend with whom I have concert plans in March, asking if I’d rather get online viewing tickets instead of driving downtown to see the show in person. Because it’s March, when we often have snowstorms.
This is a trend that mystifies me. Does this make me a tough Minnesotan?
I hope that as this post is read, I am on the road to Brookings, SD. We have had days of “halfway weather” lately, a phrase I coined to mean weather that is nasty, but not nasty enough to make you stay home.
Last week there was an ice storm that closed the interstate 20 miles west of here after 27 semis couldn’t make it up the hills. There was freezing drizzle predicted northwest and north central here yesterday, and by Sunday afternoon there was no travel advised on the the roads to the north of us. The two counties just east of us that we need to drive through today were also expecting a “wintery mix” last night. We may slip and slide to Bismarck, but after that we should be ok all the way to Brookings. Driving on icy roads are my worst nightmare. Being the anxious person that I am, I also have been obsessively looking at the long range forecasts for next Sunday, when we are slated to drive home. Like my mother, I worry about the weather and many other things that are totally out of my control. I don’t imagine I am going to stop any time soon, though. Old habits die hard.
What bad habits would you like to stop? What bad habit did you stop, and how did you do it ? Ever slid into the ditch?
Trail Baboon 