Zoey Learns a New Trick

 Those of you with small dogs know that they are sometimes not the smartest creatures on the planet. You probably also know that they are not as dumb as they may lead on to be.

While I was gone, Barb called me every morning from the gazebo where she has her morning coffee and the dogs play in the enclosure. Just hearing her talk about the antics of Zoey and Maisie made me home sick. She would describe to me how they will be running and Zoey will run into Maisie knocking her over and making her roll. Then Maisie will do the same thing to Zoey except Zoey is 25lbs and Maisie is maybe 10, so Maisie just bounces off of her and is the one who ends up rolling on the ground once again. 

She also got in the habit of bringing the dogs out to the pen, (aka dog jail) while she vacuums and does other things in the house. This has served her well, giving her the freedom to do what she wants without the little ones under foot. That is until she looked out and saw Maisie standing at the edge of the fence staring off into the distance. Zoey was nowhere to be seen. Barb finally saw Zoey a few yards outside the enclosure sniffing around. A jail break! She thought it was weird as it has never happened before but she went and got her, put her back in the pen, went back inside but kept an eye on her. Sure enough the little shit walked up to the edge of the fencing and leapt over it! In 5 years, she has never done this and now she decides to?!?!? Not all new tricks are good tricks!

So. the first order of business when I got home was to tear down the 2' fence and install a 3' fence. Well. Barb did most of the hard work as my wrist and shoulder at still out of commission. I was able to help take down the old fence and put up the new one, but she had to do all the post pounding. 

We were able to get most of the posts in with this pounder, but did have to borrow Neighbor Jim's hammer drill and T post bit for the last 5 that were in total rocky areas. 

Maisie learned a new trick too, and it is a good one! She is now sleeping through the night! No more getting up 3-4 times a night make for a happy Barbie!

Other than that project my motivation level has been very low. I did work out in the new garage prepping the overhead doors for an upcoming garage door installation. Barb has been working on her own projects. She got it in her head that she wants to redecorate the bedrooms, which I think are fine, but once an idea gets in her head, you best just get out of her way. There have been a flurry of Amazon packages coming in; pillows, comforters, duvets, curtains, candles, plants. Many of them went back only to have more packages replace them. Paint swatches are stuck to the walls...Me? I am thinking I might need to go back to the farm just to get out of her way!

She has also been working on a secret project in the workshop. I know what it is, but will have to wait to see the final product.

Last Saturday we went up to Spearfish to see my sister who was visiting Alana and Ryan. Also with her was her husband Murray and their son Marshall. It has been years since we have seen them!

It was also the first time Maisie has been on a big adventure. The first time she was harnessed and leashed. We stopped by a restaurant on our way and had lunch out on the patio with the dogs. Maisie was very good and just settled down under the table and slept while we ate. 

When we got to Ryan and Alana's all hell broke loose as Sophie and Loki greeted and investigated the new puppy. Zoey reacted the way we thought she would. She attacked anything that tried to play with her or get rough with her baby sister. She would let them smell her but anytime Sophie or Loki tried to play with Maisie, Zoey would in between them and put a stop to it.  

Other than that project, it was a pretty quiet week. I started getting things ready for bow season which opened on 9/1. Pretty hard to get excited for bow hunting when it is 85-90 outside. I've shot my bow twice and I have absolutely no strength in my left shoulder to lift the bow so whatever I did to it needs more time to heal. I am getting some interesting photos from the trail cameras though!

Besides deer, we have had several other visitors to the water tanks including bobcats, coyotes and even a stinky striped friend!

No blog is complete without a dog video, am I right? This clip was originally only 20 seconds which is not nearly long enough to annoy the hell out of Harry, so after 20 seconds I played it again in super slow motion. 

Although now that I think about it, if I had played the original 20 seconds in a loop Harry would have probably watched it for hours before he figured it out!

Farm Time

Time. Time is something there is not enough of sometimes. Especially when it comes to getting the crops off as soon as possible. Why are we in such a hurry? Consider the fact that your entire livelihood, your entire success or failure of the year lies in the crop that you have been waiting for all year to mature. You too would want to get it off the field and away from the unpredictability of Mother Nature as soon as possible. 

One thing I have to adjust to every time I come up is adjusting to Farm Time. What is Farm Time you ask? Well it certainly is not the same as regular time. Not even close. When Chris says, "We are going out in an hour", a lot of things kick into action. An hour is not an hour, it is more like 45 minutes, sometimes 30. I need to get to my camper, eat lunch no matter what time it really is, pack water, snacks and anything else I might need for the day. Phone, headset, charger, take an ibuprofen.....

Lord help us if he says, "We are leaving in 15 minutes", you are basically already late as that means he is walking towards his combine and getting in. 

Once you are in the combine, tractor or truck, usually around 11am, you need to be prepared to be in there the next 9-10 hours. That is a basic shift using Farm Time. Almost three weeks into it, I am used to it, my first week, I had not quite adapted. 

We finished the last of the wheat fields on Thursday evening. This crop may be the saving grace this year as overall yields were pretty good! There are actually a couple of wheat fields left, but those are the hailed out ones and are frankly a lower priority right now as we focus on getting the viable crops off the feilds and into the bins or to the elevator. 

We have since moved on to Canola. The first field we went to is called Millie's as it once belonged to Aunt Millie. A 160-acre piece with about 152 tillable acres. When you are a farmer, it is not about how many acres you own or lease, it is about how many tillable acres you have. Slough and woodlots are not all that valuable to farmers.  

They did something quite interesting on these acres this spring, creating 9 test plots using 9 different varieties of canola. One might think that canola is canola, but nothing could be farther from the truth.  Different varieties have different yields and grow differently. It is quite a tedious process setting up test plots as you have to take the time to flush and switch the varieties every couple of passes. You then have to flag each of the plots to you know which is which at the end of the year. Some we could tell visually, others we could not. 

I will not get into the nitty gritty of the results, if you want that you can push here, but I will say that the top variety (Invigor 330) yielded about 600 more pounds per acre of canola than the poorest performer (Pioneer 612). At the current price of $0.25/pound of canola, that is almost $23,000 over the 152 acres. So many other factors go into these results; rain, some varieties are more drought tolerant than others. Soil type, nutrients.... the results achieved on one field might be totally different on another field a few miles away. Interesting, nonetheless. 

I trucked most of the week once again, with Chris, Farmer Bob and Dylan doing the combining. Bob S carted and Ty assisted with the trucking. Bob S went home on Friday which put me back in the cart for the last three days of my stay. Ty took this video of me dumping canola at sunset one evening. 

I did take one spill this week while I was cleaning the hopper of the truck. I was trying to reach some wheat that was lodged near the top, so I climbed the slope of the hopper to get it. On my way back down, I lost my footing and down I went, right through the trap. It was one of those falls that is so jarring you take the next few seconds to mentally assess what happened and what hurts. My ego hurt most of all, but also my wrist, arm and shoulder. The wrist swelled up for a day or two but seems to be mostly back to normal now, just tender. 

When we were harvesting the wheat around the "Home property" we had a family picnic/supper. Holly, Sydnie and Stephanie set up tables and chairs where we had supper out in the field so to speak. Chris brought out the drone and took a group pictures as well as individual family pictures. Being the only nonfamily member, I opted out as it would just be a picture of lonely old me standing in front of the combine. 

Holly also put together this video put to music which is pretty cool. 

The bonus of harvesting this piece is that you do not have to truck most of it. I just parked the truck over the auger and Bob just dumps into the semi and the wheat just passes straight through into the auger and up into the bin. 

Before I knew it, it was Sunday afternoon and time for me to leave. Sad and happy all at the same time I got in the truck to find this!

I drove two hours that night, and 6 the next morning before pulling into our driveway, It is so good to be home. As I write this, I am on the couch with computer on the arm of the couch and two Frenchies in my lap. Life is good!

Wheat Time!

 So much going on, so little time to write about it. We have been busy harvesting wheat this week with several long days between 12-16 hours. On a good day, with both combines going and no troubles we can get about 300 acres done. If a combine breaks down, things slow down to a snail's pace. At least it seems that way. 

There are a couple of wheat fields ready, a few more still have some green in them, and green is no good when it comes to harvesting wheat. And I am not talking totally green, just hints of green. Chris can drive by a wheat field at 50mph and say, "Too green". To me it looks the perfect golden you want a wheat field, but to the experienced eye, or when you really slow down there is definitely some green in it. The one on the left is ready, the one on the right has a lot of green. 

We typically cannot get into the field until 11am or later depending on the previous night's dew which makes it tough to cut. This means we go late into the night, 10, 11pm or even a little later until the dew settles in again. 

I have been kicked out of the cart and have been trucking this week. Not my favorite job as it is nonstop going and there is a more stress as the whole operation is dependent on you dumping the truck and getting back before the other truck is full and everything comes to a standstill. We bring two semis out to the field, once one is full, I drive it back to the farm and dump it into an auger which carries it up to the top of the bin and dumps it in. Meanwhile, out in the field the other truck is being filled. I think the bin below will hold 50 truckloads. The last field we did was about 5-6 miles away and it took me about 40 minutes to do "a turn", by then the other truck is often full so I just jump in that truck and do it over, and over, and over again a l l d a y long. Lord help me should a shear bolt break on the auger I am using at the farm to empty the trucks as that take precious time to fix. Or worse yet, the bin gets full and you have to move the auger.

If we really get into a tight spot, Ty or Dylan can help with the trucking, but their time is better used someplace else. I did have to call for reinforcements a couple times when both trucks were full and there was no way I could keep up. In a way, that is good news as it means a good harvest and unlike the peas, the wheat is doing a little better than anticipated. 

Bob S arrived on Monday and took over the carting duties, so we have an extra man in the field which is very helpful. Meals are delivered to us in the field by Holly or Sydney, they do their best to accommodate our pickiness, but you are so hungry and thankful for food, I would eat just about anything. These two are excellent cooks though and everything is delicious! Sydnie texted me the other day asking me what vegetables I wanted in my chicken pot. I said, "anything except carrots, peas, and green beans, unless they are French cut green beans then I would eat them." I am pretty sure she was thinking that there is nothing left to put into a chicken pot pie, but she texted back and asked if I like corn. "YES!" It is on the right below, on the left is Holly's homemade pizza which we look forward to every Friday night, both were delicious!

I was not sure how one makes a chicken pot pie with only corn, but she did it! She is self-admittedly an inexperienced cook living on mostly prepared and air fryer food until her marriage last month. Now she is trying to expand her horizons and is doing a very good job. 

Everything was going very smoothly until it started raining. Farmers pray for rain during the growing season, yet curse it during harvest, then pray for it again after. Never happy these farmers. Even a little bit of rain brings the harvest for a standstill for 1, sometimes 2 days. So far, we have had three days of rain with more in the forecast. Not good when Bob S and I are only here for a limited time and we need to get the crops in.  

We still kept busy all day, cleaning and organizing the shop and other areas of the farm where stuff has accumulated for years. We pulled stuff out that has been there for decades. There were parts for combines and tractors that have been gone for years. Threw some away, organized a bunch and listed a lot of items for sale. 

I also "got" to clean a couple more bins and there is always maintenance on the combines like replacing broken sickle blades.

I spent 4 hours cleaning downed trees in one field. These were from one of the windstorms in the summer, but you cannot get to them while the crops are up. Once we harvested this field, we were able to get to the trees. These trees were probably 30 years old and overnight 15 of them were on the ground. 

The rain also allowed us to get out for a group lunch for Dylan's birthday, he turned 30 this week! We also played poker one night with the gang here on the farm and a few others. Farmer Bob even got in on the action!

Back home Barb has had another rough week. No wasp stings thankfully, but she did pick up a bug somewhere resulting in 3 days of a flu-like illness. Achey, chills, and the rest of it accompanied with little sleep thanks to potty training Ms. Maisie does not make for a happy Barb.  

She is making headway with Maisie though as earlier this week Maisie actually started going to the door when she needed to go to the bathroom! That is a big-time win!

Maisie has a new favorite spot in the house. She loves to lay down under the half-barrel table next to Barb's chair.

Barb had two traumatic experiences this week. Well, three if you count her illness.  Both were before she was sick at least. I even got to witness the first one. It was 2:30 in the morning and the camera alarms around the house went off on my phone waking me up. I looked to see if it was Barb's boyfriend sneaking off or what, but when I looked all I saw was Barb carrying Maisie around the house. Apparently, Maisie had to go to the potty and when Barb brought her out the sliding door, the latch was in such a position that it flipped over locking Barb out of the house! 

She went around to all the other doors checking to see if she had left any of them unlocked, she had not. She finally found a window that was unlatched, pried the screen off, opened the window, set Maisie through the window and crawled in herself. That is one way to wake up for the day! I captured this screenshot off one of the cameras. 

The second incident caused a flurry of phone calls to me in a short period of time when a huge snake decided to make an appearance right outside the door. At first she called me to identify the snake. Through a series of questions we were able to determine it was not a rattle snake but a harmless bullsnake. She was still questioning whether she should kill it or not as she was afraid of it biting one of her precious puppies. This thing was huge measuring close to 5'!

I finally convinced to just to shoo it away which resulted in a couple more phone calls when the snake became aggressive and started striking at her. She finally got it to go away, but it came back 5 minutes later, she did this not only once, not only twice, but three times! It even crawled up the birdfeeder tree, no doubt smelling the squirrel that is always hanging around. It finally crawled down that drainpipe I showed a couple weeks ago giving Barb no peace of mind at all. She has not seen it since. 

She only made two videos this week for your viewing pleasure, but one of them was of Dakota playing. A rare sight indeed!

The girls spend a lot of time out in the gazebo, they all just love being outside. 

We received a bit of bad news notifying us that our friend Jim from back in Wisconsin passed away. Barb and his wife Melanie were (and still are) best buds back in the horsing days. Jim and I became good friends and still talked once a month or so. He is going to be missed, rest in peace buddy. 

That's it from the farm this week, hopefully this coming week will be filled with sunshine and good harvesting days!

It's Been a Rough Year

 As does every April, this past April's planting brought yet the promise of a good growing season with a plentiful harvest come August and September. So plentiful that we would struggle with where and how to store all the crops. Grain prices so high they would have to open banks just to store all the money. This is the dream of every farmer when the last seed is planted into the ground. This year was no different.

A timely rain earlier in the spring fueled this promise and things were looking good, it was going to be a good year. Until......

The first incident happened mid-May when they had a windstorm of biblical proportions. Sustained winds in excess of 70 miles an hour creating dust storms, like of which that have not been seen in decades. Disrupting school bus routes, causing accidents and the stripping topsoil of recently planted farm fields. Along with this topsoil went seed and seedlings. There were actual drifts of dirt in ditches along the roadway!

The majority of the damage was to exposed hilltops where they lost hundreds of acres of newly emerged crops. Not the start to the season they were hoping for. 

The next storm hit in early June, a bright sunny day that we all dream about. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and you could almost hear the crops growing in the fields. The yellow of the canola blooms were just starting to pop. 

Then ominous clouds formed over the farm. This storm threatened to bring even stronger winds. And it followed through with that promise with winds which reached 80-100mph. They called it a derecho bringing not only wind, but hail. 

Unlike the storm the month before, this one hit when the crops were at their most vulnerable stage. Right when many of them were flowering and creating the blooms which in turn creates the grain or seed. 

Locally, on the farm itself, trees were ripped out by the roots, doors askew on buildings, grain bins moved from their foundations.

While this was devastating, it was nothing compared to what they saw when they drove around to look at their crops. Beautiful yellow canola fields were totally wiped out. 

Over 2,000 acres totally wiped out. The promise of a bountiful harvest gone overnight. There's the thing about losing your crops. You cannot just call it a day and wait for next spring to plant again. You still have to spray to keep the weeds at bay, you still have to harvest what is left to clear what remains for next years planting. Basically the same expense you would have if the crop were viable, with no income to offset it. There is some insurance, but it does not even come close to what was lost. 

But it is now August and time to harvest the remaining crops. I arrived on Monday after an 8-hour drive. 20 minutes later I was in a semi driving it out to the field. 5 minutes after that I was in a tractor driving within 3 feet of Chris and Farmer Bob's combines as they unloaded peas into the cart I was pulling behind the tractor. And so begins the harvest of 2026. 

We were busy harvesting three pea fields. While two of these fields may not have been hit with either of the storms, they were hit with the heat dome that seemed to cover much of the nation. Pea pods that may normally contain 5-8 peas, contained 3-4 drastically cutting the yield. Again, same expense to harvest, about 1/2 the income to cover this expense. Because it was a lower yield, I was able to put my feet up between dumps. Ah, life is good!

When we were not in the field, I spent my time getting the bins cleaned and ready for in the coming grains cleaning 12 grain bins that day. Boy, was my body sore that night! 

But it was a good sore, and it is good to be back up here with what I consider my second family. Good to see Bob and DeAnne, Chris and Holly, as well as the newlyweds Dylan and Sydney. And I cannot forget Ty a nephew of Bob and DeAnne's who is on his third year working fulltime at the farm. 

Week 1 of three almost in the books, three fields done many more to go. There is no way we will get them all done before I head home, but three weeks is about my limit nowadays. Even though we have been married over 40 years now, it seems the older I get the more I miss Barb when I am away from home. That math just does math in my head but that is the reality of it. 

I talk to her a couple times a day and get updates on puppy life. She is focusing her time on potty training which she is not sure if it is progressing or not. She takes Maisie outside to do her business every hour or, which she does, but Barb is not sure if she yet understands the connection with being outside and going to the bathroom or if she just happens to go while she is out there. Because if she was inside, she would have no qualms about going wherever she is when the need hits. 

She did have one traumatic incident when she got stung on her hand by something while she was outside. Her hand swelled up like up like a balloon. She said she is pretty sure it was a Murder Hornet so at least she still has a sense of humor about it. Three days of pain and itching has been keeping her up at night, of course in addition to Maisie waking up every couple of hours. 

A work in progress, but I have all the confidence that Barb will get there. We too will get there at the farm. We are done with peas and ready to move on to wheat, but the wheat is not ready yet, there is still some green on the stems, and they need them to be totally dry before harvesting. As such, we have a couple of down days, from the field at least. 

One morning I headed out to a field with the riding lawn mower to recut a line between two fields. Because they are a seed dealer, they need to make sure their seed is as clean as possible with no cross contamination. They cut a swath between fields to make sure one variety does not bleed into another. 

I also spent a couple of days picking away at a mess behind one of the buildings eventually getting it cleaned up and somewhat organized. 

This post showed some of the things that were not all sunshine and roses in the farm life. But there is always the promise of tomorrow. The promise of next year, the promise of the next field doing better than expected and the promise of puppies that will bring a smile to your face.