Tag Archives: Featured

2026, Family, Farming Update, Kids, Seasons

Second Summer

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This week’s farming update from Ben

Sure has been beautiful weather. I’ve seen just a couple fields of soybeans standing yet, a lot of corn has gone out. The dry weather has been perfect for the farmers with cattle on that make round bales out of the corn stalks. It’s been dry and they haven’t had a rain threat and it’s really been nice for that work. 

On Wednesday we had two groups from possibilities out for hayrides. It was much nicer weather than the previous week but some of the clients still expected hot chocolate and while I am out doing the ride, Kelly is making hot chocolate. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it. Tuesday morning daughter and I saw a bald eagle as we were headed in, and then Wednesday on the hayride, they got to see another bald eagle.

Friday morning we did another group, a little windy but certainly warmer than they would’ve had last Friday. It can’t last forever, but it sure is nice while it does. This group also had hot chocolate.

After the hayride, I loaded up some scrap metal on a trailer and hauled that in. Finally got one thing off my list. Then I picked up the fence scrap that I tore out last weekend, the cattle panels, and an old bulk tank that had been used as a water tank, loaded that on the trailer and will get that delivered at some point.

Going to the scrapyard, I followed a combine and a big tractor about 2 miles on a busy county road. It was quite a line going at 20 mph. Corn heads come in different widths, and a six row corn head, at 30 inch rows, is about 15 feet wide. That’s pretty much a full lane of traffic. Anything bigger than that and they take the head off before driving on the road. Many farmers have 12 row corn heads. There’s a few 16’s and 18’s. But that’s a lot of weight, and a lot of corn coming in, and you need a pretty big machine that can handle all that. The big thing now is folding corn heads. So on a 12 row head, three outside rows on each side fold up over the middle making it about as wide as the machine itself and then they don’t have to take it off to travel on the roads. They’re very popular for the convenience factor. Seems like they’re also very expensive. Google tells me a slightly used 16 row folding head is listed at $254,500. Honestly, when you think about the engineering involved to make it fold, it’s pretty impressive.

Photo courtesy John Deere
FB image. Head folded and traveling. They do seem to obstruct vision a bit.

After the Wednesday hayride, I needed to put the wagon back in the shed. Because of where other machinery was parked, I had to make an S curve backing into the shed. If you look at this photo, the purple line was my intended route. And the green line is how it really went. 

I do like to challenge myself…
There’s a big difference between backing a 2 wheel trailer vs a 4 wheel wagon. Two wheels are easier. 
When I was a kid, there was a tractor rodeo at the fair. It involved backing things up, two and four wheels. Around corners, and into spaces and Dad really wanted me to do it. I refused. Eventually I got pretty good at backing things up, but it takes practice and I didn’t have it at 14. I’ve never like competitions.
And judging by the green lines, I’m out of practice again. After Friday’s ride I put the wagon back in the shed. I did better. Practice makes perfect.

I’ve kinda run out of music in the theater shop lately. I just can’t find anything really interesting to me. Nothing turning my crank. 
I did some Latin Jazz, I did Rush, I tried Johnny Cash and nothing is really floating my boat this week. I’m saving the soundtrack of All That Jazz for next week. That will be tech week. “Nothing is personal during tech week.”

HOW ARE YOU AT BACKING UP?

WHAT SHOULD WE FOLD?

2026, Family, Food, home, pets

Who’s In Charge?

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Freya is extremely food motivated.  I’m pretty sure if I left a 40-pound bag of dog food open in the kitchen, she would eat until she popped.  She’s not eating me out of house and home, although I’m going to need a separate line on my budget for dog treats.  The good news is that combined with her smarts, it makes it very easy to work on training. 

Of course, I’m not sure who’s being trained.

Nimue is not all that food motivated.  If she feels like it, she’ll show up at meal time but sometimes she comes down later to partake.  She does have dry food out all the time so she’s certainly not going hungry.   She does have one exception; she loves her Friskies Party Treats.  If I shake the jar (I keep them on my bedstand), she comes right away. 

The treat parade started when Guinevere was young.  If her stomach went empty too long, she’d throw up bile – ick.  So I began giving her a couple of dog treats in the morning to tide her over an hour or so before breakfast.  This was when I started giving Nimue a couple of treats as well.  Took a few tries to find that she loves Friskies.  I’m not sure when the two of them convinced me that they should also get a few treats at bedtime.  7:30 p.m. to be specific. 

It took Freya about a day to realize that there were treats to be had when the kitty was getting her Yums.  It took her about another day to figure out that 7:30 was the magic hour each night.  So now, they are both presenting themselves at 7:30 for treats.  See the header photo for the “Gimme treats” eyes.  And they will both lie to me if necessary.  Last night I got home late with Freya from dog class and Nimue blatantly lied to me about getting her treats.  When I asked YA, she confirmed that she had given Nimue treats at 7:30 in my absence!

Clearly where treats are involved, I’m not in charge.  And I’m not highly motivated to change that.  Maybe I should get a treat at 7:30!

Do you have any nightly rituals (with or without pets)?

2026, Art, education, Uncategorized

Community Education

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I must confess I am somewhat anxious for Saturday when I am attending the first art class I will have been to since high school. I took art history in college. I loved it. I hated every art class I had to take in Grades K-12 that involved creating art.

We had good art teachers in our public school. I simply have no talent for drawing or painting. My handwriting is awful. It is even a chore for me to do special decorations on cookies or cakes. We have a very active Communuty Education program here that teaches everything from seed saving to toddler management to learning MahJong to making your own bath bombs. There also are art classes, and Boommate strong armed me into taking a Raku class with her this Saturday. I think it only involves choosing a pre-made piece of pottery bisque and painting it to be fired. I think I can handle that.

In December I am also signed up with her to take a class in which we will create acrylic paintings. It is being held in the high school art room. If it is the same art room from when I was in school, I will probably have nightmares. I would much rather take a class in toddler management!

What does your town offer for Community Education? Ever taken any classes? What were your most and least favorite classes in high school?

2026, Family, gardening, History, home, Nature, Uncategorized

Raking Leaves

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Where is it written that people have to rake the leaves off of their lawns every fall, so that no leaves remain? We have neighbors here in MN and had neighbors in ND who worked daily in the fall to remove any traces of leaves. We are not raking people.

In our ND town the City was of no help to people who needed leaves hauled away. People had to haul them away to the landfill themselves. Of course, this was the City that wouldn’t remove snow from residential streets unless 4 or more inches had fallen. (It’s going to melt eventually anyway, and we don’t have it in our budget to plow anything but major arteries.)

Luverne has a much different attitude about this. I attribute it to the proximity to Northwest Iowa and a Dutch influence regarding neatness. The other day while it was raining we saw several street sweeping machines washing streets. The City sends out leaf suckeruppers several days in October and November to remove leaves that residents have swept into the gutter. Snow of any amount is also plowed up.

We like to leave the leaves for ground cover and pollinators. We sweep up leaves that collect on the sidewalk or deck, though. I remember the smell of burning leaves in the fall when I was a child, and loved it when my mom and dad would make leaf piles for me to jump in. Leaf burning is illegal now, I think. I am glad we have better things to do now than rake.

What are your leaf raking, leaf jumping memories? Are you a raker?

2026, Family, Kids, Music, Theatre, Uncategorized

12 Incompetent Jurors

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Boommate and I were driving past the high school yesterday on our way back home from exercise class when we noticed an ad for the upcoming high school fall play 12 Incompetent Jurors.

We both thought it would be a fun play to see. I looked it up when we got home. It is a parody of 12 Angry Men and is about the jury deliberations in a case in which a man has confessed to stealing a number of cats. One of the Jurors doubts the facts in the case and holds out on a guilty verdict. Chaos apparently ensues.

I never was in plays in musicals in high school, although I was on the speech team and gave dramatic interpretations of Anna Christie and Long Days Journey Into Night. As a musician I was in the pit orchestra for Li’l Abner, The Music Man, and Bye Bye Birdie. I was too introverted to try out for a role in the non-musical productions. Looking back, I regret that. Our children were braver. Our son was a dancing/ singing cowboy in Oklahoma and our daughter was one of the wives in The King and I in high school.

Were you in plays or musicals in high school or college? Do you attend productions at your local high school? If you could go back in time, what role would you want in a play or musical?

2026, animals, gardening, home, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather

Blanket Weather

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I have to admit it. I turned on the furnace last Thursday. It was chilly in the house, with a hard freeze predicted for Friday night/Saturday morning. I hate being chilly and just dressing more warmly indoors doesn’t help.

I set the thermostat at 70°. Who can argue about 70°? None of my housemates complained, not even Boommate who is always too warm. Now that it will be warmer this week, I doubt the furnace will kick in very often. But should the house temp drop below 70°, I shall still be comfortable. The dogs have been snuggling closer at night since the temps dropped.

I love fall weather. I love wrapping up in blankets. We have several Pendleton wool blankets, a really warm and fuzzy Norwegian wool blanket, quilts, and several down comforters. We are set for cold weather and chilly nights. I find my cooking plans have changed somewhat this past week, too, and I am finding soups and stews more appealing than salads. Husband picked all the tomatoes Friday before the freeze, and they are ripening in boxes in the garage. The Swiss Chard survived the freeze, but as I have frozen pounds of it already, I think we shall let it face its fate in the coming weeks. I, in any event, will be warm.

What is your cue to turn on the furnace? Favorite chilly weather foods? How do you keep your garden going through early freezes and frosts?

2026, Farming Update, Theatre

LOQUACIOUSNESS!

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This week on the farm / in the theater from Ben

Thursday we got 1.23” of rain. Then Friday was cool and windy and partially cloudy with a freeze warning for the evening. It’s MEA weekend and we had scheduled hayrides for daughters PossAbilities groups on Thursday and Friday. Well, first we postponed Thursday’s, then that evening, figured it was going to be so cold and windy that it would be miserable for riding out on a wagon. I’d be fine in the tractor, but it’s not about me. I suggested we postpone Friday as well. Next week looks to be a much nicer week.

It’s troublesome that it’s dark by about 7:00 PM these days. It’s hard to get much done at home. Good thing Padawan 2 added those extra lights to the back of the one tractor this summer. Last weekend Kelly was picking up sticks. I was using the tractor loader and grapple bucket to pluck larger branches and piles and move them to the burn pile. The plan might be to move “this” pile, but then there’s “that” log and pretty soon I’ve moved quite a bunch of other stuff. Once again, I had to remind myself, the tractor and loader is NOT A BULLDOZER. I told myself that right after a hydraulic hose started squirting oil. A very lovely arc six feet tall. But only when I closed the grapple. Turns out just a connection had come loose. No damage done. Whew.

Then down to the barn and the cow yard and the old, worn out fence separating the former calf pen, from the cow yard. There’s about 5’ of elevation difference, the calf pen being higher, and the fence had tilted over the years and posts broke off and it was just a mess. Covered in weeds because of the hill and rocks and it was hard to get mowed. This wasn’t a barb wire fence, it was cattle panels, sixteen feet long (that’s a standard) and about five feet tall. They were all beat up. Some random cow or bull trying to climb over once too often. I used the grapple and just lifted them up out of the weeds. Made a pile that I’ll crush down and haul into the scrap yard at some point. I picked up some new (to me) cattle panels at an auction, just need to get this fence out. And make new holes. And build a new fence. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy! I have a trailer with scrap on it, I’m just trying to decide when to fit that into my schedule. Won’t be until after I get this play at the college open.

Over MEA, I painted the stage floor a light blue color base. It was a five gallon bucket of discount paint from one of the big box stores. Then my usual texture over it. Mostly brown, then some red, green, and blue. Have I mentioned, we’re doing “Dragons Love Tacos”, which is a pretty popular kids book. And there are Red, Green, and Blue dragons.

It’s not done yet

I was talking to Kelly one morning about how daughter will try to tell you something and her explanation goes back to yesterday and lunch or something that, in my mind, has nothing to do with what we’re talking about now, or the question at the moment, and I can’t figure out how it’s relevant, and I said to Kelly my attention span isn’t that long and I never know what we’re talking about. Kelly said daughter is definitely mine. And I blinked. And the reality smacked me in the face. I sort of tried to object, and Kelly said we were both very verbose in our explanations of things. Huh. Damn.

Verbose: wordy, long-winded, talkative, effusive, garrulous, rambling, bombastic, pompous, pretentious…

I saw a FB post the other day that said “I didn’t know parenting the Me out of my kids would be so hard” Yep. I have said before that daughter is stubborn and opinionated and thinks she has to have the last word, just like me and it makes me crazy. Just hadn’t thought about the talking thing before.

I picked up some new shirts from Savers the other day. Took them down to the costume shop. I didn’t have time to be pulling seams and swapping sleeves, so I just hemmed some up and cut some off. When I was a kid, I liked having the western style shirts with snaps. I have found a few of those lately and it’s kinda fun to have the snaps again.

YOU EVER HAVE BUTTON FLY JEANS? (I Had one pair on some army surplus pants. What a pain!)

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT FROM YOUR PARENTS? OR GIVEN TO YOUR KIDS?

2026, Art, Baboon Achievers, Food, gardening, Gatherings

PJ

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PJ / Margaret brought something special to the Trail.  Wicked sense of humor, acerbic wit, thoughtful comments and great stories.  What a life she lived.  I thought we needed a full day to remember her.  Bill commented earlier that we all probably had our own special connection with her, so hopefully today, we can all share.  I have many memories but will just share a few that really stand out to me.  The rest will be up to you all.

The Garden Restoration.  When PJ got hit by a car and couldn’t do her spring gardening, it was amazing how many baboons came together on a Saturday to lend a hand.  Even Lisa showed up in her green cocktail dress (she didn’t garden in the dress).  Everybody picked a patch and went to work.  And, like magic, food showed up.  Amazing how that happens when baboons show up.  PJ sat on the patio and cheered us on.  She mentioned it to me more than once over the years; I know she was profoundly moved and grateful.

Paper Cutting.  Danish paper artist, Karen Bit Vejle brought her to show to the Swedish American Institute and the Twin Cities folks met for a field trip.  It was amazing to hear PJ translate some of the informational blurbs in all the Scandinavian languages – Danish, Swedish, Norwegian.  I don’t remember Finnish or Icelandic, but I’m pretty sure she could have handled those if they were there.  Amazing.

Don Panchos.  I delivered Ben’s farm fresh eggs to PJ several times and on our first egg visit, she clued me into a great Mexican bakery just a few blocks from her house – Don Panchos.  It got to be a ritual for me to stop there after every trip to take eggs. 

Advice.  PJ was a thoughtful woman and she gave me some excellent advice once about letting other people give of themselves without trying to make everything fair or even.  Wonderful advice that I think of often.

I could go on, but I’m going to let other baboons tell their stories.  Margaret, I already miss you terribly.

Tell me about your connection to PJ / Margaret.

2026, animals, Food, pets, Uncategorized

Snacks

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Yesterday I finished cooking a large pot of brodo, a turkey/beef stock from The Splendid Table cookbook. It calls for 9 pounds of turkey wings that simmer for 14 hours with lots of vegetables and 4 pounds of beef shank. I get about 3 gallons of stock from it.

I get my turkey wings from a butcher shop that gets a case of them for me directly from the meat packing plant. They are enormous and meaty. After simmering for 14 hours, however, there is not much taste left in the meat. I can’t make myself throw them away, so I freeze the meat in small bags for our dogs. They get a few pieces of the turkey in their daily kibble. They love it.

They also get roasted butternut squash and beef protein sprinkles every day in their kibble. I roast the squash with our Turkish olive oil brushed on it. At least once a day they get gullet strips, and they have collagen chews to gnaw on. Yes, we have terribly spoiled terriers. They get so excited it is hard to stop since they seem so happy.

I think we spoil our dogs with snacks because we spoil ourselves with good food. They don’t seem to get fat on these snacks, but they are busy, active dogs who race around and burn off lots of calories. By the end of the day they collapse and sleep soundly all night.

What are your favorite snacks? How do you spoil the people and creatures you love? How are you spoiled?

2026, Family, History, Radio, Uncategorized

A Matter Of Grave Importance

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Today’s post comes from Occasional Caroline.

My great grandfather, Oscar Elmer, was sent as a missionary to start a Presbyterian church in Moorhead, MN in 1871. In May of 1874 his brother, John, came to visit from New York. Unfortunately, John Edger Elmer fell into the Red River and drowned. The normal procedure would have been to have his body returned to New York to be buried in the family plot in a cemetery in their home town, but John’s body was not recovered from the river until nearly a week after he disappeared and had deteriorated past the point where it could be shipped East. The town did not have a cemetery and the typical burial in Moorhead at the time would be on the property of the deceased’s family. Since Oscar did not own property he recruited some men from the town to help him bury his brother in a temporary location between two trees, with a rope tied to the trees to mark the grave.

The lack of a proper burial site prompted Reverend Elmer to organize a committee of residents to establish Moorhead ‘s first cemetery. In 1875, a railroad company was persuaded to sell a 5-acre parcel of land to the city for $1 and the cemetery came to be. John Elmer’s body was moved from the tree-marked grave and re-buried in the new cemetery.

Fast forward to 1971 when a 29-year-old man from St. Paul was giving a poetry reading at Moorhead State University. While walking through the town the next morning he happened upon Moorhead ‘s Prairie Home Cemetery. He had been trying to come up with a title for the radio program he was planning, and Prairie Home caught his attention. He changed Cemetery to Companion and the rest is history.

The photo of John Edger Elmer’s gravestone was taken by my cousin’s daughter on recent visit to Moorhead. She is a genealogist and John Elmer’s great great grandniece and Oscar Elmer’s great great granddaughter.

Any family cemetery stories? Where do you want your final resting place to be?