Back at the Farm!

 Ah, it is good to be back at the farm. Kind of like ground hogs day in a sense. Being my 11th or 12th fall up here, things become routine. I do have to refamiliarize myself with some of the machinery. Like, what RPM do you put the tractor at when unloading grain from a truck into a bin. Or which switch turns on the PTO. Within an hour of my arrival, I was doing just that, unloading a truck. 

There are 6 of us on the farm working on getting the crops in; Farmer Bob is in one combine, Chris is in another, Chris' dad, Bob S. is in the grain cart, Dylan and I are trucking, and Ty is cutting hay, cleaning grain and doing a variety of other jobs back at the farm. So far, this has not varied too much; Dylan has jumped in the combine a time or two, but the rest of us have pretty much stuck to those roles. 

There has been more than our fair share of breakdowns, at least it seems that way to me. A fuel pump here, a pulley and shaft there. And there is always the occasional bearing, sensor and shear pin that goes out. Luckily, they are pretty self-sufficient when it comes to repairs. I am not exaggerating when I say they have saved well over $10,000 in labor costs just this week alone. 

The focus of the week was on the wheat fields. 155 acres one day, a couple hundred the next. How much you get done in a day depends on how fast you can go in the field. If the straw is tough, you need to go slower, pretty much everything is under 4mph even in the best conditions. The other things that dictate how much you get done is the moisture level and the aforementioned breakdowns.  You cannot just get up in the morning and hit the fields, you need the night's dew to dissipate before you can get out there, many times it is after noon before we get out into the field. 

While waiting for that to happen, there are always the morning chores, fueling the combines, topping off the DEF, dumping trucks from the night before, greasing up equipment, cleaning out bins, moving augers..... So far, our days have been like 7am-7pm, but we were up one night until midnight working on replacing that pulley and shaft. The Case dealers even have "after hours" parts people on call. Does not matter what time it is, call the parts number and someone answers. That person will then drive into the shop, find the part and put it out for you. On the night in question Farmer Bob was running to get parts at 11pm.  Time is money and one cannot afford to be broke down. 

Diesel on the left, DEF on the right

As I said, my job this week was trucking. Depending on the truck, I will be loading with anywhere from 60,000 to 70,000lbs of wheat which I then bring back to the farm and unload into one of 30 or so grain bins of the farm. The bin vary in size from 4,000 bushel (roughly 4 trucks) to 50,000 bushel (roughly 50 trucks. 

The seed will sit in these until they are either sold on the commodity market or cleaned and sold for seed to other farmers. Most of the fields know their fate even before planting. Some are raised specifically for seed and some they know will be commodity when they put it into the ground. Sometimes farmers will have the seed under contract even before they put it in the ground in the spring, say, with General Mills or a beer manufacturer. It is quite the process.  

Depending on the crop, we have to "sanitize" the combines, trucks, cart and augers between varieties. This means getting into every crook and cranny, blowing the seeds out. Since much of their harvested seed is sold to other farmers to plant the following spring, you do not want cross contamination between varieties. 

See all that seed on the ground above and below? There are a lot of places for seeds to hide in those machines!

While the trucks and cart are relatively quick, the combines take about two hours each. But you have to be somewhat of a contortionist to climb in and out of the trucks and carts. The best way into the truck hopper is through the trap under the truck which is about 18" from the ground. My old-man bod just does not bend like it used to. I've tried going in from the top, but it is so steep and slippery, you pretty much just shoot to the bottom anyways. 

Did I mention the bins? Yeah, we have to clean those too.....

Then there is the moving grain from one bin to another. This happened a couple of times this week when a big bin only had a few thousand bushel left in it and we needed to free it up for the grain coming in from the field. We moved what was remaining into a smaller bin. 

Out of the bigger bin (left) and into the smaller bin (right)

 There are 6 varieties of wheat: Hard Red Winter, Hard Red Spring, Soft Red Winter, Soft White, Hard White and Duram. This week we harvested Hard Red Spring and Duram. Duram wheat is used primarily for pasta, it also has a very high gluten content, red wheat is used for pretty much everything else. 

Duram on the left, Red on the right

They recently bought a drone to video some of their fields for their seed business. Here are a couple, one of a pea field and one of a wheat field. If you look in the background at about the 1:00 mark of the second video, you can see their farm in the background. 

The best part of the day comes around 6pm when supper arrives. Either Holly (Chris's wife) or Stephanie (Ty's wife) arrives in the field with a Styrofoam container of food. This week suppers included ribs, pizza, sloppy Joe's and cheese steaks! The end of the day a shower comes in a close second. With the temps up in the 90's this week and as dirty as we get that shower feels mighty nice! 

I put up a couple of critter cameras before I left South Dakota, two of which are cellular and send pictures to my phone. Here are a few of the more interesting shots. 

You may have to look twice before you figure out what this one is.....

The animal in the next one isn't quite as obvious as the cow above, but if you look to the right edge you will see it. One of the hills most elusive critters. 

Some sad news though, Remmie passed away this past week. Some of you might recall this post I wrote about him this spring. He had the kind of life a dog should have; a loving family, the freedom to walk freely around the farm and being able to pursue his passion for hunting. Chris and Holly gave him the best life, he could not have asked for better owners. To say he is missed would be one a huge understatement. I urge you to read/reread that post to give you an idea what he meant to their family. 

Busy 10 days at Home

 There is something comforting about the routine of being at home. Every morning the same sounds reach my ears as I sit on the couch and watch the morning news. I need a few minutes to get my head and muscles going in the morning, Barb not so much, she is generally a spaz from the moment she wakes up. 

I am often up before her, by "up" I mean on the couch. I often wake up at 3:30-4:00 and go out to the couch. I don't know why, but that move will often put me back to sleep for a few more hours. At about 6:00-6:30 what happens next never changes..... Zoey will jump on the couch and sit on my lap waiting for some pets. I will then hear Barb turn on the Breville, as she walked to the sliding door and takes the dogs out. 5 minutes later she is back in the house and walks into the laundry room where I hear her fill the dog water dish and pick up their food bowls puts the dry food into each and brings them back into the kitchen where she puts a scoop of canned and a few pieces of shredded chicken on top.

After bringing the bowls back into the laundry room, she returns to the kitchen where I hear the clank of the dishwasher being emptied. By now I have the TV on and am watching the morning news. Once the dishwasher is emptied, I hear her at the Breville grinding her coffee beans and the other noises it makes in the coffee making process. Barb then comes and puts her coffee cup on a coaster on the table next to the couch and asks me if I want my Mountain Dew. 

My heart glows with love as I listen to this morning routine....day after day after day. 20-30 minutes later she will ask what I want for breakfast and go about making it. By now many of you are telling me to get my lazy ass to get off the couch and make my own breakfast, I will tell you, I have tried in the past and this routine is what Barb likes to do, what she wants to do. If I try to do anything I am told to go sit down. 

From that point on, the day is a wildcard, who knows what will happen. As we drink our morning beverage we talk about our plans for the day, which for me usually is, "Work on the garage". 

But that was not the case the first few days we were home as I was out of lumber and they could not deliver it for 3 days. So instead, I said words that we both dread....  "Let's finish the grout". With a groan, she says "Do we have to?"

An hour of so later I am mixing up the mortar and Barb is adding dye. Once the mortar is the right consistency, we each add mortar to our squeeze bags and get to squeezing. 

But guess what? We are done with the grout! I don't know why but this chore was like our kryptonite. We just could not get motivated to do it. But now it is done! Well, almost. Barb still wants to go through and clean off the excess with muriatic acid. 

Of course we had our regular chores that needed to get done as they were delayed while we were gone; changing the water filters in the house, cleaning the filter in the hot tub and weed whacking the tall grass on the driveway island. 

 Oh, and filling the apple tree water tote. The apple trees are looking good so far. No apples, but whatever was eating the leaves seemed to have stopped. 

When I was done with that, I had about 100 gallons of water left over so I put it in the cattle tank. While the cattle have several water tanks available to them between ours and our neighbor's property, ours has been empty for a couple of weeks. The herd happened to be near me as I was filling it, when they heard that water hitting the bottom of that tank, they came a runn'in!

 Our lumber order arrived on Monday and I got to work on the garage. While climbing around on the roof is not my favorite thing to do, I do find it rewarding working on it. We are still working on the roof, we still had 26' of roof on each side to cover, so 52' in total. Normally we could get this done in two days, but Barb blew out her back resulting in a 2-day delay. Once she was better, we got to work getting 6 panels (18') up the first day and only 2 on the second, it was just too hot. The temps were 86 and 94 each of those days so by noon, it was so hot you could not go on the metal up there. 

Did you find the Frenchie in one of these photos?

In the mornings and afternoons, we have been spending time out in the gazebo, which is where we discovered Zoey's latest talent. Eating ants! There are dozens of ants crawling across the concrete and Zoey has taken it upon herself to rid the gazebo of them one by one. The funny part is the ants are trying to fight back as they bite Zoey tongue and she shakes her head trying to get rid of them. 

I did get out to help Kevin at one of his jobs one day where he was putting trusses up on a 40x80 shed. It took a good 8 hours to get them up, but luckily the temps only got up to 76 that day. 

Yet another day, I got over to Dan and Bonnie's to help him with some electrical on an addition he is putting on his garage.

But the week was not all work, we got out once to go to Custer and sit on a roof top bar watching the bikes go by. Last week was Sturgis week and there were bikes everywhere!

We also took a drive out to Buffalo, Wyoming to look at a generator for the camper. We currently have an onboard generator, but it is acting up. Barb called a few places in the area, but no one will work on it. The one place she did find said they would do it, but needed $190/hr just to diagnosis it with a minimum of 3 hours. Then she found the exact same generator with only 100 hours on it for sale in Buffalo for $400. So we drove out and bought it. 3 1/2 hours each way, but I think it was the right move. I will either work on the existing generator myself or just replace it. 

And Sunday we had our niece. Alana and Ryan out for a Frenchie play date. We had not seen them in a while and it was nice to see Zoey, Sophie and Loki playing. Dakota hid in the bedroom and wanted nothing to do with them. Zoey and Sophie would play, then crash, play and crash over and over again. 

Our next post will come from North Dakota as it is time for me to head to the farm! Harvest began about 10 days ago with the peas. They are getting ready to start with wheat which is much busier than peas so it is time for me and Bob S. to head up to help!

I will leave you with these two beauties who stopped by the other day to visit. A doe and buck mule deer. They were only around for about 5 minutes but it is certainly nice to see them!

Ontario to Wisconsin to South Dakota!

We had another sensory overload moment as we traveled south into Wisconsin and into our old stomping grounds of Spooner, Shell Lake, Milltown and Balsam Lake Wisconsin. Spooner does not look like it changed at all in the past 50 years. Paul Bunyon still stands at the north edge of town holding his arms out where there is supposed to be an axe. I do not think there ever has been an axe in his hands in my memory. The Red Cross drug store is still operation on the corner of Main. Again, in operation for the over 50 years I have been living and coming through this area. Tony's Riverside Pizza...I will never forget the pizza's my dad and I shared over the years in that building. 

Of course there are the new things, a Dollar General on every corner, but for every new thing I see something that has been there for decades and brings back memories. The Washburn County Fair was going on as we passed through. We did not stop but a vivid memory of me at probably 10 years old flashed back. Our family was attending that fair and, much to my mother's dismay, I won an albino rabbit. At the end of the fair, they put a bunch of rabbits and pigs in a big pen and let the kids loose. If you caught an animal, you could keep it! I remember pinning this bunny to the ground, its legs a kick'in as I scooped it up and brought it over to my mom. 

My mom would not let me keep it at home, but the neighbor farmer made a pen for me, and I put the bunny in it. The next day I returned to find the farm dog eating my once pure white bunny. Talk about traumatized....

I doubt they have that event anymore. After we passed through Spooner, we took a left on Highway 70, east to Stone Lake where we met my niece Katie and her husband Mike. We reconnected with Katie a couple years ago after a probably 20-year gap. We had never met her husband, Mike. We were not supposed to meet up with them until after 7pm on Friday night, but she was so excited to get together she took Friday off and we had the full day together! She planned an action-packed day starting out at the Perlick Distillery in Sarona where she had another surprise for us. 

Her brother Steve was meeting us! Again, it has been well over 20 years since we have seen him. Weird to see them all grown up when you only have memories of them in their early teens. Not only has he grown up and in his 40's, but he is also married and has several kids. His wife, Tabitha, was there as well, a super nice person, it was nice to meet her. 

Katie and Steven

From there we went to the Garage Bar which is in.... you guessed it a garage. Well, it started out that way, now it is more of a pole building. Where else can you order 5 mixed drinks and a beer and get change back from a $20?

Our last stop of the night was at the Summit Game Farm for their Friday night fish fry. Another Wisconsin staple. We saw these guys on the road along the way.....

So delicious! (The fish fry, not the porky) All too soon it was time for bed and hit the road in the morning. We carried on south to the Milltown/Balsam Lake area. Somewhat a spur of the moment visit, we gave my sister a two-day notice asking her if we could camp in their driveway for two nights. Sister Judy and Mike live on Balsam Lake. 

She planned two days of fun in the sun visiting a few of our favorite Wisconsin bars in Milltown. In all our travels we have never run into anything like an up north Wisconsin bar anywhere else. It is just a vibe that is not repeatable anywhere else. Those of you who have experienced it will understand, those of you who haven't won't understand so I will not even try to describe it. All the bars have deer and fish mounts, all have pull tabs and all of course have shake-a-day. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of the flavor what I am talking about. 

Wise Guys in Milltown is also the home of a good friend and our favorite bartender Julie (Jules). We try to stop by and see her whenever we are in the area. 

Next door is Hack's where we went and pulled a few pulltabs. We won over $100 on our first round, but we "reinvested it" and eventually walked out with empty pockets. 

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Who do we run into while we were there? Kevin's daughter-in-law and grandchildren! They were just in South Dakota and we missed them as we were in Ontario, what are the odds of running into them in a bar in Wisconsin?!?! Pretty good actually...

Here's another thing about Wisconsin bars; drink chips. You can win drink chips at shake-a-day or when someone buys you a drink and you are just not ready for it. Judy has a baggy she carries with her for just such occasions. 

Mike has what he described as a garbage bag full of drink chips from when he cleaned out his dad's house. He would probably break the bankrupt if he cashed all those in!

 Our last adventure of the day had us heading over to Waterside restaurant on Lake Wapogasset where we met our friends Doug and Connie. So good to see both of them. Sadly, I forgot to take pictures.

The next day, Judy had more big plans for us! While we saw Judy and Mike in Florida last winter, we had not seen the rest of my siblings in a few years. Judy was able to get a hold of everyone and set up a lunch date for us in St. Croix Falls! Sadly, sister Carol was not feeling well and could not make it, but we got to see brothers, sisters, spouses and even my niece Kristina! 

The problem with getting together with a group like that it is impossible to spend as much time talking to each one as you would like, but it was awesome seeing everyone, who knows when we will be able to do it again. 

But our adventures are far from over! There are hundreds of lakes in the NE corner of South Dakota that have walleye in them, the problem is knowing which one to fish. Luckily, we have friends who fish this area quite a bit and turned us onto a lake between Watertown and Aberdeen.  The campground was like a ghost town. Full of campers but no one around. There must have been a 3-4 dozen sites, all with campers in them, but one around. When Barb called to get a site for two nights, the guy said he only does seasonal sites but had an open one we could stay in for two nights. Being it was a weekday; we figured everyone must just come up on the weekends. 

At over 15,000 acres of water it was hard to know exactly where to fish. Where does one even start? No fear, the master fishman is here! Notice I said master fisherMAN, as in me, not my lovely wife Barb. After looking over the lake map, I noticed a couple of sunken islands out in the middle of the lake, the perfect place for those tasty walleyes to feed. And sure enough, we had a couple on within minutes of dropping our lines in the water. 

Over the next two days we caught dozens of fish. Nothing big, in fact nothing over 16". They all seemed to be about the same size, 13"-16". The only picture we took was of the smallest fish caught by your truly. Truth be told, the next fish I caught was even smaller, but I threw it back before Barb could get a picture of it. 

We were able to weed out our limit of eaters each day adding to our bounty. The freezer is officially full of walleye!

Two 5-hour drives later we were pulling into our driveway. Our Great Summer Adventure was over. Only three weeks, but full of fishing and fun! Both of the girls were glad to be home. Dakota walked around the house, her tail a wagging. She even went over to the toy basket and pulled one out and tossed it in the air. Zoey was over the top excited and got the Zoomies which I was able to catch on video. Somehow I have a feeling we will be buying new furniture sooner than later.....

Everything was as it should be at the homestead. One thing that caught us my surprise was the sunflowers under the birdfeeders! We are going to leave them to grow for now. They made it this far after all. 

Now, it is back to work. There is a list of things to be done before I head to the farm for harvesting!