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Saturday, January 31, 2015

A grumpy post but I do find my pocket knife!

Yesterday I planted for the farmer who has the farm where I once rented the old farm house.
It was one of the oldest houses in the county.
I was a pretty neat old house with little squares of colored glass around the windows and door.
There was an old oak mantel on the big fireplace. The mantel came from possibly and even older house that had been torn down. There was an old Youngstown metal sink and counter lots of windows and a huge upstairs perfect for permanent Lego villages.
But it was freezing cold in the winter. We shut all the doors and huddled around the old woodstove in the winter and built roaring fires in the fireplace.
Meth addicts and other scum have completely stripped the house.
Yesterday I looked in the barn. It has been completely vandalized.
In the papers strew across the floor I found a number of my books and papers. I had no idea I had left a box of personal effects in the garage. I worry if I left my two prize possessions behind as well.
My most prized possession which I have search high and low for and cannot find is my Grandfather's Bible which was a large KJV with margin notes stored in a leather case which he made himself.
My second possession, (laugh if you will) is my Audio Technica AT-155 LC cartridge, in the box, with packaging, instructions, graph of frequency response, which I saved my money and bought when I was in High School and is now worth real money.
But, I digress...
I stopped to read my resume.
I should have not quit my first job and went to Costa Rica for two Months and then wandered around the country to Minneapolis-Moline conventions. I should have stayed for four years and learned the trade. That was insane.
Second thought was about the boom bust cycles of farming and the stress of being self-employed.
The year before last was a good year. Straw prices were good, annual ryegrass was good, hay prices were excellent, and I was looking for success.
This past year was not so good for several reasons.
One of which is the boom bust cycle that has become the norm in agriculture. (witness corn and soy prices)
We will use hay for an example.
I depend on good hay prices, last year the price went too high. This year prices appear to be good but hay is not selling. Next year people are still going to expect high prices and everybody and their uncle will bale every scrap of pasture in the green part of the state. I'm thinking next year will be a hard sell now that I have lost my feed store customer.
Corn and Soy prices are low and now store bought feed prices have dropped so there goes "Sum Pig" feed sales and counseling service.
But what really upset me was letting the diesel overflow my tractor tank. It really made a mess. Now I have to look at it for two days until it rains...

But all is not gloom and doom! Me being forever the optimist and able to find happiness in even the darkest cloud rejoiced and exclaimed "oh fiddle!" (in a happy positive way) upon finding my pocket knife! I had been searching for it since working on the tractor earlier this week. I found it being used as a wedge to hold up the headliner. 
Earlier I had reglued some of the cab upholstery and also the headliner. I found some special 3-M brand spray mount which is pretty wonderful stuff and had used various found objects to hold things in place until the glue dried.


Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! I found my knife!

3 comments:

  1. Lucky you, able to find that pocket knife. Lately farming here is becoming a "bust cycle". Between crop diseases, poor prices and grain movement, flooded farm land, etc. the only time the boom hits is when we sell the land to the next group of "off shore" optimists and speculators. -30C wind chill today. I'm off to work, but not for long.

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  2. Sum pig. The only sum pig that followed me around in my farming days had a way of finding negative sums. I was always envious of the French pigs that found truffles.

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