Planting and losing things

A year ago I broke my hip. 

I slipped on ice in my driveway and fell hard.

It is amazing how much difference a year can make in your life. I was in pretty good shape up till last January. 

I am not complaining about my recovery. I got better really fast. Up to a point. Now I just seem to be sore all the time. Maybe I should start doing exercise on purpose instead of by accident.

I find it hard to stay positive.

We have had a long run of cold weather with a fair amount of sunshine. I took the opportunity to replant a small field of rye.

I no-tilled the rye in October at 120lbs per acre. The rye sprouted and looked like a really good stand. Then it started to disappear from the center of the field outwards. It is only a six acre patch. 

I applied slugbait two times and found dead slugs. But the damage seems to be already done. So I replanted.

The plan was to plant at night when the ground was frozen as when the sun comes out the ground gets sticky. This did not work.

When I went to get my GPS computer, the box was empty. I have no idea where I put it. My idea was to use last years field record to find and plant the field in the dark. So I got up early with the intent of planting at daybreak. Of course things went wrong. It takes as long to set up a 5 acre field as it does to set up for 100 acres. 

It was a beautiful day for planting!

No-tilling without GPS in daylight is not a big deal. It would have been nice to lay out the field with the computer as I wanted to go at an angle to my last planting.  But it all worked out fine in the end. Other than the field being 6.5 acres instead of five and I ran out of seed with 1/2 a pass left.

I imagine the computer will turn up somewhere. My daughter thinks she saw it in my pickup. My helper thinks he saw it on the bench in the shop. My wife says I left it on the kitchen table for a long time. I thought it was in my pickup. Who knows... Unfortunately FarmerGPS is not responding to my repeated emails requesting a new activation code for a different computer. Of course I did buy the program 15 years ago.

I was really hoping that the nice weather would generate some no-till planting jobs but it could be that my no-till planting business is over. Different times and different farmers.

I did find a set of keys that has been missing for several years. It was under the seat of the pickup!

In an other direction... I see that there is now a big push to promote stories of disappointed Trump voters. I was sent a video in which an angry guy was talking about farmers (Trump voters) worried that their tomatoes will rot in the field because they can't find cheap undocumented labor to pick them. 

That seems to be a stretch. My experience with Occupational Health and Safety has pretty much frightened me enough to doubt there are farmers making a serious practice of hiring undocumented workers. Also, Trump was pretty clear that his first goal was to shut down the border and ship back the illegals. So if you were depending on exploiting illegal labor for poor wages and living conditions and you voted for Trump I would have to laugh at you.

I feel much of the liberal mind set on farm labor comes from reading "Grapes of Wrath," in eighth grade.

But what do I know?

It turns cold

Its a beautiful life. Just wish there was any money in it...

A rambling discussion of New Year events

I ended 2024 properly. I spilled hot soup on my phone and ended the year with the rainbow screen of death.

It was a fitting end to a depressing year.

I feel worse about the soup than I do the phone. 

I have been regressing on iPhones. Every time I kill one I find an older one somewhere. No sense in throwing good money after bad.

I say 2025 will be better. Or at least that is what I said in the spirited lecture I gave my daughter and her friend she invited to the farm for New Years eve. I need to work on a ceremonial prayer. I just tried to mention things that were important and relevant. They seemed to appreciate my effort.

I cooked a couple steaks on the gas grill and the lovely and gracious wife made the rest. It was a nice dinner.

I asked my daughter why in the world her friend would want to come to the farm and spend New Year's with old folks. She said explosives and vinyl records were the draw. I am well versed in both those areas.

Her friend had just bought a newer stereo and wanted to set it up. It was new enough that I knew nothing about it. It was a modern Marantz amp and Bowers and Wilkins speakers. He seems to feel I am an expert which is a myth I hate to dispel. 

He also had a box of LP records he wanted to clean. I have a SpinClean record cleaner which does a good job. I loaned it to him last year but I used warm water and it warped his records. This seems odd to me but i am not going to try it myself after hearing his story.

We hooked his amp first to my Technics SL-J2 Linear tracking turntable. It is pretty neat as you can skip songs or repeat sides and it is fun to play with. 

No sound on one channel. I didn't mess a lot with it as I had my old Dual 1019 set up to play Christmas Music and it was easy to hook up. (The Dual has a Shure HiTrack, I think it is an old V15.  I splurged and put a JICO stylus on it. (However, they were not $300 15 years ago) I think it is nice sounding cart. The Dual is pretty quit although grounding is always an issue.)

The guy is currently into 1960-70's prog rock  which is not a genre I really appreciate. But it was fun.

I was a little disappointed with the Bowers and Wilkins speakers. They are the modern style bookshelf speakers that are narrow and deep. Simple design with woofer and tweeter. The were very clear and I would say accurate sounding. But I didn't find them very musical. They sounded really good in the midrange. But I am probably not a good judge. I really prefer warm sounding audio and "warm sounding," is essentially distortion.

I am listening to the same album (Dire Straits) that I used to set up his stereo on same turntable using an early 1980's Yamaha amp, DCM Timeframe 100 speakers, and it sounds brighter with more depth on the low range. Of course we are talking a serious difference in size of speaker so it doesn't directly compare. It is just an interesting difference in sound. Not sure which is "Correct."

Later, we blasted a whole series of mortars shots into the heavens greatly distressing all the pets in a mile square and including our own. I had to spend a half hour with Rosco but he seems to have forgiven me by this morning.

Rosco is very lonely when his humans go on trips and he becomes my dog.

Today my wife and daughter went somewhere to watch something with her sister.

I put together an old table. One of her sisters borrowed our "dining room" table and we have been sitting around the living room eating like Philistines off our laps. I think maybe spilling soup on the me, my phone, and the floor might have inspired a directive for me to dig another table out of storage. 

I can't believe this table made it from 1919 to 2025 without being painted some odd color by a frustrated housewife! It is a bit wobbly and took quite a bit of oil but it is not that bad.

It is a 100 year old piece of crap but thank the Lord no one has painted it grey or black. It was taken apart for storage. I tried to set it up yesterday evening but I couldn't find proper screws. Last night I woke up from a sound sleep with the idea to wedge match sticks in the old holes and use modern phillips head deck screws. It actually worked.

So that is the first day of 2025. Not an adventurous start but probably adequate...

I put license on the 1966 Ford again. If only one could return to 1966 or 1970 or just 1990. It was just better times.