The Farm dog rides again

Sunday Morning Sidewalks. We don't have any out in the country. I was checking for comments to approve when I hear a disturbance outside. The new farm dog, whose name is Roscoe, decided to go for a walk with the neighbors.

I have no idea why I think this is funny but I keep thinking, 

"Roscoe's on the Street again," which is not really true as he never goes on the street. And really, who still remembers the Boomtown Rats? Perhaps my brain is slightly out of tune.

Roscoe has been hanging out at our house. But only when The Large Orange Cat is inside. Roscoe is the new Farm Dog. He is a good dog.

It appears that he has finally got Goldie the Rat Terrier to play with him. They have found a common bond. There are mice in the pile of pipes across the yard.

But most importantly, Roscoe likes to ride. He is obsessed with riding. He will ride on the forklift, on a tractor, on a four-wheeler and when the Nephews next door are gone Roscoe comes over and sits by my new Gator waiting for it to start. Because he gets to ride in back! It doesn't matter how short the ride. He is ready to go. Also, last week I gave Roscoe three pieces of spicy chicken strips that I didn't want to throw away. That seems to have given us an enhanced bond.

My acquisition of a Gator is top secret. Fortunately I have had the foresight to remove all identifiable features in this photo so I feel pretty safe.

My college used to have a means for disposal of surplus property. But due to the fact that most middle management are either lazy, incompetent, or just tired to the paperwork and are putting in time till retirement, they have abandoned it. Everything just goes in the dumpster.

But there is a way. The unofficial way. This was in effect when the surplus property disposal system was officially in operation. Someone will just give you the offending property with the understanding you make it disappear immediately and don't talk about it. It is kind of funny as it has been officially declared unfair to give surplus or worn out groundskeeping equipment to the individual groundskeepers. This is also true for firewood. Firewood is to be cut up and stacked for students to use. After the pile started to rot we no longer have firewood. It goes in the dumpster. Much to the pain and frustration of those who burn wood.

But, I digress.

I have wanted this Gator for a couple years. It was assigned to me when I first started as a Grounder. When it was declared surplus I asked the head of our department for a chance at it if it were to go into the dispersal system. He said he would keep me in mind.

Of course when it came time to junk it, he gave it to someone else not connected to grounds and I ended up being the one called to move it on a Saturday. I was able to trade a vintage Dearborn post hole auger for it. The guy has a Ford 8N so he was excited to find a matching implement. 

The disappearance of the Gator has caused much consternation in the grounds department. Other people wanted it. I am sure people will soon point the finger at me and think it is my whiteness and connections to the white "old boy" network that got me the prize. This is in fact true. If I would not have told the correct people that I wanted the Gator the guy whom it was given to would have never talked to me about it and I would have not been able to trade for it. 

Small Colleges and Churches and Cooperatives provide such good examples of why the US Gubment does not work...

Now I can find a new job. 

This was my goal, to get the Gator...

Now Roscoe has a goal. To Ride in the Gator!!!

Goal setting is important!

Monday I take the day off and start to talk about farming and then go off the rails

 I took the day off work. My supervisor gave us a talk about the purpose of Personal Time Off. We are to use it to relax and rejuvenate ourselves. 

So, I am blogging at 8:30 am on a Monday.

Further plans for today are to make more pig feed, look at a couple fields someone wants no-tilled to wheat, and mow the lawn.

I have inadvertently gotten back into the feed making business. I have 3,000lbs of peas which were tested at a whopping 40% protein, a couple ton of triticale, six big bags (700lb bags?) of oat screenings and a Pearson's Square App on my phone. 

Saturday I started calling previous customers. I have one person that wants 500lbs today. I had a 1200lb bag left over from my previous misadventures and so I thought I would mix it with my new batch which has a lot of alfalfa in it and make 3 mm pellets. The peas in the old batch were extremely dirty and thus horribly dusty when ground. I had the bright idea of turning the mix into 3 mm pellets.

I started at 4:30 and finished at 7:30 p.m. Ran the tractor out of diesel at 7:28 p.m. Then when I was moving the bag of pellets I spilled the bag. Then I was grumpy with my wife. Not a good evening. Plus, the Sunday sermon was about not being angry so I pretty much proved my Mother correct. Don't work on Sunday!

However, I did discover that 350lbs per hour is mindnumpingly slow for pellet production and my little White 2-60 (Fiat 560?) is a bit thirsty even when it is not working hard.

The pellets come out of the pellet mill at 150-170 degrees F. The drop onto a conveyer which is covered and has two 12v radiator fans which blow cooling air on the pellets. The pellets are about 100 degrees when they drop into the bag.  I previously used an auger and no fan which I think worked better but was harder on the pellets. But I loaned my auger to my neighbor and he wants me to grind corn for his distillery and I haven't gotten all the hemp cleaned out of my mixer grinder yet. So I have been avoiding him.

And now for some moralizing...

I saw this on my facebook page. I really used to like the lady who posted it. She seems to have turned into a bit of an Alberta Scrubb in her old age.  I see this post as an example of a typical leftist/progressive viewpoint.  

Part of the social action concept of the left is to Redefine cultural values in a negative light and then criticize those values based on YOUR previously defined stereotype.  Listen to this speech by Barak Obama. It sounds good. Just like the old Cold War appeal, "Why can't we all just get along, We all want the same things, don't we?" 

We don't want the same things. Jesus was not a socialist. Saying Jesus was a friend to the poor is not even correct. The message of the New Testament is how to survive and even flourish in any situation. If you are poor, a slave, under an oppressive regime, or you are richer than Daddy Warbucks, your responsibility is to show the Love Of God to your fellow man. Jesus upset the money changers in the Temple because they were perverting the institution/mission of the Church. The brotherhood of believers as well as individual Christians have responsibilities to help one another and to reach out to the unbeliever. But, society is changed one heart at a time and not by social action or legislation or force of arms. 

Know your enemy:

Rules for Radicals 

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In 1971, Saul Alinsky wrote an entertaining classic on grassroots organizing titled Rules for Radicals. Those who prefer cooperative tactics describe the book as out-of-date. Nevertheless, it provides some of the best advice on confrontational tactics. Alinsky begins this way: What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away. His "rules" derive from many successful campaigns where he helped poor people fighting power and privilege.

For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don't have the power to change a bad situation, they stop thinking about it.

According to Alinsky, the organizer, especially a paid organizer from outside, must first overcome suspicion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a bad situation. Alinsky would say, "The first step in community organization is community disorganization."

Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a "mass army" that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals. 

Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. 
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat. 

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. 

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength."

See also 10 Principles for Public Media
And Co-operation First
And IAF Organizing pdf
And Post-Alinsky Organizing 

The Citizen's Handbook / Home / About / Table of Contents
The Citizen's Handbook / Charles Dobson / citizenshandbook.org

A Sunday speech about books and events

My brother found some old photographs. Thirty years from now will it be that my daughter finds and old MacBook?

Thirty years ago I thought I was going to be somebody someday. Didn't think I would be a groundskeeper and still poor!

In 1990 something I repainted this 1964 Minneapolis-Moline M670. It had something link over 10,000 hours on it then. I think we put another 10,000 on it since then. It is interesting that now our newest tractor is a 1986 White 2-155. 

I listen to books on my phone at work. I started with detective fiction from the 1960's, (John D. MacDonald) and continued through modern fiction, Adrain McKinty, Lawrence Block, Olen Steinhauer (don't remember other names)

I was amazed at the changes in values. Travis Magee had a flawed but distinct moral code, his author still believed in a positive moral outcome. Wrongs were righted and after a misadventure Travis and Meyer hung out in the Busted Flush with Plymouth Gin on ice and pontificated and philosophized. 

Their discussion were (In my opinion) part of the on going discussion that made pre-twenty first century, country music, blues, jazz, an reggae so interesting. The degeneration of tradition Christian values and the old codes of honor and integrity and stewardship of God's creation. Essentially the understanding that we are only here for our limited lifespan and our decision is to preserve life, live honorably, virtue for the sake of virtue, vs living for the moment as the moment is all that there is. Generally they follow the 1960's values of living for the moment but retaining their hints of "dear old Momma, bless her soul..."

Modern authors just kill everyone and random bad stuff happens. The hero's deal with random death and destruction. Old values are hollow. Their friends turn on them and must be killed. They are continually faced with impossible moral choices. Do you shoot the child or the woman or die your self.

I was listening to Adrian McKinty who incorporates Northern Ireland and the "Troubles," into his work. His characters are a bit more nuanced than a lot of the modern escapist fiction. There are vestiges of Catholicism and Protestant beliefs that give them moral conflicts as they navigate an incredibly high body count.

I tend to binge listen so perhaps I get too involved in my books. After the last Michael Forsythe murder/betrayal (Bloomsday Dead) I downloaded a book on CS Lewis and then moved on to a 40 hour marathon of "The Chronicles of Narnia."

I suddenly have realized that my whole train of thought is slightly off and that Olen Steinhauer is actually Cold War Fiction and I need more coffee.

Not to waste five paragraphs of random thoughts held together with a thin line I can't quite follow I will make some concluding observations.

First, Eustace Scrubb's parents and their horrible socialist friends have taken over the world. They are the Progressives that censor Hucklberry Finn and take "1984" an "Animal Farm," as textbooks.

Second, the reason the Children in "Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe," and "The Magician's Nephew," knew what to do in Narnia is because they had read the right books.  "Lord of the Flies," would not have happened to post WW2 British school children but happens every day in the modern America.

Third, I have been reading about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. I watch much of the events as they happened before the censor ship took over. Mobs focus on a perceived weakness and will run that person to the ground. Kyle was obviously young and inexperienced, the rioters targeted him because he had the AR and they didn't think he would use it. Leftists/Progressives have always provoked a fight and then claimed to be victims (See back to the actions of Eustace Scrubbs)

People have gone through Progressive/Socialist revolutions before. There is a lot of history. Fascists in Italy were a reaction to violent Socialists. The Spanish Civil war could never have had a good ending.

If Kyle would have been convicted it would have meant that you could no longer defend yourself in times of social disorder. In fact, there will be a push to eliminate your right to self defense.

Read what what state leaders have said about the trail and note how they lie about the actual proven facts of the event.

The words of the Governor and Speaker Tina Kotek are pretty amazing.

A beautiful Saturday Morning

 The title of this blog is in fact, The Lazy Farmer. As such I feel there are standards to uphold.

We have had rains of Biblical proportions. I suspect much of the farm is flooded. But, I am sitting in my rocker in front of a warm fire. My wife is gone and her co- dependent dog is locked outside. (She has eyed me with suspicion since I ran over her with the grain drill.)

I have a full cup of coffee and I can hear the whistle of the infamous Willamina Wobbler at the rail crossing down the road. Surprisingly I don't hear the gaggle of Canada Geese on the flooded fields. They have not arrived yet. I also did not wake up to gunfire so the ducks must be swimming a little further out today.

I have much to do. The windshield wipers have failed on my wife's pickup. She lets me borrow it for work as my truck is not currently appropriate for polite company. Of course it is not simple. The windows also do not roll down. It is the cab computer which is buried deep under the dash. If I were not so lazy I would repair the 1966 Ford pickup that just needed a carburetor rebuild or the 1970 Camper Special that needed heads or the 1964 that needed a new starter post, or the 1963 Studebaker Cruiser that just need the torque converter put back in.

In order to get the pickup into the shop I need to process a bag of hemp (150lbs) and a bin of goat feed. Although I do have 15 more bags of hemp to do and I was supposed to make alfalfa pellets for my friend's rabbit collection and I must clean my shop as there is not a flat surface not occupied by old electrical gauges, parts of Great Plains grain drill, White Tractor parts, unsorted tools, a couple ancient vacuum pumps, speakers salvaged from the college, and various unfinished projects.

So I have unabashedly retreated to the comfort of a quiet house and a pot of coffee and the day my very well proceed with out me. Of course about 10 a.m. I will completely panic as I realize just how much is not done.

I also need to mow the lawn and use my recently acquired groundskeeper skills to knock the yard in to shape as the wife's family Thanksgiving is at our house this year...

In other news....

A lady from church brought me a box of albums to evaluate. They are 1970's classics that every middle aged white guy buys as soon as he starts collecting albums. Perhaps the difference is that I never started really "Collecting" albums, I just never stopped acquiring albums.

Last night was the first time I have purposefully sat down and listened to a Pink Floyd album.

I was not all that impressed. The production was good. I found the odd sound effects annoying. The producers obviously did enjoy their stereophonic effects! 

I am going to keep the album "John Barleycorn Must Die," by Traffic as that is an epic title. I suspect that the albums are worth much more than I would be willing to pay for them. But, I am enjoying listening to them. Especially now my free online music services don't let me find specific songs without making me hear stupid advertising and playlists I don't care about.

And now for another thought. I was watering plants in the University library yesterday. I like libraries and used bookstores. It reminds me of the days when I could actually read. I found this section of books. I wonder if the insane liberal idiots know about this. Pretty darn colonial of the school!

I discovered this while I was listening to a commentary on C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia. The Children know what to do in Narnia because they had "read the right books."  Books of heroism and "doing the right thing," not this post modernist shite where the main character has to be perverse just to knock it all off the rails. 

Holden Caulfield was one screwed up little shite and while I have sympathy for him. I don't think he should be a roll model.

Likewise my favorite teenaged angst book, "The loneliness of the Long Distance Runner," has inspired me to be an absolute contrarian my whole life.

But, I digress...

In honor of Armistice Day, I give you this link... because I am contrarian.

And to further confuse you all....

I think this may have also happened to me in 1978.

Have a nice day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9NqnzPc-Ic

And while we are at it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8X1EKyhLHw

Wish someone would give me an apple crate full of British Pub Rock, weird 1960 soul music, non-nashville sound country western, even Bluegrass with banjos.

When your kid decides to be the opposite of you, it is pretty sad

 Mark Glaze, fanatical gun control activist, has killed himself. CLICK HERE for story.

If you read to the very end you will see that his mother was a homemaker and his dad owned a gun store. He is quoted as saying if you would have told him when he was a kid, shooting guns and hanging out in Colorado, he would be the face of the anti-second amendment movement, he would have said you were crazy.

Somewhere along the way he decided to the be the opposite of his parents. Of course he suffered from severe depression and anxiety but no one makes a correlation. 

At least the women in his family told him he was wonderful...

I lose my email and muse about blogging and make hemp tonic

I hope no one has been attempting to email me. I forgot to check the blog email for six months and mail.com deleted by email account and then would let me use the same email address. So for those of you who care my email is now buddeshepherd@mail.com 

I think I have the email links updated but I have a lot of trouble with my Buddeshepherd Google account and signing in to Blogger.

I went through my settings on Blogger and I was amazed at how many of our friends are not updating. Several have died. Quite a few quit posting in 2013. I don't really remember 2013 so I don't know what happened.

I get about five views a day. Usually people who want to know how to split a White tractor or rebuild a Dual 1019 turntable.

When I post I think Ralph, Gorges' Duck, and someone in Oregon get notified and see my blog. Sometimes I get 20-30 views in the days following a post.

Have people gone to other platforms like Instagram? Or is blogging dead? 

To change the subject. 

I have unfortunately gotten back into the hemp business. I though I had it all sold. However, the person buying it decided he didn't need two year old hemp buds and he backed out.

Actually, what happened was my friend sold all his hemp to a guy out of state. It was not the greatest price but it was a sale. Now if he would have just said he had 1100 lbs instead of  1000lbs and sold mine it would have been nice but I suppose that would have been complicated. He did try to get me in on the deal and stored my hemp for a year. Anyway I had to go get the hemp last week as his partner is selling his farm and that is where the hemp was stored.

My hemp is really nice, all buds and the bags are heavy. I am going to turn the buds into pellets and use the pellets for fertilizer or goat feed. 

I asked my pot growing neighbor if I should just dump the hemp and he said I should give the pellets a try. Then he brought me another ton of the shite that he had stored in his own shipping container. 

Yesterday I tried pelletizing it. I got everything set up and it started pouring down rain. The hemp would not feed out of the big bags. I got soaked. I am not sure why I am doing this. No one is going to buy the crap.

I also made hemp tonic last week. I have some friends that like it for muscle pain. I made a 1000 mg/ounce dose. I used MCT coconut oil as a carrier.  If my math was correct. If it was wrong I made a 2000mg dosage.  I suspect they are putting it in their coffee but I don't ask. 

Today I am going to make some with alcohol as a carrier. This works differently than the coconut oil as the alcohol evaporates leaving the CDB resin on your skin. It is not an oil that you work in to your skin. I use Everclear as it is 190 proof, works as a hand sanitizer, and since I suspect people may be 'tapping the Admiral' so to speak, I don't want any ingredients that are poison.

It works great for some people. Some people it doesn't help. I don't know why.