2025, Business, Farming Update, History, Music, Nature, Travel

THINGS ARE DROPPING

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This weeks farm report from Ben

I’ve noticed some soybean fields just starting to turn yellow. Kelly says the barn swallows are grouping up. And acorns are dropping. All that probably means something. 

Crop prices keep dropping, too. Due to predictions of good yields across the corn belt. Locally, corn is under $3.50 / bushel, and soybeans are under $10. That’s a tough place to be. My direct costs to grow and harvest corn is roughly $400 / acre, and for soybeans about $300 / acre. Not knowing how the fall will shape up, or what drying costs might be, we’re speculating on final yields and prices. Making conservative estimates of $3.00 / bu final price means I’d need 133 bu / acre to cover costs. And that should be doable. Optimistically I’d have 180 bu / acre. That would leave me $273/ acre to cover repair costs, fuel, interest, crop insurance, pay off the loans, make payments on long term debt, ect. Soybeans work out the same way, just different numbers. Neither is in the bin yet, so we’ll see. This is why I have a few other jobs. To support my farming hobby. (eye roll)

 Last weekend Padawan and I did a bunch of stuff. We packed the wheel bearings with grease and took the other wheel hub apart to replace those bearings. Both rear tires were wore out; one was on borrowed time. A few days later I went to Appel Service in Millville MN with the two wagon tires, a tire from the plow I had replace this spring, and another tire I found in the shop that I haven’t remember what it’s for yet. I’ve talked about Appels before; we’ve been taking tires to them for years and years. It’s about 25 minutes away. Great guys and a great drive. 

I forgot to buy the dust seals for the axel hubs, which I picked up on Monday, but I had padawan reinstall the hub, even without the dust seal, just so he could see how you tighten it up and put the cotter pin in it. He had no idea what a cotter pin was. If you don’t know, it’s a split pin, length varies:  length and the diameter as needed, and once through the hole, you bend the sides to prevent whatever you’re holding from coming off. I have some pins that are 1/4” diameter and 2” long and some tiny ones 1/2” long and 1/32″ diameter.

Then we drained the coolant and he replaced the radiator hose on the old John Deere 630. I had him pull the carburetor off. He is too young to know what a carburetor does.   We changed the oil, oil filter, and the air filters on the big tractor, the 8200. It has two air filters; The biggest is about the size of a 5 gallon bucket. He was really impressed with that. Then a smaller inner air cleaner. He went home and cleaned up, and came back out with his girlfriend, who chased down her pet chicken, and they stayed for pizza with us.  The kids, not the chicken. 

I have been working on the 630 exhaust manifold. Got the bolts out and the manifold off! Heated it with a torch, just like my friend Tim J. said. Would you believe there’s another Tim J?? He’s not too much like this tim j. but that one knows a lot about old tractors. The two bolts that were broken off, I welded nuts on the top (to make a bolt head again) and they came right out! I couldn’t believe it!

Heating the castings to break the rust
Nuts welded on the broken bolts
Uh, this looks broken…

Took me a while to find my welding stuff as I haven’t needed that in the new shop yet. the old welder on the bottom, newer welder on the top. That old welder, maybe from the 1950’s? has taught several of us how to weld. Dad taught me and some of my nephews. The oxy-acetelyne torch to the right, I’ve had since 1982. I learned how to use a gas welder in high school shop class and mom and dad bought me this one for my 18th birthday.

WELDERS

Friday morning I went to pick up a really nice long reach 5 ton hydraulic floor jack that I got at an auction.

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Then to Millville to pick up the 4 tires I had dropped off earlier in the week.  I took a random gravel road, 592ndstreet out of Millville, and had a great drive, all by myself, following the Zumbro river to the North. It was a great drive! I wasn’t sure where I was, and there was no cell signal down there along the hills, but eventually the road looped back to the south and I found my way home.

MEANDERING

The truck seemed to be riding rougher than it had earlier and the tread was separating on a front tire. Thankfully it got me home, and I jacked it up (using the new jack) and went back to Millville with the truck tires. Another great drive with no one else on the  road, Just the way I like it. It was about 4:15 on Friday when I got there and the shop was pretty quiet. Paul and Dan took the tires off, Jim got me two new ones, and they mounted and balanced them, and I was headed back home in about 20 minutes. I sure do like going to Millville. Good thing I’m employed again since I spent $1200 on tires Friday. 

My brother came out and we took 100 bales of straw off the wagon with the broken front end, and put them on another wagon. Then I put 20 bales in the truck for delivery on Saturday, and the last 52 bales on a trailer. Perhaps Saturday I’ll get the front wheels off and see what’s really broken on there. Right after I put the two new tires back on the other wagon. 

And I pulled out a disk I’m not using anymore to take to an auction next week. I pulled a bunch of junk out of the trees last week. Two old flare boxes, an old elevator, an old digger, and a 24’ bale elevator that I will also take to the auction.  There wasn’t trees growing through them when I parked them there… that’s how long some of it has been there. Time to go.

Music this week is Nina Simone. I recently heard ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” 

WHAT MUSIC IS GIVING YOU A LIFT THIS WEEK?

MOST COMMON FRIEND NAME IN YOUR PHONE?

2025, Family, home, pets, Uncategorized

Breaking Good Habits

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My mother had a sign on the kitchen wall when I was growing up that said “My house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy”. That has always been my attitude, too, as we tried to find a balance between clean and clutter.

Since July 2, the day our house went on the market, our motto has been “My house is spotlessly clean to try to impress prospective buyers, and happiness is secondary”.

Boy, is it a pain to keep the house clean and uncluttered so that at a moment ‘s notice we can be out the door with the dog so an agent can show the house. I have become really insistent to make the bed pillows uniformly plumped and stacked, the bath towels evenly folded and hung, and the kitchen counters and floor spotless and gleaming. There are no newspapers, magazines, or mail left out. I dust twice a week. All the dog toys are put in the toy bin instead of lying about. I wash the panes in the bay window regularly to remove dog nose prints. Husband keeps all the waste baskets empty, keeps the kitchen sink clear of dishes, and keeps his bathroom clean and tidy. We both have been weeding the gardens and rolling up the hoses as needed. We are exhausted!

I hope this level of cleaning doesn’t become too ingrained, so that I feel as though I am being remiss if I don’t keep this standard of neatness once we move to our new house. This is one habit I want to break.

What habits have you tried to change? How long would it take you to prepare for a showing of your current abode?

2025, Health, Medicine, Technology

Keeping Occupied

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The orthopedic folks thought that an MRI would be a good idea after my knee injury.   Was expecting to have to wait longer but they do this stuff on the weekends these days, so I was able to score an early Sunday morning appointment.   

I had an MRI years ago so knew a little bit of what to expect.  The last time I was given anti-anxiety meds as I was a bit worried about claustrophobia.  I also made the decision to run through one of my favorite movies in my head, scene by scene; I got almost to the end.  But it kept my brain occupied so I figured I’d do that same this time, although I skipped the meds since it was my knee.

The technician gave me headphones and they were quite loud and I was surprised to realize that when I play the movie in my head, the soundtrack is a big part of that.  I had to consciously block out the headphone music.  I even thought about asking her to remove them but I didn’t want to stop the process or have to start over.

Luckily it was all done in about 15 minutes.  I hardly got through the first part of the movie in my mind – Danielle had just dropped John Robie off at the beach club at Cannes!  Sometimes I worry about how many times I’ve watched “To Catch a Thief” but it sure comes in handy every now and then.

Do you have a favorite Cary Grant movie?  Grace Kelly?

2025, education, Family, Kids, Uncategorized

Welcome Back!

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Today is the first day of school here in our town’s public schools, the parochial schools, and all the schools in the neighboring smaller communities. It is, if course, one of the hottest days we will have all summer.

I believe that all the school buildings in our public schools here have air conditioning. We certainly didn’t have it when I was in elementary school or high school. The public schools here didn’t have it until after our children started school in the 1990’s. I don’t remember being really hot in my unairconditioned classrooms. Perhaps we were just more accustomed to functioning in hot buildings.

What I do remember about the first day of school is the excitement I felt the night before and being unable to sleep. My favorite elementary teacher was Mrs. Remme, Grade 3, who was a really energetic woman who loved bringing exciting things like butterfly cocoons into the classroom and having us watch them hatch. She also could have cared less about neat handwriting, which was a good thing for me since no matter how hard I tried, I could never write neatly in cursive.

My least favorite elementary teacher was Mrs. Peterson, Grade 4, a bitter woman who complained how she was bilked by door to door bible salesmen after her husband died. She also talked a lot about cooking lentils, and how it was a sad thing that we didn’t have more lentils in our diets. She went on to be an elementary principal in Iowa somewhere.

Who were your favorite/least favorite elementary teachers? How is your handwriting these days? Memories of first days of school?

2025, Food, gardening, Uncategorized

Pranking

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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?

2025, Food, home, Uncategorized

Stocking Up

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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?

2025, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, gardening, Music, Nature, pets, Science, Songs, Technology, Uncategorized, Weather

What Mystery is this?

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The weekend farm report from Ben


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.
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The new waterway.
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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!
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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. 


SIMPLE CONVIENCES YOU APPRECIATE? 

AND MUSIC-

FAVORITE COVER SONG?
 
 

2025, Family, History, Uncategorized, work

They Don’t Make That Model Anymore

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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?

2025, books, Fantasy, Media, Movies, TV

All For One….

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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?

2025, Family, home, Technology, Uncategorized

Photo Finish

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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?