2024, Family, Travel, Uncategorized

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and . . . Campers?

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“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.”—Robert Burns.

Sandra and I recently went on an eight-day camping trip to explore several of the state parks in southwest Minnesota. We paid extra to rent an Airstream trailer—Bun Bun, according to the owner—to see if Airstreams are superior to other, cheaper trailer brands. FWIW, the Airstream wasn’t worth twice the rental price of other similarly sized trailers.

As we started the trip, we imagined bright sunny days and moderate spring temperatures. The plan was to enjoy new hiking trails and explore the historical significance of parks like Ft. Ridgely, Blue Mounds, and Pipestone National Monument. What we got didn’t quite match “the dream.”

I won’t bore you with the details. I started this post with that in mind, but decided the post would be far too long. So here’s the plan in a nutshell compared to what actually happened.

  1. THE PLAN: Beautiful spring weather in MN. REALITY: Six days with rain out of eight total.
  2. THE PLAN: No illness, injury, or other issue to hamper our “fun.” REALITY: I got bitten by a wood tick during my first hike of the trip. Fortunately, Sandra noticed the nasty little bloodsucker as I prepared for bed. After she performed “emergency surgery,” we wasted two-plus hours the next day finding a clinic and having the bite checked for Lyme Disease. So far, I’m fine.
  3. THE PLAN: No mechanical issues with the trailer. REALITY: The electric cord that connects the SUV lights to the trailer lights came loose on an annoyingly bumpy section of highway and dragged on the pavement for at least an hour. We didn’t notice until we stopped at a rest area. Luckily we got it fixed within two hours (in the rain! At 5:30 pm on a Friday!) by the owner (and his employee) of a fantastic small business, Eric of Riverside Trailers in Rock Rapids, IA. The other downside of that was neither the travel insurance I bought, nor AAA covered that expense, so I paid the bill, plus gave generous tips to the men who did the work. Told them to have a few beers on us.
  4. THE PLAN: Minimal bug issues and lots of eating around the campfire or at the picnic table. REALITY: Horrendous bugs at Ft. Ripley State Park. Head nets required. Three days lost of enjoying the outdoors. Blue Mounds was better. The rain fell early or overnight, so we enjoyed four campfires on our last four nights.
  5. THE PLAN: Visit and at least do one hike in each of eight state parks—Ft. Ridgely, Lac Qui Parle, Upper Sioux Agency, Camden, Blue Mounds, Split Rock Creek, Lake Shetek, Kilen Woods. REALITY: Rain washed us out at Lac Qui Parle, USA was closed (given back to the tribe), didn’t go to Camden. But we compensated with a rain-soaked visit to the Jeffers Petroglyphs and a tour of the Rock County Historical Society (home of the 6000+ nutcrackers reneeinnd mentioned.

Mound Lake Dam, Blue Mounds State Park

Interpretive Center sign featuring author Frederick Manfred, Blue Mounds State Park

Jeffers Petroglyphs

Nutcrackers at Rock County Historical Society Museum

Quarry at Pipestone National Monument

Author at the falls at the Pipestone National Monument

Overall, we still had a successful trip, just with lots of memories we would have preferred not to remember, along with some pleasant ones as well. Sandra loved the nutcrackers, and a few of the hikes were excellent. Pipestone National Monument and the Jeffers Petroglyphs are pretty cool too.

When have your best laid plans “gang aft a -gley?”

2024, Family, Health, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Good Gadgets

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Husband and I have noticed over the past year that we are no longer as strong or flexible as we used to be. That has made gardening and housework a lot harder. We just can’t so things as fast as we used to.

When I was in Brookings in early May, I discovered that my daughter in law had neck problems that made it really hard for her to vacuum or do heavy housework. She damaged her neck vertebra last summer. They are both busy enough with their jobs and their son, so I suggested we get them a Roomba or something equivalent to help with the housework. We got a Shark Roomba knockoff, and it works great. They named it Clean Elizabeth. She does a great job keeping their floors clean.

We live where it is really dusty. Husband has allergies to dust. The prospect of moving the mattresses to vacuum under the beds was daunting, so I suggested to Husband that we get our own Clean Elizabeth to clean under the beds and the living room furniture and the dining room buffet. We named her Good Clean Bess. The dog is surprisingly standoffish, allowing Bess to go back and forth and suck up the crud. I was appalled at the dust that came up from under our bed. My only question is when did I get old?

What are your newest or favorite gadgets? How old do you feel these days? What would you want a robot to help you with?

2024, Family, home, Kids, Uncategorized, Words

What’s That ?

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Last Monday I announced to my coworkers on the Youth and Family Team that Husband and I had worked like navvies all weekend getting the garden planted. They had no idea what I meant.

We picked up some handy words and phrases when we lived in Canada that most people here find odd or quaint. Our whole family calls Mail Carriers “Posties”. We phone one another instead of call one another. The sofa is sometimes a chesterfield. People we are annoyed with are jam tarts. Those trying hard to get ahead are keeners.

Just in our family, Spaghetti with olive oil and garlic will forever be called Pasta with Invisible Sauce. A massage at bedtime was always called a backrub scratchrub by our children. A bedtime breakfast was a bowl of cereal before bed.

l grew up with some odd family words for things. My maternal grandmother said that a bottle of soda that had lost its fizz was ausgespielt (all talked out). My mother said that someone who had too much to drink was a little gemutlich. Farts were “little noises from behind”, according to my mother.

What phrases or word usages are specific to your family or place? What words or phrases would you like to introduce into everyday speech or see back into everyday speech?

2024, Farming Update, Gatherings, home, Nature, Uncategorized

Playing Catch Up

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Today’s farming update comes from Ben.

We’ve had 5.5″ of rain since May 1. They’ve all been pretty decent, gentle rains I thought. And then I was out picking up some rocks and there are some wash-outs in the fields. It doesn’t take much slope, and especially right now with so much bare ground, a hard rain for few minutes will wash. 

Farmers do so many things to try and prevent it. Obviously we don’t want to lose the top soil; it’s how we make our living too, and it really hurts my soul to see a field wash like this. Thanks goodness they’re not deep ruts. On the rolling hills like our farm, they’re hard to avoid.

I had picked up rocks before planting too, but there’s always more. 

I finished at the college on Tuesday. 

I finished lighting the play at the Rep on Tuesday, and Wednesday evening I cut some grass. Got rained on, which led to a beautiful double rainbow. 

Still trying to catch up on mowing. 

We let the little chicks out. They’re not so little anymore. Luna was very interested in them. She never bothered them, she just had to investigate really really closely. 

Daughter had her 29th Birthday. Four girlfriends from PossAbilities took her out to eat. I sent them a note of appreciation; it seems like such a small thing, but for her, that’s a pretty big deal! She doesn’t have the opportunities for those little things, like lunch with girlfriends. These four are pretty cool and we’re all lucky for the people that come into our lives. 

I put away the last of the 2023 receipts that were in a pile hiding in a desk drawer. Seriously, I’m going to get going on 2024 bookwork soon. SOON! 

I really want to get going on the shed again. I also need to get the roadsides mowed in the forecasted week without rain, so that should be the priority. And there’s a fence along the road that I want to rebuild. It’s embarrassing to drive by and look at every day. It’s just wore out. Been there a lot of  years. I’ve fixed it a lot, but it’s time to be rebuilt. Which means mowing the grass in there first. And since it’s 3′ tall, I need the brush mower. Which needs four bolts holding the gear box on replaced before I use it again. Need to cut / grind them off and replace. And I should do that soon, so they guys can get the cattle in that pasture.

I’m a little hesitant to build a fence again. I figure I need to dig holes for 11wood posts, plus put in 100 steel posts. That was hard work when I was younger. And I know this a rocky area (because it’s all rocky on our farm) Digging a hole is hard work involving a 6’ iron breaker bar, and the manual post hole digger. I don’t know anyone with a tractor mounted one. Kelly said I should I go rent one of those ‘Dingo’, motorized post hole diggers. “Do it for me so I don’t need to listen to you moan and complain.” A pretty compelling argument. I’m working on a summer helper again. I’m not sure they’d come back after a day of this.

I cut down some dead trees, and planted 6 oak seedlings. They were given to school kids for Arbor day. A friend is an elementary school teacher, and she got a bag of seedlings, but many kids are in apartments, so I got 6 of the left overs. I could cross those couple things off my to-do list.

Spent Wednesday riding in big trucks and directing the drivers applying dust control on the township gravel roads.

You know, this happens every summer: more on the list than I can get done. This is:

WHAT EVENT WOULD YOU DO AT A RODEO? OR HAVE YOU ALREADY?

2024, animals, Nature, News, Uncategorized

Japanese Invasion

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Header photo by By SolitaryThrush at the English Wikipedia,

I was always rather surprised that my best friend, a sturdy farm girl, has always been afraid of spiders, especially Daddy Long Legs, which I understand aren’t really spiders. I kind of like spiders, except for the ones that can bite and kill you (Brown Recluses). I think there are a lot of them in Iowa, for some reason.

I don’t know how Friend is feeling about the recent news that 4 inch, flying, venomous, Japanese spiders have established themselves in Georgia, and are set to invade New York State this summer. They are predicted to spread all across the country. They “fly” by some ballooning maneuver. At least they don’t have real wings.

My third cousin Tom, who Krista knows, loves creepy crawlies and turtles and frogs and breeds fox snakes and is a semiprofessional naturalist. He seems both alarmed and excited at the prospect of these spiders invading Minnesota. I don’t know how they will deal with northern cold, or with the wind we had on Wednesday, with gusts up to 53 mph all day. I remember how upset people at home were about army worms invading from the west when I was in grade school, covering the sidewalks and devouring crops. These seem somewhat worse.

What is your favorite/least favorite insect? Tell some good bug stories.

2024, animals, gardening, Nature, Uncategorized

Rabbit Proof Fence

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Our gardening chores were a lot more onerous this year due to a proliferation of rabbits in the neighborhood. It is not only in our neighborhood. I hear people from all over town complaining how the rabbits are eating flowers and garden plants.

Last year the rabbits devastated our strawberry bed in the back yard. They seemed to leave the front garden alone. This year we counted at least five rabbits at one time in our yard. We decided to take no chances and put up bunny proof fences around both garden beds consisting of wooden stakes and poultry netting with garden staples at the bottom to prevent any enterprising bunny to try to sneak under a slack part of the fence. Here is a bunny in the driveway last evening. I took the photo from the stoep, which accounts for the black metal railings.

The Australian movie Rabbit Proof Fence is about institutionalized racism, but it also highlights what can happen when non-native species are introduced into a new ecosystem. Some British guy in the mid 1800’s let loose twenty four rabbits into Australia so he could hunt them, and by the early 1900’s they had to build massive fences across Australia to keep the rabbits from decimating western Australia. There were no natural predators. I don’t like coyotes, but I sure wouldn’t mind a rogue animal to slip into town now and then to dispatch a few rabbits. Kyrill tries to catch the rabbits but they are too fast for him. I am hopeful our fences will do the trick, but they sure made for a lot of work.

What rabbit themed music, literature, or films are you familiar with? What kind of predators in your neighborhood?

2024, Business, education, Kids, Uncategorized

Sidewalk Sales

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Photo credit: Ames History Museum

On Sunday, my little neighbors Minnie and Marie came home from errands with their folks and decided to have an “Icee” stand down on the boulevard.  I was weeding in my yard so I got a front row seat to all the proceedings.  First off, “icee” was a misnomer, since they were actually selling those Fla-vor ice pops but they had their signs made so I wasn’t going to quibble.  They also were giving out dog treats free and borrowed one of Guinevere’s bowls so they could have water for dogs as well.

Most of the work for setting this up was done by their folks and then Dad sat up on the driveway with his laptop as they got going.  They were selling the ice pops for $1.00 – a long cry from the 5 cents that was the going rate for a cup of Kool-aid when I was a kid – but that didn’t seem to stop anybody (including yours truly).  Of course, there was also some sampling of their own product as well.  Even on a busy street like ours, a few people actually stopped as they were driving by.  A third neighbor child, Lindsay, joined them for the last hour, although it was clear they were all flagging by then.

Minnie told me that they made $18 and then confided that it was really boring.  They were open for 3 hours total (they took a break for lunch), so that’s 6 ice pops per hour… not terribly rigorous traffic. 

I had several Kool-aid stands when I was a kid.  The house we lived on when I was Minnie’s age was on a corner lot of a fairly busy street.  Like most kid-run stands, my folks paid for the Kool-aid, the sugar, the cups and any other supplies that were used.  One time my father suggested that we kids split the profit with him since he had paid for everything.  Unfortunately this lead to graft and a second set of “books”. He never asked again.

Did you ever sell stuff as a kid?

2024, Family, Food, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Spoiled

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I have no problem admitting that Husband, I, and the dog are spoiled when it comes to food. I started to subscribe to Goumet and Bon Appetit when I was in Middle School. That has certainly skewed my expectations for meals in my home ever since.

The dog is spoiled because he will only eat his kibble if we put a spoonful or so of homemade broth on it. This week it is goat broth. He is a happy boy.

Winnipeg is a foodies paradise, with every sort of ethnic restaurant and grocery store you can imagine. Six years there left me unprepared for spartan western North Dakota and only two chain grocery stores. Fargo, the nearest food mecca is 300 miles away.

We have taken to ordering on-line to obtain harder to find cooking ingredients. This Christmas, Husband found a source for all sorts of food from Spain, including wonderful serrano ham, Portuguese linguica, cheeses, chorizo, smoked beef, olives, and Galician sourdough bread partially baked in Galicia and frozen, shipped to the US, then shipped frozen to us. It is lovely bread that we tried, but failed, to reproduce at home. We also order 10 lb hunks of parmesan, olives, and pasta from an Italian importer (the parm lasts for a year and costs less than buying smaller packages in the grocery store) and beans from Rancho Gordo. I also order celeriac by the case from Oregon because we can’t grow it well here and I like to cook with it in soup stock. Daughter just visited the Rogue River Creamery in Southern Oregon and decided we needed 4 lbs of their award winning cheddar and blue cheeses. It will arrive on Wednesday. She and son have similar food attitudes as we have.

I justify all this by noting we don’t travel much, have little to no debt, rarely eat in restaurants, and don’t own a boat, camper, or a lake home. We shall see if living near to Sioux Falls after we retire allows more access to these foods, or if we will still order from afar.

If you lived in the middle of nowhere, and cost was not an issue, what would you order on-line to eat and cook with. Where do you like to find recipes?

2024, animals, Family, home, Kids, Nature, Uncategorized

Fledglings

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For the past several weeks Husband and I didn’t go out of our front door. Some enterprising robins built a nest atop the light that illuminated the stoep, hatched four eggs, and were busily feeding their chicks. We didn’t want to disturb them by going in and out the front door. You can see the nest in the header photo.

We could see the chicks getting bigger, and by Saturday, the last of the chicks was perched on the bench below the nest.

I like the baby tufts on his head. He sat there for a day, then flew off. I hope he has a nice adulthood.

I was always pretty independent and left the nest pretty easily, although with lots of anxiety. So did Husband and our children. I have known a few families in town where the children never manage to leave. In Winnipeg, it was typical for young people to buy their first home on the same block as their parents. That would have been pretty weird, I think, but typical for Canadian society.

What kind of a fledgling were you? Got any good bird stories?

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2024, Farming Update, Uncategorized, work

Lost And Found

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Today’s Farming update comes from Ben.

So far, so good this year. Even the last planted crops are coming along. The soybeans are just coming out of the dirt. Most guys, or maybe it’s just the bigger farmers, ‘roll’ the soybeans, with a big steel roller, to push rocks down and make a good smooth seedbed (important at harvest), and also to create optimum seed-to-soil contact. I don’t have a roller, but the last few years I’ve run over the fields with a ‘drag / harrow’ to try smoothing it out. This year it kept raining right after I finished planting, so I didn’t get it done. Not the end of the world.

In the Header photo, the oats are on the left and looking good. Corn is the upper right and it’s coming along. The lower right is soybeans. Can’t quite see rows yet, but it’s coming.

Here’s a photo of my “Parts Shelf” at home.

Most of the boxes are filters for two tractors. Then there’s a new set of lawn mower blades, and a ‘throttle plate’ for the old 630 tractor, and some clips for the gas strut on the passenger door of the gator, and a new beacon to replace the one I broke off when I forgot it stuck up higher than the garage door is tall. There are also some wall brackets for tool storage, and brackets to attach the posts to the concrete when I get to building the fourth wall in my shed.

I am gainfully employed at the college through Tuesday June 4th, then off for the summer. Maybe then I can get the tractor unhooked from the drill, and clean up machinery, and return seed, and cut grass, and get back to working on my shed.

Right now, working on another play, ‘Clybourne Park’ is a sequel to ‘Raisin In the Sun’. Act 1 is 1950, and the black couple is about to move into the area. Act II is 2001, and the neighborhood residents are dealing with the changes to a lot of things. It’s a good cast and well written show. The lighting is pretty simple; just general interior lighting, with some specials for the ending, and a change from 1950’s look, to 2001 look. Think ‘sepia’ for 1950, and brighter, but the house is run down, in 2001. “Dingy” lighting. I’m having fun creating that.

I’m having a problem these days keeping track of my water bottles. I have three in the fridge door, and I take one with me to work or outside. By evening there’s only 1 in the door. I joke that at the college I need a workstudy to keep track of my clipboard and water bottle. And I need a phone case that comes with a guy to carry it for me. Generally, I find the water bottle the next day, out in the shop or in a tractor, or in the garage where I set it down to collect eggs.

Are you drinking too much or not enough?