The week when most things went wrong

I planted today my neighbor. I did 28 acres of wheat after 5 p.m. It took me a little longer as i had to load the drill and fertilizer by myself. Meaning I had to use his forklift and find the fertilizer.
We are almost done with our silage. Last night I discovered a hole in the spout liner on the silage chopper. It seemed like a simple fix but took two hours. I did discover how an adjustable spout on a New Holland silage chopper works. It is really quite handy once you get all the bolts broken loose.
Today I started chopping. My brother had the endgate break out of the silage truck last night. I discovered a massive leak on the hydraulic suction line on the White 2-135 which required new o-rings. I finished one field and opened the next and turned the chopping over to my brother. My planting customer was a bit anxious. When I left I got off and checked the chopper header. A gathering chain had come off the sprocket and the adjuster was badly bent. I left anyway.
I got the drill going but that was not without some problems. The automatic rate controller that powers a motorized flow controller that regulates the flow to the centrifugal pump that pumps the fertilizer kept sticking wide open which directed too much hydraulic pressure to the pump which tripped a shut-off valve. Then the magnet switch that tells everything to go to the hold position and stops the acre counters failed.
Then i noticed smoke pouring out of the foam generator. The foam generator makes a line of foam on the ground that shows where your last pass was. (The dirt was all damp and I couldn't see where I had been.) It is sort of strange to see smoke pouring out of something that pumps water and soap.
It has been sort of a bad week.
I've been listening to the talk on the radio about the occupy protesters. The conservatives are all jumping into defend big business which is funny. They give these arguments which would make perfect sense if the big companies did not have monopolies of most industries. How do you vote with your pocket book when there is no alternative? Sure I look at the tags and buy "made in Mexico" before I buy "made in China," but does Wallmart care. What am I going to do? Go to WHAT local hardware store???
It all kind of disturbs me.
Why do the folks in charge like these protesters so much? I saw what happened to the WTO protesters. The Tea Party folks were not well like either but they went out of their way to not cause trouble. The occupy people have a free pass in Portland. There was some violence in NYC but nothing like I expected. Those in charge have crowd control pretty well figured out.
I think this is a setup.
The call for Change. The campaign slogan was "Change." I think it all works together.
I see it as the old Leninist idea that the capitalists will bid against each other to sell the rope that will hang them.
The regulations were not enforced, the banks and wall street took advantage and built a house of cards, the rug was pulled out but the bail out money was offered. They took it. Of course the banks didn't want to make foolish loans again and so they didn't loan money.
And the protesters have it all charted out. The banks and Wall Street are the bad guys, Change is needed.
Of course the banks and Wall Street are bad guys anyway so it all works. But....those of us who work for our living will get caught up in it and suffer.
Change is bad.
I don't see any of the clever folks in the conservative movement getting it. They are to busy getting back at the "dirty hippies" for calling them "Tea Baggers."
Fools, we are all fools...
Have a nice day, evening, night... whatever...

More about farming and a little about Lars

Yesterday was an interesting day. My helper did show up at 8 a.m. and cleaned up the mess the dogs had made in front of the house. They like to rob neighborhood garbage cans. It causes me to get a little angry and I tie Stanley up for the day. Then he howls. This is entertaining at first, as is parking the pickup near his dog house and leaving it running. He just can't make it past the end of the cable so he sits about a foot from the end and just howls his poor doggie heart out.
After a while it starts to annoy everyone else out here and Stanley is set free.
But I digress,
I thought the problem with the silage chopper was just a broken chain. It actually was a broken drive shaft that runs through the bottom of the corn header and drives the intermeshing rotary discs that cut the corn.
It would appear that when the wheel broke off the chopper I hooked a chunk of concrete with header and bent the outside bearing mount. This made the shaft flex and it then broke in one of the bearings. It was something like one and a half hex shaft. But... Since we NEVER throw anything away we actually had some hex shaft we salvaged off a combine header and my brother-the machinist, made a new shaft.
The helper and my brother worked on the silage chopper all day and I went to plant for the neighbor.
My daughter had the day off from school and I asked her if she wanted to go with me. She said no.
I came back in the house and she was standing on her head and watching some inane cartoon. I said, "you are coming with me..." she was ok with that.
She likes to help fill the drill but the farmer said he had some nasty insecticide put on the wheat so I made daughter get back in tractor. (I really need to bring along a respirator.)
Anyway, she helped me by looking up records in my book to set the drill. She found the last time I planted Geotze wheat and the population reading for 130lbs per acre and helped me set the drill. We watched the monitors and set the fertilizer rate. I showed her how to set the A-B line with the GPS and then let her drive while I ate my Amity Deli Burrito. It was kind of nasty cold but I was hungry and it was cheap.
It was kind of like having my own auto steer. She drove really well by looking at the glowing arrows and little arrow tractor on screen. FarmerGPS 5 is a pretty good program. The other advantage was she was pretty good at alerting me at the end of the field. None of this going to sleep and hitting a powerpole with Lulu-autosteer. However, the alarm is set a little far from the end of the row.... "Daddy... Daddy... Daaaaaadddddddyyyyyyyy!"
It is now 7:18 my helper just arrived. He is going to finish putting the corn header back together. He is a good helper. He has a goooooood joooob! How can I talk bad about someone who cleans up the lawn and who comes to work early.
But I digress...
Later in the day it started raining and I send the daughter home. Then the return/by pass line for the motorized flow control valve for the fertilizer pump failed. POS Chinese pipe fittings. It would not hold when the pressure went above 1500lbs. After I tightened it up it started dripping at low pressures as well. The fine mist of $10 per gallon hydraulic oil will keep my drill from rusting.
Back at the farm, my brother and helper and working on the header. New lower gathering chains are New Holland proprietary items. They cost $240 each and it takes four. We opted for another year.
We had to heat the frame of the header and beat it with a sledge hammer to get it back in line. We quit at 8:30 p.m. and decided to see what it looked like in the morning light.
Here is the little about Lars...
He does really well with a sympathetic caller or guest. It is only when he is trying to be clever and insightful and really stick it to the caller with his amazing intellect that he really gets into trouble.
There was a fellow who called in to talk about a new national child abuse hotline. Lars asked him if people who called in to report abuse would be reported to law enforcement. The guy really would not answer the question. Lars kept after him in a polite way and really got the guy to squirm, without being a jerk. If he would do that same thing with the antagonistic folks I would listen to him.
I will stop my rant and go to work but I have one last thought.
I think the law requiring therapists and Doctors and clergy to report abuse is counter productive. I think it prevents people from getting help. Would a child report abuse knowing they would get their parent thrown in jail? Would person who made a mistake and was torn by guilt and wanted to get help, do so knowing they would be reported to LE? What about crazy people who make crap up and tell it to the therapist?
What is the point? The power of the all knowing state or help for messed up folks?
Shouldn't the professional who is treating the victim or the abuser have some discretion?

My helper

So... Yesterday morning when it was too wet to do anything my helper arrives early...
Today, the silage chopper is broken down and covered in mud and wet silage and there are side racks to be finished for the truck...
Where the #$%^&* is he?

I would rather listen to this than Lars Larson

Plus The Legendary Stardust Cowboy makes more sense...
I once heard Lars arguing with Mr. Geertson about Roundup-Ready Alfalfa. I wish I would have taken notes. Lars gets Mr. Geertson to answer these totally leading questions and then he plays his trump card. Which was something on the order of since RR Alfalfa has been engineered to be "better" than regular Alfalfa isn't that a big advantage and shouldn't everybody use it? I could just hear Mr. Geertson's brain exploding. Fifteen minutes on the radio and the idiot talk show host absolutely cannot understand the argument.
All the legitimate debate of corporate monopoly, the risk of foreign countries not accepting exports because of their opposition to RR Alfalfa, cross pollination problems, RR resistant weeds, and Lars focuses on the most obvious, superficial, and stupid argument!
(I don't really care about RR vs non RR, it just irritates me to pay $4 per pound and have to plant 20lbs per acre. Perhaps that is why I have a pallet of Alfalfa seed in the barn that I bought because the salesman accepted my offer of $.50 per lb. It was a good deal so I bought 10 times what I needed. At least my wife understood. She laughed at me. I couldn't be a talkshow host because I wander off topic. Where was I?)
Have a nice day...

I am still annoyed with Lars Larson

I'm shamelessly bumping this post up in the Google Search ratings. Click here to see what I said about Lars Larson being a maroon last night.
I found this article which I think proves me correct in my opposition to Lars using terms like "Dirty Hippies," and pointing out the obvious. (Click Here for blog on Occupy movement)
There is a lot of energy in the Occupy movement. I don't think it should be trivialized.
I heard that after they got their extension cord unplugged from the charging station they were using a stationary bicycle to charge cell phones.
Many people in this movement are smart and creative. I think that should be recognized.
Just because I say that doesn't mean I support them.
I think it is bad to be the group that is caught behind the curve. Those are the folks that get sent to the re-education camps...
I wonder if the reputation defender program that Lars plugs will alert him to the fact that a Lazy Farmer in Oregon thinks Lars is an embarrassment to the conservative movement?
Wonder what keywords I would have to use?

Riddle me this...

Not to bury my attack on Lars....
I have a question. I suppose it is pretty much hypothetical but...
I was away from home planting all day yesterday.
It was raining.
My helper quit early. I think he worked on his car. He did give me a ride to get my pickup. He didn't want to work late. It was wet and unpleasant.
OK, fine... No problem...
So...
Today it looks like the sun will be out. However, it is still cold and wet. There is mud everywhere. We can't chop silage for an hour or so, in my humble opinion.
Why did he get here at 7:15 a.m.? He is out at the store drinking coffee with the Uncle. And he keeps texting me. I'm not feeling so well this morning. My family had a bit of a bug, picked up from school.
I worked in the dark and rain last night, I often work at 7:30 a.m.
Why can't you figure out that if there are 2" deep puddles in your parking lot, the fog is so thick you can't see five feet in front of you and...as you said... you serviced everything yesterday.... that your boss may not want to come out of his house right on the dot of 7:30 a.m.?
Am I not the Lazy Farmer?
AND, the second issue... If you arrive at work a half hour early could you not look at the white board that has lists of unfinished jobs dating back 2 years and just pick something and do it? What about putting tools away? Picking up trash? Washing the windows on the silage trucks, putting diesel in the transfer tanks in the pickups, any number of things but texting me five times.

I must not listen to talk radio!

I spent time listening to talk radio today. It is usually a mistake.

I am unabashedly conservative, Christian, and somewhat patriotic but yet I find those with which I should share a common viewpoint to be idiots and morons.

We are no longer mainstream. The best and brightest are no longer with us. I have no idea what it says about me but I will mention my personal bias right away. I like Minneapolis-Moline tractors, Triumph Motorcycles, and Studebaker cars. I have a non IBM iBook, I like Kipling, I sometimes read my Bible, I have no gun newer than 10 years, I have two reel to reel tape recorders, a couple turntables, I watch movies using a movie projector, and I collect Marx Johnny West figures, as well as Marx tin lithographed barns, metal toys, old books, and the occasional typewriter.

On that basis I feel no need to apologize for not exactly being cutting edge on the cultural curve.

Today I was listening to Lars Larson. As usual he was driving me nuts. He is such a maroon.

He was referring to the Occupy Portland twits as "dirty hippies," and talking about them crapping in the streets. When one of them called in he went off on stupid arguments about currency and banking and code violations. He never asked any questions that led anywhere. I didn't need a lecture on how banks operate. I have seen "It's a wonderful life," and I know about the Building and Loan. However, I know little more the people occupying Portland now than I did when the show started. (Other than they stole electricity from the electric car charging station-glad someone is using it,  and they didn't have a parade permit.)

I almost called in and complained but as I was starting to dial I realized that I don't think that quick and get confused easily and he would have gotten me into a stupid argument about semantics and made me look like an idiot and then congratulated himself.

How hard would it have been to just do a polite interview type conversation? I suspect the caller would have made plenty of inconsistent statements on his own. I think there are some ideas that perhaps Lars should review, who, what, where, when, why, and how, oh right-he was a TV reporter. I guess that explains a lot.

Some totally basic sample questions:
Who are you and how did you get involved in the Occupy movement? Tell us your unemployment story? (and then don't comment on how lazy the guy is-just let his statements stand)
What are your goals and what are your complaints? (so he doesn't really know or have anything-just let it stand on his own, don't point out the obvious!)
What do you want that is different from the Tea Party protesters?
Who are the people you look up to?
If you have this loose organizational structure and as you say your are people getting together but have many ideas, how do expect to articulate your ideas and find goals to accomplish?
Who decided to occupy Portland?
Why do you not get the proper permits?
Why do you think the cops are not beating the crap out of you like they did the WTO demonstrators?
How do you feel about the opposition to the Tea Party in Portland and their problems with the police and do you see a double standard when you have so much in common?

This should get a good discussion going and then you can go on from there asking perhaps more leading questions and getting some real information.

Then if you want to annoy the guy you can throw in some polite questions that will get him going:
Are you really crapping in the street?
When did you take a bath and are you a hippy?
Should someone rent you some port-a-potties?
How much coffee do you drink in a day?
Did Sam Adams march with you because of the possibility of underage boys or because one of your organizers agreed to touch him down there?

I have this sneaking suspicion that the Tea Party just annoys the liberals to no end because they see themselves as the protest movement and now the people they hate are stealing the show, and doing it in a peaceful, orderly, and clean manner.
I suspect that the Occupy movement is just an anti-Tea Party movement.
I worry that behind it is the same social manipulators that bring out the protesters in favor of Hugo Chavez.
I am disturbed that Sam Adams (mayor of Portland) seems pretty enthused with them. The counter-culture has become pretty main-stream here in Oregon. I think they are useful tools of the current administrations.
After all, the Government bailed out Wallstreet. Sure the banks and corporations took what was handed to them.... I think it is a setup.
And...where are the Anarchists? What dark sinister forces call them out and who made them stay home...

A good interviewer could have worked a lot of this in. It is a shame we have people like Lars at the microphone.  Calling the protesters "dirty hippies," more than once or twice is stupid. It is such a shallow attempt to diminish their voice. It is the same ploy used by liberals on the Tea Party when they call them "Tea Baggers." Going on about parade permits and crapping on the street is begging the obvious. Of course it is civil disobedience.

I really doubt the common goals of the two movements will complement each other. The Occupy movement is probably just an exercise in activism-if we need a riot how many can we get out. But, the moral high ground should be taken. (At the same time the double standard shown to the Tea Party movement must be shown.) 

It would be pretty funny if the Lars Larson talk show would rent a bunch of Port-a-Potties for the protesters. Or send a KXL van down with hot coffee. But, I don't see the establishment Republicans capable of any real clever long range thought. (I suppose the subtle humor would be lost and the Port-a-Potties would be vandalized and lars would loose his deposit.)

Later I heard Lars interviewing a candidate for the Indiana legislature (I think) on his national show. He did a really good job of getting info from the fellow. I missed most of it as I was dodging crazy drivers on a very narrow road in the rain with a wide grain drill and having near death experiences. Then I hit a really big bump on the road and lost my record book with 6 years worth of no-till planting records out the tractor rear window when the window latches were dislodged. Perhaps I am just grumpy from chasing scraps of paper down the highway in the rain.

I think those of us who just want to be left alone and cling to our out of date beliefs and traditions and not bother anyone else are pretty much screwed.