Fog, changing plans, cold wet Oregon weather...

I need to be planting. I am not.
I have other things to do. I have difficulty switching tasks. I am in planting mode, not working on stupid crap in the fog mode.
I am working on a 35 acre field of tetraploid ryegrass,  I have two 15's of the same and then another 15 acres of fescue to reseed.
What I want to be doing is 50 acres of oats and vetch. I could plant that in this weather.
The small and light ryegrass seeds are hard to  place at the proper depth with the soil so wet and sticky. Plus the press wheels on the back of the drill build up with mud which lifts the v-openers up a half inch.
I am not real confident that this will work anyway. I think it should have been planted a month ago. But...There were reasons I am sure.
The other problem is that the field is not dead. It was in spring wheat and there is a pretty good green sprout. The farmer's sprayer is broken. I think this could be a failure.
I'm going to try and the farmer to provide me with the diesel for this job. I know he is low on money and I suspect this project may fail.
Anyway, he wants me to wait until afternoon when the sun may come out. The next farmer down the list has not called me yet this morning.
I guess I will wander out and find something else to do. I have plenty to do...

 Typical View out my tractor rear window

Daughter and I went to the beach today.
We had lunch at Lil' Black Sambo's in Lincoln City. I've wanted to eat there ever since I was Lulu's age. It was a bit of a let down. Lulu had the pancakes which were fine. I had fish and chips. It was ok. The fries were good. The fish was average. I know this sounds a bit Philistine, but I really prefer the Skipper's for fish and chips.
They did have some amazing lego creations on display. London Bridge and the USS Constitution made out of Legos.
A guy and girl came in with U of O logos on their clothes. The guy was tall enough to be a basketball or footballer player. The girl had the hard attractiveness of those college cheerleader hotties. Where do they buy their perfume? Does it come in gallon jugs from Nordstroms? Is it injected into the water at the sorority houses-sort of like the tidy-bowl in the toilets?
But, I digress...
We hit the beach...I got in trouble for saying a bad word. A whole gaggle of well-dressed folks walked in front of me against the "don't walk" signal as i was turning into the parking lot. I let a word slip. I apologized and suggested she remember me in her prayers as I did in fact have a problem with saying bad words.
Which brings up a story from Friday. I have a had a girl calling me who wanted hay. I kept forgetting to call her back and I kept putting her off. She was always polite and cheerful. She had been hauling hay the hay in her little car. One bale in the back seat and one in the truck.
So, I just hauled her a ton on the back of a tandem axle diesel truck. I was going to take Lulu as it is at a local horse boarding stable, but she was not feeling well. Upon arrival I discovered the girl to be kind of a potty mouth. A few f-bombs were dropped. I think my daughter would be offended.
But, I digress...

The coast was a bit foggy and a touch on the cold side.

We had a good time.

We built a pretty elaborate sand castle and road system.

She chased seagulls.

There are always dogs at the beach. They also chase seagulls.

Yamhill County and the US Government has too much money...

This budget crisis is a bunch of crap... I say shut the whole thing down.
I just got a call about a meeting by the Yamhill County parks and rec about a proposed park down the road from us.
It is absolute insanity.
They want to put a park basically on top of an old garbage dump, across the river from the new mountain of garbage, but on our side of the river. They've got it all. Nature trails, river access, overnight camping.
The old dump should probably be a superfund site. I've seen the green mystery sludge oozing out of the river bank. I know what went in there. The school bus used to turn around there when I was a kid. I know where the garbage trucks came from. Anything and everything went into the old country dump. I've seen the neighbor's deformed livestock. Five people that I know of in the neighborhood, including my mother, have died from cancer, And it is an old Indian burial site. Not that the Grand Rhonde tribes give a rip, they are not from around here and there is no casino money to make on it.
And then there are the meth-heads who will take over the park. There is a story in itself.
But, Yamhill County is moving ahead with it. They are committed, because they invented parks and know what they are doing.
So we have money to put a park on top of a toxic waste site but we can't pay down the national debt or fix the stinking roads in Yamhill County. Hell, they can't even grade Hook and Eye Lane or Gopher Valley Road, but they got the money to open a $%^&*ing park.
Yeah, the meeting is at 9 a.m.and it is 8:52 a.m. While I am a lazy farmer I still have to work on Saturdays as I am NOT feeding at the public trough. $150 in payments for not growing wheat doesn't put me on easy street.
The people attending the meeting have already given up on stopping it. They are going to "compromise." Screw that...
The Government has way too much money... It is our patriotic duty to vote down every single tax increase and avoid paying taxes in anyway possible. They will keep spending the money until it is gone. If only China would quit loaning us money. Perhaps I need to write a letter to Mao...Maybe I'll boycott Harbor Freight...
The funny thing is...When I play Sim City (WHich the idiots at Yamhill County and the US Gubment should be required to do) I like to have parks. I think the whole park concept is pretty cool.
BUT-it is on a toxic waste dump AND it will attract MORONS...De-Evolution gets us again...
 After five minutes of reflection...
AND Furthermore, what really pisses me off is that the county planner people cynically manipulated the system by delaying and rescheduling meetings so that those of us who ACTUALLY WORK FOR A LIVING would not be able to attend. Those %^&*(#$ Sam Adams wannabees. If there is any way to be an obstructionist one should do it.
I should have gone to that meeting.
$%^&*( and ((*&^ and @@##@%&!!!!

The information age

The Nuclear Disaster in Japan is possibly as bad as Chernobyl but the authorities have decided to lie about it.
The West Coast of The USA is down wind from Japan. We know this for a fact as during WWII they sent us balloon bombs.
Somewhere I have a gieger counter. But exactly what good would that do me. "Oh, gosh, yes, I've been ingesting radioactive lettuce...Oh yes, my carpet is radioactive. I guess taking it out after six months is better than living with it for 10 years...
Lying to your subjects has worked pretty well in the 21st century (and before) so I suppose this will continue to be the order of business...

Farm management again

I am sure my loyal readers are waiting with baited breath to hear the conclusion of yet another whine about my lack of management skills. I admit that this is Whine country. You see the logo everywhere, purple with little grapes. I think the color is more of a maroon which is kind of appropriate, but I digress...
I got my helper to take fertilizer box back and put on a pallet of ryegrass seed. We then moved the drill though town with him flagging for me.
The fog actually got worse.

He started working ground and I planted. It was bare dirt so it was a little sticky.
I do have very good scrapers on my Great Plains drill.
I thought I had 300 gallons of fertilizer left.
I thought I had 25 acres to plant.
I thought I set the drill correctly.
In reality I had 225 gallons of fertilizer and I forgot the special stuff to put with it to increase the soil fungi. It was home in a the shed. It is expensive stuff. Perhaps I blocked it from my mind. Kind of like replacing the tires on my wife's car...
In reality I had 35 acres to plant.
In reality I looked at my notes wrong and set the drill for 13 lbs instead of 20. This was not so bad, but what it meant is that a month ago when I thought I was planting at 15lbs I was really planting at 9lbs. (I think) Who knows, the rate changes if it is really damp. Anyway, the monitor showed 22 seeds per foot and 1.1 million seeds per acre and I figure that is a heck of a lot of annual ryegrass. Especially since I don't think the sensors can actually count that many small seeds falling past the little electric eye.
I got the 20 acre field planted. It worked very well. The sun came out and the dirt dried out. I did have to go at 4 mph as I kept catching up to the disk and roller so it went slow.
Then I got a call from a lady that gets hay from me. She said she had found some 16mm movies from the development of the Superfortress at Boeing in the 1940's. I've been after those movies for two years. She thinks I give her a good deal on the hay because of her over abundance of secondary sex characteristics and her tendency to wear inappropriate clothing to pick up hay, but it is really the 16mm movies. The other stuff is kind of like a train wreck, you can't look away, but yet you can't look and it makes me slightly uncomfortable.
But, I digress.
I went home to load the hay.
She arrived with a box full of old slides. She said the movies must have been taken to Colorado by her ex. I looked at the box. There were some BW negatives on rolls. I unrolled one. There was a lady with a bottle of whiskey and an army man naked in a bathtub. I am not sure what I have. I think if I can figure out what I did with my BW darkroom supplies I could sell gay porn on ebay... That would probably queer any chances I have of running for president...
My brother showed up and went to combine buckwheat. I forgot to tell him the combine pickup was bent.
He called me.
Instead of going to plant I went to help him. It was no use. The drive shaft for the belt pickup was bent where it goes into the flange that drives the long roller that turns the top belt. It was not a field repair.
I went to plant.
My next customer called me and said it was raining so hard he almost couldn't get out of the field with his drill and tractor.
I said, "oh fiddle-sticks."
I started on the steep hill over looking town. On the second round it started pouring. On the third round I hit a bump and control box for the drill and foam marker and GPS interface box and crap out of the ash tray and my coffee cup fell on top of me due to the steepness of the hill. I hung up the phone.
It was dark and steep and after a while I could see where I had planted. The GPS doesn't work well on steep hills, it was too wet for the mechanical markers, the foam marker was making runny foam and it was pouring down rain. I put the 2-155 in 4wd.
I finally resorted to going back and forth and just steering by the gps and an occasional glimpse of foam at the end of the field.
I never spun out and didn't slide sideways down the hill so I guess all is good. No alarms went off so no plugged seed tubes.
I finished that field. I still have five acres to go. I wish I had not put so much seed in the drill. I hate digging it out with a five gallon bucket.
This morning the sun is shining. There is not at much fog. It may be too wet to plant.
Five stinking acres to plant.
Perhaps I'll try the special soil additive on the last five acres.

So now it is time to get rid of Mr. Cain

I suspected Herman Cain could never be president. (Aside from the problem with him being a hard working African American who became successful without playing any sort of victimization card...)
His tax plan is too simple, he makes white folks like me not appear racist, he seems honest, he is not really part RNC establishment, he says what he thinks, but mostly he is not one of the "chosen" and he has complicated the Republican set-up for the presidency. The establishment will not allow anyone from the Hercule Ross Perot,  Donald Trump, school-who preaches financial responsibility, to become president. Only the "slick" politicians are allow. Perry vs Romney and who wins doesn't matter. In the end we are destined for 1. More inane laws and restrictions on personal freedoms, 2. More money wasted on stupidity, 3. More international interventions with no clear purpose, 4. More inane rules and regulations-oh wait, I said that already.
And so... The fix is in...

Farm Management continued

The word is that farmers are making more money...
The answer is, some are-and some are not...
The most frustrating aspect of modern farming is farm management. You have to think ahead to get ground, plan crop rotations, set budgets, find the "next new and best thing," and so on. For an example of that click here...
I am setting in my pickup waiting for our impossibly slow pump in our diesel bulk tank to transfer enough diesel to the tank in my pickup to supply a day's worth of planting. It usually takes a little over 40 gallons a day. Unless, i get a really good and big field and can do 75 acres-whoop! whoop!
It is 7:30 a.m. here and the ground is white with frost. This will follow with pea-soup thick fog. I might as well have slept in as I have to move the tractor and drill through town, which is not as bad as moving down highway 18, but I don't like to move in the fog.
I see we are out of gasoline so I shut off my pickup, it has a 460cu engine.
The helper says he will be here today and so I have to find him a job.
This reminds me of my utter failure in employee management.
You see... This is the last day of nice weather. We have something like two acres of Buckwheat to combine, 4 acres of Teff, 20 acres of ground to work, and a whole list of swathers and balers to service and put away.
The pickup on the combine broke last Friday. My helper took off Saturday and Monday. Both were days he could have worked ground or worked on the combine. But, I was not here, and neither was my brother.
I will get to the point later. My tank is now full. It took 76 gallons. Yikes!
8:03 a.m.
Waiting for my cousin to call me. He is going to help me move the drill this morning.
My helper just texted me that he will be here in 5 minutes.
This just means I will have to spend a half hour telling him to do stuff I've already told him to do-which he can't do anyway because it is frosty and foggy.
What I need to do today.
I need to move the drill three miles though town to a new field. I have to take the truck with the fertilizer box (which we used to haul wheat seed) back to the Co-op. But, I need to keep the liquid fertilizer tank as I need that for the drill. I also need to fill the drill and possibly get more fertilizer but I don't know exactly how much. 100 gallons of fertilizer that is already in the tank belongs to the fellow I just planted for.
Once the fertilizer box is removed I need to put a pallet of ryegrass on the truck. The loader tractor won't quite lift the pallet so I have to divide it into two pallets which don't quite fit.
Then I have to get the truck into the same field as the grain drill.
Part of the field is plowed but finished. I will have to skip this part or work it myself or have the helper do it.
But, we still have Buckwheat and Teff to combine. The Teff will not get done. The Buckwheat is probably too wet but I thought we would spread it out to dry.
I MUST keep the grain drill busy as I have another job 10 miles away and it is going to rain.
It is 8:08, I am sure the good farmers who read this blog will have lots of advice. But, I am going to flush and go back to work...