My life is explained...

I'm in the wrong universe...
This explains so many things...

I watched the news this morning and have commentary, cause I'm sure everyone cares...

Random thoughts:

What point in US history did Christians lose their sense of humor? I'm going with 1974. I walked into the kitchen in fifth grade and my Mother said the church more uptight than ours was warning about the evils of Halloween. Mom was never real enthused about the holiday, we were not allowed to dress as devils and being a ghost was somewhat frowned on. But, I used to politely extort candy from relatives and neighbors. I think 1974 was the first "harvest" party I heard of. However, if you have a harvest party on Halloween, I think it is still a Halloween party, especially if everyone dresses as farmers. That is one scary occupation...

I opened my web browser and found some interesting stories:

1- The CEO of Apple has announced that he is Gay. So, a less than enthusiastic product launch and slightly slipping stock prices are worrisome enough for the company to play the "undeniable virtue of the oppressed" card? OR is it because he is looking emaciated and he doesn't have cancer?

I've been feeling more and more frustration with my Apple products. Apple puts you in a box, it continually limits your choices while telling you it is giving you freedom. It was once the exact opposite. 

For example: Apple came out with the feature of streaming audio from iTunes though your home wireless network. This came out at a time when no one else had a simple and non-expensive way of accomplishing this. Last night my daughter wanted to listen to her new album which she downloaded to her iPad. I said, well that is no problem, just click on the funny little icon by the play button in iTunes. The funny little button is no longer there. I spent a half hour trying to find it. Then I opened the Amazon Prime music player and there it was, streaming audio through the stereo system.

Being a liberal in the 21st century is being in a box. You pretend to have freedom but you continually limit your choices and everyone else's choices. The most liberal people I know, are also some of the most uptight and rigid people I've met. 

So, the CEO of Apple coming out as gay is just a natural extension of the "inside the liberal box" thinking that defines the company, plus it should help sales on a product that values style over substance. Which also follows the metaphor of the company but we are not allowed to ever dissent from the new true faith.

2-Our local cancer victim doesn't really want to die. Well of course she doesn't, she is not suffering horribly at this very moment. She is having fun and she wants to live and all this drama is giving her a sense of self-worth.

3-The nurse who won't stay in quarantine. US soldiers are in quarantine even though there no examples of soldiers who have down with Ebola and are not touching supposedly not touching Ebola people anyway, but Doctor's Without Borders are exempt from quarantine even though several of them have actually contracted the disease after returning to the USA. Well, they do know more than we do... (Granted, treating passengers like criminals when they don't pass being scanned with a BBQ thermometer is also insane)  Granted, the nurse was going on a bike ride which is like going to church to the modern day moron...

4. Roman Polanski arrested, Really?? How about Neil Goldschmidt? Or Sam Adams????

5. Amelia Earhart's plane found. Yes a treasure hunter is again out of money and it made our local TV news show.

6. If you are a moderately attractive woman and walk around for ten hours looking unhappy does it increase or decrease the rate of sexual harassment? If you look happy are you more harassed? If someone says "hello beautiful, have a nice day?" are you harassed? If you are ugly and someone says, "hello beautiful, have a nice day?" is that also harassment?  I found the video somewhat amusing because she looked like such a stuck up sourpuss, (now that was sexist and I know it)
For example, I found people to be very friendly in Florida. Guys would often say hello to my wife because she was happy and cheerful, or at least that is what I thought. Likewise I would say "hello" and open the door for women who acknowledged me and often said hello and I had no desire to see most of them naked. This also happens in Portland. People seem to be generally friendly us. Especially with my wife who is usually quite happy when we are somewhere on an adventure. I must say I am slightly confused...

7. What do I do with 6,000lbs of slightly damp flax seed? It was going to rain and we combined it with too much moisture. Some of it is clumping and starting to mold. I could find someone with a cement floor and spread it out but I don't want to annoy my neighbors. I think I will put it in the mixer and circulate it for a couple hours and then auger it back into a truck. I could mix it with another 6,000lbs of dry flax seed but I'm afraid it will spoil the other flax. I could mix it 50/50 with barley I suppose but then that screws up my feed ratio's. Hmmmmm....
 I am confused. 

At the Oregon Coast

My wife took me to the beach for our anniversary.

We wandered around Yachats and I told her boring stories of the days I used to cover their city council meetings.
For example: Once I did a story on a video store. The owner was an interesting lady. She had a Langletz leather jacket with a bullet hole in it. She thought it would go good with my Triumph motorcycle and wanted to sell it to me. But she was a smaller size than I.
After my interview about her new video store she asked me if I would like to see what really brought in the money with the retired folks in Yachats during the long rainy winters. She pointed to a door between the shelves of videos.
I opened the door to find that the backroom of the store was wall-to-wall porn, with a few sex toys thrown in for good measure. She said one of her best sellers were glow-in-the-dark condoms and pressed a handful into my pocket. She said, no one in town was really worried about preventing pregnancy, and gave me a knowing wink...
We were interrupted by a distraught elderly man who burst in quite upset about his wife running off with a "biker gang from up the river," I did not know if this was literal or some sort of code language. I made a hasty retreat...
I've always been more on the cautious side, if you know what I mean...

In other news, something has happened to our little helper... He just took one day off to be with his grand child and he is gone... I do have this video...from October 14th...

Just another reason for the resistance

It has taken me years to realize the simple difference between "them" and "us."

"They" believe that a law makes it right. "We" believe in right and wrong as a universal standard best exemplified in "the chronicles of Narnia,"  kipling's "if," and "Tom swift and his atomic Highway."

"They" believe in telling you what is best for you, for example, Teddy Roosevelt stealing Yosemite from the local ranchers and local indians and turning it over to John Muir and his Sierra club cronies.

But I digress, before I even got started.  

I hate the new gas cans and the idiots who thought lawnmower gas was killing polar bears.

I try to make it work.

I solve the problem...

I kill a polar bear...

(An iPhone post, can u tell?"

Working in the rain

My little helper seems to have disappeared.

Two weeks ago we were trying to repair a White combine to finish up our flax. He does not like that combine so he took the silage chopper apart.

That Saturday he asked for the day off to spend with his grandchild. That monday he was sick.
Now it is raining.
Everything remains as it was...

The header

The chopper.

I've been working on the Smith and Smith 2-155. Which continually sprouts new oil leaks. Found a chunk of what looks like a casting in the oil.

I wonder if I should fire my helper for something that I could screw him out of his unemployment. After all, I am a conservative Mennonite. It would be only right to make him accept responsibility for his actions. After all, he has cost me money. I could tell him it is for his own good and then expect him to still be my friend.
So what should it be, "Insubordination" or "Workplace Violence,"  or not wearing underwear. What would wearing bib overalls and no underwear fall under, sexual harassment?

I'm thinking it is not actionable till he bends over!

I now get all my news from British tabloids

I am not allowed to look at the page three girls but everything else is good stuff!
It all happened when I got a malware program which I can't remember the name of. It pretends to be an extension of a program you can use to watch TV on your computer. So, you click ok in the little box and it installs and copies all your search history. Then it hijacks your startup page with links to stuff it thinks you should view.
I think it is called macinstaller or something like that. It would be more helpful if I looked it up, but I overslept this morning and I have Meadow Foam to plant.
I downloaded an anti viris program called "avast" which solved the problem (and was free) but in the process I lost my start up news page.
So I switch to the BBC but instead of the BBC I ended up with The Daily Mail. Foreign news services have all the good stuff that the US networks do not have.
Like the story about our Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber and his crazy girl friend.
The Governor of Oregon pretends to be a regular guy with his cowboy boots and suit jacket. One of those country folk from 1971 as seen at Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Concerts and neighbor hood hot tubs in Eugene. A local cultural phenomenon.
He dumped his wife and took up with this psycho lady after his first term of Governor. His psycho girl friend started a number of "environmental consulting" firms with ties she had through screwing the former Governor of Oregon  through her own hard work and effort and did not talk the Gov. (affectionately know as Dr. Doolittle during his first tenure) into running again when consulting jobs were hard to find in the economic crisis.
Anyway... I gotta go... Read The Daily Mail story by clicking here. 
Note: This was first reported in Willamette Week and is sort of old news. This is just a twist on the WW story I think.
I looked up Governors Girlfriend Willamette Week and I found her using a State Police Pass to park her Prius  in Portland. She is soooo Environmentally sensitive that I forgive her....
I also found the story about Neil Goldshmidt  tapping a 12 year old having a relationship with young girl.
And Sam Adams and his forbidden love...
Packwood and his box wine seductions seem pretty tame now-a-days!

Goats

We now have goats. They tend to escape. 

The Daily Strumpet Newspaper is the same as the Lazy Farmer who came up with the name in 1984 and wrote a newsletter for years

I was invited to a wedding today. I was a bit surprised to be invited. I like the kid, (actually he is not a kid anymore) I enjoy teasing him. He worked for a farmer who I stacked bales for. We ran stacker together for a summer or two. He is always really enthusiastic, always ready to tackle a new project. And he has a good sense of humor.
It reminds me of a story of our days stacking for the neighbor.
We were working in a big field with five balers and two stackers.
You dump the stacks in a row. Eight blocks make a truck load. You dump one stack beside the other with as small a space as possible between them.
The squeeze then picks them up and sets them on the truck.
The top bales need to be tied together so the stacks don't spread apart when the squeeze grabs the bottom layer. Usually, one person in the baling crew is assigned to tie stacks. In this case the stack tier was somewhat of a goofy kid who was slightly annoying. He was making a show of jumping for one stack to another, so I started setting the stacks just a little further apart each dump in an attempt to see how far he actually could jump without falling on the ground.
So... I got the last stack just a little two far away.
My friend saw the gap and thought I miss-counted the number of stacks for a truck load. He headed for the gap at full speed but he forgot one thing.
I did not raise the bale pickup.
The stack tier saw him coming and started running. I saw him coming hung out my door and frantically waved my arms.
He hit the stack so hard it actually exploded.
I looked around and saw everyone was looking at him. I got back in the stacker and started stacking...

At the Wedding I ran into a couple people I went to high school with. We talked for a long time. I scored a pie! (Thank you father of the groom)  It is a good pie. I'm having some now.
Several people asked about the Daily Strumpet. One suggested that in this modern age perhaps paper is outdated and perhaps I should try a blog.
I mentioned that one could do a search for "The Daily Strumpet," on the internet. I noted that one issue is on scribd.com. I looked it up. It was the Christmas issue for 2009. CLick Here to enjoy it.
If you do an internet search for The Daily Strumpet Newpaper you will see that I am number two. Someone has taken the name dailystrumpet.com.
I think if you were really interested in finding out if The Daily Strumpet, Americans irregular newsletter for regular people, is still published or has found another incarnation you could find it.
I rarely tell people who ask about TheDailyStrumpet that I have a blog under the name Budd E. Shepherd. I'm not sure why I'm hesitant or why I chose to do it under an assumed name. (If you email me I'll be happy to tell you my real name, I just use Budd E. Shepherd for things online to keep everything consistent.)
I feel sort of weird telling people I blog. It seems rather pretentious to say to people, "I'm a clever fellow, I'm a farmer with a bog!" Also, I tend to go off on strange subjects and use large words and I do this because I'm interested in the subject and like the sound of large words and not because I want my friends and neighbor's to think I'm a really smart and clever fellow. I'm quite content to rant at random people on the internet as I will probably never see them in person so who really cares? I have no reputation to uphold...
Several of my followers are former Daily Strumpet subscribers who went to a fair amount of effort to find me online. Or when I told them the address of the blog, they actually looked it up.
(In the early days I did tell people about the blog, then I discovered that they didn't actually follow it if they knew me and that is another reason I quit telling people. I'm not going to beg people to read the blog...)
Sometimes I wonder if I should do another Daily Strumpet on paper in news format and make up stories about people I know.
Did anyone read the issue on scribd? It wasn't one of the best.

"Great Job Brownie," says President Ebola to the Head of the CDC- after saying "mission accomplished," shortly before ISIS takes over Iraq

Ok, I voted for Bush... And I have yet to hear the end of it from certain neighbors and relatives.
So, tell me how the federal bureaucratic response is different now that Obola is president in stead of Bush? Lets say, Katrina vs Ebola? CDC vs FEMA?
The USA gets it's first Ebola case and president Obola plays his 200th round of golf.
Meanwhile, his person in charge of the CDC makes speeches downplaying the danger and reassuring us that there are procedures and protocols in place to protect the public and we certainly don't want to do the obvious, and restrict air traffic from infected countries.
Next... the guy dies and no one knows what to do with the hazardous waste generated from his death and treatment. His family is sort of put in quarantine but then no one thinks to bring them food so the Red Cross call's Jimmy John's for a speedy delivery.... And the gubment threatens to arrest the dead guy after he gets well.
Soon we realize that there are NO PROTOCOLS.
We see photos of people cleaning up the parking lot in street clothes.
Sort of like video of the Stadium at New Orleans...
Then,
A nurse gets sick.
The head of the CDC blames the nurse.
We find out that while the entire world knew the guy had Ebola the hospital was waiting for tests to come back and the nurses treated the guy and were not wearing protective suits...
Next president Obola announces the discovery of Ebola and says the world needs to do more and asks for millions of dollars and sends the Marines to Africa.
But doesn't shut down air travel.

Yesterday I heard the president speaking on the radio. He is really going to get on this Ebola thing.
I understand the cheap psychological ploy. I've seen it used by employees, or by school bureaucracies.
You let the crisis happen and then you can be the hero.
He golfs, the world burns, he speaks forcefully after private individuals have figured out all the problems, and he is now the hero.
The faithful Koolaid drinking supporters will always apologize for him.

Now here is the real problem. I blame Obama, you blame Bush, but yet what are the differences and what are the similarities. I suggest the commonality is the massive federal bureaucracy and the many individual managers and department heads. It is all a focus on procedure and paper shuffling with an increasing lean towards the political left. I suspect bureaucrats love socialism. Saving the environment requires regulation, going green, carbon reduction, fairness, and so it goes.
Sad thing is, if they would have just said the Ebola victims contained asbestos then they would have put up serious containment and brought in a real hazmat team and the world would be saved...

And another thing... Those folks in Africa who we are supposed to care so much about... You realize they didn't just get Ebola yesterday... We meddle in other people's business all around the world but yet it is private volunteers who have been essentially "giving their lives," to help contain a disease that could threaten the world.

Of course Chris Brown could be right...

And they still won't due the most basic thing and shut down flights. Sooo, people panic and Belize won't let a cruise ship with a possible Ebola victim dock despite a phone call from John Kerry.
You know the gubment is lying to you and that is what causes panic...

We are all screwed... If not this then whatever else is coming. You have to have faith in your gubment, it is how the contract works...

I just wander around in circles

Seed bag art?

I removed my four year old expensive Speer seat cushions due to the fact that the foam was cheap crap. I replaced them with a 30 year old seat cushion out of a dead combine. It is a little faded and cracked but still has decent foam.

I was three acres from finishing the field and the needle went below empty. Turned out that my bulk tank in the pickup did not have that extra 20 gallons I thought and so I had to drive back home to refill.

I used my pocket knife to hold the diesel filler on and then thought that was a bad idea so I held it myself. And I over-filled it...

Had to pick up my daughter from school after her volleyball game at 7 p.m. I almost finished. I just have the corners to do.

The Seeder Meter, which everyone who owns a grain drill should have

There are essential things in life. A good pair of pliers, a real crescent wrench, a good hammer which still has a handle, underwear, coffee...
And for the farmer who runs his drill more than 235feet per year- The Seeder Meter which was invented by a fellow farmer, Dave Berckes of Canby, MN.

This is the Seeder Meter which can be found at www.acuscale.com.

It's use is quite simple.
It is a balance scale which is calibrated to read in pounds per acre. (It also uses the communist system but we ignore that here at the lazy farmer. (I mean after all, did Noah build in Ark in meters, Did king Arthur pull a two meter sword from the stone? Did Robin Hood carry around a kilo of arrows? I think not! Although speaking of kilos, Chronic Boy has a grow card, today the skateboard ramp at the park, tomorrow the world!)
But, I digress...
Wow! I really digress, perhaps this is why I do NOT have a real job...

Ok, balance scale reads in lbs/acre... You disconnect one seed tube and hang a bucket under it. 

Then you drive a set distance determined by your drill spacing. My drill is 7.5" and I drive 234 feet. I think... I haven't actually looked at the chart in a while and who knows, this may account for the seed not always coming out correctly with the acres!

I use a calc-an-acre to read out distance in the tractor cab. I also hang the bucket on the lift of the drill. It keeps rain out of my home-built magnet sensor that turns the calc-an-acre off when the drill lifts.

Then you weigh the sample on the balance scale. It is pretty simple. You can also use this system to calibrate a drill at the shop.

The scale has a handy level built in.

You lift the wheel off the ground and then turn the wheel until your calc-an-acre reads the correct feet. If you understand basic math you can figure out the number of revolutions. I use my acre counter and have my little helper turn the wheel. Sometimes I pretend I'm measuring the seed and see just how long I can get him to turn the wheel before he gets mad at me.
This is quite entertaining...
But, I digress...

The disadvantage to the seeder meter is that is is hard to use in really light seed at low rates. You have to get creative to weigh 10lbs per acre of Timothy. I've used it at 8lbs per acre on fescue with somewhat mixed results. It works wonderfully all those weird seeds that are never in the drill chart. And whose drill chart is ever correct?

I use it in wheat in conjunction with a density meter (which he also sells) as the density of wheat can vary quite a bit and makes a huge difference in planting rates when planting at modern seed rates of over 120lbs per acre.

I am also a dealer. (Of seeder meters) But, I've only sold one or two. I have no idea why farmers won't buy them. They just kind of look at me funny. Of course people often look at me funny. Who knows....

And now I have to go to work. It rained last night... I planted ten acres of timothy before it rain. I didn't use the Seeder Meter, I just guessed by using the chart. I planted at 8lbs instead of 12lbs and so I planted it all twice. Yes, I am a really GOOD farmer and you should take my advice on all things!

In other news, I found that Almond Joy candy bars go very well with coffee. I have no idea why it was in the A/C vent but it looked fresh and I ate it... (just adding to my credibility here!)

I am still a very positive person

We finished silage.
Of course the dump box jammed in the up position again...
So we put the other box on which dumps on the wrong side so you have to pull out of the row to load the truck, but if you overload it you can get like 8 tons in it.

Finished up as the moon was rising above the Amity hill.

Started in on annual ryegrass. The price is terrible and it should have been planted two weeks ago.

I worked the ground and was waiting for a sprout. I got the sprout, my brother sprayed the sprout and now I'm planting.
Things are of course, going wrong...

Note the light and the truck bed...

$3,000 in tires and the outside dual is going flat...

I'm using the seeder meter invented by a farmer by the name of David Berckes. You drive a set distance and collect seed from one tube. Then you weigh the sample and it gives you pounds per acre. It is a little hard to use on low seed rates but beats lifting the drill and turning the wheel a thousand times...

The seed rate is varying by 10lbs per drill fill up. I do not understand. Drive 2 at 30 gives me 30lbs/acre, Drive 1 at 30 gives me 10lbs but at 35 gives me 22lbs but then at 34 I get 19 and then at 33 I get 12 but then it opened up on its own to 50 and I planted like 80lbs, (in the dark) and then I went back to 34 which gave me 18 pounds so I left it alone and then when I put extra bags in I planted 30 acres on what should have been a 20 acre load of seed...

Then Wilco gave me 10-34 liquid fertilizer that comes out of suspension and fills the screens in the fertilizer orifices with grey and black goop.

Then I noticed a drip on the pump and discovered one of the drain plugs was wearing out so I replaced it and then my brother hit a rut and broke the three point mounted sprayer off the tractor and I helped him and then his wife made me have a steak for lunch and then someone came for hay and when I went back to plant my tire was flat and the drill wouldn't fill itself with fertilizer and so I cleaned goop out of the filter again and then I noticed a drip on the other drain plug on the pump.... So I wiggled it and it blew a thin stream of fertilizer directly into my eyes.

I'm too cheap to buy sunglasses so I've been wearing these wraparound safety glasses which have a tinted lens for gas welding. The stream would have hit me right square in the eye if not for the glasses. 

It is amazing how the fertilizer will wear out the plug. Left one is old plug, right one is new plug.

So i went back to the shop to wash my face and there was a fellow loading his own straw and so that took a while.

And then the seed rate was wrong again...
I'm going to go to church and then I'm going to attempt to plant Vetch. Tuesday it is going to start raining. I have to plant for a couple other people yet. I wanted to work up some hay ground at Muddy Valley but once again, it ain't gonna happen.

In the mean time my little helper disassembled the silage chopper and took the day off...

It never changes and it never really gets any better. I keep thinking of Ed Winkle's post of several days back. You have a good year and then it is just frustration once again...
Have a nice day...

I just downloaded some trucker music so perhaps the afternoon will go better. Nothing like trucker songs to cheer you up....

Everything was working fine and then this happens, those darn low orbits.

I should probably keep quiet about it. See nothing, say nothing is my motto!

Of course it was nothing compare to what happened to my little helper later this evening. He was setting at the coffee table in his usual spot when out of the blue!!!!

Totally and completely unexpected. Probably comes from all the coyotes which are attracted by the full moon.

More corn misadventures

Everythingwas going fine until the dump box stuck up in the air. 

So we got the forklift. 

Lifted the box. Took the pins out of the hydraulic cylinder. 

And then the cylinder retracted. So the problem was not a bad cylinder, but rather that the box is in a bind when yet is up in the air. Nothing looked wrong. Of coarse this all happened when The sun was shining in the rear window, and it was too bright to see the box.

By the time we got the box back together it was dark.

I filled it up again and dumped it. I was very careful. Then a fountain of silage sprayed out of the fan on the chopper. There was a hole in the blower band.

I decided to quit.

Before:

After:

perhaps we will get our first load in before lunch.

Changing a tire and more corn

Every farm should have a forklift

And a faithful helper

18 x 42 = 756 kernels 

Nice sunset

Good corn vs bad corn and I actually look at facebook and the Ebola President

This is bad corn. I doubt it really meant to be bad, perhaps it is just misunderstood. But it is not 30 ton to the acre.

Here is good corn. The truck fills much faster. I think I'm supposed to be figuring out the varieties and how much they weigh per acre.

Would have gotten twenty loads yesterday but a tire on the chopper exploded. We attempted to change the tire but I think the tire changing machine needs to be bolted to something solid. It is powered by Armstrong. We even brought the full force of our little helper into the efforts but to no avail. Had to take it to a professional.

We are just running one truck. If the dairyman wants to talk to the truck driver then I have to wait. I've been looking up people on facebook using my iphone. There are a couple people I'd like to talk to. Of course they are not on facebook. Some of the most interesting people are not. It is kind of fun to try and find people. I suppose that is really not being a clever sleuth. But, stalking has such a negative sound to it...
Earlier, I was on a plan to be friends with as many Eastern European women who play banjo as possible, but they have been rejecting me. I thought perhaps they would all become enamored with Ralph and emigrate to Canada where they could all be his farm interns and sister wives and play banjo music and ride around in the old Ford but sometimes those ideas you come up with while driving around in circles in a tractor are just not practical when you turn the a/c off and step out into the sunshine.
Yes, they rejected me... Perhaps it is something in my profile...

In other news I see we have finally managed to get someone in the USA sick with Ebola. Good job! It appears we worked really hard to get that to happen. Create a crisis and spend a lot of hot air attempting to solve it eh?  I have not even listened to the late night talk shows. I listened to the news release from the head of the alphabet agency in charge. It came on right after the talk by the lady whose agency let a Lunatic run around the Whitehouse lawn with a knife, as opposed to the American voters who regularly put Lunatics into public office SANS-A-Knife. (Sort of like sans-a-belt trousers but without the elastic.)
Yes, I am filled with confidence!
Also some humor in the hunt for the crazy guy in PA. He is hiding in six square miles of woods. They have cops with machine guns, silencers (so as not to disturb who?), tanks, armored personnel carriers, airplanes, dogs, and who knows what special equipment, and they can't find him? There is like one trooper per square foot, ah but they are camoflaged so they can't actually see EACH OTHER...

And here is a photo of some flax. I think I'll post flax photos instead of corn photos from now on...

Corn Silage

We started our corn silage yesterday morning. I should not be able to chop in second gear with a three row header.
I started at 8:30 a.m. and got the first load finished at 11:30 a.m. I adjusted the gathering chains wrong and the idler sprockets started coming off. Yes, I just became a mechanic yesterday....

Later, I found a huge block of wood.
With the header...
It was a little hard on things. It was a really nice chunk of wood. Pressure treated even.