2025, animals, crops, Farming Update, pets, Theatre

IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS

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This weeks farming update from Ben

The squirrels are tormenting the dogs. They start with Bailey, since she’s outside. Then Bailey gets Luna and Humphrey going in the house and they’re at the door whining and barking until we let them out. You’d think they’d have learned it’s just a squirrel. Bailey has this shrill, piercing bark, it makes your ears bleed. We think sometimes the squirrels choose to off themselves because they can’t take her barking anymore. I watched a squirrel about 10’ up the electric pole, head down, dancing around the pole, just tormenting the dogs. (If Luna’s toenails were a little longer she’d be up that pole.) Then the squirrel leapt from the pole, cleared the dogs by a good 15 feet and made it to another tree before the dogs could turn around.

I got out last Sunday and cut some weeds in the oat fields. And I did more Thursday evening. One field left will take an hour.  I’m using the haybine instead of the brush mower. Six of one, half dozen of another. The brush mower is 10’ wide, the haybine is 9’. But I can go faster with the haybine. That machine cuts, crimps, and puts the material in a narrow row for baling. I used it for cutting alfalfa when I was milking cows, and I still use it to mow the roadsides. The brush mower is more like a big lawn mower, and it just cuts and shreds the material all up. I’m not saving the weeds or oats to bale, and by opening the rear guides, and putting a baffle inside, it lays the weeds out in a path about 6’ wide. I also don’t want to smother anything growing underneath, and I want it disintegrated enough by spring that it’s not a problem then. I’m hoping we get enough rain or snow or warm or cold temperatures to do whatever it needs to do to break down by April. I’ll bet you didn’t know I could make a whole paragraph on cutting weeds, did you?

Another online auction finished in Plainview on Tuesday. I won some good stuff cheap! Two grinding wheels for concrete sold for $12. They’re about $60 each online. And I bought 5 sheets of 5/8” plywood for $78. They’re $35 each at big box stores. Finally, I bought three doors, brand new, for $36. I needed one of them for a new dressing room we built at the Rochester Rep Theater. It was the right size, the right style, and had hinges on the proper side. I picked it all up Wednesday and installed the door. I told the men using that dressing room, if they had a good rehearsal Wednesday night, I’d get them a doorknob on Thursday. They did and I did.

I’ve been busy with theater most of the past week.

One night during rehearsal I noticed the cue labels on the lightboard made a nice, slanted pattern. It wasn’t intentional, but I appreciated it.

I like the symmetry in things. Also, my OCD kicks in a little bit and that nice slant appeals to me. Like when shopping at the big stores and taking the cart to the stall and they’re all mess up; that bothers me when they’re all cockeyed. I spend more time than a person probably should lining them up and making the stacked line of carts. I would hate having that job of returning carts to the store. You can never finish! I’d hate it. How frustrating.

The neighbors are planning on taking their cattle out this weekend. The cows ran over to see me as I drove past them.

Most of the soybeans have lost their leaves. Lots of guys cutting beans around here. The guys I hire will get to mine when they get to them…

MOST MEANINGLESS JOB YOU’VE HAD?

HAVE YOU KNOWN ANYONE WITH AN UNUSUAL VOICE?

2025, Family, Food, Kids, Uncategorized

Tradition!

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I wrote on Wednesday about getting moose meat from our next door neighbor, a moose his brother-in-law had shot last year. The reason for the gift of moose was to make room in their freezer for the venison from a deer that Neighbor’s 12 year old daughter shot over the weekend.

Neighbor comes from an extended family for whom hunting is really important. Last Saturday he and his daughter drove to the sparsely inhabited grasslands south southwest of us, and she got her deer. It wasn’t a clean shot, and they had to chase it. It took a while for the deer to expire. They gutted it out, and loaded it in the truck. On the way back, the girl told her dad she didn’t want to go hunting anymore.

Neighbor spoke proudly of how courageous his daughter was for telling him how she felt about an activity so important in their family, and how he was supportive of her decision. He said they had great conversations on the way there and back about all sorts of things like boys, her plans for the future, etc. He is a good dad, an educator, who spent are least one summer in San Francicso coaching swimming for Stanford. His daughter is a lucky girl.

What family traditions have you kept or dropped? What qualities do you think make for a good father?

2025, animals, Family, Nature, Uncategorized

Hiss!

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Tuesday Husband and I took the dog to the groomer in a little town about 10 miles west of us. I drove, and on the way back I had to swerve to avoid running over a very long rattlesnake that was slithering across the highway. We estimated it to be about four feet long. We have Prairie Rattlesnakes out here. Their markings are unmistakable. We have seen them all lengths, from tiny ones no thicker than a pencil to the long one on Tuesday. The weather has been so warm here I suppose it was a good time for the snake to check out the available mice in the ditch. We have never seen any in town.

I had some clients years ago who had to move out of their rental home on the south side of town because there were dozens of garter snakes in the walls of the basement. The house was later condemned and torn down. We heard that the lot the house was built on was a noted breeding ground for garter snakes. No other structure has been built there.

The town of Narcisse in Manitoba interlake region is well known for the tens of thousands of garter snakes that emerge from their nests in the spring and return in the fall. I guess it is quite a tourist attraction. We never visited there when we lived there. Snakes aren’t my cup of tea. I have a second cousin who I love dearly who lives near St. Peter and who loves snakes. He has bred snakes for commercial sale in the past, and loves it when his cats find garter snakes in the basement and bring them upstairs.

What are your experiences with snakes? Do you have any friends or relatives with interests you find odd?

2025, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Fingers Crossed

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A month before we closed on our house in Minnesota, the realtor phoned me to let me know the hot tub had sprung a leak, and the current owners were told it wasn’t worth fixing. Did we want them to replace it or remove it? I told her to remove it.

Now that we are three weeks from our move, and four weeks from closing on our North Dakota house, I have become very watchful and worried for anything going wrong here and needing to be fixed or replaced. I had a scare Sunday when I noticed that the dishwasher wasn’t draining, but a quick application of a plunger cleared whatever was plugging it up.

I have to calm myself and tell myself to stop when I start worrying about one of our vehicles breaking down, the plumbing exploding and ruining the drywall, or one of us getting injured or dropping dead. It is stressful enough to move, but we sure don’t need a last minute disaster.

What last minute disasters have you experienced? How do you get yourself to knock it off and stop fretting?

2025, books, Movies, Mysteries

The Warden Threw a Party

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After Robert Redford’s death last week, I re-visited my goal to see more of his films.  I was able to find The Last Castle for free through my cable so watched it a few nights ago.  As I was watching it, a couple of things occurred to me.  First… while Robert Redford made beautiful and thought-provoking films, a lot of them are dark and depressing.  Second… I really don’t care for jailhouse movies. 

Yes, The Last Castle is a jailhouse movie.  No serious spoiler alerts except to say that it is dark and depressing.  And you know it almost immediately when an inmate, who clearly hasn’t done anything and is panicking in the jail yard, is killed by the prison guards.   I did battle it out until the end, but it wasn’t a feel good scenario. 

The realization that I avoid jailhouse movies occurred to me fairly early into the movie.  I’ve never watched The Shawshank Redemption, despite MANY people telling me it’s the best.  No Green Mile, no O Brother Where Art Thou, no Papillon (although I did read the book).   I haven’t even seen Jailhouse Rock; my aversion to jail movies apparently goes back aways.

That isn’t to say that I’ve taken a pass on all of them.  I have seen Cool Hand Luke, The Great Escape, Escape from New York as well as two other jail movies with Robert Redford – Brubaker and The Chase.  Technically The Chase isn’t in jail but it’s the chase after a jailbreak, so I’m including it.

Not too sure why I don’t like jail movies although it might be tied to the fact that I don’t like a lot of movies in which the chips are obviously stacked against the protagonist.  I’ve shied away from The Hunger Games and the Maze Runner – those kinds of things – for that reason.  And no movies about gladiators at all.

Any jailhouse movies that you’ve liked?  Any types of movies you shy away from?

2025, Art, gardening, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Aromatherapy Times Two

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My current world is a battlefield of aromas.

My tomato and pepper plants are still putting out fruit, so I am out at the bales every day harvesting.  If you’ve ever grown tomatoes, you know that you can’t pick them without getting a very pungent smell all over your arms and hands. 

I’m also working with melting beeswax (Ukrainian eggs).  It gets on my fingers and under my fingernails.

The tomato plant smell is easily washed off (if I remember when I come in) but the beeswax smell lingers not just on my hands but on my clothing, in my hair, probably in the air.  Even after a shower, I can still occasionally recognize a whiff of it.  A couple of times the last few days I’ve noticed that the tomato smell and the beeswax smell are duking it out to be the top dog.  The beeswax always seems to win.

I don’t mind either of these aromas.  Not like patchouli.  This is an odor that I just can’t abide; in close quarters it actually makes me a little nauseous.  Since there are people who seem to like it, I’ve always assumed that it was some sort of biologic response, kind of like how Jacque can’t stand the taste of cilantro.  I haven’t found any science to back up my theory but I’m going to stick with it for now!

I’ll be done with the eggs in a couple of days and the tomatoes are slowing down, so assuming that the war of the smells will be over soon but it’s interesting while it’s going on!

Do you have a favorite aroma?  A least favorite?/

2025, animals, Farming Update, Uncategorized

A DIZZYING … SOMETHING

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The weekend Farming Update from XDFBen

Not much happening at the farm this week. I got a case of vertigo about Thursday, and I worked half day, and felt like crap the rest of the day. The weekend was pretty much spent in bed. Several years ago Kelly had vertigo for a few weeks, the plain old BPPV, positional vertigo. We tried the head exercises to reset those crystals in my ears, and last Friday they seemed to work. Saturday, oh boy, that just made me feel absolutely terrible. I remember being at the clinic with my Dad when he was maybe 70+. He must have been having dizzy spells because the doc laid him down on the bench and had him turn his head and I can still picture and hear him groaning. Dad, not the doc. And it wasn’t a good Sound. And Dad didn’t want to do that again.

Monday I picked up some motion sickness pills and they’ve helped a lot. Wednesday I was at about 80%, now I think I’m back. I’ve got too much stuff going on to lay around. To quote my favorite movie, ‘All That Jazz’ and the doctor telling Joe Gideon he needs to rest, Joe responds “I GOT A SHOW TO PUT ON! WILL YOU TALK TO THESE PEOPLE?? THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING!”

Anyway, not much happening out in our countryside.

Most corn chopping has finished, and guys doing high moisture corn are working on that. Soybeans will be coming along soon. And from there it’s right into the fall rush.

Tuesday afternoon I did manage to hook the tractor onto the haybine and pull it out of the shed. I need to get the oat fields mowed off before the weeds take over. The last few years, I’d been digging them up after oats, to stop the weeds from sprouting. Then I would plant cereal rye as a cover crop. This year, crop prices and finances being what they are, I decided not to spend the money on rye seed. The cover crop wasn’t a direct cash benefit; it was one of those bigger picture concepts where a person has to realize they’re doing this for the greater good. And I know that, but still… it was another $600 in seed and my time, and fuel, and I just decided to skip it this year. And now I have to mow off the weeds. They’re too big to dig up at this point, and I want to keep the oats growing until winter. The other thing about rye, it had to be sprayed to kill it in the spring. So, there was another expense I decided to avoid.

We got 2” of rain. Rain is always welcome, almost always, but it’s getting late enough in the year, and with harvest approaching, most farmers would rather skip the mud. It’s a tough alternative, rain or no rain. Good thing the weather isn’t left up to farmers.

I hauled in all the old tires I cut off the machinery. Plus a few others I threw on from the shed. There was a corner of the old shed full of old tires. One never knew which tire might be the one we needed to fit whatever it was that went flat. Including a couple tires with such an odd rim, there wasn’t a chance it was gonna fit anything except the 1949 International Harvester baler it came from. The one dad sold in 1968. But we still had a tire for it because you never know. And there’s an old pick-up tire that fell out from under the truck as I was leaving one day, that’s still leaning against the wall in the shed. Why? Just because. I still keep spare tires in that corner, but it’s not such a huge pile anymore. I have  3 or 4 plain old wagon tires, size 9L15’s that fit every wagon and just about every implement on the farm. I should have run the old tires to my favorite tire place in Millville, but that is half hour away and I didn’t have half an hour, so I took them into Rochester and they charged me $6.35 each. Dang. I was sure they had said it was like $6 for a set when I called.  At least they’re gone.

The guineas. Remember when they hatched, there was 3 parents taking care of the 13 chicks. And then it was 12 chicks for a while, then 10, 9 for a week, 8 for a week, and now 7. And the other two adults have disappeared. Not sure what’s become of them, or why or how they managed to hang around long enough to get the kids mostly grown up, but they haven’t been spotted in a few weeks now. We were hoping maybe one was sitting on a nest somewhere, but usually we’d have seen them by now. Out behind the barn, near the pole barn, I did find a teenage chick missing a head. Which means raccoons. Did some of them move to the pole barn and raccoons got them out there? I don’t know; haven’t found other carcasses yet. But dang.

The guinea mom, she is a real bully. She chases the chickens away from her kids. Even the roosters.

Working on a show, the Dolly Parton musical “9 to 5”, opens at the Rep theater next weekend. The vertigo kinda messed up my schedule finishing theater projects and working on that show. It will be fine. Que sera sera.

REMEMBER ROLLING DOWN HILLS AS A KID? EVER ROLL IN A TIRE?

2025, Nature, pets, Uncategorized

Going Buggy

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The other day our terrier came into the house with a large, green caterpillar in his mouth. We got it away from him before he could eat it but it was clearly dead.

Our deck off the back of the house has a pergola that is covered by layers of grape vines. It provides nice shade and also harbors birds who like to eat the grapes. A night or two ago I was sitting on the deck when the green wiggler in the header photo dropped to the floor right in front of me. I guess the vines also provide a nice environment for caterpillar development. The caterpillar was still alive, so I moved it into some bushes so the birds and dog would have difficulty finding it. I hope it gets a chance to form a cocoon.

One of my favorite memories from Grade 3 is finding a really big cocoon and bringing it to class. My teacher let me keep it in the classroom, and a couple of days later we came to school to find an enormous Cercropia moth flying around the room. I don’t know what kind of caterpillar our green one is, but I hope it doesn’t turn into a destructive moth.

Any idea what kind of caterpillar this is? Ever have an insect collection?

2025, Art, holidays, Seasons

Pysanky

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A couple of comments yesterday made me think that I have probably never explained the process of making a Ukrainian egg or “pysanky”.  I’ll try to keep it simple!

Larger eggs are easier, although I did a fun series of three teeny eggs a few years ago.  A rinse in white vinegar gets any residual grease off the egg.  You work with a whole egg, uncooked and not emptied.

Ukrainian egg dying is a little similar to batik.  You apply melted wax to the egg and then dip it in dye.  You repeat this, from your lightest color to you darkest until you’re done and then melt all the wax off.  A very traditional pysanky will be white, yellow, orange, green, red and black but there are plenty of other designs using other shades (blue, purple, pumpkin, brown, etc.)  After you are all done with waxing and dyeing, you melt all the wax off the egg (carefully) to reveal your design in all its glory.

There are a few tools for making pysanky.  The most critical is called a kistka and it is the tool that you use to melt the beeswax and to apply the wax to the egg.  I have two kinds of kistkas.  The traditional kistka which is held over a candle to melt the wax and an electric kistka, which keeps the wax cone hot without having to use a candle.  Both traditional and electric have a variety of widths, depending on how thick or fine you want your wax lines.  I tend to use both during a project.  The beeswax has a black additive these days; without it, the wax is hard to see on the egg if you’re using electric – no carbon from a candle flame!

After you’ve melted off the wax, that’s when you add the varnish.  This is an important step because it not only makes the egg shiny and pretty but it adds a bit of strength to the shell.  If you are making pysanky that are being displayed but are not ornaments, then you are done.  Eventually the insides of a Ukrainian egg will dry up and you can hear the dried yolk rattle if you shake them.  (If you break one before it’s all dried up – get a clothespin for you nose!)  If you are making ornaments, you’ll need to blow them out and add a finding to the top so you can thread it with twine, floss or some sort of string. 

The most frequent question I get is how long an egg takes and it depends entirely on the complexity of your design.  This year’s egg, if I did one at a time, from beginning to end would take about 75 minutes, but since I’m doing several at one time, that cuts down the time to about 55 minutes each. 

Of course, there is plenty more I could say, but I’ll save that for when you ask me!

Tell me about any tools you need for your hobby!

2025, Art, holidays, Seasons

Bad Santa

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The egg table is up.  And it only took two hours to completely torpedo this year’s design.

Many years ago I started coordinating my holiday crafts to a central theme.  In addition to the Ukrainian egg ornaments, I also make the cards as well as kid ornaments and 6×6 decorated calendars.  I try to tie all these items together every year.  One year I did a snowglobe theme, one year the theme was “branches”.  Peppermint, polar bear, gingerbread men, birds have all been done.  There are a few themes that get repeated – holiday trees is one of those and also poinsettias. 

This year’s theme is Santa.  The card, the kid ornament and the calendar were seriously  easy but the egg has been difficult.  First off, there just weren’t many idea out there to start with and most that I found were painting on eggs, not traditional wax/resist.  I had one idea and then when I sketched it out the first time, I realized it would be too hard to get all Santa’s proportions correct on an egg.  Then I turned to clipart – a surprisingly good way to generate ideas for Ukrainian egg design.  I messed with the idea for a couple of weeks and thought I had a good  design.

Suffice it to say that drawing curvy lines in hot wax on an egg isn’t an easy thing to do.  Then add fiddling around with mixing different dyes to get Santa’s skin right.  Leaving space for his eyes was a pain.  But the biggest issue was just too much white and a bit of red then a black background; it was just — blah.  And I didn’t like the side border either, although that could have been remedied.  I completed two of the design and then abandoned it.

I spent about an hour going through my egg design books and a couple of online places and finally found something that I could alter.  There is no actual Santa on the egg, but it has a lot of red and white, with a black background and I was able to add “ho, ho, ho”; that’s as close as we’re going to get.  This design is more complicated than the failed Santa image, but much more satisfying.  I managed to get three done before I just couldn’t sit on my hard chair any longer – the design is solidified so now I’ll be on a roll starting this morning – after I feed the bad Santas into the garbage disposal!

Have you ever had to abandon what you had initially thought was a good idea?