You all know I’m a little obsessed with a certain event each August. I like to be organized but normally don’t start getting going until a couple of weeks before (athough before retirement I used to request the days off several months in advance).
YA and the State Fair, on the other hand, are rarin’ to go now. In the past couple of weeks there has been a barrage of emails. Grandstand announcements and ticket offers. Highlighted fair beverages (of which there seem to be A LOT). New vendors and new foods.
YA has definitely inherited some of my love of lists; over the weekend she came into my room with a pad of paper and announced that it was time to make our food list. She started doing this a few years ago so that we remember what we want to get while we are at the fair. This list includes our favorites as well as items from the new foods email that look interesting to us. It looks like a long list but it’s spread out over several days and we don’t always get to everything. I did notice that nothing from last year’s new items have jumped to our “old favorites” list.
The floodgates are open now. I printed off all our tickets as well as my fair packing list. Can’t go off to the fair without all we need in the turtle bag. We even started a little pool of cash for the big event.
Anything you’re preparing for (or obsessing over) this summer?
On Friday YA made our annual trek to pet deer and goats and llamas at Fawn-Doe-Rosa. The route to get there is straight through Lindstrom, which is a pretty little town with deep Swedish roots and one of the cutest water towers ever (see photo above). But it turns out that it’s not actually a water tower any longer.
Back in 1992, the city built a new water tower because the original was no longer able to meet the demand. At that time, the older water tower was “repurposed” as the world’s largest coffee pot. A local business owner funded the conversion – adding the spout, handle and knob along with repainting it. Initially there was a steam function but it hasn’t been working for years.
Several months ago the city council approved an initiative to spruce up the paint job and also to restore the steam function. This time around, much of the cost was raised by the said of small water tower replicas. Four weeks ago, the steam poured out of the pot again for the first time in years.
Just by luck, we were driving through Lindstrom at exactly 10 a.m., which is one of the two times per day that the steam functions. YA was telling me about all this so I did a quick u-turn so we could circle back and get a good look. There were folks hanging out on the street corners to watch as well. It was cloudy, so while we could see the steam, I think on a clear day it would be more impressive.
A fun tangent, I recently read Off Main Street by Michael Perry and one of the essays is called “You Are Here” which is about water towers in the Midwest. It was entertaining and I learned there’s more to a water tower than meets the eye. Highly recommended reading. Fun confabulation of reading and traveling!
Have you seen any fun water towers? Ever climbed up one?
I had a fun surprise yesterday morning. As I stood in my kitchen, thinking about breakfast, I got a text from one of my donut haunts, telling me that I had a reward coming – a free donut or a free coffee. So much more exciting than eggs and toast. Since I was going out for a couple of errands anyway, I decided to go the donut route for breakfast.
In order access this reward, I had to use my phone but since I didn’t have a younger person with me, I sat in my car until I got onto the right screen, or so I thought. The young man waiting on me was very patient when holding the phone to the “register” didn’t seem to work. He said he’s do it the “long way” and put my phone number in. He then said I had a $5 off, free donut or 5% discount. Which did I want? And then he said “or all three?” You all know what I said. He started punching in stuff; on my side, the screen was showing 3₵. I kept waiting for it to get to a higher number and it never did. When he confirmed the 3₵, I told him I’d have to go to the car to get a quarter since I didn’t have any cash on me. He smiled and said “let’s take it out of the penny jar” which was on the counter.
So I had my donuts and diet pop for free. And it was a gorgeous morning to boot. What could be better?
I finished mowing weeds this week. Last year the mower was being repaired so I wasn’t able to mow much at all. $2600 later it’s back and better than ever. I mow the edges of the road next to the fields to keep the weeds down, (and the crops always look better when the weeds are cut). Lots of wild parsnip, and thistles. Sometimes when it’s just grass I’ll leave it standing and I think to myself ‘What is the point of mowing all this?’ What is the point of mowing if it’s not noxious weeds? The waterways that go through the oat fields, I mow them off because it’s easier to harvest the oats and bale the straw without the weeds and grass in there. But it really does look nice when it is mowed down. I don’t worry too much about cover for wildlife, there’s plenty of cover yet.
I practice my side hill acrobatics too. It helps to remind myself how low the actual center of balance is on the tractor.
All the weight is under my feet. There is a bit of a ‘pucker factor’ but I’ve done this before so I know it’s OK. I worried more about these hillsides when I was a kid. Dad always told me it was OK. And I only ever tipped over one wagon and that was due to a badger hole.
Down in the pasture there is a lot of parsnip. Back when we had cattle, they kept the weeds and buckthorn down. Or maybe buckthorn hadn’t taken over 30 years ago.
While down in the pasture I found some wild flowers growing. At risk of stirring up the flower debate again, I present them here. I used the ‘Plant Net’ app to identify them. Wild bergamot, Giant St. John’s wort, American blue vervain (which we had bought some seedlings from a friend selling native plants, and I didn’t realize we have this), mullein, and lots of Goldenrod coming. I try to save most of that. Again, majority rules, so I’ll mow some off to get the parsnip.
VervainWild bergamotSt John’s wort
And Kelly took this picture of milkweed in the yard.
Milkweed blossom photo by Kelly
We learned about ‘Beggars Lice’ too. For years, the dogs would get these little stickers in their fur and I didn’t know what they were or where they came from. Ah. It’s this plant.
Beggar‘s Lice
Work at the theater went well. I won the ‘Power Actuated Nail Gun’ on the auction, and made good use of that. It was fun to use. I nailed 2×4’s and foam to the north wall for some insulation. We are attaching plywood to the 2×4’s. Nailing 2×4’s to concrete with a .22 blank! Awesome!
Crops are still looking good. Corn has nearly doubled in height since July 4th.
Beans are filling in and getting blossoms on them. The oats should be ready for harvest in another week or so.
I put a new fanbelt on the 630 tractor and I replaced the throttle plate so the throttle lever will hold its position. One of the padawans and I changed the oil in Kelly’s C tractor.
A little bit of everything this past week.
Next week I’m working on ‘Shrek’, the musical, down in Chatfield.
FAVORITE SOUR FOOD THAT MAKES YOU PUCKER?
OR QUESTIONS OF YOUR CHOICE BECAUSE I GOT NOTHING!
Cantus refers to itself as a low-voice vocal ensemble. Sounds a little sterile; it is anything but. They do a wide variety of mostly a cappella offerings: a lot of internation, classical, commissioned pieces. Yesterday it was an entire program of Frank Sinatra covers – amazing.
My BFF and I have been attending Cantus concerts for 30 years; we do six to seven concerts a years, depending on the season’s program. We attended their concerts all over the place – St. Thomas, a church in Excelsior, the McPhail Center, the Ordway. Yesterdays was at Westminster Presbyterian downtown. Over the years we’ve been to the Westminster dozens of times; it’s a great space with wonderful acoustics.
Two thirds of the way through the program, Chris Foss, a bass, stepped up and began a beautifully rendition of I’ll Be Around by Alec Wilder.
About a minute into his performance, which had a piano accompaniment, the bells of Westminster began to rang. It was just loud enough that you could certainly here it but not loud enough to completely drown Chris out. The bells ended very shortly before the song ended. In all the times I’ve been in Westminster for concerts, this has never happened before. Not sure why the bells were ringing at noon on a Thursday. I’m guessing that many performers would have stopped and waited for the bells to stop, but Chris kept his composure and kept going. He got wild applause after his number; I guess because it was a great song but also as acknowledgement of a rotten situation.
I didn’t see Chris in the lobby after the show but I hope that anyone speaking to him praised the other song he did during the concert – not just for his calmness during the bells.
Do you live near a church that still rings their bells?Would you have stopped singing?
The Mourning Dove in the header photo built a nest on the light next to our front door. She is a sweet little thing who has been sitting on successive eggs all summer. She never leaves messes on the deck, and sits on the nest even when we sit out on the front deck. We consider her our spirit animal.
One of the first real estate agents who showed our house told our real estate agent that we needed to get rid of that nest. Our agent, a real animal lover, reluctantly relayed the information to us, and said she didn’t agree that the nest had to go. She is just ethically bound to let us know comments from other agents. We told her that as long as we own the house the bird stays. She was quite happy with that news.
Ever since we have had our house on the market we have scrupulously cleaned, patched, dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed and tried to make the place look really good. I admit the kitchen and bathroom cupboard fronts need a good cleaning, but it isn’t all that noticeable, and we are having some nice women in later this week to do that as well as scrub the kitchen ceiling above the stove to get rid of grease stains. The agent who complained about the bird showed our house a second time, and then told our agent that our house needed a really good “deep cleaning”.
Our agent relayed this to us, but stated that she didn’t agree, and thought we were immaculate housekeepers. She added that she was never going to allow the complainer into her house. Our agent then told us the complaining agent lived just a few houses from us across the street, and that the complainer had also told our agent that she wanted to make sure that the people who bought our house were people she would want as neighbors. Her house, a new build, is always perfectly landscaped and pristine. There are children, but we never see them.
Well! I don’t know this person and have never met her, but since all the agents who show the house leave their business cards, I know her name. I asked some work colleagues if they knew her. Their responses were really fascinating. One of my coworkers had actually worked in the same long term care facility with the agent several years ago, and knew her sister in law really well, and described her as a terrible bully both at work and in her family. Another coworker stated she had heard awful things about the agent, all related to being a bossy, judgemental bully. Living in a small town has its benefits.
I admit I feel bullied by this person, but I am not taking her criticisms to heart, and I hope that whoever buys our house are even more radical gardeners than we are, and set up bird feeders and bird houses all over the property!
Who have been the bullies in your life? How did you deal with them?
Well, things didn’t out like I expected. I was completely figuring that today’s post would be a full-on rant about bureaucracy. Didn’t turn out that way.
I got the dreaded yellow card in the mail about a month ago reminding me that my Class D driver’s license needed to be renewed. It also went on, at length, about the Real I.D.
Pretty sure I chronicled the last time I had to renew; it was during Covid and I ended up arriving at the AAA location at 6 a.m. for their 8 a.m. opening since I had waited too late to get a coveted actual appointment (who knew you needed an appointment). Being one of the first 25 in line meant you could get service that day. I had heard several stories about the trouble in getting the Real I.D. so I had a file folder, papers, copies of papers. Turned out to be fine.
That’s why I was a bit surprised to see all the verbiage dedicated to Real I.D. You’d think in this day and age, it would be easy enough to sort a mailing list by whether or not somebody has already jumped through those hoops.
Checking on line I found that you can’t to appointments any longer, which seemed weird so I picked up the phone and called. (Now I do have to say, even if I were ranting, that one of the reasons I like the AAA is because they do answer the phones.) The gal on the phone confirmed that they don’t do appointment anymore but that weekdays are relatively slow. She also confirmed that I had to re-present all my Real I.D. paperwork again. Sigh.
I gathered the same stuff as four years ago and headed out yesterday morning. I was expecting this process to take at least an hour and I was fully prepared to whine about the insanity of having to basically re-apply for Real I.D. when I was clearly Real already. Full transparency – I was crabby.
Well, I got there at 9:05. I was called 5 minutes later. The little gal behind the counter laughed when I told her that I had been instructed to bring all my Real I.D. stuff; she said “not needed” and didn’t even look at it. I didn’t have to fill anything out except to sign and date the application that she printed off. Picture and eye exam was fast although I’m sure in the history of bad DMV photos, I’m now in the top ten. Final paper and current license snipped and I was out the door at 9:19.
When I was down on the farm last Friday, Ben took me on a tour around the fields – it’s one of my favorite things about visiting. The corn was tall but weren’t showing any ears yet. Ben explained about where the ears start to form and we also talked about the difference between field corn and sweet corn. He commented that sweet corn is a bit ahead of field corn and in Iowa, there might be sweet corn already. I’m such a city girl – I love earning about farm stuff.
He was proved incredibly on the mark. As I was driving home, YA texted me that our former neighbors had dropped off some sweet corn for us; they had been visiting the grandparents in southern Iowa!
YA and I both love corn but for some reason the first sweet corn of the season is really special. We dragged the grill out of the garage on Saturday and roasted all the corn along with some veggie brats. Ate on our little patio in the backyard – it was perfect weather for the first corn lunch.
Yesterday, I used up the last of the ears. I was too impatient to drag out cookbooks and look for recipes so I just kind of made it up as I went along. This is what I made:
Corn Salsa
2 ears of corn, kernels removed from the cob
½ red onion, finely chopped
1 hot pepper, finely chopped (I used a pepper from our garden called “salsa pepper” – it was hotter than I anticipated, but not too hot to eat. A less hot pepper would be fine.)
3 T. chopped cilantro (also from garden)
Juice of one lime
Salt & pepper to taste
Mix it all together. Eat.ll
Elote Off the Cob
2 ears of corn, kernels removed from the cob
¾ c. cotijo cheese, crumbled
1 roma tomato, finely chopped
About 1/3 c. mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip because YA doesn’t like it)
2 T. cilantro, chopped (from garden)
2 T. chives chopped (from garden)
¼ tsp. tajin (if you don’t have tajin, you can use chili pepper & cumin)
Juice of half a lime
Salt & pepper to taste
Again, mix it all together!
Neither of these were big recipes, so I don’t expect the corn will last long. We’ll do plenty more corn this summer, but these first six ears were the best!
It’s been six years now since we lost our Little Jail Bird, Edith. In her memory, I’m running my favorite of her postings on the Trail.
Until last fall, I had never been to Banning State Park. I had driven by it dozens of time, because when I head up to my sister’s house, I always turn off 35W and take Highway 23 into town. I didn’t know much about Banning, but when I was looking for a day trip, it seemed to fit my needs perfectly.
First, I wanted a park where I could drive there and back in one day without getting too tired. Second, I wanted a park that didn’t involve driving several back roads, because I knew that I would be driving in the dark due to the shorter fall days and my night vision and sense of direction is bad enough that I would get lost unless I kind of knew where I was going. And third, I wanted a state park because I had a state park sticker and wanted to use it as much as possible to get my money’s worth out of it. Banning fit all of those qualifications. Plus it has a waterfall, which is a big plus in my book.
So, off I went, one sunny morning in October. When I arrived, I stopped at the visitor center to get maps and ask where the best spots were. I was so excited. It seems that often when I go north, I am early for the fall colors and often find myself driving home just a few days before “peak” and this time I was not too early! I said something about that to the woman at the desk (while trying to not jump and down in excitement) and she shook her head woefully and told me in a discouraging tone, “You’re going to see LOTS of brown out there.” Gee thanks, way to burst my bubble.
Of course, since I drove all the way up there, I figured I better go on the hike anyway even if I would see mostly brown. I drove to the parking area and when I stepped out of the car and looked up, I knew it was going to be a good day (see header photo).
I hiked all the way to the falls and back and shot lots of photos. It was an incredibly beautiful day: that clear, deep blue sky that you only seem to see on autumn days and – surprise! – lots of colorful leaves on the trees. It can be a challenge shooting in bright sunlight, but I was so overcome by the beauty of it all that I just took that in my stride. There was that wonderful northwoods smell in the air – pine trees and dead leaves. Nothing like it! and nothing else invigorates me like that does.
It was getting pretty cool and the sun was going down quickly by the time I was heading back on the trail but the golden evening light only made things more beautiful and the colors more intense. I went home pleasantly tired and very happy and glad that the woman’s prediction of “lots of brown” wasn’t true.
Every day this week, five AM pretty much right on the dot, Bailey barks outside. Luna and Humphrey bark inside until I can get to the door and get them out. And then everyone runs in separate directions and Bailey quietly wanders back to the garage, thinking, “suckers”. Pretty sure there’s been a coyote around for all the sniffing the other two are doing. Luna, she’s just running in circles barking. Humphrey is on the trail of something along the trees and around the crib, and down the field road. He’s got his nose to the ground and his tail is up and going. Bailey may sit and watch a bit, but mostly she’s letting the others take care of it. She will not engage until she has back up. Raises the alarm well, but not going to do anything about it on her own.
An hour later, they’re ready to come back in. Luna with a gentle bark. Humphrey with a scratch at the back door. Very randomly Humphrey might get locked in the feed room and he will not bark for attention. We realize he’s not around, call and call him and he will not bark. Eventually we backtrack enough we find him in the feed room, just waiting for someone to let him out. Not a sound from him.
And every night for the last week, there’s been barn owls calling. The first night, there was one in a tree right in the back yard and I had a flashlight and it just bobbed back and forth looking at me. I didn’t know what the noise was; I thought Kelly was whistling in her sleep. Sometimes they’re further away from the house, and Thursday night there was two of them right here, plus at least one more further away. A soft, whistling, screeching noise.
Daughter and the dogs take their daily walks. Sometimes, especially in this hot weather, daughter will text us asking for a rescue pick up. And Humphrey, just because he’s 10 years old and has a sore leg, sometimes we just go pick him up to give him a break. Bailey and Luna don’t always go for the walk. Bailey especially, as Luna is a bully to her, she’ll opt out just to get a break from Luna. And Luna sometimes thinks there are more interesting things happening at home with me. But Humphrey always ALWAYS goes for that walk, sore leg or not. I went to pick him up one day, and, not thinking, took the 4 wheeler, rather than the gator. He does not like being picked up, which is the only reason I was able to pick him up and put him on the front rack of the 4 wheeler; he didn’t expect this! And he sat there quietly and didn’t have to walk home. A win-win.
Last week on one of those hot days, the fan in the chicken coop stopped working. What was in there was an old box fan from the theater because their other fan had stopped working last summer. And that fan was a replacement for a previous barn fan. I’ve always thought electric motors were interesting what with stator and rotors, the windings, the capacitors on some of the bigger ones, brushes, ect. We have had a lot of electric motors on the farm, many more when milking cows and they were vital to daily operation. Big 5 and 7.5 hp electric motors on the silo unloaders, a 5HP on the feel bunk, a 5HP on the vacuum pump, a ¾ HP on the milk pump, and any of them failing was a bad day. The ones on the silo unloader might be 35 feet up in the silo, so if it failed, it was a pain in the butt not to mention an expense. I learned how to check and change capacitors, and most of the time that was the only problem. They could be replaced in the silo. Getting the motors out of the silo was a much bigger deal. Ropes and pulleys were involved.
So the chicken’s fan. The box fan I threw out. I took the one motor apart, found decayed wires deep inside and tossed it into the scrap bucket. The old barn fan motor; it would run for ten seconds, quit for ten, run for another ten, repeat. I pulled it apart. Well, first I watched some You Tube videos, then I pulled it apart, which first meant getting the fan blade and the cage guard off. (A torch was involved, just to heat up the set screws and shank to facilitate removal, not to cut it off.) I remember Dad buying this fan as an exhaust fan for the dairy barn, maybe 40 years ago, and it was too powerful; it got too cold in the barn in winter, so he took it out and it collected dust for a lot of years. Then I rescued it and hung it in the middle of the barn alley so I had a fan on those hot humid summer days milking cows. And I sold the cows 22 years ago and it’s been gathering dust again. Not really surprising the motor had quit working. I got it apart, found a wire shorting out on the windings, added a piece of heat shrink tubing to protect it, and Viola! It works! The chickens are pleased to have a fan back.
The padawans managed to get the theater boiler apart and out on the boulevard. One of the neighbors asked if he could have the metal. I said “If you can move it, you can have it”. And he did! I don’t know how, but it’s over in his yard now!
One of the padawans brought his car to my shop.
He was replacing some part of the exhaust, to make it louder or sound “cooler”… I didn’t follow the full explanation. He and a buddy spent many hours removing the old parts. Started at 8PM, went for supper and came back, left at 2AM, back at 4AM, left at 7AM. Every time they came back the dogs barked. By 9 PM the next day it was reassembled. Padawan’s girlfriend drove him out. She hung out in the shop, played with the dogs, made a chicken friend that she sat with for an hour, and helped daughter do chores. We like her a lot.
Trail Baboon 