As always happens the first week of October, the email from the ND Board 0f Psychologist Examiners arrived reminding us that it is time to renew our licenses. Husband has been licensed since 1991. I have been licensed since 1994.
This year is different for us, since neither of us is renewing our licenses. We are retired. We no longer live in ND, and we haven’t accrued the 40 hours of continuing education over the past two years necessary to maintain our licenses., which formally expire January 1, 2027. We plan to email the Board office this week to let them know we aren’t renewing. Husband will also step down as the Board Investgator of ethical complaints against licensees on January 1.
I have mixed feelings about all this; happy to be retired and not having to pay for relicensure, wistful about letting go of a huge part of my identity. Husband notes with great irony that the Board is trying to enlist two licensees to do the complaint investigations that he did all by himself.
I was the Board president for 8 years, and I remember hearing from the Board office about people who initially decided to let their licenses expire when they retired, who then decided at the last minute to renew, and needed an extension from the Board to complete their continuing education hours. That will NOT happen for us. Done is done, but my, I will miss it.
Did your employment or some other aspect of your life form your identity? How has your identity changed over the years? Ever file a complaint against a licensed. service provider?
There really wasn’t a lot happening on the farm this week.
It rained through Monday and then there was work work, and rehearsal for a show. So I still haven’t gotten rye planted and that seed tender trailer is still parked in the shed right where I left it. And it’s raining again. The new concrete has hardened and other than driving the gator across it, I haven’t gotten the edges back filled either. You’d think I haven’t been doing anything. Except homework.
I’m really enjoying the Humanities class. Lots of writing, which I can do. This week’s chapter was on Film and Television. We had to pick a movie and justify why it should be considered a classic using the themes taken from the chapter we read. (I picked All That Jazz. Honestly, I am still finding tidbits in that movie. Other student choices were Legally Blonde, The Hunger Games, and Sound of Music. Hmmm…) An upcoming project is to watch a classic film from a provided list. We can watch Casablanca or Citizen Kane, or a movie by one of these directors: Kubrick, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, or Resnais. Really? I have to watch Citizen Kane again?? Well, if I must!
The music class has been a little more challenging. My music lessons were a long time ago and it’s taking a long time to get the names of the notes back in my head. And I never did learn bass clef, so that’s all new. And trying to remember what a 1/8 rest looks like. And put bar lines in 6/8 music. And there was some confusion regarding the textbook and if we really needed one or not. Turns out we do. Both classes are online so I do homework late at night.
Back to the farm.
Last Saturday, Padawan and I worked out in the machine shed finishing up some of the little odds and ends that haven’t been finished since I started the shop project. We ran some conduit and reconnected an outlet on the other side of my main shop door. The wires got disconnected during construction. I had other outlets, so didn’t really need that one, but I do sometimes need it. I practiced bending conduit and we added an upper outlet for the security cameras. I had padawan pull wires and install the outlet. I double checked it.
The pipe in the middle with the outlet at the top is what we did.
And we talked a lot. He sure makes life hard on himself. He’s not a self-starter, and I don’t know how many more times I can tell him, GET A FRICKEN JOB! Honestly, he’s a little afraid of having to become a responsible adult. He’s trying to coast through life without becoming “an adult”. It’s not working very well. He sure is a nice young man. Just dense.
Thursday morning, I drove my big tractor 20 miles to the John Deere dealer in Plainview. A few weeks ago, I had the water pump and thermostats replaced. And it still overheated. I drove it to them so they can work on it up there. They’ll hook it to a ‘dyno’; a gizmo that connects to the power take off and puts a ‘load’ on the tractor to work it. The tractor goes about 24 MPH. It took about 50 minutes. I try to take some secondary roads as much as possible to avoid the traffic. I like the wider roads better than the narrow roads.
A nice wide shoulder
A narrow stretch
I was lucky not to have too much traffic, and none of the drivers passing me did anything stupid. Tractors with cabs or ROPS, Roll Over Protective Structures, have seat belts. We don’t often wear the seatbelt, but I do if I’m on the highway, or I get into a sketchy situation. I went to put the seatbelt on, and the buckle wouldn’t latch. I futzed with it until I broke the latch. I was glad no one drove stupid.
And then, just before I got to Plainview, there was a dead skunk on the side of the road. You know what that means:
Listening to the 1940’s station the other day, I saw a song title, “Life Gits Tee-jus Don’t it” and that caught my attention. Sung by Carson Robison. He was a country singer from the mid 1920’s until his death in 1957. Wiki says he was a composer of ‘event’ songs that usually included a moral. Such as Remember Pearl Harbor, or The Wreck of Number Nine. The aforementioned Life Gets Tee-jus.., was a 1948 “worldwide hit” for MGM records. How about that?
The song starts off with these lyrics, spoken in a slow drawl:
The sun comes up and the sun goes down The hands on the clock go round and round I just wake up and it’s time to lay down, Life gets tee-jus, don’t it
And then goes on with these verses:
Hound dog’s howlin’ so forlorn Laziest dawg that ever was born He’s howlin’ ’cause he’s sittin’ on a thorn Just too tired to move over
And ends with this:
Well, the cow’s gone dry and the hens won’t lay And my well dried up last Saturday My troubles keep pilin’ up day by day And now I’m gettin’ dandruff
Sheez. Talk about a downer.
I will skip songs by Bing Crosby or Vaughn Monroe. I just can’t take their voices.
WHICH CLASSIC MOVIE WOULD YOU WATCH FROM THE LIST?
You know those colds going around? Kelly, daughter, and I all took sick days this week. Just colds, but foggy head, stuffy nose, and Kelly has a low grade temp. Naps are good.
Last weekend one of our neighbors had their annual barn dance. Music was provided by a funk band from the twin cities, ‘Tyte Phitt’. They were a lot of fun! When contacted to play here, they were interested because they’d never played a barn dance before. And the hosts said they wanted to see how a bunch of farmers would like a funk band. It was loud, but it sure was good!
Last Saturday Kelly and I mixed up 17 bags of concrete to add a little berm to the new concrete and fill in a low spot
Just enough at the door to keep the water out. Kelly learned a lot about mixing and working concrete. She says it was interesting. And it bugged her that I can smooth better than her. I’ve just had more practice is all. Someday I’d like to put an overhead door here. We’ll see.
And then Tuesday morning we had another Thunderstorm with a lot of lightning and about 6AM the electric co-op calls and tells me our power is out. I’m barely awake. It is?? (And isn’t that something; they’re telling ME it’s out.) He says there was a lot of lightning and they’ve had some meters fail. I was up with the dogs at 4AM and we had power then. Wasn’t long before a truck shows up and tells me there’s actually a tree down in the pasture, it tore down the line and broke off a pole. Yep, that would do it. One of the guys and I drive back there with the gator. Glad the neighbors took their cattle out after the previous storm because then we don’t have to worry about fences. And I had to take down part of the temporary fence we put up this spring. Then hooked up the tractor and generator and went to work. It was about 2 PM when they had everything fixed and back online.
That’s not supposed to be there…
This should be vertical
Nice oak tree. Daughter and I talked about counting rings on trees.
You can see an old manure spreader to the right of the tree. Dad used to park old worn out machinery along this tree line. Some has rotted away, some has been hauled out. I wonder why he did that? I remember a few places there used to be junk parked. Probably saving for possible parts.
I’ve mentioned before that my dad would talk about he and his brother pulling the electric lines through the pasture with horses. Then WWII put a hold on it. If I remember correctly, the farm got electricity in 1946. Mom and Dad were married in 1948, and first daughter, Ellen, was born in 1949. Mom had told Dad she didn’t want to be pregnant and using an outhouse. He finished the bathroom in 1949…before the baby, but I think it was further into the pregnancy than mom wanted.
I ordered myself an “indestructible pen”. I always carry a pen in my pocket, and often doing farm work I break them by leaning over things. Typical plastic pens don’t last long. I found this one. It comes with a titanium tip to break glass. Never in my life have I had to break out a window. Except for fun. Or as part of a show. And being how this tip is so sharp, after I gouge my palm on it a few more times, I’ll be grinding that off.
Glass breaking tip on the left.
(Preliminary question: got any good stories about breaking glass?)
I picked up 55 bushels of rye seed on Wednesday. The dealer let me borrow a seed tender, so it’s in bulk, not in bags, and I was really excited to play with that. It has a scale too! And then we got .4” rain Wednesday night and Thursday was cloudy and misty. Heck, Thursday was supposed to be nice, before it rains for a week they say. It’s all still in the shed. The point of using a seed tender, is to avoid all the bags plus it’s quicker and easier. There’s a conveyor that can be used both to add seed to the cart, then turned around and unload the cart into the grain drill. Maybe next week I can get pictures of that.
A seed tender
I spent Thursday and Friday in the office instead. I meant to do bookwork. By 2:30 in the afternoon I still hadn’t quite gotten to that. Several times I moved the keyboard and moved papers, then saw a bill or two to pay. Did that. Remembered a few more emails to do, remembered some theater stuff to do. Started a draft of this blog, moved the keyboard again to start bookwork and got an email about certifying the oat crop for an extra payment for water quality. Spent an hour doing that on my phone (Because they said it would be easier on the phone. Well maybe if you don’t have fat fingers like I do!) Had to call for help once. Had to quit and start over twice. I managed. It was worth it for the $1600 bonus payment planting oats provides for water quality grants from the SWCD. Maybe I’ll order a couple gallons of diesel fuel with that…
CAN YOU HOLD PENS / PENCILS IN YOUR HAIR? BEHIND YOUR EAR?
HOW DO YOU CARRY YOUR CELL PHONE?
(I’ve seen women walk around with them under their arm or stuck in their bra. I don’t like them in my pockets; again, I’ll break it)
The soybeans are turning yellow and dropping their leaves. Another week will make a huge difference.
We spent a week outside of Charleston SC visiting my niece and her husband and their two cute little girls, age five and two. Boy, that two year old: She never stops moving! Better them than us. And a wonderful dog, Maggie. A female Doberman. I’ve not had anything to do with Dobermans before, but she was a sweetheart.
These people love their hot weather. I was hot for the whole week we were there. They made a fire one night in their fire pit. IT WAS 80 DEGREES! I kept moving my chair back. But, it was a lovely night and It was a great, much needed vacation.
Our first night and I got to take the five year old to bed. I was pooped out.
Who doesn’t love chasing seagulls?
Daughter loved the beach.
While we were gone, our house sitters, G & E, did a fabulous job keeping our dogs occupied. They left the house cleaner than it was when we left. E does a lot of cooking, which was evident by the washed cookie sheets and bread loaf pan on the counter. We need to get them to leave some left overs. And G works at a local nursery and we always come home to fresh cut flowers and even some new plants on the front step. Great people. We’re not sure the dogs were glad to have us come back or not.
Plus our other neighbor, B, collecting eggs and taking care of the chickens. She said she loved her the dogs protected her from the raccoons.
The tree branch that fell down on the deck just before we left got cut up and hauled away. We are so lucky it missed the gutters and missed the lights hanging off the gutters. It broke a leg off one plastic deck chair, and bent one tiki torch. Driving around the farm, there are trees down all over. Lots of trees in fields, which will make harvest difficult. It’s hard to clean them up without damaging more crops. Our neighbors took their cattle out as there was so many trees down on the fence it was easier to take them out than to fix the fences. At least for now. They’ll be fixed before next spring.
And we’ve had a bunch of weird electronic issues since the power was out with that storm. Course the router needed to be rebooted a few times, and the extenders, and the security cameras… got most of them back, but it’s been a process.
The Soil and Water (SWCD) people, and contractor Clint built the new structure to stop erosion.
The front side with a tile inlet.
The back side. The tile drains down in the tree’s to the left.
Clint also built a ‘low water crossing’ at one of our waterways. It tends to be wet in the spring, (that’s why it’s a ‘water way’). He excavated down, placed geo-textile fabric, large rock placed underneath, smaller rock on top, and that way the water can still pass through but the equipment has a place to cross without creating ruts in the soft spring soil.
Bailey approved
I am very proud of the work we’ve done the last few year making the farm a better place for the future.
Including pouring concrete.
Last week Kelly and I were compacting gravel for this pad. This concrete is in the main part of the shed, right inside the main door, and is where just about everything gets parked. I’m as excited about this concrete as I have been about all the rest.
A pack of wire ties.
Wrap the wire around the rebar, hook the loops, and spin it five times to make it tight. Six twists will break the wire.
Rebar wired together and propped up with rocks, tin cans, empty bottles; Anything I found in the garbage that I thought would be useful. You can buy 2” plastic rebar chairs, but why would I wanna do that?
We had some good help leveling out the concrete. Our son came down with a couple of his buddies. I spent a little more money and ordered a conveyor truck to get the concrete in the shed, that way I could be in there helping and not in the tractor hauling concrete 1/2 a yard at a time in the loader bucket. I am supposedly, the ‘Brains’ of the outfit. I use the term loosely. Jokes on them!
I ordered 5000 psi concrete “garage mix” with fiber and air entrainment. See, sounds like I know what I’m talking about.
You want a bunch of help getting the cement truck dumped out and the concrete spread out. Then there’s a little more time to get it level and time for it to begin to harden before the finishing work begins. And that can be a one person job on a pad this small. It just takes several good people right at the start.
On top of the compacted gravel we get the rebar laid out and tied together using a homemade wire twister. I use fiberglass rebar. I buy wire ties with a loop on each end, then use a paint roller I’ve modified to twist them.
By the time we finished I was pooped out. Man, I am not 30 years old anymore.
The conveyor truck getting set up. We were all working so I didn’t get any pictures of it happening.
Kelly was in charge of the measuring stick and the laser level to get it level. 
Looks pretty good for some amateurs. Better than our first round last year.
Humphrey walk through it first. But I’m OK with that. I left his footprints.
HOW OFTEN DID YOU FALL ASLEEP YOURSELF TAKING THE KIDS TO BED?
During Covid, once I got un-furloughed, YA and I were both working from home – she was fulltime and I was half-time. She had a desk in her room with the big monitor and I had my big monitor in my studio. Most days I moved the big monitor onto the floor in the corner so I could use my desk for crafts. YA left her big monitor up on her desk all the time.
When I retired (and permanently excised the big monitor from my studio), YA began to do her work-from-home Mondays and Fridays from the dining room. The big monitor in her room didn’t get turned on for MONTHS. It was occasionally problematic with her in the dining room. She is very sensitive to background noise when she is on calls so if I doing anything downstairs (like cooking), it bugged her. And me.
About two months ago she casually mentioned that we should probably get rid of the old day bed in what we call the sunroom. It’s a small room, windows on three sides – no closet. Since I’ve been slowly but steadily de-cluttering the house, I probably said “uh huh” and nodded my head. Then about a week later, she said that she’d like to make the sunroom into a home office. The light bulb about the day bed flashed on at that point.
We had to take the day bed apart to get it to the boulevard. The city took it off our hands in three different trucks over three different days and then YA went to work. Cleaned, vacuumed, moved her desk into the new office and positioned the big monitor front and center. Then of course, she had to fill the empty space in her room – more cleaning and vacuuming. The little vanity that she moved looked swamped so off she went to IKEA and came home with a new vanity. It looks good.
The little old vanity sat on the boulevard for about 45 minutes before somebody stopped and scooped it up.
The curtain fiasco took about a week since first the curtain rods she ordered didn’t work and then the first set of curtains was too short. I think, as of this writing, she’s all set. Friday will be the inauguration of the office so we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully I won’t make too much noise in the bathroom if I keep the bathroom door shut!!
Have you ever worked from home? What would be a necessity for you in a home office?
It has been a real eye opener moving here from the middle of nowhere on the Northern Plains. The weather here is far more changeable and unpredictable. Pickup trucks are fewer and smaller. Lots more bugs.
Sioux Falls is our “big town ” for shopping. It is only 24 miles away as opposed to Bismarck, our former “big town” that was 100 miles away. Trips to Bismarck were few and far between. Even so, we really don’t want to be running to SF all the time for things we need that we can’t get in Luverne. That means more ordering on-line.
We have been astounded by the speed on-line orders are delivered to us. The other day I ordered some bookends at about 10:00 am. They were delivered by 6:00 pm the same day. Other orders come overnight and are delivered between 5:00 am and 8:00 am. Is this normal? Does this happen elsewhere? I think if folks back in western ND knew this was possible, they would protest the wait times for their deliveries!
I wonder, though, how long deliveries across the country will be quick and speedy. The other day I got an email from a produce company in Oregon I often order celery root and savoy cabbage from. They were offering a $500 bonus to any customer who could recommend a CDL trucker who could deliver their produce. There seems to be a trucker shortage. Hmm. I wonder why?
Do you get orders delivered fast? Tell some delivery stories. Know any truckers?
Six months after our move into our home we continue to get mail addressed to the former owner. He still lives in town in a lovely refurbished apartment on Main Street just above his satellite communication business. I know it is lovely from the gossip of some electricians who were at our home and had been in the previous owners’ new place.
I always let him know when we get his mail. Sometimes he picks it up. Sometimes his elderly mom picks it up. She lives one block from us. About a month ago we received the property tax statement for his Main Street property along with some other mail from a finance company. I could tell what it was since the property tax envelope had been conveniently torn enough in transit for me to peek inside. I let him know via text that we had it. He texted that he was currently in Arizona and would pick it up when he got back to town in early April.
I saw him in his Jeep last week as I was going to the grocery store. He still hasn’t phoned to pick up his mail. I decided I am not going to remind him. The more we learn about him and his ways of dealing with things I think that he has been cossetted and coddled far too much by this community, and if his property taxes are delinquent, well, that may be a good lesson for him.
What natural consequences have you seen people deal with? What natural consequences have you experienced?
I am pretty good at fixing things around the house. Husband isn’t very handy, and repairs have usually been left to me. In the last few years, however, I have discovered that any repair involving a ladder is too much for me, as I have become increasingly scared of heights.
Yesterday we had a handyman service come to replace batteries in the garage door opener motor, program some new garage door opener remotes, and replace the closure in the garage ceiling that leads up to the attic. The old closure had fallen out and cracked. We also had them hang a large mirror in the livingroom. That involved heavier work than I was prepared for.
Everything went quickly and smoothly. Now that the mirror is up I think I can finally hang the pictures that have been stacked in the basement. I plan to have an electrician come to replace all the fairly aged wired-in smoke detectors in the bedrooms. I am thankful for all our helpers.
What repairs around the house do you leave for the experts? Post some working songs.
On Thursday I collected the mileage and hours from vehicles and tractors then put it all in my ‘Yearly Mileage’ spreadsheet. Everything was about average. We used the lawn mower 31 hours, put 43 hours on the big tractor, and 127 hours on the other tractor. Drove the 4-wheeler 22 miles, and put 306 miles on the gator using it 48 hours.
Egg count for 2025 was 419 dozen. 5028 eggs. Plus a few dozen that froze or got broken.
On Tuesday daughter and I took a road trip to Potsdam and Meyer’s Seed, then John Deere in Plainview. And got sundaes at DQ and then back to Rochester for a stop at Barnes and Noble. She thanked me for the adventure.
At Meyer’s the oat seed for 2026 is ordered and paid for, and corn and soybean seed has been ordered and financed, at 0% interest with a 4% savings. (6% savings would have given me prime -2%). $11,700. A bag of seed corn now is over $300. I ordered 25 bags. That’s a separate loan from the $43,000 for fertilizer and spraying. I got TWO free seed corn hats!
You know how you’re supposed to save receipts for seven years? I brought up a box from 2002 and sorted through that. Oh my goodness. We’d been married 12 years. Kelly was making $17 / hour. We had 2 kids in daycare, and $36 in our savings account. I’d get a milk check twice a month. It totaled maybe $2200. I owed the vet $1000, the breeder $500, the feed co-op $500, plus there was always other bills and expenses. I got anxious just looking back through this stuff. Once I saved the important stuff, I took the unneeded stuff out in the snow and burned it.
It was a small fire; not much stuff. And I just used my gloved hand to ‘swish’ it around to get all the papers to burn. Evidently the cheap nylon mechanics glove I was wearing have a lower melting point than the flame of even a small fire. I didn’t get hurt or anything, it just melted the sides of the fingers of the glove. Daughter came over to see what I was doing. I pointed out that she shouldn’t use her hand to stir up a fire. She looked at me like I was a complete idiot. And she basically said, “Well duh!”. Oh good. A win on the parenting front! She knows enough not to stick her hand in a fire.
The wedding we attended on New Years Eve was really very nice! The bride was stunning, the groom looked sharp in his black tuxedo. They were both relaxed (or at least looked that way) and the ceremony was low-key and they wrote and read their own vows and had fun. We had a full three course meal, and there was a live band. I got a lot of compliments on the fact I was wearing sleeves. I did have to dig to the back of my closet for this shirt, and one cuff was a slightly different color than the other. Solved that problem by rolling them up a bit.
For Christmas Kelly gave me this hat:
I picked up oil filters and grease tubes at John Deere. I changed the engine oil and filter in the 630. I was looking in the operators manual for the tractor and realized I’ve never checked the oil level for the transmission. On modern tractors there’s the engine oil dipstick, and then a dipstick, or sometimes a site tube, showing transmission and hydraulic oil level. On the 630, there’s a dipstick for the engine oil, and one for the hydraulics and I remember always checking that as a kid. I don’t know what fascinated me about that dipstick, but I checked it often. And then there’s a check “LEVEL” plug for the power take off. And on the side, according to the book, another check “LEVEL” plug for the transmission.
HUH!
Never seen that before.
I had to scrap some dirt off to find this.
You take the plug out and add oil until it starts to run out the plug, then it’s full. I don’t remember Dad checking that. I’m sure he did, I just didn’t know about it. Now the tractor is good to go come spring.
And the 1940’s music station is back on my car radio.
We were having some problems with our 15 year old gas stove. If you didn’t start a burner just right, the whole control panel would short out, and we would have to reset the clock, the timer, and the ovens if we had them going.
This was pretty annoying, so we called the local appliance repair company. The technician came out, unplugged the stove from the electrical socket, and pulled the stove out (now I know where the gas turnoff is for the stove. That was an anxiety for me). He removed the back of the stove, checked for frayed wires, checked out connections, replaced the back, and put the stove into position. Nothing needed to be replaced or fixed. It worked perfectly. No matter how the burners were started the electrical panel didn’t short out. The repair guy said sometimes just unplugging the appliance and jiggling the wires will do the trick. We plan to get a dual fuel stove in summer, as electric heat is better for baking. If there wasn’t a gas connection, I would have loved to jiggle the wires.
What appliance woes have you experienced? How are you at jiggling the wires and seeing what happens? Any current appliance worries for you?
