While I love the State Fair, I’m not all that big on the grandstand shows. Not sure why – just not my thing. Every now and then I go to a show – last one before this year was Garrison Keillor, back in 2017.
Back in the spring, the Happy Together tour was announced in an email from the State Fair folks. Later that same day, my friend Lori, who loves the fair as much as I do, emailed me with the dates she and her husband were going to be on the fairgrounds (she lives in Chicago now). For some reason, the grandstand show and Lori being in town seemed like a sign. We texted back and forth a bit about going together and then I bought the tickets.
When I was leaving for the fairgrounds on Monday night, YA said “will you know any of the songs?” Her opinion of my musical knowledge is that I don’t know anything written in the last thirty years. She might be correct, but I assured her that the 60s and 70s are another thing entirely.
Here was the line-up: the Cowsills, the Vogues, Gary Puckett, Little Anthony, Jay & the Americans and the Turtles. Each group got four songs – they all did their most popular and on the fourth song, videos of each group back in the day was aired on the big screens.
It was a fun show and I DID know all the words to all the songs – and sang them unashamedly (along with everyone else in the grandstand). It was a little bittersweet though as the 60s is now too long ago for these performers to still be stumping around. None of the bands had all their original members; only the Cowsills were all Cowsills, just fewer of them. The Turtles were actually represented by Ron Dante, who was a member of the Archies, but was never a Turtle. (This turned out to be fun because there was an extra song for that set – Sugar, Sugar, which is one of my favorites.) And the single performers (Gary P, Little Anthony) were struggling. And while I know all the words to the Gary Puckett songs (Young Girl, Woman, This Girl is a Woman Now and Lady Willpower), listening to the lyrics in 2025 is a bit…. squirmy.
If another Happy Together tour comes around and it again features the 60s, I think I’ll take a pass. Unless it’s for the 70s – then I might give that a go!
When I started the rough draft of this blog Thursday, I didn’t have much farm stuff to talk about. Now Friday afternoon and I’ve got a few farm related things.
I needed some straw bales for Friday. First of the 2025 crop to be used and climbing up into the straw pile and trying to hit the truck bed was a challenge.
Trying to aim under the rafter and get the bales in the truck bed.
We hosted daughters group, PossAbilities, and gave them a wagon ride through the fields. Kinda cold and windy, but they had blankets, Kelly made hot chocolate for them when they returned, and they enjoyed it.
I hauled in the scrap iron on Thursday. The wagons I pulled out of the trees and scrapped last week.
The net weight of the scrap was 3200 lbs.
The cranes are always fun to watch. My goodness, the amount of scrap is overwhelming. Juxtaposed with such a pretty blue sky!
I took secondary roads there, and I took gravel back roads most of the way home. I saw two Bald Eagles eating something that left a pretty good sized red spot in the field. I saw more of those ‘Bigfoot’ silhouettes. A few farmers are starting to chop some corn, and lots of guys are doing 3rd or 4th crop hay.
A couple months ago when our fridge died, we purged a lot, and moved a lot to the basement chest freezer and spare fridge downstairs. I still haven’t figured out why the new freezer section upstairs is so empty. What happened to all that stuff?? I thought we needed it? Isn’t that a story for our times…”But, I need that!” No, evidently, no you don’t.
One of the things missing from the upstairs freezer was the last loaf of chocolate chip Amish friendship bread I had made back in March. Most of us freeze and savor those summer time flavors in January. Here in September I’m remembering last winter. I didn’t think I’d have thrown it out as I know the chocolate is bad for dogs. The chickens would have loved it, but I just didn’t remember doing that. Took a month, but I found it in a bag in the chest freezer and I’ve been enjoying it. It’s not as dried out as I thought it might be, and I look forward to baking more this winter.
When I was researching how to remove those old tires last week, I saw one video where the guy talked about using diamond tipped cutting blades. The cheap abrasive cut-off blades I can buy at big box stores wear away quick. They’re about $3 each, but as the name implies, ‘abrasive cut off’, meaning they wear out as fast as they’re cutting. Cutting off the 16 tires I used 4 small, 4” wheels, and one 7” wheel. So I went shopping online for diamond tipped wheels. An “Indestructible” wheel comes in a 5 pack. Well, Huh. You see where I’m going with this? If… then why…?
I ordered a 3 pack of diamond tipped cut off wheels. We’ll see what happens when I get to the next set of old tires.
(There might be a photo here if I remember to go out to the shed and take a photo)
I REMEMBERED!
Abrasive disc on the top, diamond disc on the bottom
Kelly and I have a joke that I can’t find anything if you’re going to put it under my nose. This morning it was my cell phone. It was 6” away from where I was looking. No wonder I couldn’t find it. I had to borrow daughters phone to call mine and track it down. I was the kid with my mittens attached to my sleeves…Why is that getting worse instead of better?
We’ve talked before about that magic ten minutes in the morning. Every. Morning. It was later than usual one morning. Daughter and I got in the car to leave and she says “I was pretty fast this morning, wasn’t I.” Uh. Not really. But I don’t know why. Maybe it was petting the dogs longer than we should have. Which seems like a pretty good excuse. One night she was mad at me for not letting her do something. She begged and pleaded and then stormed off yelling “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!” I replied, “Actually, biology has nothing to do with this.” and then I got the giggles. She didn’t think it was so funny but a few minutes later we talked it over. She gets over stuff quick. I like that. 
Last weekend Kelly and I attended a wedding in St. Paul. It was at a relatively new wedding venue called Le VENERÉ. A pretty nice place. Newly remodeled. The Groom told me when they toured it in February it was full of scaffolding. It is an old building with a really cool stone foundation. They had a 1920’s ‘Speakeasy’ theme and encouraged people to dress the part. I wore sleeves. And after looking up 1920’s styles, just decided to order a cheap 1970’s style ruffled shirt like I had in high school. It came with a bow tie that wouldn’t fit around my fat neck, so I just wore it on my sleeve. Kelly and I drove up Friday and had a weekend vacation. We had a great time at the wedding with friends.
As of last Sunday we had our house on the market for two months. We had many showings, but no offers.
Our real estate agent couldn’t understand why. The house was clean, well kept, and nicely updated, with lovely features. We knew that our rather wild yard with the mass of raspberry canes, the large strawberry bed, the front veggie bed, the large flower beds, and the rampaging rose bushes just didn’t appeal to some viewers. Others wanted a larger yard, something we really couldn’t do much about.
Our agent wondered if the basement, which we had extensively remodeled and updated. was just a little dark. She advised us to try ro make it brighter, so last Sunday we replaced all the basement light bulbs with Bright White LED bulbs. We did the same to the upstairs lights for good measure. The whole interior was somewhat brighter, with uniformly tinted bulbs.
The next day, Labor Day, was somewhat trying as we had two showings, and that meant keeping the house beautifully pristine and having to leave for about an hour with the dog. I don’t quite understand this, but both of the viewing parties on Monday gave us offers immediately after the showings!
Was it the lightbulbs? I seem to think it was, and I find it ridiculous. I am grateful and relieved, though. Now we can focus on wrapping things up here.
What would you look for if you were buying a new house? What decorating trends, past or present, have you loved or loathed?
My bales look sorry this summer. Saggy and disintegrating looking. Ben explained to me how this can happen – kinda made sense.
But saggy and disintegrating doesn’t seem to be a problem for my veggies. We’re having a bumper crop of everything. Basil, chives, rosemary, cilantro, poblano peppers, hot macho peppers, mint and 4 kinds of tomatoes. Romas, some heirloom, sweet 100 cherry and in a summer surprise, I’ve actually gotten a couple of Santa tomatoes from the plant that I grew from a seed. I’m sure there’s more out there but I haven’t harvested for a couple of days.
Santa Tomatoes
I used up all the cilantro already. Four jars of pesto so far, an ice cube tray of chopped mint with lime juice, another ice cube tray of chopped basil with olive oil. Eight containers of tomato sauce. Gifts of tomatoes to neighbors and friends.
And lots and lots of tomato recipes. (This was all going on while I had a MASSIVE zucchini to deal with as well.) I’ve made my favorite pasta with cherry tomatoes a couple of times. Made tomato butter that was terrific on the zucchini corn bread. This weekend I’m making panzanella, tomato basil soup and some tomato rice. Probably time to consign some of the tomatoes to the freezer as well. Whole tomatoes right into freezer bags for use this winter.
Gosh – I feel like Renee and Chris with all this produce and cooking!
You all know I have an affinity for Godzilla movies. I don’t know why. Most of them aren’t all that well made and of course they are pretty violent. But like many of the mysteries in life, Godzilla and I seem to keep crossing paths.
It happened again last week when I stumbled across Godzilla Minus One, which came out in 2023, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki. This is the 37th film in the Godzilla franchise and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen most of them. While Minus One got great reviews, I wasn’t holding my breath.
There is much more of a human element to this one, although seeing the aftermath of WWII on the ordinary Japanese citizen was depressing. Then this massive, basically indestructible monster comes and destroys what little is left. And, as always, nobody can ever say why Godzilla does what he does.
I noticed right away that this Godzilla is a really good match for the earlier Godzillas. Of course, much better CGI and photography but his spiny back and the shape of his head and neck were just like the classic. And then towards the end, I thought “this music sounds so familiar”. After the movie was over, I found the original 1954 Godzilla with soundtrack composed by Akira Ifukube. This is apparently now known as The Ifukube March and has been used in several of the movies over the years:
The composer for Godzilla Minus One (Naoki Sato) did a great salute by incorporating the march into the final “battle scene”:
If you had suggested to me when I was younger that someday I would know enough about Godzilla to recognize his classic form and his classic music, I would have laughed until I cried. Guess I’d better get out the tissues.
When I went to bed the night before Opening Day (do I need to say, of State Fair?), I was ready!
I had the alarm set for 5:40; I wanted to have enough time to do my leg exercises before we left for the fair. We normally get home around dinner time and I didn’t figure I would do both sets of exercises at night.
The turtle bag was packed – everything on the packing list crossed off – cash, coupon booklets, tickets, Tylenol, bandaids, wipes, container for cookies, fan, hat:
Packed and ready to go
I went to bed a smidge earlier than normal, but not too much. I pet the cat and then snuggled down. That’s when the trouble started.
Apparently several episodes of Death in Paradise was a bit much for evening viewing. Woke up from a weird intense dream of bodies floating in the Caribbean. Dozing off again did not come easily and I ended up turning on “To Catch a Thief”. Then woke up to the dog whining at 1 a.m. – one of the smoke alarms was squeaking. Took a few minutes to figure out if it was my room or the hallway and then we had to dig out batteries. Dozing off again did not come easily. Ended up reciting A is for antelope, B is for baboon, C is for capybara…. got all the way to the end of the alphabet – twice. Woke up at 2:30 to make a trip to the bathroom. This time I ended up turning on Murder on the Orient Express. At 5:15 I rolled over and when I looked at the time, I just gave it up. Plenty of time to do my exercises, pick up a bit, feed the critters, water the bales.
I can’t recall the last time I had such a rough night. Obviously opening day was clearly keeping me a little over-wired! Luckily it didn’t keep me from enjoying my first day at the fair and I slept exceedingly well that night. But I do wonder if I need an updated “go back to sleep” routine?
You’ve probably heard me say that the only good things to come out of Covid were working from home and drive-up service. I know that many businesses are making people come back into the office but hopefully drive-up service is here to stay.
With a sore knee, running errands wasn’t the top of my to-do list the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, you can’t just keep putting off errands or else your household starts to sag at the edges. As I started to list things that just needed to get done, I realized that drive-through was going to be my friend. Here’s what I managed to do without getting out of the car:
Aldis
Target
Value Village (this was a drop-off, not a pick-up)
Post office (again, a drop-off)
Bank ATM
Dunkin’ Donuts
Caribou Coffee
There was one more errand that did require me to get out of the car – returning a library book. The only library with a drive-through return in the Hennepin system was the Southdale Library – and as of this past week, the drive-through is no longer available:
I can’t remember a time when I had so many things I could do without exiting my vehicle. I do like drive-up and drive-through!!
Going to work early one morning and there was the football team, under the stadium lights, all in uniform, having practice. Whew, I think early morning practices would be tough. Like getting up to exercise.
We saw a “V” of geese flying over one day.
Later I listened to about 2 dozen barn swallows gathered on an electric line chittering and chattering and having quite the discussion about when and where to go. Although the ‘where’ is pretty well defined, at least in general. South. Everybody. Just head south.
Kelly got one of those hotel sales calls that would take us someplace south if we just listened to a sales pitch. We don’t like to make hasty decisions, and I didn’t realize the salesperson was on hold while Kelly and I talked a few times. Then the salesperson’s manager came on and tried to shame Kelly for keeping the person on the phone for so long and not immediately just saying ‘Yes’. Snort. Give her attitude, will you? Click.
We will not be going south.
I had my first day of class. Forensic Chemistry. It’s a hybrid class, meaning a lot of it is done online, then we meet Wednesdays for lab. My friend Paul is taking a writing class. Here’s our first day of class photo.
FIRST DAY OF CLASS
I got the front end off the wagon where the wheels went wonky.
It’s not supposed to look like this. I have a nephew, Matt, who is a welder. He’ll be coming to look at it and see if it’s salvageable. A lot of cracks and old welds where the axle attaches to the frame. Old welds must be mine, but I don’t remember fixing this.
Mid-September there will be another online auction in Plainview. Last week when I dragged all the old machinery out of the trees, I pulled out a pretty nice disc. I had used it for several years until I got something bigger and better. I cleaned the disc up, greased it, and towed it to the auction.
WIDE LOAD COMING THROUGH
It is 20’ wide so I took up most of the road and part of the shoulder. I try to take the back roads when I do this sort of thing, but I have to get to the back roads first. Most traffic was pretty respectful. I had the SMV sign on the back, and I bought two magnetic flashing lights, one for the front corner, and one for the back corner. I travelled about 25 MPH. When able, I’d pull over and let traffic pass me.
Then I got to the road where they were painting new lines on the road. And putting cones down. I knocked over the first two cones before I figured out how far I needed to move over. And I scared a couple garbage cans. But I got it there in one piece.
The next day I took in a 24’ bale elevator, but that was on a trailer and wasn’t any big deal.
Several times, Kelly and I would go outside planning to do “this” and we’d go off and do “that” instead. And we’d laugh, “This isn’t what I came out to do…” Yep, but it needed doing anyway.
I picked an ear of corn.
THAT is a nice ear of corn
It’s filled to the tip, which means it had ideal growing conditions. Any stress and the plant aborts the kernels at the top. This one was 40 kernels long, and 16 around. (It’s always an even number around). So 40 x16 = 640 kernels x 30,000 (plants / acre) = 19,200,00 kernels in an acre / 90,000 (kernels in a bushel) = 213 bushel / acre. Never in my life have I had a crop that good. This won’t be either. Factor in the deer, the raccoons, the clay or rocky spots, the trees on the edges… and I might actually make 180 bu / acre. We shall remain cautiously optimistic.
The soybeans are looking great.
BELLY BUTTON HIGH!
TOP EXTRA TENDER LEAVES
Notice these extra leaves and pods on the top? Again, terrific growing season. The deer just haven’t found this plant yet… that’s what they’re eating off is all the tender bonus growth on the top.
One evening I burned a brush pile. Later, Kelly and I sat in the gator and enjoyed the fire.
BON FIRE DATE!
I removed the tires from the rims on the old junk wagons. I watched some YouTube videos how to do this quick and easy. They were using car tires that didn’t have innertubes, and they hadn’t been sitting in the trees for 30 years. But I figured it out. Cut it open with a Sawzall, then use a grinder to cut the bead cable. Removed 16 tires.
One didn’t have a tube! Just about every farm tire has an innertube in it. And most of the tubes had patches on them. It made me smile, and feel a little nostalgic. Dad or I had these tires apart before and patched a hole. If you don’t know, getting a tire off the rim is difficult if you don’t have the fancy tire machines. The bead, that inner ring of the tire, has a steel cable in it, and that’s what holds the tire on the rim. And it seals tight and it’s a pain to get off with hand tools. Dad took off a lot of tires, patched the tube, and put the tire back on. You have to get the bead to seal. I have done a lot of tires, too. But now days, with the tire goop stuff you can just pour inside, I don’t take so many apart; I’m not subjecting the wagons and tires to the wear I did when milking cows and making hay. And, like I mentioned last week, I’ll often just go get a new tire before replacing the tube. Working smarter, not harder.
Some of the junk was two old flare boxes. Wagons we used for hauling ear corn or oats. I haven’t used them in a lot of years. The floors are rotted out and frames are too small and lightweight to be reused. It’s just scrap.
Husband is allergic to most things airborne. Pollen in the Spring, grasses all Summer, deciduous and conifer trees, molds, dust, and cats. He has had shots, devours Sudafed multiple times daily, and uses nasal irrigation every day. Nothing really helps. He snots, drips, and gags. It is hard for me to hear. The only thing I am allergic to is oral contraceptives..
It has been particularly bad this last month as the Spring wheat harvest is in full swing and there is harvesting going on all around our community. Lots of dust and pollen are wafting around us.
Despite his cat allergies, Husband adores cats, and at one time we had four cats. He just ups his antihistamine doses and we vacuum the bedspread and brush the cat with the furminator brush. Due to his need for a cpap machine and his REM sleep disorder, I sleep in the guest room with the dog. The cat happily snuggles up with Husband.
I tell him it will be worse in Southern Minnesota, due to the increased humidity, but he is open to try living there. My best friend who will live with us has four cats, so we will have some challenges
What would you do if you found you were allergic to something you adored?I If you have allergies, how do you manage them?
Mothers’ warnings and bits of advice run through my head. I’m assuming (hoping?) I’m not the only one.
Don’t run with scissors. You sound like a cow chewing her cud (usually with gum). You two girls quit fighting – you sound like fishwives. Close the door – were you raised in a barn? Money doesn’t grow on trees. If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you? Your face with freeze that way. All of these were heard during my childhood.
You’d think that with all these tropes running through my head, that I would be more careful.
Between YA being out of the country and me having blown my knee out, the grass got out of control. YA was eager to get to it last Friday and I was happy she wanted to work on it. Since my knee was tender from going to State Fair the day before, I did the knee-friendly stuff. Moved the aidirondack chairs and little table, wound up the hose and then the exciting poop patrol. I headed out in my shorts and zorries. Easy peasy.
Since it had been so long between mowings, the grass has overgrown the sidewalk so I decided that I would do some trimming. No knee bending for this. You’d think that getting an electric edger out of the garage would set off some of my mom’s advice in my head, but…. Nope. While YA was still mowing, I started on a few edges along the flower gardens. Almost immediately a piece of cedar mulch whipped up and took a chunk out of my ankle. I decided to move to the sidewalk at that point. After I did the sidewalk, I tackled the little patio. It was then that I twisted a bit and in reacting to the knee objecting to this move, I ran the edger over my toe. Ouch was an understatement. Luckily no nearby little children were out in their yards to hear me swearing. The cut wasn’t deep but was about two inches long, going from the tip of my big toe, diagonally down the length of the whole toe.
I have two pairs of gardening shoes that live on the back porch. If a smart person were living at my house, they would have grabbed a pair of those shoes before plugging in the weed whacker. And if my mother had been around she also would have admonished me to put on a pair of those shoes. But once again, no Nonny and no smart person either! I liberally applied antibiotic cream and bandages for the first day or so and both injuries are healing up nicely. But I feel a little sheepish admitting this.
Done anything silly/stupid lately that you should have know better about?
Trail Baboon 