The former owner of our home runs a satellite communication company that provides TV and entertainment systems to health care/senior living facilities and hotels nationwide. His office is right on Main Street. He and his wife insisted that the three televisions in the home had to stay when we bought the house. They are hard-wired into a myriad of cables that run through the walls and from upstairs to downstairs and out of doors. They also left us several DVD players and stereo receivers.
There are six speakers upstairs in the ceilings of the kitchen, dining room, and living room, along with three speakers in the garage, and two attached to the house in the backyard. The ceilings in the basement bedrooms and family room also have speakers, and another huge room in the basement has several speakers in the ceiling and walls.
The header photo shows the main controls for this sound system. It resides in a cupboard in the kitchen. One can choose what part of the house you want to have sound from the radio, TV, DVD. CD, computer, or any other media player you can figure out how to hook up to the main system. The former owner graciously came over last week to show me how to operate the system. I gave him a package of lefse. It is complicated. I am a successful trial and error button pusher, so I think I will figure it out. eventually.
When did you get your first sound system? What did it consist of? What music do you think we should play on the outdoor speakers?
Sigh. (In through the nose, out through the mouth)…………….
(There was several sighs)
I hope everyone had another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat.* We had ham, mashed potatoes simmered in milk rather than boiled in water, cheesy biscuits (Gluten free. From a box. Red Lobster brand and very yummy.) and stuffing. I basted the ham with Dr. Pepper, then used a honey- whiskey-jam-glaze. Later, cleaning up, I almost made it to the garage door with the foil pan of ham juice and Dr. Pepper before I dropped it. The dogs enjoyed it. I threw out the rug.
Corn is out. All of it. They finished the last field on Wednesday. They got most of it out on Monday. Monday night I was able to chisel plow some of it. Tuesday it rained all afternoon. I kinda thought I’d have Wednesday to work up more corn ground, and then the weather people started predicting snow and I revised my work schedule. I was busy all day Tuesday, but decided to skip a rehearsal on Tuesday night and stay home to farm. And then it kept raining. And raining. Not a lot, maybe half an inch? But I knew I had to try. I worked until midnight chisel plowing. And I got everything that was harvested worked up. Yeah, it was a little muddy. But there’s enough corn trash (the stalks and leaves) that traction wasn’t really an issue, I just left a lot of mud on the road. Which is now frozen and kinda lumpy. It would have been nice to get the tractor and chisel plow washed off before winter really set in, but oh well. A good rain shower in April will do that too I guess.
“A bad job of tillage in the fall is better than a good job of tillage in the spring”.
That phrase has a lot of factors involved. In the spring, if it’s a good day for planting and I’m waiting for it to be dry enough to chisel plow, that puts me further behind for planting. It’s all a race against the clock and the weather. The sooner planted, the better. I’m very glad to have gotten done what I did. It was just starting to snow as I was working up the last field.
Yields seem to be pretty good. Test weight was good at 57 or 58 pounds per bushel. Corn price is based on 56 pounds per bushel, so anything over that is a bonus. Takes less corn to make a bushel, so therefore better test weight means more bushels. Moisture of the grain was 17-18%. It needs to be dried to 15% for storage, so there’s a fee for the elevator to dry it. Plus, shrinkage. Those extra points are water in the kernel, meaning a tiny bit of swelling. Meaning the elevator docks the total bushels (gross weight divided by the test weight) by some factor that they have devised, to give me ‘dry bushels’ meaning less bushels for me. (Any margin goes to the elevator.) For example, I had a load of corn with a gross weight of 84,800 pounds, truck and grain, at 17% moisture and 58 test weight. (When the truck pulls up to the elevator, there is a tube that plunges down into the corn, and sucks up a sample into the office, and they test it for moisture and weight. That’s where those figures come from.) Once the tare weight is determined when the truck is empty, the balance is the grain. In this case, 58,980 lbs. Divided by 56 (bushel weight) gives us 1053 bushels gross. Minus the moisture shrinkage gives us dry bushels of 1024. Shrinkage. This is why some farmers store their corn at home. They can dry it cheaper, they’re not paying for the shrinkage, and they can perhaps sell the corn at a better price later. Course there’s the cost of the bins and trucks and the entire operation, and managing the corn to keep it in good shape in the bin. And I simply don’t raise enough corn to make a pay back. I know, too much information again.
December 1, most of my loans will change their interest rates. So I used an operating loan to pay off all the fertilizer and chemical loans from spring and summer, and I’ll use the corn check, once I get it, to pay back the operating loan.
We’re gonna be a little bit short this year. A few thousand dollars. Not the end of the world.
The deer! East of our buildings is Silver Creek, and acres of woods and pasture. It’s a deer haven. I came over a hill and there had to be 35 deer standing there. Later that night, coming down the driveway, I bet I saw 100 sets of eyes. Deer all over! Stupid deer.
We only got a dusting of snow that night. Perhaps more coming Saturday? Every guess is different so we’ll just wait and see. I did plug in the water tank heater, the chickens heated water bucket, the heat tape on a water pipe in the barn, and turned on the ‘block heater’ in the house. I moved a pile of dirt that was inside the shed, left over from the concrete work. Added dirt to the edges of the new concrete, and added rock to the edge of the front walkway concrete. Got the snow blower in the shed and the rear blade on the tractor. Moved some other stuff from outside inside. And installed driveway markers late Friday. Kelly and I did the snowfence last weekend. Typically we do it the weekend after thanksgiving. We decided last week seemed like better weather. Good choice.
I also mixed up the bags of cement last Saturday and got that done. tim, it’s all the same color.
We’ve been watching ‘The Landman’ on TV, and it’s based on a podcast called ‘Boomtown’. So I listened to that in the tractor while doing fieldwork. It was a very interesting look at the oil boom- and busts- of the Permian oil fields in Texas. Me and Bailey had quality tractor time. She wasn’t interested in the podcast.
In the last month, I finished the college show, a Mantoville show, a Rep show, some outside rentals at the college, and the crops. No wonder I can’t keep track of what day it is. I knew I just had to get through this week. I don’t have ANY EVENING EVENTS this coming week. Next week will be the holiday concerts at the College. A couple afternoon rehearsals, and two evening performances. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
Everytime I go into the shop I think how wonderful this is and how lucky I am.
Remember the chicken that hatched some chicks a month ago? They’re bigger than pigeons now and with the weather changing, decided it was time to let them out of the pen.
The first night momma brought them all into the garage.
There are seven chicks. Two are on the floor or something. It was a whole big thing trying to get them all up on the garbage can. Perching takes practice.
After that, mom ditched them all. She’s still spending the nights in the garage, kids are left where ever she leaves them. I try to get all seven of them together at night, but it just depends.
There’s still some chickens laying eggs out in the pole barn. I would appreciate it if they’d lay them closer to the ground rather than 12′ up.
Does anyone here read the Smithsonian Magazine?
I really enjoy it; it always has such interesting articles. The November issue has an article on the man who created and started the Hardy Boys books. I think I read them? I don’t remember them making a big impact, and I’m not sure if it was those or we had Nancy Drew. As usual, I expect mom picked them up used from someone, so we only had a few.
*Thank you Arlo Guthrie
Finishing corn
A harvested field!
The last field. Done.
Snow in the furrows of a plowed field makes you feel good about your life choices.
We have been in our new home for almost a month, and find the community and people friendly and accommodating. We spent the last almost 40 years living among ranchers, oil workers, and people descended from a Black Sea immigrants. The latter are somewhat short and Roman Catholic. Now we live in an area settled by Germans, Norwegians, and Dutch immigrants. There are lots of Lutherans and Dutch Refomed here. There are lots of tall, blondes here. The Lutheran Church we attend and that I grew up in was founded by Norwegians. It was surprising when we attended last week to hear the loud and intune singing from the whole congregation. The local high school here had to start a new men’s choir this fall since so many of the boys wanted to sing. This is a very musical community.
Husband and I are amazed how often the city puts out street sweepers and machines that suck up piles of leaves that people have raked into the street. We usually just ignore the leaves. Husband felt compelled to rake since everyone else was doing it almost every day. He blames the Dutch influence for this street cleaning obsession.
Husband was excited to find Aquavit in the local liquor store. It was impossible to find out west. He went full Scandanavian by getting lingonberries and pickled herring, both easy to find in the stores here. We also have a local brewery that makes a German type beer that Husband likes. We rolled and fried 75 sheets of lefse last Saturday, so we are ready for a SW Minnesota winter. I draw the line at lutefisk.
How are you influenced by your neighbors? How comfortable are you singing aloud in church or other public settings?
Thanksgiving will always be a day during which I stop at least once to think about Steve, who we lost in 2021. Steve was the first baboon that I met in person; I’ve read all his books; I remember his horror when he realized he had fed me something with chicken stock. I still miss him on the trail. Here is another of his posts, one of my favorites from April of 2021.
A friend and I used to discuss troublesome issues in our lives. We called them our “dragons.” Dragons are problems can only be dispatched with exceptional effort and resolve.
Few problems qualify as dragons, which is good. Most of us handle routine problems with routine efficiency. Alas, some problems are a lot nastier or complicated than others. Some of us have anxieties that prevent us from addressing certain issues forthrightly. Sometimes problems become entangled with side issues. Throw some procrastination into the mix, and what could have been a baby problem might grow up and begin belching enough fire to qualify as a dragon.
Examples? You don’t gain street cred as a dragon killer for beating a head cold, but beating cancer will earn you respect with anyone. Overcoming any addiction would surely count. The friend referenced in my opening paragraph slew a dangerous dragon when she escaped a marriage that was destroying her soul. From what I’ve read, the nastiest dragon Barack Obama faced down in his two terms as president might have been nicotine.
My most recent dragon should have been no big deal. Last September my computer emitted an electronic scream, seized and died. I had expected that. Computers typically remain healthy and functional for five to ten years. My fifteen-year-old computer was clearly living on borrowed time. I had prepared by backing my data files, although I could not back my applications.
I bought a replacement computer loaded with Microsoft’s Office, a choice forced on me because that is the only way I could get Word, the word processing app I’ve used for thirty-four years. Office costs $70. That is probably reasonable, although it irked me to pay for a suite of ten programs just to get the one program I use. But Microsoft enjoys something like a total monopoly on basic Windows business software.
Microsoft inserts a feature in the Office software that causes it to shut down unless users can prove that they have paid for it. To validate my purchase, I peeled back a piece of tape that covered the confirmation code. The tape ripped the cardboard beneath it, destroying the middle six numbers of a code of about twenty numbers. As it was designed to do, my software soon froze rock solid. I could not create new documents nor could I edit the many files already on my hard drive. Every time I turned on my computer, a niggling message from Microsoft reminded me I had not validated the purchase. As if I could forget!
Worse, there was no way I could contact Microsoft. The company recently eliminated its customer service office. Microsoft now directs customers with problems to some internet data banks that supposedly answer all questions. Of course, the data banks say nothing about what to do when the company’s own security tape destroys a validation number. I learned there are many businesses claiming they can help customers struggling with Microsoft apps. Those businesses didn’t want to talk to me until I shared my contact information or subscribed to their services. Then I’d learn again that my particular problem could not be resolved by anyone outside Microsoft. And nobody inside Microsoft would speak to me.
Over a span of seven months I spent many wretched hours dialing numbers and writing email pleas for help. The shop that sold the computer to me clucked sympathetically but told me to take my complaints to Microsoft. Members of a group called “the Microsoft community” kept telling me it would be easy to fix this issue, but none of them could provide a phone number that worked. While I could have purchased the software again for another $70, the rank injustice of that was more than I could bear.
I finally learned about a set of business applications called LibreOffice, the top-rated free alternative to Office. It is open source software, free to everyone. But people who put their faith in free software often get burned, for “free” often just means that the true price is hidden. I worried that this software would not allow me to edit all the documents I’ve created over thirty-four years of writing with Word. And—silly, silly me—I kept hoping I could find one friendly person in Microsoft who would thaw my frozen software. So I dithered for weeks.
Last week I took a deep breath and downloaded LibreOffice. It loaded like a dream. LibreOffice’s word processor, “Writer,” is friendly and intuitive. Ironically, I like it quite a bit better than Word. With it I can edit all my old Word documents, and I used the new software to write this post.
That particular dragon is dead, kaput and forever out of my life. Other dragons await my attention, malodorous tendrils of smoke curling up out their nostrils. I did not triumph over Microsoft, as that smug firm never even knew it had a conflict with me. Still, I celebrate the way this all ended. When we slay a dragon, the most significant accomplishment might be that we, however briefly, have triumphed over our personal limitations.
Any dragons in your past that you wouldn’t mind mentioning?
As you all know, a lot of things strike my interest where books are concerned – recommendations from friends, stories online and titles. Give me a good title and I’m all in. At least to start with.
I see a lot of books on Facebook these days. And as if they are tempting me personally, there are a lot of catchy titles. Here are a few that I have on hold at the library right now that I chose simply from their titles: The Dead Husband Cookbook, Inside of a Dog, Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests, And Then We Hit a Rock. Based on my luck with these kinds of picks, most of these probably won’t get finished. And Then There Were Scones only made it about three chapters. Awful.
So I approached Murder at Gull’s Nest by Jess Kidd with a bit of trepidation. I think if the library started a section of Cozy Mysteries, it would probably be shelved there and to be fair, it did tick off all the cozy “boxes”, but not in a way that is run-of-the-mill way. The characters are real, the story is compelling and importantly I wasn’t able to figure out the murdered until almost 75% of the way through the book.
And even more importantly, the language was fabulous; I do love a good turn of phrase:
“Outside, the sky is brightening, which is of no concern to the room, daylight being dissuaded by heavy velvet drapes and the somber yews that crowd about the window.”
“Nora steps into a cheap café and orders a pot of tea. When it arrives it is what she hoped for: decent and strong with a skin a mouse could skate on.”
“Humans can’t tolerate emptiness for long… if I’m empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I’m not alone!”
“Jesus, who would want to read about a failed old nun, with her stipend, and second-hand shoes.”
So I’m recommending this book to everybody and have requested a couple more Jess Kidd titles
Have you read something recently just because it had a good title? How did that turn out?
On apple picking day, as we put our peck and a half on the scale at the paying shed, it just didn’t look like enough apples. It’s the amount we’ve gotten for the last couple of years; we looked at each other and had the same thought – we need more. Since I was already hobbling around with the big brace on my knee, we bought a pre-picked bag and added it to the scale. Three quarters were Connell Red (my favorites) and the last quarter were Honeycrisp (YA’s favorite). I do like the Honeycrisp and I wish it were my favorite since it’s a home-grown Minnesota apple. But the Connell Red was introduced in Wisconsin and is said to be the “offspring” of the Fireside which IS a Minnesota apple. Close enough for me.
Apple crisp is a staple for us during the fall. My recipe is based one I found in the Apple Cookbook that I bought decades ago from the Afton Apple Orchard. We add cinnamon to the apples and we use two times the topping that the recipe calls for. In fact, I usually make several batches of the topping all at once and put the extra in the fridge. That way making an apple crisp is really just a matter of cutting up the apples.
Our other favorite is an Apple Manchego Salad. I had this at the Loring Café years ago and chef was gracious enough to give me the recipe. (I’ve since found the exact same recipe online so I don’t think I’m as special as the chef made me feel at the time!) It’s pretty simple. 3-4 apples (depending on size) cut into matchsticks. Then 4-5 ounces of manchego cheese, also cut into matchsticks. I use the mandoline for this, making it quite a fast salad but you can certainly chop by hand if you need. About ¼ cup of chives, chopped fairly finely. A splash of lemon juice (no more than a teaspoon), about three tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper. Done. I made this salad at least three times this fall and despite it saying “8 servings”, YA and I have made it disappear in less than 24 hours each time. Then there are the hand pies, which I think I promised I wouldn’t talk about too much. Made them twice this year.
Yesterday I decided it was time to use up the last 7 apples that have been stored on the back porch. Since I had some crisp topping left, I made an apple crisp and then with the very last two apples, I made a teeny French apple cake, using my 6” springform pan (which I never get to use enough). This is the first time I’ve tried the cake recipes – we’ll see if YA likes it – she gets back later today from her latest trip.
Of course, crisp apples with peanut butter slathered on them are the premiere snack at this time of year!
Any fall favorites that you’ll miss until next year?
At a funeral in September, the father of my deceased friend came over to talk to the rest of us from her book club. He was proud of how intelligent she had been and how much she had loved reading. He surprised us by asking us each if we had a favorite book and what character would we like to be in that book. At the time I answered A Christmas Carol, which I read every December and that I would like to be Mrs. Cratchit. She was considered a good person but wasn’t a doormat. This is my favorite quote from her “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.”
But I’ve had a couple of months and I have a couple more. I always admired Helen Burns, the little friend of Jane Eyre who dies from mistreatment at the “school”. “It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.” Good words for our current times.
While The Martian is one of my favorite books of all time, I wouldn’t want to be Mark (the main character). A little too distressing for me. I want to be Melissa Lewis, the captain of the mission, who turns around when they’re almost back to Earth when they find out that Mark is still alive. “All right team, stay in sight of each other. Let’s make NASA proud today..” Even though I’m sure she got court-martialed when they all got back home, even after saving Mark.
I’m not sure which character in Wrinkle in Time I would want to be but my favorite quote is early on in the book when Meg’s mother says “But you see, Meg, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.” My hero Neil deGrasse Tyson has said something very similar.
Do you have a character you’d like to be? Or a good quote from a book you like?
My schedule has been a little crazy lately. Next week will be better. 🙂
I hear there are places in the country where the weather on the evening news doesn’t take ten minutes. I don’t need the full ten minutes, I just want to know the 12-48 hour forecast, and the 7 or 10 day forecast, Which I know is just a guideline. Especially this time of year, when the forecast has some pretty drastic changes coming.
No, the corn still isn’t out and I don’t want to talk about it. The grain elevators are closed on the weekends now, because 99.8% of the harvest is complete. So I don’t expect anything this weekend unless they finish everything at their place and they just come in and fill up the trucks on Sunday.
I wrote a long story about the thermostat in my shop and I threw all that away and tried to make this a shorter story. A red herring was involved and suffice it to say human error played a part. Because of course it did.
I use a wifi thermostat so I can monitor it from the house. It worked last year. This year, it worked while I’m out there, but it didn’t work when I came to the house.
One day it died completely so I bought a new one. Installing that and I blew a fuse up in the heater itself. Another trip to town for an ‘E’ fuse. An E fuse? Never heard of an E fuse. Oh, it’s a ‘3’ not an ‘E’. Thank goodness I figured that out on my own and didn’t say that to the guy at the auto parts store. Then of course there was a new app and all of that rigamarole. And that night in the house and it wouldn’t connect again.
The day we poured the concrete, including the slab outside the front door, I used a side door, and a different light switch. Turns out, the outlet I have the heater plugged in to is tied into the 3 way switch for the lights. And I hooked that up myself, this wasn’t the electricians fault. Other than they didn’t know I wanted an outlet for the heater, which is why I did it myself. But how come it worked last year?? Because the heater was plugged into a wall outlet and because the electricians weren’t here until March, and I didn’t get the heater outlet installed until April. So now, when I come into the shop and turn the lights on, the thermostat works. When I leave and turn off the lights, the thermostat turns off. Well, don’t I feel like a dunce. How could I tell the thermostat was off once I left the shop?? I thought the problem was the wifi. Nope, that was the red herring. The problem was the thermostat wasn’t even ON.
I have it plugged into a regular outlet again and I can tell you, by the app, it’s 46 degree’s out there at 56% humidity.
We did get the concrete done on Tuesday. Yay! Check that off the list! A big job, and I had the easy job in the tractor hauling the cement from the truck outside, to the pad inside.
(Two reasons; the truck wouldn’t fit inside the shed, and I didn’t want him backing onto the existing concrete slab). When they poured the inside slab a couple years ago, they used a little “buggy” to haul the concrete. This was the same thing, only different.) The truck driver was great! Randy. 65 yrs old, been driving a concrete truck for 38 years. We joked before he got there, would he know we were amateurs? I told him right up front, feel to offer advice. He just picked up the bull float and got right in there helping.
Took about 2 hours to get it all dumped and leveled. I was a little bit short of product and left a bit of a gap on one end of the walkway pad. I expect to finish that with 10 bags of concrete mix I picked up.
About 6:00 PM I was able to start smoothing off the concrete with the hand trowels. (I Learned the difference between magnesium floats and steel floats. You use magnesium when you’re first leveling, and steel to do the final finish.)
It was about 8PM when I was trying to finish the big slab and smooth around the drain. The concrete was getting too firm by that point and it was a little too late to be working it. All in all, it’s not bad for the first time for a bunch of newbies. It will look better when it gets some dirt on it to cover the imperfections.
I spread out tarps and covered the outside ones with straw.
A few days later I pulled off the tarp and moved the dumpster over there. This right here was the original point of all this.
I wonder how much snow will blow in here?
My brother using the bull float on the first piece.
Working on the big slab inside the shed.
Our son helped, my brother helped, Padawan’s girlfriend helped, (Padawan was at work) and Kelly helped. They all admitted this was harder work than they imagined. And we all learned a lot. Next summer’s plan is to do another slab inside. My brother isn’t sure he’ll help again next summer. Son says he will find more younger helpers.
I’m just glad it’s done. I had a beer that night. I’ve been waiting to finish the concrete to have that beer.
We thought for sure we’d have a dog footprints in it somewhere. Or Luna was gonna drop a ball into it. We locked them in the shop at one point.
Inside slab done. Won’t drive on it for a week yet, and will get it backfilled shortly.
You haven’t seen the chickens lately. Here’s the chickens eating some left overs.
I have a new appreciation for the people doing concrete work and making it look easy.
There has been a karate school a few blocks from my house all the time I have lived here (think going on 3+ decades). I’ve really never paid attention to it at all.
Well, I got invited there to watch Marie (little girl who used to next door to me) take part in her karate class. If I had any assumptions before going, they were almost all wrong.
The karate school is woman-owned (not Japanese karate master-owned) with primarily women instructors (not Japanese karate masters). I saw a bit of three classes – the one before Marie’s, then Marie’s and then the very beginning of the class after. It was approximately 2/3 girls (not a bunch of Asian little boys). I actually only saw one Asian kid the whole night. So much for all my assumptions. To be fair, all I knew about karate before this was what I learned from watching James Bond movies.
Marie’s class is about 40 minutes long and the very first class was half instruction about when and when NOT to use their karate skills. Marie is the smallest in her class but pretty feisty. Another little girl had the karate yell down pat and one of the little boys could hardly wait for the instructor to give the go-ahead for the next move. They were all very cute.
I did a little searching on the internet and the history/etymology of karate is WAY too extensive for me to even try to parse it. You’ll thank me for that!
Have you ever learned any karate / judo / taekwondo / sumo??
One major adjustment to living in our new house is relearning how to cook with a gas stove. My parents had a gas stove until I was about 18 when we moved to a new house and they had a glass topped stove installed.
My mother instilled in me a fear of gas stoves. In her mind they were just bombs waiting to explode. I know there are lots of safety features in these stoves now, but I still am anxious. With a glass stove top, spilling liquids or having drips from lids that are slightly askew is no big deal. On one of my first forays into using the new stove last week I spilled a very small amount of water near a burner and it wouldn’t ignite, just clicked with no flame until a few minutes had passed and the water evaporated. We are being much more careful as we cook so we don’t spill on the stove top.
It is hard for Husband to hear the igniting clicks if he doesn’t have his hearing aids in, so I find myself surreptitiously monitoring his stove use. I hope I can relax as we get more experience with this stove. It cooks things really well and we seem to have more control as we cook and bake. The phrase “Now you’re cooking with gas!” was a marketing slogan to encourage people to switch from wood or coal burning stoves to gas stoves in the 1930’s. It then became a general idiom to indicate the someone was doing really well. I hope we can “cook with gas” as we learn to cook with gas.
What are your experiences with gas stoves? Any favorite idioms or sayings?
Trail Baboon 