Silage

We are chopping silage in between the rain showers. We have a new truck driver this year. He is filling trucks and doing quite well. I started about the same age but with a 1949 Studebaker. He is starting with a 1973 International. He actually is driving a newer truck than I did!

How do you play Mary Anne by Marshall Crenshaw?

I have been trying to figure out the chords to "Mary Anne," by Marshall Crenshaw. I can't play guitar but my daughter can. She is destined to hate the music I like but I've been trying to get her at least enthused.

I thought it would be an easy D, A, G, then G, A, D.
It didn't sound right so I looked it up. They say C, G, Dm but use barre chords. I'm not sure how you even spell "barre." I can do a couple but I do them wrong...
She want's to play poptropica. Durned kids...
Perhaps I'll go out to the barn and try "tapping the admiral."
I like Marshall Crenshaw...

Man does he look old...
I think he play Buddy Holly in the Buddy Holly story movie.

We started silage yesterday

What is there to say?
Short corn, Tip fill problems, someone did some strange wiring on the silage chopper and the lights kept shorting out.
I just figured we were lucky to just to get to the field...

A little tibit of info for my parinoid Christian readers

I was reading Wired magazine online last night and came across this interesting blog article. They are talking about the FBI training on Islam. Apparently, one of the FBI trainers does not believe in cultural relativism. 

There are a couple interesting ideas that come up again and again.

1. Why was it that the Crusades are considered a humanitarian crime on the order of the holocaust, (assuming it happened) but the Islamic Conquests are not even considered?

2. Why are the various historical Christian excesses, like the witch hunts, Spanish Inquisition, treatment of indigenous people, continually brought up as proof of Christian brutality but are never compared to excesses of other ideologies. What about paganism in general? Are people by natural brutal and self-serving or are they naturally good?

3. Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian Fundie why does his name come up when people are desperately searching for examples of Christian terrorism. For such a hot button issue as abortion-Just how many abortion clinics have actually been blow up? How many doctors have been shot? Is it one or is it one thousand? I honestly don't know.

Now here is the point of this whole post. I lifted this quote from the Wired article,  "The best strategy for undermining militants, Gawthrop suggested, is to go after Islam itself. To undermine the validity of key Islamic scriptures and key Muslim leaders."

And that little quote is why I am writing this blog post, has not this already been done with Christianity?  It was just one sentence that really caught my attention and with that idea in mind I read the comments. Higher education in the west has been devoted to the undermining of key Christian ideals since the post WWII era. The difference is that of course they are correct. Christianity is based on flawed concepts and all the Christian leaders have feet of clay, (oops! a cultural/biblical reference) We are our own gods, except for Islam which of course for some reason we love and defend because somehow we want their approval...

I have somewhat of a cynical viewpoint. I think humans will be controlled. In fact, I think they desire control. I think that 20th century Christianity gave us a good framework of values. Plus, it allowed for the whole peace love and understanding thing. Dissent was tolerated! There were levels of belief and non-belief for everyone. But yet we still had a common framework of core cultural values.
I hate to see it be destroyed. I wonder why Islam seems to the new control system of choice by the hive. I don't see a conspiracy of one or two people. Rather it is a conspiracy of like-minded people. Similar values, similar schooling, and similar experiences who are all making similar choices without directly communicating. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of people and then millions of people all making the same choices and having the same attitudes.
Are such things studied?
I wonder if it could be statistically charted?
I am sure there are the global elite who are right on the scene to effect change in some way. Much money and power can be made from societal change. I think Islam channels a lot of cash into the hands of their leaders.
Just what I've been thinking about.
Next post will have photos of corn harvest.
I leave you with one of the anthems of a generation. Is that relevant? I think my choice of musicians is ironic.

Sweet Corn

I helped a friend pick sweet corn today. It was pouring down rain at 4:30 a.m. For some reason the cannery never tells you to start picking your field at 10 a.m. It is always at 10 p.m. or 3:30 a.m.  I think they like to work in the dark.
We picked 30 acres. It was too wet to run trucks in the field so they had to use large dump boxes. I pulled on with my 4wd White.
It is sort of interesting but I am grumpy due to my unsupervised helper's excessive use of a cutting torch on the corn chopper header in my absence.
Good Night...
Thanks for the link from Zeta Wolf who should allow comments. I suppose it is a bit of a different world...Kind of like the following cartoon. (wish I could afford it on 16mm)

Mondays and my lack of farm management skills part five

I woke up this morning and it was still dark. This was not because it was early in the morning but rather because it is late in the year. It is raining and the sky is a dull gray. It is supposed to shower all week.
My daughter had not accomplished her 90 minutes of reading for the weekend. Instead she opted to watch stupid movies. She started out watching an incredibly stupid cartoon on OPB but she was complaining about not getting her reading done so it was shut off. Soon she was busy reading a Cowboy Sam book to make up her minutes. Cowboy Sam is not 5th grade literature but the pictures are awesome. I think Jack Merryweather is much underrated illustrator.
We were supposed to take pumpkins to school for the kids to decorate. Of course you can't use knives in a modern school. Somehow I was supposed to get her to school early as she had forgotten to do a math problem. I didn't get her to school that early but I got the pumpkins.
On the way out I noticed that the employee had arrived. He left early Saturday when we were trying to get a field worked before the rain. I suppose coming in early on Monday and drinking coffee for an hour while I take my daughter to school and get my stuff together makes up for the days he left early or came to work late when we could actually farm.
On the way we discussed her reading. She got angry and frustrated at me. I told her crying was not going to get her reading done and instead of watching stupid movies all weekend she needed to do her reading. Putting it off till the last minute was not a good idea. I did not add commentary as to why I know that is a bad idea.
Once at school we saw the law of unintended consequences at work. The ladies have been complaining about people parking in the firelanes. There is a new Principle who takes her job very seriously. There are changes, a new sheriff in town. Now the kind of out of the way parking lot I use is for staff parking and the close parking is for the annoying young ladies to park to drop off their kids. I do what ever I can to avoid those ladies because they are always late and have poor judgment. (see a previous post on that subject)
There are new security measures in place at school These probably do nothing but they are annoying which is the only language young mothers understand.
The latest child disappearance was most likely planned by a family member and while it took advantage of a lack of security at the school, more security would not have prevented his disappearance, it would have just happened in a different manner.
Just the same, all of us adults are now potential abductors and should all be suspicious of each other. I just wander where I want and act apologetic and admit to being confused. This works very well as the school is run by middle aged women who find that polite and confused act very endearing.
Once back at the farm I found a list of people who want me to do things. I've not been answering my phone which really annoys people. In fact I just turned the durn thing off and put it on the charger in my pickup.
I had just settled down to sit a spell and take advantage of the wireless internet when my brother came looking for me. A nice elderly lady was at the shop and quite upset because I hadn't returned her phone calls. I started to explain that I also hadn't listened to her messages but then I realized I'd have to explain the reason, which was I just didn't want to be bothered. It was really nothing personal, I just didn't feel like talking on the phone.
She wanted a bill for her hay and to answer the question as to if I was going to do hay at Gopher Valley next year. She doesn't know what she will do if I don't do her hay.
What I needed to say was that I would do her hay if she paid me more, as in just giving me $55 a ton instead of doing it on halves. But, then again I am really tired of going up there and having everyone complain about how late I am and then dealing with storage and hauling and rough fields and impossible barns to stack in and just doing hay in general.
I told her I wasn't able to do her hay in a timely manner and was tired of everyone being mad at me for not getting it done. I said she needed to find someone who would get it done on time. She pointed out that there was no one but me to do it. I wanted to suggest that in that case folks should just get off my case and say thank you and bring me cold drinks and be happy in the summer instead of bringing me down with their negativity.
I working on her bill right now.
I suppose I should go down my list of phone messages and call people back. I think there is about 20 of them.

Tuesday morning update: Monday afternoon I took off to get 1/3 of a pig as we are out of protein at our house. When I came back my helper was gone. The silage chopper header was turned over and the shields were off so I assume he was working on it.
This morning I got a text that he is having back spasms and may not be in to work today. Now here is the deal... My brother is taking my father to the Dr. today. I made an appointment to deliver barley seed this afternoon. Half our corn is ready to chop for silage. I need to work 50 acres to plant annual ryegrass. I just got a 175 acre planting job, plus a 17 and a 7 on the wrong side of McMinnville (which I should have turned down), I told my daughter I would take her to the Zoo Friday, my brother drives truck Thusday-Friday, the silage hauling truck is not ready, the drill is half full of annual ryegrass, the silage chopper needs to be put back together, the oil needs to be changed in the 2-135 and the 2-155, and of course.... My helper is not here today...
Perhaps it will rain all day anyway...
Whatever...

Tuesday Noon update: My neighbor needs me to help him with sweet corn. It is too wet to run trucks in the field to pick so he picks into a large box which then is dumped into a truck. The box holds 5-7 tons and takes a 4wd tractor to pull in the mud. I don't think I have ever been involved with picking sweet corn in daylight hours for some reason so it looks like a night job. This is good as I will be able to work on the corn chopper during the day and run the dump box at night.
I hit my hand with a really large hammer. No visible damage other than a loss of my Christian Sanctification and a possible hole in the ozone layer due to offensive language-actually I didn't say anything out loud. It was an internal commentary!
Plus the silage chopper header needs to be rebuilt. There are bearings that seem to be loose and a broken grease line. How can something so simple be such a pain in the butt to work on? Why are New Holland Parts so #$%^&* expensive?
I could use that 1.2 million dollars right now.
I think I'll go fishing...

I go fishing...

I was home alone today and decided to go fishing. I borrowed my daughter's fishing pole and headed down to the river. I figured out how to get to a couple spots where we saw some fish staring at us as we floated down the river on an inner tube earlier this summer.
So I braved the coyote crap and the black berry vines and nearly fell in the river but at last I arrived at the secret spot. It didn't used to be a secret spot. In fact when I was a kid there was a deep hole with a big old cottonwood tree and a rope in it. But, the tree washed away and the black berries grew up and we put fifty feet into a buffer strip for the NRCS.
I'm not sure if I really want to eat a fish out of that section of the river due to the amount of lead in the gravel. I did find an old propane bottle with a rather large bullet hole in it, so I guess that is part of the legacy.
I threw out a line and got a strike right away.  I didn't get the hook set and lost it. I could see him following the spinner in but that was it. That was about it for another half hour. I tried a couple different spots and I managed to lose a nearly new lure.
I was about to leave but I had an old MEPPS spinner in the bottom of the tackle box and I gave it a toss between a couple logs into what I figured was a pretty deep hole.
I got a hit pretty quick. It was actually a bit of a fight with the bass attempting to dart under logs and under the edge of the bank.
I was thinking about eating him but then I wondered how I would ever get him up the river bank. So I tossed him back.

I tried a different spot a little ways downstream and promptly hooked a stick. In the process of pulling the hook out I broke off the end of my daughter's vintage Shakespeare Wonder Rod. Somehow I feel kind of silly now that I know it is a fly rod.

Oh well, I've been called a Philistine before...

In other news we are watching the movie "Country Strong," which I have heard is a pretty terrible movie. It actually has some pretty good country music in it. The story line is pretty much a throw-away. Guy wants to sing, girl wants to sing, big name country singer making a comeback but has a booze problem. Gweneth Paltrow is the big name singer. She is pretty pathetic, fake accent, and real life annoying image that I just can't shake. We turned if off when it looked like there was going to be a sex scene.  I did like the music, if we could just edit out Gweneth. She should stick with Glee...