Tag Archives: Featured

2026, crops, Farming Update, Uncategorized

DO WHAT I SAY NOT WHAT I DO 

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This week‘s farming update from Ben

Finally turned some heat on.

I used the seat warmer in the car and the heated steering wheel, too. (The greatest invention ever!)
Daughter and I put the back on the chicken coop.
Took off an outside faucet and picked up a few odds and ends to move into the heated shop. Tested the heat in the shop.

Friday night it’s 23°F already. Brr.


Daughter did a presentation at her program. A Life Skills speech called, depending on her mood either “PICK UP YOUR DANG GARBAGE!” or “How to Clean up”. She’s very good at picking up our garbage. Let’s not talk about her own room. Staff said she did a real good job and made it fun.

Daughter has some very specific rules and she expects everyone to follow them. The other night I was going to bed and I said to her, ‘Love you’. She said “Love you”. I went to bed and she came to the bedroom to chastise me because I didn’t reply. I explained I said it to her first, so she was responding to ME and therefore I didn’t need to respond to her. That’s not how it works in her head. I said “I love you too” and then she was happy. Sometime I like to argue the point. Sometimes it’s not worth it. But when is ever NOT saying I love you worth it?

I Finished working on the chisel plow. Some new teeth, the Buster bar Points, and changed a tire.

I hauled in some scrap metal, delivered a wagon load of Straw to the local strawberry farm. And delivering some straw for goats on Sunday.

Bailey waiting for attention


I placed a Neon “CLOSED” sign in the shop.

There’s a long history to this sign. It was in front of a bank on Broadway in Rochester back in the 1980’s. The Rep theater moved in next door, the bank closed, and an insurance company took over the building. When they remodeled and took the OPEN / CLOSED signs down, I asked if I could have them for the theater. One sign was broken, but I got this one. We hung it in the lobby over concessions. Eventually the Rep moved from that space and I took the sign with me. It was used in several plays. 

It’s darn heavy because of the two transformers inside. I was hanging it for a show, and accidently leaned into it and broke the glass ‘OPEN’. Well Damn. I was kinda bummed. But it had a long run. I tried to decide do I keep or throw. Padawan and I re-wired it to CLOSED and now it’s in my shop. For safety, It’s on a switched outlet so it goes off when I turn the lights off. 

I got half my corn out yesterday, Friday.

I don’t have final numbers yet, but moisture is about 16% which means it only needs to dry one point for long-term storage. So that won’t cost too much. I’ve put a few thousand bushels in storage for when I need that financial bump in March, and sold the rest to pay off the fall bills. Test weight was good, that’s how much corn it takes to make a bushel, 56 pounds is the standard. That’s roughly 90,000 kernels.

Unloading the combine “On the Go”, meaning still harvesting while unloading.
Riding in the combine

I ordered diesel fuel finally. 550 gallons at $5.00/ gallon. Added 75 gallons to the tractor.

I was very happy to get out in the tractor and do some tillage.

Tractor buddies

Slight bit of urgency to this as I will be having foot surgery on the 20th.

Nothing major, just a couple bone spurs. (I always feel icky when saying I have bone spurs. Please don’t lump me in with what’s his name).

I GOT NOTHING.

TALK AMONGST YOURSELVES.

2026, animals, Family, Uncategorized

Hogwash

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Last Friday evening, our son drove into Brookings to put air in the tires of his wife’s car. They live in a small town several miles east of Brookings. There are three roads that go between the towns. Two are nicely paved. The third is paved, albeit poorly. with some patches of gravel here and there. The county ran out of money this summer to pave the entire route. There are lots of farm trucks on it.

On the way back home on the partially paved road, Son drove through a very large puddle on the road. It was several inches deep. When he got home he parked the car in the garage and noticed a very horrible smell. He said if the temperature had been any higher in the garage he might have fainted from the stench. The sides of the car and the tires were covered with a black, tarry substance.

He tried wiping off what he could, and then took the car through the car wash. 5 times. He got most of it off, but it still was sort of smelly. He used an enzymatic cleaner to get any remaining crud out from between the doors and the door frame. It took him most of the weekend to get the car cleaned.

He consulted with a friend who grew up on a farm who thought the offending substance had come from a truck hauling liquid hog manure. Son says he has a new appreciation for the word “hogwash”.

What words have you come to appreciate lately? What’s the biggest mess you have had to clean up? Any experiences with hogs?

2026, Automotive, Mysteries, Uncategorized, Weather

Rainy Daze

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It’s about a 9-hour drive from Minneapolis to Gray Summit, Missouri, if you account for gas and bathroom stops.  I had about 3 weeks notice that I would be making this trip and, as is my habit, I began trolling the Weather Channel.  The forecast was for rain on both days of my travel.  All day both days.  Ick. 

Driving in the rain is not my favorite thing to do, especially on highways.  It’s harder to see and requires some serious attention on wet roads.  Then there is the inconsistency of the water hitting the window shield due to all the various traffic that passes you by.  Most cars and smaller trucks do not have flaps, so they throw up a lot of spray.  And the larger semis do have flaps but with 18 wheels, the flaps don’t help much.  So I spent most of two days changing the speed of the window wipers. 

The biggest problem was one of my own making.  Every single time I had to get out of the car, I got wet.  Most gas stations have their pumps under cover but the walk from the pumps to the store (for the bathroom break) were not.  Murphy’s Law held true in that whenever I made this walk was when the rain came down heavier. 

“Why didn’t you have an umbrella?” you ask.  As well you should, considering that I’ve already told you that I knew the forecast.  I have no good answer.  Between us, YA and I own six umbrellas in various colors and sizes.  They all hang on a hook on the back porch; I actually looked at them as I was heading out the door.  A very brief thought went through my brain about what a pain to open the umbrella, shake out the umbrella, close the umbrella and make sure I didn’t get the inside of the car too wet.  So it was actually an intentional decision to leave the umbrella behind. 

I was sorry about this decision almost immediately and more than once I thought maybe I would pick up a cheapo umbrella along the way.  But then I thought of the six umbrellas on the porch and didn’t really want to add a sibling to that family.  So I just got we over and over again; seemed like every time I was just about dry, it was time to stop again.  Sheesh.  Hopefully on the next road trip, I’ll remember this. 

Any time you’ve shot yourself in the foot (metaphorically)?  Where do you keep the umbrellas at your place?

2026, History, In Memorium, Music

The Edmund Fitzgerald

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Yesterday was the 51st anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  Good grief, how can it have been that long?

The EF was commissioned in 1958 and was a taconite hauler from the northern Minnesota mines to various iron works in ports on the Great Lakes.  When she was launched, she was the largest ship on the Great Lakes and remains the largest to have sunk there as well.  She was carrying over 26,000 tons of taconite on that last voyage and she lies 530 below the surface — just 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, where she was headed.  Although life rafts were found deployed, no one survived.  Only one body was found on the wreck itself, no others have been discovered.

I found this interesting animation online:

Of course most of us remember the Edmund Fitzgerald because of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.  I’m guessing that it’s cemented in many of our minds because it was a staple on the Late Great Morning Show.

He wrote it in early 1976, after having read about the tragedy after it happened.  Lightfoot was up for two Grammys, best song and best male pop vocal, but was beaten out by I Write the Songs and Stevie Wonder.  I’m pretty sure that all of us here on the Trail would have voted for one of our classics.  I still tear up when I hear it.  And then after I play it again, I usually put on The Mary Ellen Carter as well!

Any other good historical ballads that you like?

2026, gardening, History, Travel, Uncategorized

Savannah Gardens

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Today’s post comes from Jacque.

April 14-18 this year (2026) my dear friend Tracy and I took off for a Savannah, Georgia Garden Tour. After returning home I intended to submit a blog about it, because we saw so many interesting Gardens and sites. Hmmm. What happened? So here it is (now that husband’s medical difficulties stabilized, I will start to work on one about Northern Ireland. )

We travelled to Savannah the weekend of April 16-20 to stay just south of the iconic Forsyth Park in a VRBO apartment that was beautiful, and up 3 flights of creaky stairs. Once up there we had a deck shaded by a tulip tree. It was quiet and lovely.

Forsyth Park Fountain

Creaky Stairs

Front of apartment

The garden tour is organized by the North of Gaston (NOG) Garden Club of Savannah. ere is the website. They host one every spring. I see that soon the 2027 tickets will be on sale:

The Garden Club of Savannah NOGS Tour of Hidden Gardens 2026

It attracts thousands of visitors and is walkable. We started with the garden nearest to us at a mansion featured as a law office in the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It is in reality a single man’s home.

Tracy and I in the first garden

Statue of naked lady

Most of the gardens were walled and very small, with every inch covered in patio or plants. It took two days to get to all thirteen gardens, walking through the graceful neighborhoods to get from one to the other. Unfortunately, the two days of the tour were unusually hot, 94° each day.

Jones Street of the idiom “Keeping up with the Joneses

Mossy Chair

Walled Garden

Relics and cannon ball

The most interesting garden was on Jones Street. The townhouse there had been remodelled and updated in the 1990’s. During the excavations of the garden the relics were brought up: the pottery and glass shards were not a surprise, but the cannon ball held by the red armed figure was a great surprise. They did not know the cannon ball was still live, so the entire street was evacuated. The examination of the cannon ball showed it was from the Civil Ware era. It was not live, so the homeowner kept it as a novelty. The family had remodeled the stable and tiny “Slave Quarters ” above it as a rental.

We dined at a local lunch spot one noon where we found a wedding shower in progress. Everyone attending had to wear a hat. This was my favorite:

What strange things have you found in your yard?

2026, animals, dreams, Family, home, Kids, Movies, Uncategorized

Jori!

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Big Red by Jim Kjelgaard was published in 1945, the first of a trio of “Red” books.  At some point Walt Disney picked up the rights and the movie came out in 1962.  My folks always took me (and sometimes my sister) to the Disney movies and I was absolutely besotted by the big Irish Setter in the film.  I was six, so not quite up to reading the original book on my own, so my mom read it to me.  I read it again on my own a year or so later.  (This is not a rant about how Walt Disney completely re-wrote much of his source material; but suffice it to say it was my earliest lesson in how books and Hollywood weren’t always in sync.)

From the moment I watched that movie, Irish Setters have had my heart.  It took me eight years to convince my folks that we needed to add a red dog to our family and one of the first things I did as a young adult, in my first house, was get an Irish Setter of my own (Scarlett).  Other setters followed (Tristan, Rhiannon).

YA and I knew quickly after Guinevere passed that we needed a dog in the house; since I grew up in a two-dog household and usually had two dogs at a time as an adult, I knew it was time for two dogs.  And I knew that one of those dogs had to be red. 

I contacted the rescue organization that we had adopted Rhiannon from, filled out the paperwork and haunted the website.  We also searched other sites but Irish Setters are not a very popular breed – they got wildly overbred back in the Disney movie days.  They also aren’t the easiest dogs… very high energy and quite stubborn.  We also looked into puppies from breeders but the price tags were so very high; YA and I are also both committed rescue folks, so that avenue didn’t go anywhere.

Jori showed up on the Save Our Setters website on a Monday morning in early September.  It was so hard not to make a nuisance of myself throughout the process, and I’m not sure if I was successful.  Then came the call from the foster, who had the biggest say in who would be a good fit for Jori; we had a great talk; she said she had three other folks to interview and then I would hear back.  Three days of torture before I got THE call; Jori was ours.  I’m pretty sure I shrieked a bit on the phone.  There were some tears as well.

The foster (and Jori) were in Georgia but before I got myself too worked up about transport, it turned out the foster was going to an English Setter dog show in St. Louis the first week of November.  Driving to St. Louis and back was much more do-able than driving (or flying) to Georgia and back.  So that’s why last week I had a solo drive to Purina Farms on Tuesday and a dual drive home on Wednesday (the dog show was at the P.F. arena in Gray Summit). 

Jori is the name that YA and I gave her.  It’s short for Jorinda from an old Grimm’s fairy tale that I always loved as a kid: Jorinda and Jorindel.  Jori has been on my short list for dog names most of my life and now is the time.  Not YA’s first choice, but I overrode her objections.

She is settling in amazing well for a rescue – clearly feels at home and has taken over my bed already.  Freya thinks it’s wonderful to have a playmate – they tussle over toys, chase each other in the yard and wrestle in the house.  Jori loves everybody within the first minute of meeting them and at this point has no manners at all about letting you know.  She’s very very happy about the large variety of treats we have at the house.  So far she’s figured out “sit”, “come”, “uppie [for going upstairs].  She’s loves walking but pulls and because she’s huge for a female setter, she is quite strong.  We’re working on this but did I mention stubborn??

So that was the big Where in the World is VS mystery from last week. 

How have you picked out names for your pets?  Kids?

2026, animals, chickens, crops, Farming Update, Theatre

SHELF CHICKEN

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Thursday night, I stepped outside before bed and it was so nice to see the stars. There was my friend Orion and I said hello. After the cloudy days and rainy weather, it was so nice to have a clear sky.
It was a bit brisk at 34°, but at least it was calm.


It has been a busy week. Saturday afternoon will be the 11th performance of the kids play at the college this week. We opened last Saturday, had one show on Monday, and then two shows a day the rest of the week for area second – fifth grade. The show Dragons Love Tacos, was well received by the visiting school children, and it was a nice cast, and I think I’ve gotten a new work study out of the deal. The young lady running lights is in the band and choir, and came in as a friend of one cast member and she’s got the right spunk and attitude to be a good match for me. She’ll start in January.
It was fun talking to the school kids as they came in. We had some college students help as ushers to meet the busses and I’d hold a door and talk to the kids: “Hi! Welcome! Thanks for being here! Enjoy the show! Where are you from? Have fun! Nice hood! Love the sparkles!” and as many other tidbits as I could come up with.

View from the booth
Oops! Too much smoke but it sure looks cool.


A few other meetings on top of things and some homework and I didn’t get a whole lot done this week.

Last weekend, Kelly cleaned up the flowerpots in front of the house, moved a few of the perennials over to the machine shed, pulled out the tomato plants for the chickens to work through, and put the plant stands away. I spent Sunday afternoon picking up hoses, cutting some grass and mulching leaves in front of the shed, and backing the chisel plowed into the shop to do some work on that. It was a beautiful day. I had to wonder why I’m usually picking up hoses the day before a snowstorm is coming? I think it’s because some years we’ve already had a snowstorm by now.

Of course Tuesday was Elections. I helped open the polls and worked until 9:00, then into the College for the first play, and then back to the Townhall for Elections.
Of the 570 walk-in voters that we had, our final results tape showed they were predominantly Republican. But after all the early voters were counted and added, the Democrats won. Pretty interesting. I had several discussions about why that is. Looking at the total county votes, all the rural areas go Republican and urban go Democrat. I don’t want to speak badly about the damn old farmers, but why is that??

I had to get some plow bolts before I could change the points on the chisel plow, and there’s a thing called a buster bar on the back of the chisel plow that just kinda knocks the big clumps down so it’s not quite so rough next spring. The company that made it is no longer around, but eventually, I found another company that still has parts and I was able to order some replacement teeth. However, on the first round the dealer ordered the wrong set. On the second round was they got it right.


We had an inch and a half of rain between Monday and Wednesday and I am hopeful they will get back to harvesting corn in the next few days and hopefully mine will be taken quickly. I would like to get going on plowing right away, but I also need to get updated soil samples done and they like to do that before the fields get too rough from plowed. And all the loans that I took out last December to pay for this years crops have also come due.  The soybean check won’t quite cover all the bills, but once the corn is out, we should be doing OK.

I have mentioned before this one chicken living in our garage. Sometimes a second or third tries to move in and I chase them back out. Call me cruel and heartless if you want, but I don’t need chicken poop on another area. One area of poop is bad enough. Recently a second chicken moved in and while she sits on a garbage can the first chicken has moved onto a shelf. Daughter calls her the shelf chicken.
She even lays eggs in there sometimes. I don’t understand.


Padawan‘s birthday was Friday. He is no longer a teenager. We are taking him out Saturday. He isn’t making much progress on “becoming an adult”.

We provide lunch for the actors during the week. I take the leftovers home for the chickens. Tuesday was tacos. I had half a five-gallon bucket of beans, rice, and taco meat. It was dark when I got home so I left it in the garage. One of the dogs found it and ate 2/3 rds of it. If it was Bailey, at least her farting the rest of the night didn’t bother us.
Thursday, I saved some mashed potatoes and veggies. I forgot the bucket downstairs and Friday morning, maintenance had dumped it out, washed it, and left me a clean bucket. The chickens were very disappointed.

WOULD YOU RATHER GET A STOOL FOR A TALL SHELF, OR GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR FOR A LOW SHELF?

2026, Food, Uncategorized

Read The Label Carefully

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Our new freezer is working splendidly. It is bigger than the old one, and much easier to see what is stored therein. Husband and I realized after transferring things to the new freezer that we had far too many frozen leftover dinner entrees and we decided to cut back on our cooking and make finishing off the leftovers a priority.

We are usually pretty good at labeling foods we freeze by writing the name of the foods on the lid of the container using a permanent marker. It isn’t the best method, since the older lids have multiple names on them. I try to cross out the old names before I write a new one.

This week I chose three containers of leftovers to finish off. One was labeled “Cuban Black Beans”. One was labeled “Rare Lamb Roast”. The last one had “Green Chili Chicken” written on the lid. As they thawed I checked to make certain the labels reflected what was in the containers. They seemed to match.

Husband heated up some of the chicken for dinner on Monday. We were looking forward to some Southwest food, and had heated up some corn to accompany it. It was quite a shock to find that the chicken bundles topped with what I thought was tomatillo chili sauce were really haddock-stuffed cabbage rolls with dill cream sauce (Fischrouladen), a Northern German dish. The coarse mustard in the sauce looked just like tomatillo seeds. It tasted really good, though.

We bought some freezer tape to put on container lids so that we can write the contents on the tape instead of the lid. That may help reduce the confusion of our leftover’s identity. In a few days I will pull some more leftovers out of the freezer. I hope there aren’t any surprises.

How carefully do you read food labels when you shop?Many Unidentified Frozen Objects in your freezer? How do you manage leftovers?

2026, animals, Fantasy, holidays, Kids, Media, Mysteries

Plague Doctor

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Halloween was kind of a bust here.  We only had 19 trick-or-treaters before I closed up shop at 8:30. And 3 of those were my little friends whose parents drove them over just to see me.  If they hadn’t come, it would have been 16.  A LOT of leftover candy… sadly we bought stuff that we like.

One of the things I like to do when kids come up to the house is guess what their costumes are.  Some are easy.  Spider girl.  Cowboy.  Ninja.  Cat.  But some were clearly off my radar; my knowledge of popular culture is just not up to snuff for Halloween.  One tween was all sparkled up with tuile and a jaunty hat; she told me she was Moulin Rouge.  I was thinking another was Barbie but turned out she was the American Girl Doll Courtney, complete with a small rollie case with the doll itself inside.

The one who took the cake was a kid, maybe 11 or 12.  I thought he was a monk… robe with rope as a belt, a few medallions, a long cross necklace.  Nope… he told me he was a plague doctor.  It took me by surprise and by the time I had the question “Where is your plague mask” come to my lips, the little group he was with had headed back the sidewalk where some parents were waiting.

Plague doctor?  Really?  I was dumbstruck.  Do kids know what a plague doctor was? Are plague doctors in popular culture these days.  Rabbit hole time.

Apparently plague doctors are alive and well among us:

  • The Plague Doctor from Vigil: The Longest Night. He’s a bad guy trying to resurrect an evil goddess.
  • The Doctor from Plague Road. This is a post-apocalyptic and ruined world game in which The Doctor explores and fights bad guys.
  • Plague Knight from Shovel Knight. Also a villain whose modus operandi is explosive alchemy potions.
  • The Leech from Wytchwood. Yet another sinister figure who injects diseases into his patients.
  • The Warden from The Serpent Road. This alchemist’s role is stopping a spreading infection with potion crafting.
  • Corbus from Thymesia. This character has survived the plague with an experimental treatment that leaves him with raven-like abilities.

This is just a handful and most of the games are in the dark fantasy genre.  Almost all of them wear the traditional bird-like mask (which I also discovered, were fashioned so that there were receptacles along each side of the long beak for perfumes and drugs).  I suppose that it’s easy to cast such a scary and suspicious-looking character into a bad guy in these games but it seems a little unfair to stain the service of all the doctors who tried to help with the plague despite the risks and the odds of not surviving themselves.

Any memorable costumes this year (or that you can remember from past years??

2026, animals, Fantasy, pets, TV

Lamb Chop Slayer

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Years ago, YA came home with the first of the Lamb Chop chew toys for Guinevere.  Guinevere was the Queen of Destruction when it came to stuffy toys.  She could disable and disembowel a squeaky toy in a matter of minutes and once it didn’t squeak, it was just a useless clump of foam to her.  I was extremely queasy about letting her have a Lamb Chop toy; it meant nothing to YA but I remember Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop from my childhood with affection. 

Seeing Lamb Chop murdered before my eyes was not something I was looking forward to.  To everyone’s surprise, Guinevere treated Lamb Chop almost with reverence, gently nibbing on it.  No ripping it’s guts out, no chewing it’s head off.  It was weirdly wonderful.  When the Lamb Chop toys went on sale, we bought ten of them.  Every Solstice she got a fresh one and when she passed, there were at least six of them still in service.

Freya has inherited all the Lamb Chops and so far, four of them have met their maker.  She is rabid about getting to the squeaker, but unlike Guinevere who would just disable the squeaker, Freya wants to eat the squeaker!  (Add this to a long list of things that Freya thinks she needs to chew/eat.)  So in addition to the awful mess that an expiring Lamb Chop makes, I am now the Official Director of “Watch-Freya-To-Make-Sure-She-Doesn’t-Eat-The-Squeaker”.  This means when she gets close (when she can get her whole snoot inside the toy), I have to take the toy and get the squeaker out myself.  So now I am the one pulling out the innards of a beloved childhood character.  From murder watch to pre-emptive murder itself.

Any childhood characters you think would make a good dog toy?  Or that you would prefer NOT to see chewed on?