Pumpkins, fall and Charlie Brown

What springs forth in your mind when you think of fall? Mine is pumpkins, pretty fall leaves and Charlie Brown. I’m talking the coffee, not the character Charlie Brown. What, you say?

You’ve never had a pumpkin latte until you’ve had the Charlie Brown pumpkin latte at my absolute favorite coffee shop and roasterie, Coffea.

Okay, I’ll admit I do love Charlie Brown the character too and his Thanksgiving (it’s a good movie). If you’re ever in the SoDak neck of the woods, stop in and check out Coffea, it’s worth it. Mind you this is a seasonal drink.

I fondly remember their caramel lattes. Take a picture, they are works of art. I do wish they had a Coffea here in my area. The best I’ve got is a Coffee Culture, they’re good but they’re not Coffea.

Yeah, I’m a farmer but I love my coffee. Usually two travel mugs of goodness go with me to the combine and they only last till noon. Yup, it’s a sad day at that point. Any rainy day is usually an excuse enough for me to run to town and grab a superb cup of coffee. It’s not a cup of joe, it is most definitely coffee.

It’s Halloween but the day is about pumpkins, a latte and pretty fall leaves for me. I enjoy pumpkin carving but mostly I love pumpkins for the simple delight of baking them and blending them into a creamy puree. It makes the most delicious pumpkin pie ever.

Enough chit chat, it’s back to the fields for me. I do believe my combine has missed me.

It’s all about that garage

They say it’s all about that bass but for me it was all about that garage. I was bored last winter and went on Pintrest. Gasp! Oh the horror… Some of you may commiserate with my poor hubby; it has been the source of several ‘great’ ideas and projects.

Prior to this ‘great’ idea hatching, our garage was stud walls only. No insulation and no drywall with open rafters all the way.

I look around the garage. After cleaning, okay, serious deep cleaning and maybe a few shovels, it should be a fairly straightforward project. It took a week but it was finally empty. The previous owners hadn’t cleaned out the garage when they left so… yeah. You know what I’m saying right? I went through the whole business of calling around for quotes on insulation and drywall. I googled ‘how to…’ and figured I knew how to play the game. I’m good with tools but I’ve never done this kind of project before.

Some of you are no doubt laughing at the display of beginner naiveté and over calculation of the length of the project. I thought, hands down, I’d be done within the month.

You may now commence laughing yourselves silly. I know I did later, when it was funny, that is. Yeah…

I didn’t realize that the garage wasn’t framed with the intent to finish it. Meaning, they cut corners and left out the necessary studs in the corners to affix the drywall to. Ahh, my poor hubby. He loves me so and he very nicely volunteered to help me out with it and do that.

Then it was putting in the insulation. It wasn’t bad and going all pretty well till I realized that I’d have to cut all these smaller pieces for the random widths and lengths that were left under the windows and over the doors. Sigh. Well, that was easy.

Next, on to putting up the plastic (the vapor barrier stuff). I thought 'give me a hammer tacker and plastic and let me roll!' Ha. Yeah right. Of course, I would somehow pick the nastiest, stickiest and most humid day to put it up. It happened to be the same day that a storm rolled through and took out the power, including the fan that was pushing air around in the garage. It would be fun they said. No fun, here, none at all.

Well, me and hubby survived. We got ‘er done that day, which totally sucked. I inadvertently got a couple days of a break from the garage while I waited for the delivery of the drywall. Since our garage is attached my hubby decided to go all five eighths instead of trying to mix in half inch here and there.

Let me tell you, those buggers are heavy! I’m not a lightweight at picking up what I put down but when hubby says ‘just hold it for a bit so I can get it level’ and takes his sweet time doing so… I will say and repeat, sink a few screws already! It took a few days to do the walls but then there was the ceiling. Oh the ceiling, how I don’t like you.

Fortunately we had bought a drywall lift when it came time to do the ceiling. It was so handy it made me wonder why we didn’t get it sooner to use for the walls too. Hmmmm… My handsome hubby worked in the evenings after coming in from the fields to put up a few sheets or one each night. A couple of weeks went by. Finally it was done!

Now for the taping and mudding; and don’t forget about the sanding and repeat. The taping and mudding I found to be both mind-numbing yet relaxing-ish. The sanding though, that was a whole new ball game. I work out but the whole wax on, wax off over every single seam (walls and ceiling) proved to a bitter enemy and a vengeful victor. My muscles hurt for days afterwards. I thought my hand would never grip (or flex) anything again.

Don’t forget the second layer!

Grumble, grumble, grumble. How could I possibly forget? Apparently one coat isn’t good enough, three is the best but it’s a garage, I’m okay with two coats. And I’m on a time crunch. The garage has to be finished by end of the following week. So I had ten days to finish sanding, mudding, sanding and painting.

Meanwhile, every now and then I get a murmur of ‘you should come play/work in the shop with me’ or ‘come ride in the tractor with me.’ I love doing those things or being the actual operator of the machinery but this project really needed to come to an end. For my sanity.

I made the self-imposed deadline! The wall finished out nicely with a canvas color, a light ivory and the ceiling a ‘Versailles sky’ blue. I envision the trim to be a cloudy gray, which I’ll do this winter in the shop. I also sealed the floor with a made-for-it epoxy and its corresponding blue and white sprinkles. I mean, who doesn’t love scrubbing the floor and filling the cracks in with concrete glue?! Really, the actually application of the epoxy is the fun part.

It’s so much more fun to reminisce over this event. Somehow your mind conveniently forgets all the mind-numbing rote exercises and pain that go with it. And the dust of sanding drywall, my hair was white! No worries, I got smart and tied a kerchief over my head to protect my hair. The dust is hell on your hair.

Done before harvest, well, my definition of a harvest start.

Done, ma’am, done!

Harvest tales

Once upon a time… a girl operated her Case 7010 combine in a field of dreams, err… soybeans, with a Crary air reel, no less.

That dream was lovely, acres were being combined and the yields were good. And then, it rained. And it rained and rained. A whole week was lost due to rain.  Darn weather!

Well, she figured, it gave time to get little repairs done and troubleshooting to prevent bigger repairs from occurring. Dad, however, was a little down in the mouth and worried about the crops.

Since the start to that lovely dream it has been a slow awakening to the reality of pms’ing weather, that can’t stick to the seven day forecast.  Ahh, well, that’s farming, right?

So I work in fits and starts. My work day (actual combining work) doesn’t start until after lunch (the dew overstays its welcome)

and we’re done by the time the sun sets. That darn dew sets in early and then the bean stalks become so chewy that my combine rumbles and grumbles.

Then one day the alarms, bells, whistles went off. All it was missing was that disembodied voice saying, ‘warning, warning, break down eminent. Break down eminent.’ Uff da. So I stop, immediately throwing switches turning off the rotor and bean head and then throttling down the rpm’s down to idle. Dad pulls up in his truck, already throwing open doors to get tools out. I turn the key, sigh and then climb down the ladder from the cab.

We discuss how the clean grain alarm was going off so we start there. Opening the shields we eventually determine the problems.

But first…

How to get out of combining for the day:

The pulley for the clean grain elevator twists and pops off. No grain goes into tank, done for the day. Unless, of course, it’s already sunset.

Reapply pulley. Proceed to check the clean grain elevator. Loosen the chain in order to turn it. Manually turn pulley and check all paddles in elevator.

'Forget' to tighten elevator chain. No worries, this will come back and 'help' you in a couple of days. (The loose chain will cause the pulley to jump off like a synchronized pair of divers off a springboard, stopping grain from going into the tank.)

Not one, not two but seven paddles are in various stages of disrepair. Some may be completely missing their rubber paddle.

Hmm, done for the day? Well, stopped for a couple of hours until they can be properly fixed.

Run out of fuel? Ha, what a terrible excuse!

Rain showers spit through the area. Yeah, you might be done for the day (any maybe the next day too).

Mysteriously put a rock through the combine (yes, it would skate right over the rock trap), make a lot of noise, break a pair of chopping knives and counter knives on the straw chopper

Forget your lunch, snackies, water, etc. Yeah, get out of here!

Ahh, the adventures of farming, you can never predict the next day or have to worry about a boring day at the office. My office is the great outdoors so boring isn’t in my vocabulary (unless it's winter and I have to face down the mountains of work, as in the variety of bookwork).

Getting the feet wet

It’s that time of year again.

Time to clean out the cobwebs, dust things off and… did you think I was talking about cleaning?!? Ha. Well, in a very roundabout way it could be considered cleaning; if you think about harvest as cleaning off the fields.

You got it folks, its harvest season!

I love fall; the trees changing colors, the crisp scent to the air and seeing the combines in the fields. Of course, I would be in one of those combines but it’s fun to watch others going as well. I much prefer red to green but in a pinch (or a lack of red around) I’ll settle for green. I do love my red combine, the cab is bigger than the green one I’ve been in and it’s much quieter also. I can actually listen to the radio without getting a headache. What can I say? I’ve got excellent hearing and that much rumbling and loud white noise makes it impossible to listen to a radio in a green cab.

Farming with the hubby here north of the border is nice but it really helps that harvest starts just a bit earlier than in the states. It gives me the opportunity to shake the rust off after the yearly sabbatical from combining. The flat prairies here and a lack of rocks hiding in the ground that usually can’t wait to pounce into my header (yikes!) is an easy way to get back into the groove and feel for combining.

I will say it will take me awhile (a couple of years anyone?!) to get used to the fact that harvest season starts about end of July (the very early side) and goes till about the middling of November. To me, July is finish spraying, mow and mow some more, and finish trucking season; most definitely NOT the precursor to harvest season.

Ah well, in my mind, it doesn’t really feel like harvest aka fall till the middle of September. This year it has been a glorious fall so far with the trees turning colors. Some years it sadly changes in the wink of an eye.

I’d love to chat but it’s time to run! It’s harvest time! 

Happy harvesting

May you rest in peace (?)

Part of me half wishes this was an epitaph for this infamous animal… Turns out it’s more of a tribute. No, no, that’s too positive.

A nod, yes, this is a nod to the infamous animal that holds (unfortunately) a special place in hubby’s heart. He’s an animal that will live to the ripe old age of forty-something and is only five now, yikes.
What a future to look forward to. I’d much prefer an Arabian for longevity.

Danno, is a miniature donkey. Why do we have one you ask? Well, before me and hubby met, he decided he wanted one and so he got one. Along with two bubble-brained ewes, for company, or so he said. Methinks he could’ve been Old MacDonald in another life.

I, on the other hand, prefer horses. Horses are smart, useful, good friends and the list goes one. A miniature donkey is smart (a**), protective and can do… well, I’m not really sure how useful he really is outside of the whole protective detail.

He and I don’t really get along. He views me as the interloper that stole his master’s affections, time and attention away from him. Maybe part of that is true, ha.

The little donkey is a turd some of the time. He likes to bite or kick on a whim and he’s not really halter broken. He adores my hubby though. At least he has good taste.

And in the winter, when he’s in his winter yard, he’s shown that he’s the driveway alarm. Who needs a doorbell or those sensor alarm thingies when the donkey will bray when someone pulls into the yard? You can hear him clear as a bell in the shop. In the house, well, not so much. We still need to work on that yet.

I will say he is cute for a miniature donkey and he turns on the charm when people visit. Either that or he is good at manipulation for treats. He prefers a handful of oats, no carrots or apples, please; he’s a connoisseur.

May the years be quick, the grass green and tasty, and the sun warm on your back Danno.