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. 

A farming picture

People usually worry about hitting power lines or interstate highways when farming and looking at a computer screen. Someone left an apple tree and a ladder in the field. I did stop in time. 

I have been farming in my spare time. I had lots of great blogging ideas but it was too depressing to comment about the lunacy in today's world.

I wish I had the free time, the money, the privilege to worry about oppression. Be a nice change from worrying about going broke. I suppose the guilt would get tiresome.

More farming...

Random rant about something you have heard before and it won't even matter except to get me on a list somewhere

Oregon is going nuts and it is probably time to leave.

I grew up hearing stories from my Uncle about leaving Germany between the wars. He foresaw the end of this country better than anyone else I have even talked to.

Germany was devastated spiritually after WWI and it slowly became a dual society. The rural people were conservative and more religious. The city folk became progressive and liberal. According to Uncle H the growing divide between the liberals and the  smarter than anyone else folk became significant. 

A charismatic leader like Uncle Dolf who promised to rid the country of socialist/communists/weird perverts and university professors(sorry for being redundant) was welcomed because he was an alternative. A few normal people realized it was time to leave. But overall I suspect that the temptation to welcome brownshirts beating the shite out of Antifa shite head types was so strong that one might overlook a little spillover. 

Needless to say, Uncle H got the heck out and moved to Texas. I suspect the only thing that will keep Oregon from turning into Berlin of 1926 is... , well I don't really know. I don't see a charismatic right-ringer rallying us all. The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer a first seemed to be a step in defense of the rest of us but they were immediately and skillfully marginalized. The racial diversity of the groups, Latino, Cuban, Black, White was denied and the clever folks defined them as RaCist. Of course. The "so called violence" didn't do much as those groups seem to have just ended up being mostly Oregon State Police and FBI infiltrators agitating each other. Plus, rural Oregonians are not extreme right wing or "racist fascists." We just want to be left alone. We don't want Kate Brown and countless civil servants telling us what to do. We don't want snot nosed brats protesting endlessly about non-existent oppression of people who we don't even know. We don't want global warming bullshite forced on us because the idiot early baby-boomers read the Hobbit and Grapes of Wrath and convinced their grandkids that the internal combustion engine is evil and that all Mexicans are oppressed farmworkers. (I used to be post baby-boom and pre Gen-X before Wikipedia expanded the Baby Boom years. There ain't a lot of us and we seem to be a grumpy lot)

Note: I started to write this last weekend and ran out of steam. I am still out of steam. I got nothin to say. 

Here are some pictures with no captions and a video that probably won't work.

My collections are interesting

I Accomplish Stuff at My real job....

I have to decide. Decisions are hard for me. I generally choose wrong. So do discard the first pick as it is probably wrong and take the second? Or just go boldly forward with no regrets... I have had bad luck with both so perhaps I should just choose randomly...

Today is Independence Day. It may be too dry to set off explosives. Plus, I kind of identity as a wearer of the grey.

My choices,

Go to Church...

Go fishing...

Rake alfalfa. ( I kind of want to do that the most)

Go back to bed. (Five gallons of coffee later I suspect that is not an option.)

Proofread my blogs...

Find the movie projector and "Gum Ball Rally" and invite the people over who have been begging me to do movies for the past year...

Wallow in depression till my daughter arrives to work on her bus, annoy her and my wife, then go fishing...

Yesterday was a good day.

The a/c fan quite on the 2-135 but we had a new one. I was not driving the 2-135 so it were not I who suffered. I sent my retired guy helper home and worked on the tractor. I did get it repaired. It was a POS Chinese fan. ( A shout out to my namesake in California who actually blocked me on facebook because I complained about Chinese bearings and he though I hated his wife who is apparently Chinese- Insanity runs in our family) I really hate Chinese products. Have nothing against Chinese people in general especially if they are from The REPUBLIC OF CHINA.

But I digress...

The 2-135 is suffering the curse of a repaint. Exhaust manifold leaks, (or has a bad head gasket on the result Hercules. Of course the Hercules was rebuilt by the US Army before the Obama appointees took over so I figure it was made with regular pride and not June Pride so it is probably fine) It also has a water leak from the rubber joint under the Turbo, which also makes me suspect a head gasket, but no bubbles so I don't know)

My nephews took the initiative to bring the Tedder rake and baler up to Muddy Valley and get things going whilst I worked on stuff. I sent them home as it was  6 p.m. on a Saturday and I figured there was a rodeo somewhere that needed attending. But first I waited till the eldest got all the twine tangling problems sorted out on the baler. Actually feel a little guilty about having the second oldest rake another two rounds till the baler started working again.

I got my just rewards. The A/C in the 2-155 was so cold I got the shivers. I really hated to turn it down as most of the time you are way too hot running a tractor. I suppose it doesn't all even out in the end.

And then I decided I would open the next field. I was a mile away from the pickup on the opening round when suddenly the sun disappeared behind the hill and the moisture content jumped to 20 percent. I figured that was probably ok and baled a little further and then it went to 30 percent. There ain't no rationalizing that away so I quit.

I actually feel good about accomplishing something for the first time in a year. Of course I should have stacked it also, but perhaps this afternoon when it is hot...

In other news, my college is giving away surplus cool scientific stuff next week and I want to take it all. I don't know what it does but I want to be a scientist. If only I could concentrate. If I could concentrate and remember anything but the lyrics to old country western songs I could do anything in the world!!!

The lazy farmer is actually lazy nowadays...

It is hot...

It is never hot in Oregon this time of year. 

It is going to be 90 degrees at 12 midnight tonight. I should have been hooking up lights on all the tractors. Years ago we had similar weather and I just basically switched to working at night. 

Now I have this job as a groundskeeper and when I get home I am so tired from the heat I just don't feel like doing much. Pretty sad. I really am becoming the lazy farmer.

Last week I turned down a better job. It paid $2 an hour more. I suppose  I had good reasons.

1. It would have cost me $1 an hour to drive the distance. The reason this is a big deal is I live close enough to my current job that I could drive home for lunch. Switching to a 40 minute commute on a highway I hate was daunting.

2. They made me an offer. I asked for 45 cents more to meet my goal. They said that HR had a computer program to determine pay equality and after working for my current college I understand the codewords. The code word is F... You. They are coating it in Jesus language instead of social justice and diversity. Actually I think at the new job I would be getting a double dosage of both.

3. The President of my current college invited me for coffee to discuss my mental state. I went to his office. The ladies in the office acted weird like I should not be there or I was getting fired. Turns out he was on vacation. I was invited to his house.... 

I really felt I should go to the back door as it is the president's mansion on campus. He calls me in and his lovely and gracious wife brings me coffee. We have a great chat, the cheers me up. We agree on a strategy. I ask for what I want, which is pretty reasonable and based on the wages of local groundskeeping companies. If they don't give it I walk. I have a job.

And that is what I did.

I am still a little depressed. I just cannot seem to boost my motivation. It will be a long summer.

I have been driving dump truck in the evenings. It gets me more behind with fixing farm equipment but $30 an hour is pretty nice. Plus, they are so happy for my help. The excavator guy has a truck load waiting for me at 4:05 pm. I haul it to the farm where I am dumping it and try to make it back by 4:45 pm. He quits at 5 so that gives him time to load me. Then I try to get two loads in myself. I am down to loading in 20 minutes. (I am getting better with the excavator. )

I try to make it home by 7:30. So far I have only ran the stacker one evening. I worked till 10 p.m. and thought I was done but didn't realize there was another field. The problem with this is that while it is nice in cool in the stacker, the next day I can't stay awake on the lawnmower because of the heat. 

I am afraid I am getting old. I have no idea how to deal with that problem...

I am reflective

We had a different Pastor in Church this morning. I enjoyed the sermon. I needed it. I am too uptight.

He quoted TS Elliot, "The Hollow Men," and reminisced about reading "On The Beach," many years ago. Then he quoted Dale Carnegie, "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living."

I wanted to call/text my daughter and talk about it. "On the Beach" is an awesome movie. (Having never read the book) plus TS Elliot. "The Hollow Men," is interesting in so many ways just as a poem but the Pastor's Biblical references and the "On The Beach," reference made it all so much more interesting to me. There was a time when I thought talking about things like that with my daughter was the most amazing thing in the world.

But alas, that that time has past. It is a different world now.

I went to my nephew's graduation yesterday. Him and his three other classmates seem happy and positive. It is Child Abuse to put your kid into the public school system if you have any values at all. 

I often question my decision to work off the farm. I question even more my decision to get my daughter to attend the Young Writer's Conference at Sweet Briar college. I am not a particularly good parent.

However, when I decided to get an off the farm job I felt I had to make a decision. My dad had to go to a rest home. If he would have lived another year there would be no farm. This would have probably been a good thing for all involved, but that is another story.

I did not want to be a 50 year old truck driver, it is a tough life. I often get confused at what gear I am in. It is an 18 speed. Traffic is a little scary on HWY 18 on a Friday with 12 yards of gravel. I think it would be worse with a set of doubles or a 50ft trailer. There has got to be a niche for me...

But... That is what I was last week.

The company doing the steam line project at my college needed truck drivers and they hired me for twice my hourly wage. I took a week of vacation time and drove dump truck. Saturday, my supervisor told me I could just work by myself if I wanted and I should just use the excavator to load myself. 

The bucket is quick attach, it rotates and tilts independently. It is really amazing to run. I am not good at running it but I have observed the real excavator driver using it and he is awesome.

JRT Mechanical seems to be a great place to work. I sent a photo to my supervisor documenting that I anciently broke the top board on the dumb truck with the excavator bucket. (The controls are opposite what I am used to and I was trying to learn new controls instead so switching the lever). I said he could take the cost of a new 2x10 out of my pay. He said it would be cheaper to just buy a new dump truck...

I probably should have turned the lever that changed the controls but I am so bad at running an excavator I thought I might as well learn the other system. I did get better...

I kind of hope they offer me a full time job.

My supervisor from the Grounds Department at the University I work at brought me coffee Saturday. I offered to let him run the excavator but he declined. It was kind of funny...

I don't think I can work at my daughter's college. It pays another $2 per hour. They have amazing facilities. People seem to love their jobs. That college is NOT going broke.

But.... The secret to happiness is controlled access. 

I refuse to go to work in the morning and pretend to listen to a self help book but actually listen to...

 I am a bad farmer. A lazy farmer. There is hay to cut and in three days, there will be hay to bale. I have feed to make, I have a broken tractor, a broken motorcycle, a broken golf cart, and several axes to grind. (metaphorically speaking)

It is 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday. I have a baler to put together and I am blogging. Perhaps that is where the Lazy Farmer name does truly apply.

What I would rather be doing

I hate working on baler plungers. I have trouble reading the instructions. When I had my larger helper Bill, we would argue over the instructions and somehow figure it out. I do not think in the same way as my new helper. Nothing against him. It just doesn't work the same.

This needs to be installed and adjusted and then readjusted and then adjusted again. Then I will probably get it wrong.

I have a book but I can't read... Actually, I can't understand instructions...

I need my daughter. But she has abandoned me.

The weather man is calling for 90 degree temperatures next week. I am taking a vacation. I am going to drive a dumbstruck for the company that is redoing the steam lines at my University. I also have an interview at another University as a handyman groundskeeper. There is a very unlikely possibility that it will pay two dollars an hour more. If so I will take it.

My daughter is working in the grounds department of that University this summer. It is where she attends. She has been advocating for my employment there. I am not sure this is a good idea. I tend to interact too much with her. She objects, but then turns around and seeks me out. This job is an example. She was going to work in my grounds department but then got a job at her University. Then she tries to recruit me.

She said, "At LU I am known as Farmer ....'s daughter. At GFU you will be known as Lulu's dad." A subtle difference. But somehow important in terms of status....

The decision to switch jobs is actually impossible. I was offered the job a couple years ago. The pay turns out to be almost the same when the extra half hour drive is figured in. The drive kind of sucks.  At my current job I now I have 15.5 hrs of PTO per month and they give me all sorts of interesting junk. They are renovating the science building and I am really hoping for cool scientific junk this time! 

I am listening to "How to stop worrying and start Living," by Dale Carnegie. It is a refresher course...

Ok, I'm lying... This is what I am really listening to. Probably why I can't read.