The only issue I have when we visit our son is the temperature of his home. He lives in a split level home, and the guest room is in the lower level. No matter the time of year, I always freeze in his house. I am always pretty cold in most settings, I must admit, but it is really cold for me there. (I have a space heater under my desk at work that I run most of the year, but our office building is generally experienced as a cold place and they can’t seem to regulate the temperature.)
Son got heat stroke a couple of summers ago and keeps the house very cool ever since, especially at night. The design of the house means that the cold air stays in the lower level and the hot air rises to the upper level. There is a big ceiling fan on both levels, but they don’t seem to do much in terms of drawing the warm air downstairs or pushing the cold air upstairs. Son and DIL spend most of their time on the upper level. Son closes the vents in the lower level in the summer, but I am still cold. I wore a down vest around the house on Sunday.
I sometimes resort to surreptitiously turning up the thermostat when no one is looking, but Son notices and turns it back down to 70°. That doesn’t sound cold, I know, but 70° there feels a lot colder than 70° in our house. I am thankful he has nice down comforters on the beds so I am warm enough when I sleep.
What are your standards for house temperatures?Where have you visited or stayed where you been the mostuncomfortable? Ever had heat stroke or heat exhaustion?
The Baby Sprinkle held at our Son and Dil’s home on Saturday was a lot of fun. It was attended by us, Dil’s mother, and six couples and their children, the couples being family friends. Their children are all the same age, between Grades 1 and 4. .
The women spent the Sprinkle coloring funny pictures on diapers and onesies, while the guys were in the downstairs playing a new, baby-oriented Dungeons and Dragons game Son had developed. Many of the families have children who attend the same Boys and Girls Club daycare as our grandson.
It was really funny to hear the moms talk about their amazement at the vegetables their children eat at Club and not at home. The children have been coming home asking for “those crescent-moon shaped green beans” (lima beans) and the little cabbages (Brussels Sprouts) that they get at Club. Grandson declares he loves romaine lettuce as long as it has French dressing on it. He is a very picky eater, and the lettuce is a real surprise. He has never eaten lettuce at home prior to this.
These kids are eating vegetables because they see their friends eating vegetables! How wonderful! No amount of parental pressure could accomplish this at home.
What were your favorite and least favorite vegetables as a child? How were you positively influenced by your peers? Ever play Dungeons and Dragons?
Our 7 year old grandson has taken a keen interest in his mother’s Ibanez acoustic guitar, and spends up to an hour at a time trying to pick out chords and play tunes on it. His dad taught him the tune “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica that he likes to pluck out.
Grandson isn’t big enough for a full size guitar, so yesterday we went to Sioux Falls and got him a three-quarter size Yamaha guitar. It fits him really well, and has just the right sized neck and fretboard. He is very excited! His parents have been in touch with a Brookings guitar teacher and are going to sign him up for lessons this week. His new sibling will arrive in August, and he will need something to keep him occupied when all the attention is on the new little one.
My first instrument after the piano was a B flat clarinet. Son had a trombone. Daughter was so excited to get her French Horn in Grade 5 that she marched around the block blasting on it. The first time she saw a violin that a friend had brought over to the house to jam with Husband, she almost wrestled him to the ground to get it away from him. She was 5. Husband set up violin lessons for her the next day. Husband had a cello, and still has one he loves to play. Daughter in law is a piano and flute player.
Grandson assures me that practicing won’t be a problem. We shall see. It is lovely, though, to have another musician in the family.
What was your first instrument? If you are an older sibling, how did you adjust to your younger siblings’ arrival. If you have older siblings, how did they react to your arrival?
When I grew up we didn’t splurge on hotdog buns or hamburger buns, unless maybe it was a special event, or there was family coming, then it was buns for Messy Josephs. (Sloppy Joes). Hot dogs? On a piece of bread. Hamburgers? On bread. Kelly’s family did hamburger buns. Kelly would cut hot dogs in half to fit them on a hamburger bun. Well, that’s just weird. But It’s how our parents survived. We are living much more recklessly, and we get the appropriate buns. And it’s tough to use them up before they mold. And it bothers me once the hotdog bun gets a little dry and breaks open. Or we have real fat hot dogs and you can’t smush it into the bun without the back opening up. And on the other hand, I still struggle eating that last bit of bun without the hotdog. We certainly don’t eat as much bread as we used too.
So much of food is tied to our up bringing.
And then there’s ratchet straps. Dad never owned a ratchet strap. And I didn’t know about them till I started working as a stagehand because everything there is ratchet straps.
And it seems like those really are the only way you should be securing something in a truck or trailer or securing it. Not rope, not bungee cords. Ratchet straps.
Dad had two long pieces of rope; they were probably 100 feet long. One was about a half inch diameter and there was another one that was maybe three-quarter inch diameter, and I think it was the old rope that used to go up through the hay mow to pull the bundle of hay up into the barn. They always hung in the shed. Seems like he was always using rope for something. This was the old sisal rope. The thicker one was worn smooth and probably didn’t really have much strength left in it.
And now, I very rarely use a piece of rope. At the college I’ve got some polyester rope, every now and then I have to move light fixtures from the cat walks either, up or down to the stage, and I use rope for that. Sometimes when the physics kids are in and they wanna hang a bowling ball as one of their demonstrations of The Conservation of Energy, I tie a rope around a piece of steel 40 feet in the air. But I don’t remember the last time I used a piece of rope at home. Twine, that’s a different story. Just bought two more bales of twine for the baler, and I am often cutting a length of twine to tie up something.
I have an assortment of rachet straps. Some have flat hooks on the end, some have regular hooks, some are 1” wide and 10’ long. Some are 2” wide, and 20’ long. Learning how to tie up the loose end is another skill I’m still working on.
On Thursday I took the trailer to Plainview to pick up some 12’ tall pallet racking. The guy helping me load it also helped me strap it down and he did the ‘fold and tie’ with the slack. I haven’t perfected that one yet, so I did the ‘Roll and loop’ method, which takes longer.
Luna is not a good rider, yet she can’t stand missing a ride. I had time to take a side trip to Theilman, MN, which I remembered being too once before, but I didn’t remember it being in the driftless area. It was a great drive and a fun way to use up 20 minutes.
For some reason, Luna sat nicely in the backseat a few times. It was odd.
Crops are all planted, and I noticed the first soybeans I planted are just starting to emerge. We got a nice 1” rain on Tuesday; slow, all day, light rain. Just perfect. On Monday I took the old plow over to that field of grass. Of the two fields, one was heavy soil, and more wet than I would have expected, and it didn’t work up well.
In proper conditions, the dirt would have ‘spread’ more as it turned over and you end up with a nice smooth field bed. I think there’s a reason this field was taken out of production 20+ years ago and put into a ‘conservation’ program. But the new owners think this would be a great food plot for deer hunting. Well, there’s a lot more deer around than there was 20 years ago, and if I ever get it planted, it will make a good food plot. Seems like every generation must relearn some things. Good or bad.
I’m done at the college, and I guess I’m on summer vacation.
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR PARENTS THAT YOU DO DIFFERENT? OR NOT?
If you noticed that I didn’t have a presence on the Trail on Saturday, it’s because it was stump removal day. The tree itself had all been cut down by Friday evening so Saturday was all about the stump.
We had a couple of offers to help us yank the stump out with a truck (thank you, tim and my neighbor Don) but with my front yard garden flourishing this year and some of the perennials starting to bloom, YA and I didn’t want to risk trashing those; hence the decision to utilize the “dig to China” method of stump removal.
You ever have one of those times when you’ve taken something on and as you’re working on it you start to question your sanity? The first couple of hours went fine – the beginning of the work and you’re still full of optimism and energy. By lunchtime, we were lagging a bit so we took a break and ate sandwiches on the front steps. I will admit that I did google “stump removal” before we got back to business.
By 2 p.m., I was seriously thinking about having myself committed. We’d been digging down around the stump for hours, cutting roots whenever we came upon them and even with both of us with our backs to the house and pushing vigorously, the stump wasn’t moving at all. At this point, my mantra was “We can do this because we’ve done it before” – a little like Harry Potter in Prisoner of Azkaban – since I had been part of the stump removal team when my wasband and I took down a tree when we first bought the house. See:
So YA and I just kept digging; by this point we were more excavating than digging as we were trying to get under as much of the root system as possible. I really did say to myself “we’ve done this before” repeatedly.
Suddenly at 3:15, when we shoved it, it moved. So we shoved a little harder, then there was a good sized “cracking” sound. At this point I shoved and YA got underneath with the chainsaw and finished off the last root holding it and voila! At 3:20 the stump was out. It was a little stunning since it seemed like we’d be digging forever and then suddenly we were done. We rolled the stump down to the boulevard and since we are both good at cleaning as we go, we only had to put all the various tools back on the porch. You can’t really tell from the photo but I was just about the dirtiest I’ve ever been from a yardwork project – maybe even dirtier than when tim and I sandblasted to porch. I had to take a scrub brush and the hose to myself in the backyard before I could even go in the house. Then it was a shower with another scrub brush and a LOT of body wash.
We finished up the work on Sunday – digging up the area and leveling it out. We did find the black edging that I put down decades ago as well as the various layers of black tarp that truly did not do anything about weeds. Now we have two pretty little Dwarf Globe Blue Spruce planted that will not grow above the window level and should fill the space nicely. To make it look a little prettier for now, we also put in a few hostas as a minimal border. I told YA as we were inspecting our handiwork yesterday that I was never, ever going to do that job again.
Ever.
Do you have any mantras that have been useful in your life?
I was at home yesterday morning making a peach crumble preparatory to going into work, when Husband phoned from the office asking if I wanted to go to Taylor, a little town about 15 miles east of us to get four cabbage plants. I said I would. They had set the plants aside for us.
I started some Alcosa savoy cabbage from seed several weeks ago. We have grown them in the past and they are a lovely cabbage. We usually start seeds under our grow lights in the basement. For a variety of reasons we had the pots in a sunny window upstairs instead. The seeds germinated beautifully, but didn’t get all the light they needed and got too leggy. Many of them got bent or broken off. I planned to grow six cabbages. I ended up with three barely viable tiny plants and planted them on Tuesday. I think they will make it. They look much better now that they are deeply planted. We even have some nifty chicken wire cloches to protect them from bunnies. We had some lovely rain in the afternoon that really helped.
Husband has been worried and fussing over the possibility that we might not have our own garden savoy cabbage. None of the grocery stores here sell it, and none of the greenhouses sell the plants. He says we have a minestrone garden, as opposed to a salsa garden, and need savoy cabbage. I told him I found a place that will send us savoy cabbages in the fall, but he continued with the anxiety about the cabbage plants. When he phoned to say that Taylor Nursery had set aside a red cabbage and three regular green cabbage plants he would be content with, I agreed to go to ease his cabbage anxiety. He is excited to make coleslaw and borscht from these very vigorous plants. I just want the fussing to stop. I just hope he doesn’t get all fussed up about the collard green seeds he plans to plant. I am so happy he isn’t planting kohlrabi.
What is your favorite veggie in the cabbage family? Would you rather have a minestrone garden, a borscht garden, or a salsa garden?
We live-stream Classical MPR from our computer in the study. I drilled a hole in the wall that separates the study from the living room so that we could put a speaker wire through the wall and have a speaker play music into the living room. It works swell, although the volume control is on another speaker on top of the piano in the study. Sometimes it isn’t loud enough. My ears have been pretty plugged up due to spring pollens, and it is sometimes hard for me to hear well.
The other day I was sitting in the living room listening to MPR play a Beethoven Piano Concerto. The volume wasn’t as loud as I would have liked, but I was too lazy to get up and go into the study to crank it up. It was a lovely performance, and I was surprised to hear the announcer say at the end of the recording that the pianist was Elton John. Well, of course Sir Elton can play the piano, but I never heard that he had entered the classical sphere. I double checked the play list and saw that the pianist was actually a Chinese pianist named Huang Tiange. I don’t know how I translated that name into Elton John, but I think it was the way the last name was pronounced. I had a good giggle thinking about all the other absurd and wonderful combinations of people and activities I could think of, like Mick Jagger’s preschool curriculum. I need to take more Sudafed so this doesn’t happen again!
What have you misheard, and when have you been misunderstood? What are some weird and wonderful people and activity pairings that you can think up?
We hardly ever buy potato chips or corn chips. I like snacking on fresh fruit and cheese. Husband prefers to have olives, figs, and dried apricots for an afternoon nosh. He also loves saltine crackers and nuts, though, the crunchier the better. I can’t stand hearing his crunching. To be fair it really is my issue, since I can’t stand hearing anyone crunch on things.
I occasionally need some graham crackers for pie and cheesecake crusts. I have to hide them after I buy them, as Husband will eat them all before I bake. Most crackers I can take or leave, but I recently got some extremely thin sea salt and herb crackers from this Italian import place we like to order from. They are called Pane Carasu, and are from Sardinia. You can see them in the header photo. They are really quite delicious. I can even tolerate Husband’s crunching on them.
The new crackers have inspired Husband to get out our Nordic Baking Book and choose some crisp bread recipes to try. He also plans to make crackers from his sourdough discard. I am sure they all will be noisier to eat than the Sardinian crackers. I will just go into another room when he eats them.
What are your favorite snacks? What noises irritate you? What do you imagine it is like in Sardinia?
Several of the most remote and sparsely populated counties in ND were included on a list of municipalities across the country alleged to be “Sanctuary Jurisdictions” by the Department of Homeland Security.
This came as quite a surprise to the generally law abiding citizens of Slope, Billings, and Golden Valley counties. Those counties are just to the south and west of where we live. Slope County has a whopping 703 residents, and boasts the second least populated county seat in the country with a population of 24. (Brewster, NE beat them out with a population of 17.) There is no police department in Amidon, the county seat. There is a police car parked on the side of the road on the main highway into town, with a mannequin seated in the driver’s seat. It always reminds me to slow down when I drive through! I guess that is how all those immigrants are sneaking to and fro.
Golden Valley County has 1700 residents. Billings County has 1000. These are mainly ranchers and farmers. Townspeople are the service providers for the agricultural sector. Some of the towns don’t even have schools. I am sure they are all scratching their heads wondering where all the immigrants are hiding. The sheriffs of all three counties are demanding apologies and retractions from Kristi Noem. She used to spend a lot of time in Pierre as SD governor, and you would think she would know something about southwest ND. I hope Clyde can comment today, as his daughter was the pastor for several churches in those counties and he is familiar with the places.
What laws are you most likely to bend? Do you obey the speed limit?What is the population of your county seat?
I heard on the radio the band ‘The Who’ is beginning their farewell tour. I thought back in 2016 they were on their farewell tour. Which isn’t anything new, the Rolling Stones are still out there and how many farewell tours have they had. Anyone seen the Stones?
I saw The Who in 1982. I think it was my second big rock concert and as an 18-year-old, driving with a State Farm atlas in my lap from Rochester up to the big city of St Paul and the St Paul Civic Center, it was a pretty big deal. I’m sure my folks were concerned sending me out into the world like that, even if it was just two hours away. I know I’ve told the story before but I like to brag about it so I’m gonna say it again: My first rock concert was Queen 1982, when Freddie Mercury was still strutting around the stage. My brother says Queen was the warm-up act when he saw the band Chicago right after Bohemian Rhapsody had come out.
So I set the bar quite high to have Queen and The Who as my first rock concerts. I know I have programs from them both, might even have tickets stubs in a drawer somewhere. And that’s when you had to go to a ticket office on the second floor of Dayton‘s department store. I feel like I found out about both of these fairly late so it’s not like I was waiting at the doors the first day tickets went on sale and a bunch of us rushed to the window. And then I found out you could call in to get tickets, so you called, getting the busy signal, hung up, and called again. In 1986 when tickets for Pink Floyd went on sale at the old Metrodome, I was home sick in bed and Kelly, while at work, was able to call and get tickets for us.
I digress.
The Who on a farewell tour.
They were well past their prime in 2016 and I decided I was not gonna remember that concert, I was gonna remember the 1982 concert.
You probably all remember the rock opera Tommy, and a really bad movie that was made after that. I always liked the Quadrophenia album better. Pete Townshend, the arm-windmilling guitarist, is married to Rachel Fuller. A singer-songwriter, musician, and composer. Together they created an orchestral version of Quadrophenia and I recently saw it’s a ballet in England. I enjoy the sound of an orchestra behind a rock band. And the climactic final song of Quadrophenia called “Love Reign O’er Me“ sung by a full throated, powerful opera singer like Alfie Boe, is really something.
How long should you keep doing something?
I am sure they don’t need the money, and if you love it, and you are able to do it, I guess you should keep doing it, right? I mean should I quit farming because I’m “too old“? But I’m not farming in front of tens of thousands and charging an obscene amount of money for people to come see me struggle to climb up into the tractor and make crooked rows across the field.
But I’ll be skipping this tour.
Farming.
I’ve finished all my spring work. Although I am remembering now I’m supposed to plow up a couple fields and plant some corn as deer food plots for a neighbor. I kind of forgot about that. But the important fields, the ones that I’m trying to make money and survive on, they’re done.
I was hoping to finish soybeans last Tuesday, which is still two weeks later than all the neighbors, but… life.
It rained just enough on Tuesday that I had to quit. Once the dirt starts getting sticky, which only takes a couple of hundreds, it sticks to the gauge wheels on the planter. The gauge wheels control the depth of the seed, and sticking an extra half inch of dirt on the wheels changes the planting depth, and you’ve heard me say before, the depth is pretty critical. I quit for a little while.
I spent most of Monday out working up all the ground, me and Bailey, and was a little bit sad to be done. Only because I enjoy my time in the tractor. The next morning I realized I had forgotten a field. So while it was a little bit too sticky to plant, it wasn’t too muddy to do fieldwork. Bailey and I got another hour of tractor time.
And then later on Tuesday I was able to go out again and I planted until 9:30 PM when it was again raining lightly and I was out of seed. I finished planting Friday afternoon. I started going over the fields with the drag, just like I did with the Oats, but the point of this is to smooth it out so that the combine header, when harvesting the soybeans, can ride as low as possible. Because soybeans pods will grow very low to the ground.
I had my last event at the college on Thursday evening. Tuesday will be my last day and I can haul out the garbage, and lock up cabinets, and take the rest of the summer off. So to speak.
The question was asked why my eggs are different colors. It’s different breeds. Some breeds of chickens lay white eggs, some brown eggs, and then there’s a couple breeds that lay the green eggs. I have Araucana’s.
Trail Baboon 