We had our first church handbell rehearsal last Thursday, and welcomed some new players. During some after-rehearsal snacks, the conversation started on gardening. Two of the new players, a married female couple, said the rains this summer really helped with their zucchini crop, but they had too many now. We advised them to take the excess to the food pantry. Another veteran bell player told the story of moving to a small Idaho town where her husband was a Luthern pastor. They were quite solemnly warned to keep their car doors locked at all times in the summer and fall because people would stealthily deposit unwanted excess zucchini if the doors were unlocked.
We have never been the recipients of excess zucchini until last Saturday, when I found a nice big one on the front steps. I highly suspect the new bell ringers of pranking us with the zucchini. Since it is a bigger one we plan to shred it and make zucchini pancakes. Just wait until our butternuts are ripe! The new bell ringers may be in for a surprise on their front steps.
When was the last time you were pranked or you pranked someone? What would you like to leave surreptitiously on someone’s yard or front steps?
Husband and I order lots of foods on-line that are imported. We get quite a bit from a Spanish importer, such as tomato sauces, olive oil, dried beans, serrano ham, and Spanish cheeses and pancetta. We also order pasta and parmesan cheese from an Italian importer, and gallon cans of Turkish olive oil from the Syrian grocery store in Fargo. We get beans from Rancho Gordo. I like to have a well stocked larder. We are really spoiled.
I find myself in a quandary now, due to the threat and uncertainty of tariffs, the fact that we are moving soon, and the fact that this is the the time of year to stock up on dried beans and other items as it is harvest time. There is a special bean from Spain called Tolosa beans, for example, that is essential to a soup we love to make, and is hard to find in the States after autumn. We are also trying to use up as much food we have currently so we don’t have to move it.
After the threats of tariffs emerged in the new year I ordered two gallons of Turkish olive oil and two half-gallons of Spanish olive oil before the price skyrocketed. We will have a lot of olive oil to move. Yesterday I ordered eight pounds of Rancho Gordo beans as we were short on some beans we cook often. They won’t take up too much room on the moving truck. I don’t plan to order any more food on-line at this point, but I am feeling increasingly militant about not letting politics interfere with my cooking or my finances.
How might tariffs impact your budget? What imported foods do you purchase? What foods do you make sure you have on hand?
Welcome to the sick house. We all have colds. You should buy stock in tissues. My head is all fogged up so who knows what may come out in this…course that hasn’t stopped me running heavy machinery.
After last week and breaking things, I made some progress on repairing things this week. And I don’t think I’ve broken any more. Yet. (Never say never). I replaced the lift cable on the bale elevator and got that repaired. On the hay wagon I got the remaining pieces of the wheel bearings out of the hub, meaning I got both the inner and outer bearing race removed, which, thankfully, had identification numbers on them, and a local place could use that to find the correct bearings. We double checked dimensions and I got four bearings; a set for both back wheels and the plan is to have one of my padawans help me install on Saturday. It will be a good experience for him to ‘pack’ grease into a bearing. It’s not hard, but there is a process, and it is messy. It’s supposed to be hot on Saturday, so I’m planning a shop day. We’ll put the old John Deere 2 cylinder tractor, the 630, in the shop, drain the coolant and replace a radiator hose, take off the carburetor (for one of my friends to deep clean) and we’ll see what else we can get into. I’d like to replace the exhaust manifold, and those bolts will be difficult to remove as I’m not sure they’ve been out in 50 or 60 years, and through innumerable heating and cooling cycles. I’m told to heat the area red hot, let it cool for a few hours, then smack it with a hammer. That may work on some of the bolts, but on two of them, the heads are broken off, meaning the usual method is to weld a nut to the broken off bit. I’ve never tried that. I’ve seen it done successfully, just never tried it. We shall see.
Looks like we’ve lost 1 baby guinea. Still got 11.
Some of the baby guineas. They’re pigeon sized.
And they sure get around. Often when I leave in the morning, the three mom’s and them are half a mile up the road, hanging out on the edge of a corn field. By evening they’re all back home. Weird. And there’s been one pheasant hanging out around the barn. Now that the oats is out and straw baled, I’ve been mowing the edges of those fields. Cutting down weeds I couldn’t get to while the crop was growing. And I mowed the new waterway. The barn swallows sure loved me doing that. It was fun watching a couple dozen of them flirting around.
You can kinda see the barn swallows fliting around.
The new waterway.
The chickens like it when I mow, too.
On Wednesday this week I drove to the twin cities to pick up some lighting stuff for the college. I have mentioned before that my favorite Bob Dylan song is ‘Tangled up in Blue’. I don’t often listen to song words or meanings, but that one appeals to me. I love a good story, and one of love lost tugs at my heartstrings. I was aware of two versions of the song, Dylan’s and Joan Osborn’s. Then I heard of this guitar player who was recently in the cities by the name of Billy Strings, and he does a cover. So I started looking for his version. It’s on YouTube, but not Apple music yet. However I found several other versions.
I spent half the trip up, and the entire trip back listening to these different versions of the same song. The differences were really interesting to me. I really like the rhythm of the song, the tempo, the structure, and, depending on the version, the instrumentation or harmonies. A group called Grain Thief has a bluegrass version. The Indigo Girls have a section that drops into a solid blues verse. KT Tunstall’s gritty, throaty voice gives it a different vibe. Then there’s Mary Lee’s Corvette, who I hadn’t heard of before this, and she’s got a good rocking version. Jerry Garcia’s Band has a version complete with guitar jam. Bob Malone does a ROCKING bluesy version that I really liked (And a solo piano version available on YouTube). Robyn Hitchcock is just guitar and piano with a very folk / blues sound. A few are simply guitar, one starts as piano before adding the full band (and I really like a song that grows like that.) There was one version that seemed to be punk rock or something. I only got 20 seconds into it before deleting. Overall, the different guitar sounds, the slightly changed lyrics, the interpretation of each artist was fascinating to me and I still am not tired of this song after listening to it 58 times.
We have these fuel barrels for the farm: a 300 gallon barrel of gasoline that’s up on a stand so it’s gravity fed. And a 500 gallon for diesel fuel that’s electric and has a pump. The automatic nozzles like you use at the gas station don’t work on gravity feed, the only work with a pump, so it was a big deal when, however many years ago I got a used barrel from a neighbor and went from gravity to a pump on the diesel barrel. I rented a trencher and ran an electric line across the driveway from the shop to the barrel and then could buy one of those automatic shut off nozzles. When I needed to refill the tractor the other day, I started the fuel flowing, went to the house to grab a snack, and got back to the tractor two seconds before the fuel stopped. I remember a few times with the gravity system and we used a big square nut to hold the lever up and then I would go to the shop and get distracted and I spilled a few gallons… I appreciate not having to worry about that anymore.
The header photo and that hole in the ground? I dug up the cover of the septic tank. Bailey helped.
Those eyes!
We got the tank pumped out. It’s been on my ‘to-do’ list for a couple years. Also got a riser installed so the cover isn’t 2 feet underground anymore. Digging it up on Thursday I was thinking that is going to be a really good thing.
Our last day of working for the State will be sometime the first week of October. The administrators at both of our agencies are scrambling to figure out who can do all the things we do, and it is turning out to be a challenge.
Husband and I are somewhat unique in that we are actually in-person at our agencies and don’t work remotely. Most of our State psychology colleagues live out of state and only test people via telehealth with the help of psychometrists. Very few of them even test children. We also are unique in that we know how to give IQ tests to children about to turn 3, and that is a rare skill indeed. Children with developmental disabilities need IQ testing before the age of 3 to determine if their issues are severe enough and will be long term. If so, they qualify for a host of services, as well as Medicaid and excellent case management. In other more populous parts of the state, there are enough psychologists in the private sector to do the testing. Not so out here.
We also know how to do IQ testing using the Stanford Binet IQ test, which has norms down to age 2, and which none of the younger State or private sector psychologists know how to use. You can’t test a 2 year old via telehealth. They don’t make them like us anymore.
Husband says he wants to be like a 1964 Chevy Impala. You can see it in the header photo. I identify with my Great Grandmother’s early 1920’s Reo. My father had vivid memories of playing in the car when he was small. Here is a similar model
What out of production car model do you miss? What else have they stopped making that you regret?
When we talked about esoteric knowledge the other day, I would not have said that The Three Musketeers was a particular interest of mine. Then I stumbled upon a tv series from 2014-2016, a British production. Binge-watching is a perfect occupation when you’re nursing a knee.
This particular series is a little darker than I like, but I realize that I’ve seen quite a few of the musketeer movies over the years, so it’s intriguing to see this one. The production values are quite good – costumes and dialog seem more realistic than a lot of historical dramas. Of course, there seems to be at least one nubile young woman each episode who manages to fall for one of the musketeers in just a day or so. Then there’s the fact that all of the musketeers except D’Artagnan (the only character played by an actor who I recognize – Santiago Cabrera) have old, unhealed loved tragedies in their past. Athos in particular can’t seem to get over his.
And it’s VERY violent. I find myself listening more than watching every now and then. I’m not surprised that there were only three seasons. I’m about half way through the second season and I’m starting to wonder if Paris is going to run out of population, so many people get murdered each episode. Last night I actually muted it for about five minutes while Captain Treville was getting operated on. (Thank goodness I live in an age with anesthetic.) It’s another show that I can’t watch up until bedtime or I have dreams that are much too intense.
As I’ve been watching the show, it occurs to me that I can’t remember if I ever READ The Three Musketeers. All the comparisons that I’m making in my mind may be from other movies/series I’ve seen. And there is still the one big question of why Dumas titled his tome The Three Musketeers when there are clearly four of them? Maybe the book explains this? So I put it on hold at the library. I’ll let you know!
Did you have a play sword as a kid? Ever taken fencing or shooting lessons?
One benefit of moving is the chance to go through things and decide what is good to keep and what is good to go. I spent part of Saturday going through a closet in the guest bedroom that has all our photo albums in it. That was a daunting task.
I am the photographer in the family. Over the years we have kept, organized in albums, most of the many photos I took during our early marriage and of the children as they grew up. We also acquired Husband’s family photos that included photos of his childhood as well as old family photos from early 20th century. We got a lot of those after Husband’s father died. I have my own old family photos organized in another part of the house.
I found I still have the scrapbooks my mother put together of a trip to Europe I took as a high school senior with America’s Youth In Concert in 1976, and my years at Concordia. I had forgotten we had those, since I shoved them in our closet after my parents died 11 years ago. I am glad I made an executive decision then to get rid of most of the volumes of my own baby pictures. I haven’t missed them at all.
The whole problem with the guest room closet is that we have been shoving things in there and forgetting about them. I got rid of empty photo albums and other useless things on Saturday. Why, I asked myself, do we have three pairs of binoculars? I didn’t have the energy to sort through the fifteen or so photo albums that remain. That will be done at our leisure after we move.
Snce the advent of smartphones I no longer use my camera. Those photos are in “the Cloud”. I will have to figure out how to digitize the photos in the albums I decide to keep. Our son assured me it is easily done. We shall see if that is so.
How do you store your pre-smartphone photos? Any Baboon scrapbookers?
One of the challenges of sharing a kitchen with Husband is his extreme fussiness regarding the foods he cooks and prepares. He has many preconceived expectations as to what goes with what, and is unhappy if the combinations aren’t exactly the way he wants them. When he seasons a dish, he spends quite a bit of time tasting and adding this and that til it is just right in his mind. I can’t tell the difference.
The same goes for his fussiness in pairings of different foods. I can usually put up with his demands for just the right main course with just the right sides. It is a little more difficult now that we are trying to empty our freezers before we move. We have agreed, for example, that we aren’t going to buy any more sausage, brats, or ground meat until the stuff we have is gone. There are a lot of sausages to be used up.
The other day I was pretty exasperated with him for stopping at the butcher shop and buying some ring bologna and summer sausage. I reminded him of all the brats and other sausage that we had that would work just as well as bologna. He insisted that he had to have the bologna because that is always what he has with the particular side dish he was going to have that evening. I told him that we would never get through the food we already had if he keeps this up, and that he might have to change some of his expectations for meals if we are to reduce the food in the freezers. He sighed and stated in a somewhat martyred tone that he would just have to start practicing acceptance regarding our meals. Husband says he owns his culinary idealism.
I am fortunate to be married to someone who loves to cook and loves good food. I just hope he doesn’t get too distressed as he has to change his ideas, at least temporarily, regarding our meals.
What do you have to practice acceptance of? Do you have inviolable expectations for some meals and food pairings?
For the last several weeks I have been plagued with an ear worm of Oh, Canada. Don’t ask me why. It is a nice enough tune, but it was getting annoying. I woke up at 3:00 am Sunday with another tune going through my head. I was sleepy and had to think for a minute but recognized it as Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper by Jaromir Weinbeger.
I pride myself for an ability to identify pieces of classical music by ear. I had the advantage of playing the Schwanda piece in college concert band, so it wasn’t too hard to identify it. I challenge myself as I drive or listen to Classical MPR to name the piece or composer before the announcer does. I still have some trouble discerning between Poulenc and Milhaud, as well as all the Spanish guitar composers, but on most other composers I think I am pretty solid.
This knowledge, as well as $5.00, will get me a cup of coffee, but it is pretty satisfying to be able to say, if anyone asks “Oh, that is such and such by so and so”.
What area of esoteric knowlege or skill do you pride yourself on? What long running 1960’s television program made repeated use of a composition by Brahms?What classical music are you most familiar with?
Wow, Man, what a week again. Thursday night I hit a gumption trap so hard, I had a rootbeer float and popcorn for supper…
We have baby guineas! I had seen one sitting on a nest behind the machine shed a few weeks ago, and we talked about getting the eggs into an incubator but never got too it. Next time I looked the nest was empty and there were broken eggs. Momma was nowhere to be found, and we feared the worst. A week later I saw her and a bunch of chicks heading into a corn field. Typically, guineas are not the best moms. But this group seems to ‘community parent’ and they’re doing surprisingly well.
As you can image, the real world is a tough place for a little chick. They could fall into a hole, they could get eaten or lost. It’s a tough place. But yeah, they’re doing well and getting big enough they might just make it. They’re not quite pigeon sized, and they hop and flutter and there’s always that one that’s six feet away and running to catch up.
I cut down a bunch of box elder tree’s growing over a fence down around the barn yard. Treated all the stumps. Then tore out the old feed bunk augers and cement bunks. Don’t need them anymore and it will help open up the yard.
The cow yard, before.
The cow yard after.
Tree’s before
No more tree’s. Looks better.
Dad built the first silo in 1968 and installed these augers. When the second silo was built in 1976, the whole feed bunk was turned 90 degrees and the cement bunks installed. Then it was 1978 when I stuck my leg into this.
The augers I stuck my leg in. Hard to visualize from this picture how it was set up when working. I’m just really lucky.
As I tore it out, I thought about that. I don’t harbor any resentment. These bunks fed a LOT of cattle over the years and provided for two families. They served their purpose well.
I put the forklift extensions on and used the loader forks to lift the old bunks out. I expected animals to be living under them, but nope, nothing. I’ve been asked why I’m doing this, and to what end? Just to clean up. There is no end goal. It would never be used again, why save it?
The oats got harvested Friday and Saturday. Yield wasn’t very good, the oats didn’t even fill a semi. Ended up at 735 bushels, meaning about 31 bu / acre. According to the oat people on FB, oats has been all over the place this year. At least the test weight was 34.6 meaning the elevator would take it. Wasn’t heavy enough to be food grade, nor was it enough bushels to mess around with.
Lots of straw! I ended up with 900 small square bales. Put 700 in the barn.
The hole in the middle is where the elevator was.
I had the three teenage boys helping and I couldn’t have done it without them. They were great. The one doing the most work, number 3, (and treated as the odd wheel out by the first two for some reason), had a broken toe (dropped a barbell weight on his foot). Ah, the teenage mentality.
I baled 3 loads of straw on Monday, the boys came out Tuesday and we unloaded the first two, just throwing them into the empty barn. Then we put the elevator up and unloaded the third. I baled three more loads Tuesday afternoon.
Wednesday, I started back at the college. You know what that means. Sleeves.
The boys came out at 5PM and we unloaded those three loads. 700 in the barn. Full enough. Haven’t had it this full in a few years. The boys rode in the wagon and we went to the field to bale up another load. And to stack this one as it will sit for a few months until the neighborhood berry farm is ready for it. I’d put one kid in the tractor with me, and the other two stacked on the wagon. I only hit one kid with a bale. He moved! I was aiming to the side and as the bale kicked, he stepped to that side. Oops. He was OK. Straw is light.
I’d have them rotate positions so they all got to ride in the tractor (and the AC) and they all thought it was pretty neat in there too.
Tractor view
Number 2 and 3 Padawan’s stacking in wagon. Number 1 is in the tractor with me.
Pretty proud of themselves. I couldn’t have done it without them.
I noticed on Friday, one of the rear wheel bearings on a wagon is gone. So that wagon is out of service until I can get new bearings. Hopefully it hasn’t damaged the wheel hub or axle.
And then Wednesday night, backing the stacked wagon into the shed, and the front wheels are not aligned. What the heck?? Tie rods are bend. Jeepers. Not sure when or how that happened. And I moved it a bit more to back it in and one wheel goes completely sideways. Well heck.
Huh!
So, I pulled that wagon in backward to at least get it under cover and out of the way. More repairs. Add it to the list.
AND THEN- Thursday evening and I’m taking down the bale elevator and the lift cable snapped and it all fell to the ground. Words were said. It didn’t break anything. It was about 8’ up and I was lowing it to transport height of about 6’ when it dropped. I dragged it to the shop and Kelly and I worked on it for an hour. Gumption traps were hit several times until I blocked it up with an old pallet and we called it a night. So that’s three things. I should be done now for a while. Right?
HUH!!
Corn and soybeans look great! We have reached the point we cannot make any more management decisions to help the crop. The last thing done was aerial application of fungicide. Now the crop just has to finish out the season. One neighbor called me upset about aerial application too close to his house. I understand that and will take steps in the future to create a buffer zone. However, by the time it gets from me to the agronomist to the company to the pilot, I’m not sure what will actually happen. Not an excuse, just warning him a lot is out of my control.
I was sitting at my desk at work yesterday at about 1:45 pm when I got a phone call from the Stark County Emergency Services Office. It was an emergency message sent out to everyone in town advising us that the community emergency storm shelter was opening now instead of this evening, and people who might need shelter from severe storms should go there now. The shelter is at the Dickinson State University Student Union. There were other shelters in the varios small towns around us. Cumulus clouds were developing quickly to our west and southwest, and there was the possibility of severe storms with baseball size hail and 80 mph to hit in the next couple of hours.
Well, this was rather alarming to hear. The weather was hot and quite humid yesterday. It is unusual for us to have much humidity. The NWS had been predicting possible severe weather depending on factors like heat and humidity. It was most probable that our severe weather would arrive late evening, but they wanted vulnerable people to seek shelter before that just in case.
I decided to leave work and pick up a few things at the grocery store. The emergency message must have been effective since the lines at the strore reminded me of the panic shopping we see before a snow storm hits. I went home and sat and watched the sky. There was a lot more traffic than usual for a Thursday in the early afternoon. Neighbors and people I talked to said it looked and felt like we were really going to be in for some bad weather tonight.
By 3:30 there still was no storm, but the sky was filled with big grey clouds coming in from the south and southwest alternating with periods of sun.
By 4:30 the temperature was up a couple of degrees. The sun/dark cloud pattern conntinued, and all of eastern Montana was under a severe thunderstorm watch.
By 5:30 pm, skies were mainly clear, and by 5:45 they had partially clouded over and our chance for severe storms was increased to 70%. The Thunderstorm watch was still on for eastern Montana.
By 8:30 pm, skies were completely clear, except for a solid grey line of clouds in the far west. We were in a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until 2:00 As I was exhausted from work and weather, I went to bed.
At 11:30, a very windy storm hit that lasted about 20 minutes, dropping .07 of rain and no hail. No sirens. No damage. All the storms moved east
How good are you at predicting the weather? How much faith do you have in the NWS? Any memorable times when they have been really right or really wrong?
Trail Baboon 