animals, education, Family, Kids, pets, Uncategorized

Alpha and Omega

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Our daughter has two cats, and is entirely besotted by the younger one who she named Percy. He is a handsome tuxedo boy, He is very naughty, knocked over her television and busted it, and likes to make huge leaps into her garbage can because he likes the way the lid swings back and forth. He gets a lot of baths as a result, since he gets so dirty. He hides his toys in her bed.

The other day, daughter was expressing how much she loved this cat, and described him as her “Alpha and Omega”. I was surprised and gratified to hear her say that, only because it confirmed for me that dragging our children to church all those years was worth it. I guess she was listening and I didn’t even know it. I suppose I would rather she describe the Lord, and not her cat, in such terms, but it is a positive start.

What naughty animals have you loved in spite of themselves? Who has surprised you in a good way lately? What or who is your Alpha and Omega?

Business, Uncategorized, work

Goodbye, SBM

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We heard the sad news early in March that our one, true office supply store closed. Southwest Business Machines was a fixture in town, and it was a good place to find just the right office supplies that Walmart didn’t have, or either had cheap and unsatisfactory versions of what we wanted. Husband is very fussy about his pens, and they have to have just the right ink flow and roller size. He also liked their brown, expandable folders with elastic closures. I liked the pink pencil top erasers that work much better than the cheaper red ones. I use a lot of pencils in my psychological testing. I like the blue .07 mechanical Pentel pencils they had. It was also a good place to buy computers and printers, and they installed our new printer in January. Husband could buy #3 pencils by the box.

Last summer the road in front of the store had major work with lane closures and detours, and I think that business suffered. I image that office supply stores like SBM have a hard time competing with the larger stores like Office Max. The nearest big box office supply store, aside from Walmart, is 100 miles away. I have a hard time justifying driving 100 miles for pencil top erasers. There are office supplies at our work, but the State purchases what is the cheapest and not necessarily the best. I guess we will have to stock up and be opportunistic shoppers of office supplies, just like we are with groceries.

What are you particular about? What are your favorite office supplies? What stores are you mourning?

Uncategorized

A GLOBAL MARKET

61 Comments

Today’s post comes from Ben.

April showers bring May flowers. Let’s hope so. How many times have the robins been snowed on now?

Maybe you’ve heard on the radio or TV how crop prices are up. I’ve talked about how all the input prices are up, and all of that means food prices at the grocery store may be going up.

There’s a lot involved in all this and I’m reducing it to a few sentences so, I may be making some sweeping generalizations here. The prices listed here, and the ones you generally hear on the news, are from CBOT – Chicago Board of Trade. Local prices will be less, as the local elevator gets their share. The difference is called the ‘basis’.

Yes, crop prices are up. Some of that has to do with the lack of imports from Ukraine and Russia, it has to do with stockpiles in the US, and it has to do with market predictions on how many acres are going to be planted this year.

Wheat prices had been running about $8/ bushel but jumped to over $12 in March and are now about $10.

Corn was $3 / bushel in August of 2020 and currently is almost $7.50.

Soybeans had been running about $10 / bushel and spiked over $16 in 2021, dropped at harvest to $12 and spiked again over $16 before dropping off a bit.

Why? It’s all supply and demand and the predictions and estimates of that.

India is the world’s second largest producer of wheat and they’re having a good year. And Kansas winter wheat predictions improved so supply may be higher.

Predictions show more soybeans than corn being planted in the US this year, which surprised the experts, but not really due to the extremely high fertilizer prices. (Corn takes more fertilizer than soybeans).

Brazil, which is a leading soybean producing country, may not be having the best crop this year. And as they guess what the weather might be in the US, that also influences pricing here.

It’s a little bit crazy and I don’t know how anybody should think they know what’s really going on. I guess if you’re lucky this week and your prediction is right, then you’re the ‘expert’.

I rotate crops annually; therefore in 2022 I will have more corn than soybeans, just because that’s how it worked out this year. Add in my shoulder issues and I’m planting less acres of oats this year, so I’ve got a few more acres of corn and soybeans both.

I saw a YouTube farmer talking about the high corn prices in 2012 so they built a huge shop. But by 2014 corn prices were down by 50%. And see, that’s always the problem; just because the price is good now doesn’t mean it will be good tomorrow, and I shouldn’t go nuts buying machinery and taking out loans. I bought Kelly a pearl necklace back in 2012; when the lady at the jewelry store asked what the occasion was, I told her corn was $5 / bushel. Bet she didn’t expect that answer.

I have 1000 bushels in storage at the local elevator. Local price there is $6.75. CBOT is $7.37. The basis is $0.62. The elevator charges $0.16 / bushel to store it for the first 3 months, then $0.04 / bushel after that.

Typically, prices are peaking about now so I’ll probably sell it shortly. There’s a tractor payment due in July that will take all of that and more. (But it’s the last payment! Yay!)

Duck count: Lost a black one and a cream colored. Still have two poufs, two cream, three black, and 17 mallards (that includes the Rouens that look like mallards except they’re fatter and they don’t fly). I did see a Rouen “hooking up” with a black one, so maybe they’re shacked up somewhere. But I kinda doubt it. The flamingos have returned, too.

I started keeping track of how many eggs I move out of the house. January was 20 dozen. February was only 10. March was 35 dozen! One day I collected 18 eggs. The previous day was 14.

No doubt you’ve heard of the avian flu going around again. I didn’t have any trouble with it last time. I’m hoping that holds true this time, too.

Working on my chick order for spring. Female chicks are somewhere between $4 and $5.30 each. The fancier, the more expensive. I’m looking at about $200 for 40 chicks. Availability varies, but I’ll shoot for mid-April. Weather should be warmer and stabilized some by then, right?

Predict Something. Remember Johnny Carson’s Carnac?

2022, Media, Technology, Uncategorized

Search Engine

38 Comments

I took a look at my phone search history the other day, and it struck me that someone who didn’t know me and who read through the searches I had done on Google would think me an odd duck. Here is my most recent search history:

Ladbury Funeral Service

Marie Jaell

Yo Yo Ma, Emmanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakis Beethoven Symphonies

Kay Aaenson obituary

Creamy scallops with tomatoes

Waconia, MN grocery stores

Red Star Yeast Conversion Table

Hartquist Funeral Home

The Book of Mormon musical

Brotchen recipe

ND wildfires

Einaudi: I Giorni

West Bend, IA

What on earth does this say about my interests? Husband often asks me to look things up for him, but most of these are a result of my own curiosity.

What are your recent on-line research topics? What do you like to research? What does your search history say about you?

2022, Art, Family, Fantasy, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Icy Art

29 Comments

At this time of year when you wake up to ice and snow, you have to work hard to find the fun in it.  I’ve been very crabby the last week (due to work) and boy, did the crummy weather not help.  All morning I was kind of fuming about it.

YA goes into the office on Wednesdays (although starting next week, we both have to go in on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday).  When she drives, she turns her car around near the garage so that she goes headfirst down the driveway.  When I went out over lunch to do a couple of errands, the tracks that her car made in the ice were kind of pretty, like the work of a modern artist working in an unusual lmedium.  It was just the lift that my spirits needed.

Have you seen anything that struck you as “artsy” recently?

Art, books, Business, Fantasy, Gatherings, History, Uncategorized, Words

The Sunwise Turn

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I’m reading a quaint little memoir called “Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling”.  Two women, with no bookselling experience decide to open a bookstore in New York in 1916.  The book was written in 1925.  It’s a fascinating story of how they got started and how they survived.  The book downplays the fame of the store, but online you can easily find a history of the store which was also a salon for up and coming writers as well as an exhibition and performance space. 

Early on in the book, the author describes how they came to name their shop:

The name was one of the crises through which we had somehow to get.  There is sin and virtue in a name.  We wanted a name that would mean something.  Everything was to be significant.  All kinds of titles of the thumb-mail variety were offered.  My partner telephoned me one day that Amy Murray had drawn up in the net of her Gallic wisdom the name ‘The Sunwise Turn”. 


They do everything daesal (sunwise) here” – Father Allen had told her of the people of Eriskay – “for they believe that to follow the course of the sun is propitious.   The sunwise turn is the lucky one.”

The key goes sunwise; the screw goes sunwise; the clock goes sunwise.  Cards are dealt with the sun.  The Gael handed the loving cup around the banqueting table sunwise; he handed the wedding ring and loaned money sunwise  An old sea captain who once came into the shop told me that wind and weather go sunwise, and once when I called in our Swedish contractor, Behrens, to confer with him about the furnace, eh said: “It out to be in the other corner of the house, maam.  I always put my furnaces in the north end.  Heat goes with the sun.”

I’m pretty sure naming your bookstore “Sunwise Turn” breaks every rule you can find about picking a name for your business.  It doesn’t say anything about what the shop sells and it’s unbelievable obscure, but I really fell in love with the name and the thought and meaning behind it.  Makes me want to open up a shop of some kind, just to use the name again.  

Let’s say you are opening a shop of your own next week.  What would you sell?  And what would you name it?

2022, Family, Food, Kids, Seasons, Uncategorized

Cookie Doldroms

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Girl Scout Cookies came up in conversation yesterday.  I sold GS cookie as a kid and was the Cookie Mom for several years when YA was in scouting.  I am aware that as cookies go, they are extraordinarily expensive, but I’ve always thought of them as more of a charity than a fair purchase.  Any time I see Girl Scouts selling cookies, I buy a box or two.  The grocery store, the hardware store, at my office and from the grand-daughter of a friend of mine.

This year that habit netted us well over 12 boxes of cookies.  We tried all the new ones (none of them passed the “we’ll buy them again next year” test).  YA’s favorites are Thin Mints and PB Patties.  Mine are Samoas and Shortbreads.  But clearly neither of us are as enamored of the cookies this year as we have been in the past.  I still have 2 boxes of the Shortbread sitting on the counter and have googled what I could do with them (I did get a good idea for something to put in spring baskets this year – I’ll take a picture in April when it happens).  YA has a box of PB that has been opened but clearly not touched for at least a week and there is a half a package of the Lemonades in a ziplock that no one has touched for quite some time.  (Don’t get me started on the packaging for the Lemonades and the French Toast – it’s criminal!)  I’m pretty sure the Lemonades are going to get tossed.

It’s making me re-think my strategy where GS cookies are concerned.  Maybe if I run across Girl Scouts who are selling, I should just buy one box.  And buy fewer from my friend’s grand-daughter.  And maybe pass on signs I see up at the office.  Because even if I just think of them as a charity, it bugs me to throw out cookies or to finish a box just because we have too many of them.  At least I have a year to refine how I’m going to handle this next time.

Do you have too many of anything in your house because it’s a good cause?

2021, 2022, Business, Food, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Just a Splash

24 Comments

On an average day I drink one can of pop.  Every now and then two.  But caffeine makes me crazy and my stomach doesn’t like most of the white pops and, of course, I’m so used to the taste of diet pop that I don’t want the sugared ones.  That cuts down the field of possibilities quite a bit.

Unfortunately a pop that I really like is Cherry Diet Pepsi. A couple of years ago, I tried to wean myself off because of the caffeine and it was really hard.  Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi is OK but without that cherry, I just wasn’t won over.  Then I realized I could make my own CCFDP with just a little splash of grenadine.  Little bottle of grenadine in the cabinet, pop in boxes under the microwave and I’m set.

Then pandemic hit and those dreaded words “supply chain issues”.  Within a year, I was having to hunt around for my beloved CFDP.  Then I couldn’t find it at all, unless I wanted to pay five times the usual price online. No thanks.  I even emailed PepsiCo to get their take and, as I should have expected, they gave me a non-answer and a link that didn’t work.  SIGH.  I saw stories online about aluminum shortages and figured that CFDP was probably at the bottom of the pop totem pole when it came to handing out the aluminum. 

I kept one box of CFDP in the back corner (for emergencies?) and then I resorted to Caffeine Free Diet Coke.  It’s OK, but not quite what I like best.  For awhile every time I was in a grocery store (not as often as you would think, thanks to drive up delivery), I would wander down the pop aisle… nothing.  So imagine my surprise last week when I was actually in the Cub near my house and VOILA…. a little stock of CFDP.   I bought 4!  I don’t know if this will be the end of my pop woes, but this will keep me going for at least a month!

Tell me about a product that you miss.

2022, animals, Family, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Seasons, Weather

Late March

111 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Cold again this week. The farmers’ spring excitement has tempered a bit this week. Next week it will be back.

Tuesday was such a nice day, Kelly and I went out and took down the snow fence we so carefully put up last November. The mid- December storms shredded up 80% of it and the weather turned too cold to fix. We had more snow in the road this year because of it, and it made me realize how useful the snow fence is and why we put it up every year. I was tired of looking at the remains of it and we got it picked up. The dogs helped.

The ducks have split into their summer groups; Mostly the fliers and the non-fliers, but there might be some other sort of grouping that I haven’t figure out yet. It makes it hard to get a good count on them. But I did see 6 mallards take off and then 7 more took off. And still got 2 poufs, 3 cream, 4 black… and some others.

The chickens are enjoying the grass again. And leftovers. And they like when I fill the bird feeders.

Kelly and I saw ‘Hadestown’ last week at the Orpheum. Boy, was that good. And my friend Jerry and I saw Colin Hay at the Pantages. Colin Hay was the lead singer for ‘Men at Work’ way back when. I saw them in concert way back when.

I should have found this picture of the barn for Wednesday’s article about selling the cows.

Dinner at Olive Garden Wednesday night was yummy

I know some of you read ‘Independently Speaking’ by Brent Olson. His latest article is in the same vein as I’ve written about lately. Getting machinery ready and being in town before the stores are open. We’re both still farmers at heart.  www.brentolson.online  He’s also on FB as ‘Independently Speaking’. He’s got great stories. Colin Hay told some stories too.

Pies, donuts, chairs, cows, dogs. We’ve had it all this week. 

What’s in your fridge and what are you making for supper? What do you WANT for supper? 

2022, animals, pets, Uncategorized, work

A Member of the Pack

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I have been reading up on Cesky Terriers, the breed of puppy we are getting in May. They are considered temperamentally different than the majority of terriers due to their comfort in being part of a pack. Your basic terrier is an independent thinker, bred to work alone and make its own decisions on how to deal with vermin and prey. Cesky’s are more reserved and standoffish, but very dedicated to their people.

The Cesky was developed by a guy in the Czech Republic who wanted smaller terriers he could take in a group to hunt prey on river banks. He started out with Scotties, but they fought with one another more than they hunted. He decided to come up with a new breed, and interbred Scotties with Sealyhams, a Welsh breed known for its calmness and lack of territoriality . The new breed he came up with was very good at working with other dogs, yet really good at flushing vermin and working as part of a team. I hear from Cesky breeders that they are not door darters like our Welsh Terriers were, dogs who wanted nothing more than to rush out any open door so they could explore the countryside and make their own fun. Cesky’s want to stay with their people at all costs.

It is important at my work to be able to work as part of a team. I guess I am more like a Cesky than I am a Scottie or a Welshie. It doesn’t pay to be a lone wolf in my line of work. I know that isn’t the case for everyone, though.

Are you a Scottie or a Sealyham? How well do you work as part of a team. What is your favorite breed of dog, and why?