the lazy farmer

We didn't buy the Fire Truck...

2012-02-17T07:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went to look at a Fire Truck. I would love to have a Fire Truck. It actually would be quite handy as we have fires from time to time. We have set fire to a swather, two combines, balers, fields with balers in them, a shed, and various other small items.
There have been no really good fires since we quit using White combines, Freeman Balers, and Slant Six powered Hesston swathers on a regular basis but the thought of flames on a hot summer day has never really left my mind.
So having a bright red 1966 Ford pumper truck setting in the field would be comforting. We could have got it for $1,500 from a friend. He sold it five minutes after we left for $1,800. Oh well, forever a bridesmaid, that is I...
Our friend is a pretty interesting guy. He has anger management issues. This coupled with a heightened ~~sense~~ opinion of right and wrong results in some interesting confrontations. He has been banned from a number of places.
I have no idea why we (brother and I) have been friends with him for so long. We don't take him with complete seriousness but respect him for his incredible mechanical abilities and the positive parts of his character, I guess. We also live a few miles apart.
When he bugged me about selling him my 1946 Chevy pickup that I truly loved, I told him that I would take his low offer but if he cut it up for scrap or turned around and sold it for more money within a year of purchase I would be really annoyed. I pointed out that I had know him for years and while the truck was in fact rusting into the dirt in my mind it was destined to be driven. It just needs a bearing on the input shaft of the transmission and it will run.
That was not true, mice had ruined the seat, the bed was full of leaves and had rotted out, and it smokes, plus the brakes were shot from setting. Also, the whole truck was incredibly beat up. So badly that I figured the fenders as a total loss. However, I drove it that way for several years and had a lot of fun with it.
I got to drive it yesterday. I remember the smell and the sound of a Chevy 235 six cylinder, (I removed the 216) It is still pretty beat up but he polished the hubcaps and steam cleaned the truck. It was nice to drive it again.
I suppose it is destined for either restoration or to be parted out but more than one year has passed and so I have nothing to say about its future.
It is now stored inside.
I feel better about that...
Have a nice day, I'm going to go attempt to build a small sprayer, grind some chicken feed, and I'm getting off to a slow start.

A post about audiophile stuff of which I am not...

2012-02-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

I am a failure as an audiophile...
The only discernment I have is "muddy vs bright," and I can tell if there is a lot of scratches but then it just sounds dull to me which goes back to the first distinction.
I can hear if the bass is distorting and I can hear amplifier clipping but as far as the nuances between cartridges or the difference between tracking or skating forces I seem to be a bit deaf.
I say this as I am listening to a Boots Randolf record on the Rek-O-Kut and trying to tell if the tone arm has to much drag and is not tracking correctly.
It sounds fine and the little red Radioactive thing that is hooked to the tone arm is eliminating static. Perhaps I shall refer to it as the Fukushima device...
However there is more volume on one side.

So here are the three systems I have put together.
1. Kenwood KA 3500, Dual 1019 with United Audio base and D71 EE cartridge, Dynaco A-25 speakers

2. Dynaco ST120 with Dynakit PAS-2 preamp, Rek-O-Kut K33H with a Shure HiTrack M97 or M91 I can't quite read the lettering, Sony TC230 "portable" reel to reel and Baby Advent speakers.

3. Radio Shack SA155 Integrated Amp, Otimus/Minimus 7 speakers, with a Panasonic record changer and Ceramic cartridge for playing 45's. The SA155 also is running the "audiovisual center," which is a cheap Sony DVD and the Wii.

5. A Sony TC631 reel to reel and a Denon dual cassette recorder/player (Goodwill special) hooked up to Bose Room-mate self powered speakers in the shop.

I hook my Mp3 player to each system as well with a 1/4 to RCA adapter.

I hear more difference in sound between records than I do between systems. The Dynaco A-25 speakers are in my opinion clearly superior speakers. Better sound across the spectrum, but the Baby Advents sound good at low volume in most cases. That system seems short on the high range but it all improves a lot when I hook up the Dynaco speakers.

The Minimus 7 speakers sound very good at medium to low volume and they sound good with the very low powered Radio Shack amp.

I would like to get a new cartridge to replace the Stanton D71EE which I have had since high school. It was my back up cartridge to my expensive AT 155LC which disappeared when we moved, along with a perfect Technics SL1800 turntable. My albums which I played with the AT 155LC sound like new when I play them now. The reel to reel tapes I recorded on my half track Tascam 2-22 sound amazing when I play them back on Sony reel to reel, as long as I used good tape to begin with. But there is a problem going from 1/2 track to 1/4 track.

I've been thinking about getting the famous "Red Ed" with an eliptical and a conical stylus so I can use the same cartridge on my Dual 1019 and play 78's and 45's. It is pretty cheap and well reviewed. So far I have spent less than $200 total over the past two years on stereo equipment. The Dynaco speakers were the most expensive but probably the best buy for the sound improvement ever.

I've been hanging out at the Audio Karma forum and I find it depresses me and makes me just as insecure as the New Ag Talk forums did.

I like setting in my vintage lazy-boy and listening to music coming off of a vinyl record from two old speakers with sparkly grills and sipping a cup of coffee or late at night perhaps a little old number 7 and writing the Lazy Farmer. I don't like the sound being horribly distorted, I can't play it loud, I like glowing lights and analogue meters with needles that bounce, but an audiophile I am not...
Have a ncie day... I'm going to work!

Should I buy this album?

2012-02-15T22:23:00.000-08:00

Have been reading about Roland Kirk. Should I buy this album on eBay? I have yet to see anything like this at the local GoodWill. Anyone listen to him who reads this blog?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/250975869984?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Another post to make up for lost time.

2012-02-15T22:15:00.000-08:00

For those of you who wonder at the day to day foibles at Shepherd Farms here is a quick run down.
1. Events which I can't talk about. No death, disagreement, or crisis within my family but if you happened to see the news today and know what part of the country I am from you could probably figure it out pretty quick. A year from now I will still have strong opinions about the event and will be happy to discuss it. I imagine it made the national news by now...
2. Had two people coming for feed and I am broke. Hammermill screen came apart. Spent morning trying to find a screen. Finally ordered one from New Holland for $250. Then welded sheet metal over the huge holes in the old screen. Took me all day.
3. Had late lunch with a friend. Discovered that issue mentioned in number 1 had appeared in the news. Corrected an erroneous news report.
4. Attempted to build a small high flotation sprayer trailer but forgot that the tank outlet was in the center and now have to reposition tank.
5. Played a round of "Life" with wife and daughter.
6. Tucked in aforementioned daughter and said silent prayer of thanks that I was too afraid to take my GRE's and get my graduate degree in Secondary Ed.
7. Discovered that Speaker.net has vanished now that I've finally decided my Baby Advent speakers need the tweeters replaced and a new crossover.
Which brings to mind the day I bought those speakers with my friend from Florida. We tried to pay for a Pizza with a credit card only to discover they didn't take credit cards and then when I came back with the money from an ATM they ignored us when we tried to pay. So we left. Only time I've ever done that in my life...
8. Presently listening to the Kinks utilizing the Rek-O-kut turntable and Dynakit PAS-2 preamp formerly belonging to MuddyValley's father and a Dynaco ST120 purchased from a retired Yamhill Country Sheriff. And not quite enjoying the sound coming from those aforementioned Advent Speakers. Really good sounding mid-range and bass at low volume, but the foam surrounds are starting to go on one speaker and I just can't get enough high range out of them to compensate for my hearing damage.
After listening to the Kinks I have been reminded that the same stupid ideas by the same sorts of stupid liberals that ruined Great Britain in the 1960's-1970's are just now destroying the USA.
Think about this...
Remember the protests of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam war...
Do you think you could do that today?
What would you rather have, National Guard troops standing around with M1 rifles or turtle shelled riot cops pepper spraying girls? Is it the same or is it different?

A day in the life...

2012-02-14T22:33:00.000-08:00

Today my brother and I took engine parts from the MM G1355 in to be checked by a machine shop. I got the feeling it was going to be expensive.
We went to lunch with a long time friend of mine who convinced me to keep updating the blog.
Then we went further down the road to pick up a radiator for the MM model Z feed grinding tractor. We stopped to see our aunt and uncle who are almost 93 years of age.
They are really downright decent people. Incredibly polite and dignified but funny and down to earth. I have a huge amount of respect for them.
For valentines day I bought flowers for my wife (roses) and daughter (a bunch of purple flowers which I can't identify) and I gave my wife some clever plastic sawhorses my brother got for me (well actually her) at the local farm store after she admired the ones he bought for himself and a nice card. I hate buying cards. I usually make my own using scrap printer paper, sharpies, and the occasional crayon. However, I splurged this year and bought a $5 cards for wife and daughter. Got daughter the brightest purple guitar strap I could find. She seemed happy. Wife was bemused and made me a very nice coffee cake.

Sometimes one forgets what one says... sometimes people remind you...

2012-02-11T07:45:00.000-08:00

I was at a BBQ for customers of a seed cleaner, buyer, seller. It was a good BBQ. Amazing steaks, very tender, the sort that you don't put steak sauce on. I did not see Orin, it was sort of in his neighborhood. I suspect he was off night-clubbing, the young whippersnapper that he is...
It was an interesting experience. They had an open bar and folks were making use of that.
But..before the meal they had a prayer.
The music stopped, everyone took their hat off and the bartender said a very good heartfelt prayer.
And then everyone (except us temperance folks) went back to drinking.
My brother is the friendly one of the family. I don't like crowds anymore.
I retreated to the safety of some of my ~~drunken~~ friendly neighbors. And I got onto my problem of only having three subjects to talk about, no-till, moisture testers, and neighbors who had cracked up. My brother talking to an old friend but I didn't really know what to say. It was in a big warehouse building and I couldn't hear because of the echoes. The last time I saw the fellow I talked about finding his records in the Goodwill record bin and I thought that subject had been exhausted. (he was in a Christian singing group)
So I hung out with my neighbors as they got their profits back in beer.
So one of them tried to sell me his JD no-till drill. Which was kind of funny as he is a former no-till customer. And I said that if I bought a JD I would have to wear short pants and the other neighbor started laughing and exclaimed...
"Yes but I remember you saying one time the only farmers who wear short pants are either assholes or foreigners."
And his father said, "and you know he is right! We have tested that theory!"
The fellow with the drill turned bright red and I started stuttering...
I do not drink in public...
I have been thinking about giving them a call at 7:30 to see if they want to help me grind feed.

What was wrong with the G1355

2012-02-08T22:54:00.000-08:00

It would seem that I melted a piston...

I was chopping silage a few years ago. I skipped church to chop in the mud. The MM G1355 pulled down as the chopper kept plugging up from mud and down corn. When it pulled back out it started knocking and I shut her down.
The other time I skipped church and worked on Sunday I nearly died. So this was an improvement.
I thought I posted about it but I guess it has been longer ago than I thought. It must have been on the other blog. The one that went away.
I just threw the sand castle photo in there because I took my daughter to the beach Sunday. Where we built a very large sand castle and a good time was had by all.
Today it poured down rain.
I listened to the Beach Boys on my Sony TC-651 reel to reel. It was nice.

A blurry photo showing what I did today

2012-02-07T22:29:00.000-08:00

I screwed around a lot. I was attempting to get internet radio in the shop so I could listen to Soma FM, music for saddle weary drunkards, off the country section of iTunes radio. I do not understand wireless networking, bridge mode and wireless distribution networks, but if I did I could listen to offensive music in the shop. Other than 40 year old tapes on a reel to reel. I do have my MP3 player hooked to through the reel to reel but for some reason when I have it set to play random it mostly plays Travis Chandler, State of Depression, and Jimmy Hendrix tunes. It puts me a little on edge...
My brother and I pulled the MM G1355 into the shop and dropped the pan. I am trying to figure out why she started knocking a few years ago whilst chopping silage on Sunday when i should have been in Church.
I have never had a chance to work on it as I have been alone in the shop for the last few winters. My brother is the mechanic of the family has been driving truck. I mostly fill the role of depressed ~~alcoholic~~ ~~"artistic" type~~, lazy sluggard and my employee mostly stays home and sits on the couch in the winter.
I actually found a new employee but am daunted by the task of hiring someone.
Anyway, I have not found out exactly why it started knocking although copper is visible in several of the bearings. Next I am going to pull the heads. Have been trying to figure out how to get the injector's out. No one seems to have the special tool. I think my brother found one on Amazon. I hope he used my link! That will be a $8 kick back!
I have no idea how to put this back together. I suppose that is why ITT wrote a shop manual for it.
Here is the photo, did I ever mention how much I need a new phone?

How to fix all those crappy little LED flashlights

2012-02-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

I am always amazed at the engineering of things from China. Brilliant ideas combined at times with terrible execution which leads to head scratching and the inevitable, "what were they thinking," comment. And then other times you get very good quality and design. You just never know.
(Of course China is one of those countries where you shouldn't joke about execution... So perhaps I should have used a different term.)
Anyway...
The little LED flashlights were a great idea. However, despite the machined aluminum housing and the gasket seal and the illusion of them being waterproof they are not and they corrode inside. And they have four little AAA batteries when it looks like one C cell would fit perfectly. But, it won't. Of course that would only be 1.5v and the AAA's bring it to six so I guess that is the point.
But, I digress...
In my efforts to restore aging stereo equipment I came across a product called "DeOxit". I bought a little kit on Amazon which has samplers of the different products.
I figured if this chemical can help audio connections then why not annoying flashlights that you have to bang of the table to get them to work. So, I applied a trop of DeOxit gold to each of the contacts and suddenly I had light. I am quite impressed. You may ask me why I chose DeOxit gold out of the box of products? That happened to be the tube that was open and said on the instructions that it would improve electrical connections.
I also used the DeOxit fader lube on the switches and potentiometers on the Dynaco PAS-2 amp that Muddy Valley gave me and the difference in sound was amazing. Scratchy volume controls are cured quickly and the 40 year old balky slider switches now work.
And... if you put the term DeOxit into my Amazon search box and then buy the product I will get a kick-back. I like to think of it as a bribe or a payoff. Makes me feel edgy... or is that the excess coffee I have consumed this morning?
Of course the DeOxit costs more to buy than five cheap Chinese flashlights but that is not the point...

How hungry am i?

2012-02-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

Two quick issues...
1. Got a call from a farmer 20 miles away on the wrong side of the capital city of our fine state. He wants me to no-till 40 acres of rolling hills, red dirt. Will pay me extra to transport.
Do I want to drive 20 miles and across the Willamette river on a crazy bridge and crazy traffic with a 16 foot drill? And tires that need replacing and that will cost me a total of $6,000 to replace? Keeping in mind that rolling hills and red dirt also probably means rocks.

2. The sometimes an employee showed up Friday. He got my pickup dirty, my four wheeler dirty, and filled up with gas. He said he hated to do little jobs but would be back Saturday. Have yet to see him.
Drove the pickup to jump start the neighbor's pickup and couldn't see out the window.
Neighbor gave me a bad of out of date bakery goods as payment. I would rather had him recite that poem about the flying goose.
But, I digress.
Oh, heck... don't even know what I was complaining about....
Have nice day...

The Harry Truman School of Disaster Preparedness

2012-02-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Gorges' Grouse and Surviving in Argentina and I am starting to get a little overwhelmed.
I am thinking about starting my own school of emergency preparedness and call it the Harry Truman School of Disaster Preparation. (HTSDP)
Harry Truman is the local folk hero who refused to be evacuated from Mt. St. Helens before she blew. I watched the Mountain blow and thought of Mr. Truman, but that was before the neighbor built a series of huge ~~hay barns~~ movie screens blocking our view of Mt. Saint Helens and Mt. Hood.
I think it all ended pretty well for him and his cats. Or at least it ended well for Mr. Truman. He was obliterated by a avalanche of ash and toxic gasses. His cats probably boiled to death but Mr. Truman was already pickled. They had a well stocked bar at the Spirit Mountain lodge and his plan was preserve himself by pickling in alcohol.
Those statements have been somewhat glossed over in the official narratives...
I am also thinking that instead of firearms and knives I should install motion activated speakers which play "My underwear froze to the clothesline," when intruders approach the house.
Instead of a tazer I will just carry a boombox playing James White and the Contortions.
Sort of my own little force field...
But, I digress...
I give you the ballad of Harry Truman-grumpy mean old codger and possible former gangster

Radish is more than just those little round things in the garden

2012-02-05T08:25:00.000-08:00

Our little slice of heaven has a clever little seed organization which specializes in the production of specialty vegetable seeds.
Radish is a popular one. Radish is a weed so after growing for a few years your soil becomes contaminated with radish seed and the seed company quietly drops you and moves on to a bigger farmer with new soil.
For some reason this seed company really feels the need to blow smoke up one's um... Well they do like to encourage their potential growers. As in, we want you because you have the EQUIPMENT to get a field planted in a day. Translation, the neighbor's radish production has not contaminated your fields downstream." Or, there is a nice discussion about God and honesty and perhaps a Bible Study, Translation: You have ground that has never had radish seed and we want it...
But I digress,
Perhaps that was just downright mean...
Radishes have many uses. People eat the bulbs of which there are many different varieties, from the little red bulbs to big white ones that look like turnips. The seeds can be used for oil production, and that variety also is used in cover crops as the large bulbs work up the soil as they expand and then release nutrients as they decompose.
The reason that the radish growers in Oregon are so uptight is that they are growing radish for seed stock. This seed has to be pure and not contaminated with the pollen of any other variety of radish.
Japan takes a lot of radish seed and they are absolutely paranoid about GMO contamination.
(Which is why there was a lawsuit about GMO Alfalfa in Oregon.)
So in conclusion, I find the psychological manipulation by a particular seed company very entertaining as I have seen the pattern applied for several farmers, but the real reason of course is that that seed company doesn't offer me any lucrative contracts. And I'm mad at them for making me feel guilty and not plant sunflowers because my neighbor got a sunflower contract. It really irritates me because I have been fooling around with growing sunflowers for years. I think they are pretty. Sometimes I put them in one outside row of the planter so I can tell where I am with the silage chopper in strip-tilled corn.

The Route of the Gila Monster

2012-02-04T23:16:00.000-08:00

Here is the full text for those who couldn't get the link to work. The full effect is when this is recited by a 80 year old farmer...

The Route of the Gila Monster

HE lingering sunset across the plain
Kissed the rear-end door of an east-bound
train,
And shone on a passing track close by
Where a ding-bat sat on a rotting tie.

He was ditched by a*shock and a cruel fate.
The con high-balled, and the manifest freight
Pulled out on the stem behind the mail,
And she hit the ball on a sanded rail.

As she pulled away in the falling light
He could see the gleam of her red tail-light.
Then the moon arose and the stars came out —
He was ditched on the Gila Monster Route.

Nothing in sight but sand and space;
No chance for a gink to feed his face;
Not even a shack to beg for a lump,
Or a hen-house to frisk for a single gump.

He gazed far out on the solitude;
He drooped his head and began to brood;
He thought of the time he lost his mate
In a hostile burg on the Nickle Plate.

They had mooched the stem and threw their feet,
And speared four-bits on which to eat;
But deprived themselves of daily bread
And slufied their coin for " dago red."

Down by the track in the jungle's glade,
In the cool green grass, in the tales' shade,
They shed their coats and ditched their shoes
And tanked up full of that colored booze.

Then they took a flop with their skins plumb full,
And they did not hear the harnessed bull,
Till he shook them out of their boozy aap,
With a husky voice and a loaded sap.

They were charged with " vag," for they had no

kale,
And the judge said, " Sixty days in jail."
But the John had a bindle,— a worker's plea,—
So they gave him a floater and set him free.

They had turned him up, but ditched his mate,
So he grabbed the guts of an east-bound freight,
He flung his form on a rusty rod,
Till he heard the shack say, " Hit the sod! "

The John piled off, he was in the ditch,
With two switch lamps and a rusty switch,—
A poor, old, seedy, half-starved bo
On a hostile pike, without a show.

From away off somewhere in the dark

Came the sharp, short notes of a coyote's bark.

The bo looked round and quickly rose

And shook the dust from his threadbare clothes.

Off in the west through the moonlit night
He saw the gleam of a big head-light —
An east-bound stock train hummed the rail;
She was due at the switch to clear the mail.

As she drew up close, the head-end shack
Threw the switch to the passenger track,
The stock rolled in and off the main,
And the line was clear for the west-bound train.

When she hove in sight far up the track,

She was workin' steam, with her brake shoes slack,

She hollered once at the whistle post,

Then she flitted by like a frightened ghost.

He could hear the roar of the big six-wheel,
And her driver's pound on the polished steel,
And the screech of her flanges,
As she beat it west o'er the desert trail.

The John got busy and took the risk,
He climbed aboard and began to frisk,
He reached up high and began to feel
For the end-door pin — then he cracked the seal.

'Twas a double-decked stock-car, filled with sheep, Old John crawled in and went to sleep. She whistled twice and high-balled out,— They were off, down the Gila Monster Route. L. F. Post and Glenn Norton*

A short post about farming and human nature.

2012-02-04T08:21:00.000-08:00

I am a bit disillusioned with the whole concept of the noble farmer as expressed in the FFA creed.
I believe in the future of farming with a faith born not of words but of deeds... the promise of better days through better ways... and something about the owl being a symbol of wisdom and knowledge and soil judging and public speaking contests where I made up entire speeches in fifteen minutes based on information I had gleaned from Monty Python skits.
But, I digress...
My neighbor came by with a petition to sign and send to the ODA. Some of us want to plant canola.
Canola and other brassica's are restricted in our part of the state due to lobbying efforts of the specialty radish growers.
The specialty radish growers have a pretty sweet deal.
The one seed company that puts out the good contracts has the farmer psychology down pretty well. The field man comes out and tells you what a good farmer you are and kind of intimates that it is hard to find good farmers who can get the radish planted in a timely manner.
Then they micromanage the planting. Everything has to be done at the drop of a hat, but this makes the farmer feel really special. Like they are doing "God's" work or something.
In reality, radish contaminates the ground and the seed company is not looking for good farmers with BIG equipment as much as someone with virgin radish ground and a good sprayer.
Here is the funny part.
Farmers have been growing tillage radish. In my opinion they get by with it because they are the "right" farmers and because it is radish and not canola. The seed company guy just hates canola and mustard and that is what is on his radar.
There was a meeting early in the week and there was a heated discussion.
It is funny because all farmer think they invented the concept of growing what ever crop they read about in some paper from the midwest and they don't want anyone telling them what to do... Unless it is a slick seed salesman who tells them how wonderful they are and what good farmers they are and gives them a hat.
But that is just my opinion and I'm sure I have some facts wrong.
I've never been offered a radish contract so I'm just annoyed.

The Rec-O-Kut plays and I give you Thanatopsis and The Route of the Gila Monster for your edification

2012-02-02T23:58:00.000-08:00

I have accomplished something. Goal completion and all that rot.
I put the Rec-O-Kut K33H back together with somewhat mixed results. It is paired with the Dynakit PAS2 and the Magnecord reel to reel so it has the components it grew old with. I am not so happy with the sound. The high range is not what I had hoped.
Part of it is my speakers. The Baby Advents don't sound like I think they should. I have not tried my Dynaco A-25's.
The sound is not as clean as it was before I took it all apart. However I used screw terminals instead of soldering because I was afraid I would have to take things apart again.
The Fairchild tonearm has an old shure hitrack M97 which should be a pretty good cartridge.
I completely reinforced the "plinth" but there was not a lot of rumble to begin with. However, the whole thing was mounted on a chunk of plywood. I see I have the motor drive in the wrong place but I think it was put that way to save space.
Right now I am listening to the Allman brothers do Statebourgh Blues. That sound pretty good. The Kinks Village Green Preservation Society sounded kind of dead in the highs. It is kind of scratchy record I use for doing tests as another scratch or pop won't really matter.
Anyway here is a picture and I'm going to bed.

I think I should clean up my background before I post any more photos of my projects. I have a lot of clutter.
In other news the neighboring farmer quoted poetry at coffee time. He said he learned this one from his father. It is called. "The route of the Gila Monster." It is about a couple hobos and has lots of train lingo. I think this link will get you to the poem.
Last week he quoted us this poem by William Cullen Bryan:

Thanatopsis

by William Cullen Bryant

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms,
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and and
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
under the open sky, and list
To while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,--
Comes a --Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that hourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolv'd to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrend'ring up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
, With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty --The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The woods--rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and pour'd round all,
Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning--and the pierce,
Or lost thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings--yet--the dead are there,
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the --
So shalt thou rest--and what if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living--and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh,
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come,
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
The bow'd with age, the infant in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age cut off,--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
d to his dungeon, but sustain'd and sooth'd
By an approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
1814

I annoy myself with Peter, Paul, and Mary

2012-01-31T07:15:00.000-08:00

I have been listening to the TC-631 out in the shop. Yesterday I found a reel with folk music from the 1960's. It features Peter, Paul, and Mary and Joan Baez and probably someone else but they really all sound the same.
Now here's the deal...
When I was a wee lad I thought "Puff the Magic Dragon," was an awesome song. But I don't know if I ever made it all the way through a full album.
After 120 minutes of pain I actually can't believe people really listened to this crap. It is smarmy, self congratulating, shallow drivel. "Oh look at me, I'm young and white, and self aware, and war is bad, and I've been given everything I ever wanted and I want to be a commie, but not a real commie, and oh boy, it is up to us to change the world. I think it is the "it is up to us to change the world," BS is what gets me the most. Other than that clever guitar picking. And Oh my! Another folk song! They put down the people from their own heritage who were singing about real pain. (Think Hank Williams)
I listened to PP & M sing "Blowing in the Wind," and I had to think about the corruption that has totally become the hallmark of their generation. All that high minded coffee ship drivel and they are sellouts.
So...
For those of you who grew up in the 1960's I ask you... How could you listen to this crap without scratching out your ears?
Was it to nail the hippie chicks? (I can understand that)
Did you just really like coffee?
Were you absolutely stoned out of your mind the whole time?

And I ask myself, if you were recording stuff from the mid 1960's why not (never thought I would say this) The Greatful Dead!
Or Ramblin Jack Elliot, or be the first one to follow Townes Van Zant, or Bobby Wayne (Harold's Super Service) or Ian Tyson, or rather than hear Joan Baez earnestly style another folks song, join the Army and volunteer for Nam...

I had to listen to the Legendary Stardust Cowboy to clear my eardrums of congealed sugar and little pink and fluffy butterflies that looked like Che' on his Norton.

I annoy my family with easy listening music

2012-01-30T07:24:00.000-08:00

Below is a photo of my pristine Sony TC-230 reel to reel. I say "pristine" with some reservations. It looks good and was well taken care of. But, it is 40 some years old and it was well used.
I wanted it because it has a phono stage and I thought I could use it to record scratchy 78 rpm records and 45s to my computer. However, my 78 rpm record player has a ceramic cartridge and that requires a different preamp and one thing led to another and it all got complicated and now i don't really care all that much anymore. I do need to take it apart and do some more cleaning and lubrication. I usually do this late at night when everyone is sleeping. I like to use the Old number seven cleaning fluid with a lot of ice. This does not help the reel to reel as much as it helps me.
I have a number of boxes of reel to reel tapes and have been listening to them. The family has demanded a stop to it all. It would appear that they do not care for the genre of music that includes "Leaving On a Jet Plane, Bridge over Trouble Waters, or the theme from "Midnight Cowboy," set to strings and lots of lady back up singers.
Well, perhaps I should clarify that. They don't care for 120 uninterrupted minutes of such exquisite stylings.
It is interrupting the Hogan's Heros marathon that is now the sound track of our life. "I know nothing..." (I have been trying to get the annoying Austrian fellow who sometimes buys hay from me to say, "I know nothing." I ask him questions he doesn't know the answer to or ask him for opinions about weird subjects but he refuses to bite.)
Anyway, here is the current object of my affections...

There are no Atheists in the Foxholes revisited

2012-01-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

I am a horrible fisherman. I have no patience. I never know when I am about to get a bite. I usually screw up when setting the hook.
Sooo... when I have a success, no matter how puny I like to celebrate.
I caught a fish. (read the comments or read the cut and paste quote below) I shouldn't post this as I may catch more. But, I'm bored with the whole thing and may go back and change the title to remove it from the search ranking.
I know it is pathetic to troll but on the other hand what is even more pathetic than trolling is actually spending time doing a google search for "There are no Atheists In Foxholes," so that you can show people how superior your enlightened Atheist Religion to fools who believe in silly myths, and yes people do that.
I give you just such a fellow and his insightful post which in no way goes down the list of Atheist talking points.

Doug IndeapJan 29, 2012 02:32 PM

"Why you would direct your ire at someone like Jessica Ahlquist who seeks to uphold the Constitution, rather than those flouting it is not apparent. It is important to distinguish between "individual" and "government" speech about religion. The First Amendment's "free exercise" clause assures that each individual is free to exercise and express his or her religious views--publicly as well as privately. The Amendment constrains only the government not to promote or otherwise take steps toward establishment of religion. As government can only act through the individuals comprising its ranks, when those individuals are performing their official duties (e.g., public school teachers instructing students in class and principals hanging banners in schools), they effectively are the government and thus should conduct themselves in accordance with the First Amendment's constraints on government. When acting in their individual capacities, they are free to exercise their religions as they please. If their right to free exercise of religion extended even to their discharge of their official responsibilities, however, the First Amendment constraints on government establishment of religion would be eviscerated. While figuring out whether someone is speaking for the government in any particular circumstance may sometimes be difficult, making the distinction is critical.

A word should be added about the common canard that this is all about people easily offended. We’re not talking about the freedom of individuals to say or do something others find offensive. We’re talking about the government weighing in to promote religion. Under our Constitution, our government has no business doing that--REGARDLESS of whether anyone is offended. While this is primarily a constitutional point, it is one that conservatives--small government conservatives--should appreciate from a political standpoint as well. While the First Amendment thus constrains government from promoting (or opposing) religion without regard to whether anyone is offended, a court may address the issue only in a suit by someone with "standing" (sufficient personal stake in a matter) to bring suit; in order to show such standing, a litigant may allege he is offended or otherwise harmed by the government's failure to follow the law; the question whether someone has standing to sue is entirely separate from the question whether the government has violated the Constitution.

Oh, and yeah, there actually are atheists in foxholes. Indeed, the horrors of battle lead some to and some away from belief in god(s). But then, that has nothing to do with separation of government and religion."

I am a little sad that Doug Indeap does not have a blog but it was nice of him to care enough to comment.
Now you may ask the difference between my rants in defense of mythology and his rants in defense of stupid high school girls who think they have invented truth and have a cause, I will answer that.
I know I am full of crap half the time and I don't do Google searches for phrases like, "farmers are stupid arseholes," and "dynaco amplifiers sound like crap," and then post impassioned defenses of my little pet ideals.

Care to discuss Faulkner?

2012-01-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

The Left Bank of the Charles guy got me off onto a whole different train of thought this morning and as a result I was late for doing my hay and feed and now I'm eating lunch at 3 p.m. which is really coffee break time. Of course it had nothing to do with the topic of his post...
He had a wonderful quote from William Faulkner which says a lot about life. I've thought the same thought in a different context. It is sort of like the guy who jumped off the bridge and said he had 30 seconds to think about why he didn't want to die and why he wished he hadn't done that. But, that one moment between anticipation and regret was something else!
I can't imagine walking across that field into the Yankee guns but I guess I do it every spring... No wonder I'm an emotional wreck...

There are no Atheists in the Foxholes...

2012-01-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

I was looking at Michael Savage to see what is wrong with the world and I came across this article about a teen who was offended by a written prayer hanging on the wall and took the school to court.
For me it was another one of my moments where I realized 1. we are always making the wrong argument and 2. the general level of reasoning in the 21st century is not all that high.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me.
What does a written prayer full of vague generalities that has been hanging on the wall for 60 years have to do with the separation of church and state?
No one is forced to recite it or read it or do anything with it. I suppose you are not allowed to shoot spit-balls at it but you can't even shoot spit-balls anymore I have heard.
If the prayer said "divine spirit" instead of heavenly father?
It is fundamentally different from a "ritual" spoken prayer because there is no participation. It is a static display. At this point more of historical significance than anything else.
The article had a poll whether prayer should be allowed in the classroom. I don't think this was a prayer. And I think freedom of speech should allow prayer in the classroom. For my child I would rather no prayer than a prayer with subject matter that I would find theologically offensive and I do not want the schools actively reprogramming my kid's religious beliefs. But, I am not offended by reprinted fake Native American prayers on dream catchers or on inspirational posters or ritual Muslim prayers on wall hangings as long as they don't explode.

Anyway, the girl says she did not notice the hanging until a friend pointed it out, so in fact it was not an obvious sort of "offense."So, do we not study "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in literature class anymore? I bet we don't... Answered my own question.
I think I will get my daughter to look for books with scripture in the in the School library and then sue. I wonder if the Atheist society would give her $30,000 for a scholarship?

And, the girl says she lost her faith at age 10 when her mother got sick and when the girl called on God he was not there to help her. So the whole thing is a vendetta over a misunderstanding of her own ~~mythology~~ religion at age 10? Great, more amateur theology. More amateur constitution law.
And she is now a little hero with "great strength of character."

But what can you expect from the courts. The USA now tortures prisoners, can lock you up and hold you forever on ~~suspicion of witchcraft wrong politics being a Christian, being an Atheist, looking at a midlevel government employee wrong~~, being a terrorist, so the whole country from top to bottom has no appreciation for the constitution, civil liberties, or even understands what you should be offended about. (Like the TSA)

Since I have a diverse range of 39 readers my questions are.
1. Do homilies/written prayers in books and wall hangings have anything to do with the separation of Church and State?

2. Should you be able to sue for anything that offends you?

3, What about the girl's anger at God? Why does her personal problem have to become everyone's problem. Or rather if you really don't believe in God then why do you have to "convert" every one? Is that not the flip side of being a missionary? Or perhaps I should say, why do you care if people want to believe in mythology?

I also lost my faith at age 10 or somewhere around there. I found a book of sermon illustrations in the Bible Book Store in which I read word for word the illustration the revivalist had claimed as his own the night before. It was all a lie...

This whole thing could have been avoided if someone would have just used the phrase, "God works in mysterious ways," and then given her a short course on rationalization.

Now she has to be Carrie A. $%^&*ing Nation, Rosa Parks, and Susan B. Anthony and give the Atheist society woodies. A poster child, "Whoop! Whoop!" There is nothing quite like the earnest sincerity of a kid who has never been hungry and is standing up for something that doesn't matter.

Is there no real suffering in the world?

I went to the North West Ag Show

2012-01-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

I went to the Northwest Ag Show in Portland on Tuesday. It was interesting.
I may become a dealer for a mineral supplement. If I think I can make money with only a 15% mark up. I am not sure this is good thing for me as I tend to knock a few dollars off for people just to build empathy.
You can check it out at www.grolicks.com
I am interested as there is nothing really like it on the market. It lets you give grass fed beef a little extra protein, minerals, and energy in the winter when the grass is not so good. Grass fed beef is what sells here. Grain fed is bad. Unless I am eating it... Grass fed is marketing BS...
Speaking of Marketing BS, right next to the grolicks guy were these guys who sell a device which exposes your irrigation water to magnetism. That is why I got started talking to Mr. Grolicks. I got bored with their speech after I found out the price.
They had photos and charts and all sorts of proof that it works. It does sound amazing. It softens hard water and I am sure it would grow the hair back on my bald spot that is always covered by a cap.
We listened to the speech and my brother held up one of the devices for a 1" line. They had them for 1" up to 8" water lines. They were little tubes with permanent magnets in them.
The fellow said it was "six" for the one my brother had and "8" for the big one. Or something like that. It was not $6 nor was it $60 or even $600. Not it was $6,000 and $8,000. And that is where he lost me.
I would rather $6,000 down on $30,000 worth of lime than $6,000 on a magnet in a plastic tube.
After hay selling moisture testers at the ag show for years and listening to people complain about the price of something you have to have, I was incredulous at the magnet booth. Actually, I bet you could make more money off spending $500 on a Delmhorst soil moisture tester and a couple boxes of gypson blocks and doing a good moisture management program than you could running your water through a magnet. Or $850 on an Acquaterr hand held probe which also has a built in pH meter.
But I digress...
Here is an example of the magnet scam...
Here is another discussion from HempUSA.com. (I think it is kind of funny)
Here is a disagreement...
I think I will try hooking up a few magnets to the water supply and see what happens. It will probably attract aliens. I worry about aliens...

New stereo in the shop

2012-01-26T07:41:00.000-08:00

I was "gifted" a huge pile of reel to reel tapes and two Sony reel to reels.
Lots of classical music, a little easy listening from the early 1970's. Not exactly HiFi.
I guess I just didn't realize you could stuff 120 minutes of muddy sounding bland music on a reel to reel. I had a two-track from a radio station that used the whole tape and was fairly high speed. It sounded very good.
This makes good music for me to listen to whilst miss-measuring boards I am cutting for a pallet scales I am making.
Actually I gave the nice person some cash to take her kids sledding. And I saved her a trip to GoodWill.
Today I am going to dig out the reel of old Country and Western hits from 1971 which I found at a GoodWill in Eugene some 15 years ago. 120 Minutes of Conway Twitty should put me in fine form.

I am never allowed to make a mistake or do anything stupid

2012-01-24T07:55:00.000-08:00

I have lived on this farm since, I don't know, 1975?
Over the course of those years we have only plowed next to the river two times in the fall. We have never left anything at the base of the hill leading out of the river bottom. The river has not significantly flooded in two years anyway.
This year we planted alfalfa near the river. We plowed and limed the ground. In the process we drug a lot of dirt into a low spot and then heavily seeded the low spot to oats and annual ryegrass.
This year the river came up twice. This last time it was high enough to flood out the dead truck we left in the field. I didn't think it was completely dead. I guess it is now.
The river is pretty much flowing through the low spot and I doubt there is any residue of the topsoil I drug into it or a sprig of annual or oats.
I am glad I didn't plow any more ground than what I did.
I see from my weather page that there has been another flood advisory issued for later this week.
Nice...

Birthday Party For my Father

2012-01-23T09:25:00.000-08:00

Apparently I was supposed to invite people.
Anyway, Ralph, it you would like to take the Concord down here to Amity you are certainly welcome to attend. I'll even buy you a piece of pie...
It is around noon.
I am the short balding fellow with the red nose and squinty eyes.
It is at Ashes Cafe.
It was Sharon's idea as she is just that sort of nice person. It is for two old pluggers who are now 93. My father is one of them.
We could go to the Blue Goat afterwards for really expensive chocolate cake but they never even invited me to their one year anniversary so I am boycotting them.
I don't like events with more than five people so I plan on withdrawing into a shell of grumpiness.
Have a nice day...

Our Dear Leader Sings Al Green?

2012-01-22T22:47:00.000-08:00

I was sitting around listening to Al Green and I discovered Our Dear Leader had used an Al Green song at a fundraiser. I queried my wife and she laughed at me. She said she didn't want to burst my bubble.
I've had a suspicion that being a middle aged white guy who likes Al Green is akin to a white college kid who likes Bob Marley only without the Chronic. I hope it has nothing in common with middle class white kids listening to rap.
I suppose this pretty much fits my understanding of Our Dear Leader being only slightly less Black than Bill Clinton.
I did see a pretty funny interview on OPB with David Stockman where he pointed out the ironic humor of an Alinsky inspired community organizer appointing the guy who nearly ruined GE and the Jobs Czar.
Check out this article, of course since Livingston once worked for Reagan he is a fraud and the hilarious quote at the end about GOP regressing into the extremist right. Funny because some of us think the GOP has completely sold out and should be just a tad more on the conservative side.
Speaking of irony, I am now watching a OPB story about a Korean War Vet who was tortured by his captors. Kind of changes your perspective now that Our Dear Leader has embraced change by basically accepting and normalizing the torture program set up by those evil neo-cons. Not to mention the loss of free speech and the right of Habeas Corpus which was pretty much a bipartison effort.
But, I digress...
I really hope the Reverend is not shilling for Mr. Hope and Change but I suppose the amazing conversion of Al Green is mythology anyway.
I really prefer George Clinton but I don't think he is going to give me a lift to the mother ship as I am not Black nor do I actually own any Parliament of Funk Albums.

When I grow up I want to work for the Schultze Toy Company

2012-01-22T21:57:00.000-08:00

Sergeant Schultz is my favorite character in Hogan's Hero's. Today I discovered he was the owner of the Schultze Toy company.
Then I looked him up and discovered his family was killed by Nazi's in Austria. And that he died something like one year after moving back home.
Which means I can't go to work for his toy factory because it never existed. This whole reality vs fantasy thing sometimes really confuses me...
Which also brings up my inability to make decisions. I've been attempting to buy a slide scanner to convert some old negatives we found in the basement.
I spent hours looking looking them up on Amazon last night and was unable to decide on any single model for under $100. That is because they are all crap...
Have a nice day...

Stormy Friday, as opposed to Stormy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday...

2012-01-20T23:13:00.000-08:00

I'm setting in my old Lazy Boy, (avocado green, salvaged from my uncle) listening to Al Green's "Precious Lord" album on LP. I just picked it up at GoodWill. It is in really good shape.
I have my Dynaco 120A Amp and Dynakit PAS-2 preamp and the vintage Dual 1019 and craigslist special Dynaco A-25 speakers. It could be 1965, except that Precious Lord was released in 1982 and I would not be all that old in 1965 and in 1982 I would not have been caught dead listening to Al Green.
Sometimes i wonder if the reason I am broke all the time is due to the lost productivity which results from me continually "flogging a dead horse."
LP records, tube amps, second rate 1960's technology, and beat up lazyboy recliners have got to be a pretty much a waste of time. Frankly the whole setup just does not sound all that good. Plus, I've got so much crap stuffed in the "den" that my wife won't let me bring anyone in to listen to my vintage tunes anyway. She really does make a good point...
Anyway, a real farmer would be researching soil mycrozial functions and pouring over soil tests. Heck a real farmer would have moved his dead truck off the river bottom before water flowed though the cab. Well it is dead... Sure as heck won't catch on fire this evening...

I would like to attend his church sometime. I wonder if I wrote him a letter he would come to ours... Probably not...

My Hero!!!!

2012-01-19T14:53:00.000-08:00

Click Here to better understand the author of this blog. When i was a kid I read these comics in the Oregon Farmer and for some reason took the fellow as an inspiration and not as a cautionary tale.
I guess it explains a lot about my success as a farmer...
I am the anti-edwinkle...

I go off on a rant and have a probably flawed understanding of theology...

2012-01-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

I really enjoy the blog the Contrary Farmer.
Read the blog and then come back here for my comment.
The blog was on the subject of the author giving talks to Churches and being somewhat of a nonbeliever.
There are two answers to the post. The first answer is an easy one... and that is the one I left at teh Contrary Farmer. The second part is my disturbing observation.
Standard disclaimer: I am in no way a particularly good example of a "Good Christian." I have a number of glaring failures which are at times evidenced in this blog. In fact much of this blog is a result of my failure of faith, so if you are easily offended and are an Atheist Click here, if you are easily offended and are a Christian click here. If you don't really care and want to look at porn, Click here.
The concept of Good Stewardship of what God has provided for us is a pretty central theme in Christianity. As a Christian one is supposed to live according to the best of your understanding. When we better understand things like soil health, better treatment of one's neighbor, then it is our duty to follow them.
That being said, Christianity is not really doing so well in this country. Farmers certainly seem to do their best to come out ahead in every financial situation. I suppose you can love your neighbor while you are renting ground out from underneath him if you call it "tough love" and say it is for his own good. Which is done.
Christians also pretty much neglect the difficult parts of the religion. Humbling oneself before God. That we are all sinner and require the forgiveness of God. That being a Christian means a certain standard of moral purity, honesty, and forgiveness.
And then there is the simple fact that the old "mythology" doesn't hold up so well in this day of medical science, crop insurance, bank loans, instant communication, and the constant assault on your basic belief system by mass media.
Which leads me to the point in my little speech were people will get offended.
Quite simply, not that many Christians really believe anymore. Instead we have this vague notion of taking care of "God's Creation" which we don't actually believe was a "divine" event. After all the concept of "God" was invented to explain the unexplainable, but yet we do have churches to fill and so we talk about love for our fellow man and we sing hymns and have potlucks and talk about good stewardship where it doesn't exactly apply to us and we grow sustainable lettuce in our gardens and we absolutely love black folks, and white folks who have gender confusion, and we build habitat for humanity houses.
(I'm not sure what people of color do when they want to go to Church but have out grown God. I suppose they rant about oppression and the evils of the "system," which I guess works out pretty well can then they can dovetail right on in with the white branch of the faith and everyone get together and stimulate each other's god center in the brain.)
But I digress...
Say what you will and point out all the failings of Christianity but are they not also the failings of the human race? And are they not recognized as the failings we must fight against inside and outside of the Faith.
It seems to me that the transition from Christianity as the moral conscience of our culture to being kind to Mother Earth and White Self-Hatred as the moral conscience of our culture is going to be a rocky one.
But, that is just my opinion...
And, after this little rant I will go back to talking about Dynaco amplifiers, horrible music, farming, and rain.
Have a nice day... I don't expect to see any of you in church Sunday.
Except perhaps Mr. 706.

Before I was obsessed with Dynaco amplifiers I was obsessed with omelettes

2012-01-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

When I was younger and less depressed I would tend to fixate random things over the winter and devote inordinate amounts of energy in useless enterprises.
Upon reflection, nothing has really changed.
Actually, I've been obsessed with no-till planting for the past eight years and that seems to be passing. The last couple years I've been thinking about Legos as it is a passion I share with my daughter.
But, I digress...
It was something like a decade ago that I read the book, "On the Tip of My Tongue," by Isles Brody, and became obsessed with making the perfect omelette. I dug out my cast iron skillet, I learned about olive oil, I eschewed filler of any type in my omelette, I swore never to use milk, I used a whisk, and they were always a failure.
I was having back pain at the time, which is not so different from now, but it was my first bout with it and I thought it could be relieved. I spent a lot of time soaking the hot bath tub and reading. As a result my books became a little steam damaged. Especially if I went to sleep and dropped the book into the tub.
But, again I digress.
This morning it is pouring down rain.
I was going to go to work but discovered I was quite hungry at 8:04 am and since I had not heard the front door slam on my brother's house across the machinery lot I figured he would certainly not be in the position to cast the first stone should I not go to work.
So...I cooked an omelette.
I use mostly "found" art so I scrounged through the refrigerator. The cilantro was in the trash and despite my fear of radiation exposure I did not really feel like rummaging through the compost for a few good sprigs. That would be just gross.
Sort of like some years ago when the neighbor kid was working for my dad and dad decided to make baloney sandwiches and found a nice bowl of lettuce on the counter. A nice bowl of lettuce with rotten tomatoes under it that was destined for the chicken yard.
But, I digress...
I threw my French omelette snobbery to the winds and fried up some bacon, I cut the cheese, (twice) er I mean I sliced up some cheese, and I put two eggs in a bowl with a little milk and I whipped them together with a FORK. Not too much as I don't really like the yolks and whites completely mixed up.
By this time the TEFLON coated skillet was nice and hot from the bacon. I poured the bacon grease on a pan of dog food and then watched with amusement as the dog attempted to weigh his irrepressible urge to devour bacon-grease-soaked-Ole-Roy-cheap-dog-food against the sure certainty that he would burn his tongue. It was a cheap laugh I know, but simple man, simple pleasures...
I wiped out the grease with a paper towel and poured in a little olive oil. I probably could have just used the bacon grease but I had to make one concession to french cooking.
I turned the heat up a few notches and dribbled just a drop of egg on the pan. It sizzled nicely, and so I dumped the eggs into the pan. It was a thing of beauty. For the first time ever I had the heat perfect, the eggs rose as I watched. It was light and fluffy and just what I had read in the book, so long ago.
When the top was nearly solid I flipped the eggs in the pan and turned down the heat. After admiring what now could in fact be called an omelette I discarded the last of my snobbery and added ingredients. Mostly bacon and cheese. Lots of yellow Tillamook Cheese, the kind that comes in a big yellow block and bacon. The package of bacon was frozen so I just cut off the fat ends to fry.
It was good, very, very good.
I think I shall take a nap.
I am indeed the "Lazy Farmer," Mirandy is at work. I may learn to smoke a pipe... I do need a woodstove, propping your feet on the heater vent is just not the same.

I am writing a letter to Al Gore!

2012-01-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

I am now whole heartedly opposed to Global Warming and I am planning on writing a letter to Al Gore to tell him to stop it!
It is pouring down rain outside. Not only pouring but the rain is kind of horizontal and our window leaks.
I want snow. The weather service promised us snow. The whole upper west coast of the USA is snowed in. Seattle is shut down. Do we get snow? No!
I have no where to be. My brother is not driving truck this week. We have a quarter of a beef in the freezer and a couple generators. I'd be happy if we were snowed in for a week. It would help hay sales and sled sales and hot coffee sales and tow truck drivers. So why not?
If "they" can make a hurricane wipe out New Orleans and a Tidal Wave hit Japan then where do I send my appeal for a blizzard in Oregon. Do I write to "Secret Government Organization in Charge of Global Weather Manipulation/CO HAARP Project," or just shove it under the door at the local Masonic Temple? Why does Jeff Rense never address such practical applications of huge global conspiracies?
It's for the Children...

"It Sounds Like a Chicken House Being Bombed"

2012-01-17T11:51:00.000-08:00

I thought I would expand from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy with a little Long-Hair music. Just in honor of the Dynaco Stereo system.
I suppose this really "Post Long-Hair" but my ~~Zbigniew Namyslowski~~ Lennie Tristano album has a skip...

My daughter was a bit blunt...
"It sounds like a chicken house being bombed," she exclaimed.
Philistines, I am surrounded by Philistines!

Another Vintage Stereo Post

2012-01-16T22:29:00.000-08:00

This whole vintage stereo thing is getting a little out of hand. I actually spent money!
My wife seems a bit bemused by the whole thing. I have not made a big deal about the latest addition as I am a little sensitive about the amount of Crap I drag home. However, I almost never spend more than $25 on anything.
I found a Dynaco ST-120 amp on craigslist. The fellow I bought it from was really interesting. I talked to him for something like two hours and I couldn't really back out of the deal at that point. He was asking $75. The ad has been on for several weeks at $100 and I doubt he got many calls.
The Dynaco ST-120 was Dynaco's first attempt at a solid state amplifier. There were some problems. Plus it was a kit and often there were problems with the amateur soldering jobs.
I got it home an connected it to my amplifier. I hooked it into the headphone socket since my KA3500 does not have a preamp output. I turned the volume control down and switched on the Dynaco. There was a loud pop though the speakers and buzzing noise.
I tried a record and one speaker rattled badly. I switched the amp off and waited a minute for the caps to drain and then turned it back on. I got pretty good sound which then faded in volume and became quite fuzzy. There is no fuse on the output of the amp and I think this is how the powersupply deals with a short circuit. I don't really understand it but I think it increases the voltage but decrease the amperage to keep it from burning anything up.
I disconnected the Dynaco 120 and hooked the speakers back up the KA3500 now I had distortion in my right speaker. I kind of freaked out a bit. I scored a pair of Dynaco A-25's which are kind of ugly but sound incredible. I'm not going to be able to touch another pair for less than $200 which is hard to do on a $35 budget.
Muddy Valley suggested that since it was an intermittent problem I turn the offending speaker face down and run it to see if something had stuck in the voice coil. Wonder of wonders it worked.
I pulled the cage off of the Dynaco 120 and discovered the solder had melted where the power supply capacitor lead was soldered to the circuit board.
Sunday afternoon I resoldered it and low and behold it worked.

I hooked it back up the head phone jack on the Kenwood but I hooked up my Baby Advents as I do not want to kill the Dynaco's and the Advents already have fried crossovers. It worked! Very little noise.
The Dynaco 120 is not considered a very good amp by the audiophiles but I'm not exactly "HiFi" and it fits in with the rest of my Dnyaco set up and plus, it looks cool so who cares!
I am listening to the amp at this very moment. It sounds incredibly clean hooked to my little Sansa MP3 player and playing though some little Jensen bookshelf speakers I stole from my brother. They don't have a lot of bass so I can't really work the amp very hard but it is not getting hot at volumes that don't wake the rest of the family.
I am listening to Merle and Lefty and a little Ian Tyson but have not worked up my nerve to give the Legendary Stardust cowboy a try.
It sounds pretty incredible with strong midrange guitar and vocals. I am listening to the Louvin Brothers, "The Drunkard's Prayer" right now. Excellent details in the high range. I can't hear any noise at moderate volumes. The bass is not real strong but these are little bookshelf speakers, but the tone is pretty good.

I am assaulted by snowballs

2012-01-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

I saw my sister-in-law walk out of her house and no one threw snowballs at her...
My wife can take a walk in the snow and no snowballs.
Does Grandpa get a snowball?
Does my brother get assaulted?
No...
But I decide to try out my mountain bike in the snow and what happens?

I think it takes a lot of nerve for the gang of four to attack their kind uncle (well one member of the gang is my daughter) and technically the youngest didn't attack me as I was quick to refer to him as my absolute favorite nephew with in four feet. I have taught them funny songs, told them iconic jokes like the one about the duck and the one where the punch line is, "he should have quit when he was A HEAD," and given them entertainment my sneaking up behind them with a truck air horn attached to an air hose, and played tonka trucks with them, and showed them how a dude walks, and all sorts of other highly important and useful things.
Yes, no good deed goes unrewarded...

The Electricity bill came

2012-01-14T07:41:00.000-08:00

We are trying to reduce our electric bill. We probably should be trying to reduce our cell phone bill instead. We do not have a house phone and instead rely on cell phones and I tend to natter on about nothing to various farmers when I am driving in circles in a tractor. It keeps me from falling asleep but the microwaves are frying my brain and do we really need to send each other photos of interesting corn planter attachments, girls in Wallmart with wedgies or photos of other farmers who are stuck?
But I digress...
I live in a ~~trailer house~~ Super Good Sense Rated manufactured home. We have an electric furnace. I was going to put in a woodstove but the regulations involved kind of scared me off. Plus, I spent the money on a carport. (long story)
We also have problems with our water heater. It is on the opposite end of the house from all the everything that uses water. So, in order to take a bath in are very large "garden" tub (with no overflow drain-I might add) you have to turn the hot water on full for five minutes. Unfortunately our average attention span at this house is five minutes, (mine is -.5 min and my wife's is .875 min but we have a cat so that raises the average) so we forget the bathtub with somewhat catastrophic results. (another long story)
So, we have considered those clever point of use hot water heaters. One at the kitchen sink and one in the master bath. My theory is that this would heat the water until the water from the main tank arrived. I suppose we could keep adding point of use heaters, one for the laundry room and one for the other bathroom and then turn down the main hotwater heater.
There are many designs, 220volt, 110 volt, propane, LPG, and the one I kind of like. Which is a $150 model you nail to the side of the house that uses, a propane bottle and is made for campers and cabins. It uses D cell batteries but of course it could be modified.
I've been looking at them on and off four a couple years but I can't find the information I want on the internet. My searches seem to give me "content farms" and not the crude pages made by odd folks who do weird and interesting things, the least of which is to nail a hot water heater to the side of their ~~trailer~~ manufactured home.
Those are the pages that give you the good information.
Anyone tried these hot water heaters?

Choosing your own destiny

2012-01-13T07:43:00.000-08:00

I like to read the Surviving in Argentina blog. I have mixed feelings about the whole end-of-the-world and stockpile ammo and guns crowd and I kind of avoid linking to those sorts of blogs. (although I secretly read them sometimes. However, I thought Mr. Argentina provides a lot of good sense info that will keep you safe no matter where you travel. I guess this is a bit ironic, but especially if you don't like to walk around armed to the teeth. He gives lots of good info on being self aware, paying attention, what to have ready in an emergency.
I was brought up in a small subsection of the Christian faith that has often faced persecution from everyone, including other Christians. I married a nice girl who came from another branch of the faith that has also been thrown in jail for not following the status quo from time to time. When I was a kid I read stories of Christians in Russia and China and tales of Bible smugglers and people being thrown in jail for refusing to shoot other people even though God was on their side.
So the idea of having to pack up your stuff and leave on a moments notice or being sent to the re-education camp has kind of settled in the back of my head. Not that I am really prepared for anything and I really hate to get my kid into that mindset as she seems so happy and well adjusted.
But...
Mr. Argentina did it... He packed up and left. His family took what they could carry and moved to Northern Ireland. He has my respect and admiration. I don't know if I could do it.
I really need to start selling my crap on ebay. Who really needs a collection of Marx Cowboys, Musty old books, boxes of LP records, old stereo equipment and every toy I every played with since I was born?
I don't need it, it brings me down, my kid doesn't need every lego that has gone through Goodwill in Yamhill country.
I have no idea where I would go but I would like the option of doing it.

A late lunch and a question

2012-01-11T14:18:00.000-08:00

I came in late for lunch as i was selling feed. I sat down in my easy chair to enjoy a cup of warmed over coffee. The elderly and quite grumpy cat crawled up in my lap and sat down and started purring loudly. I hate to kick him out as he will probably get angry and go pee on my shoes again. He does that out of spite.
Anyway, does anyone remember the name of my old blog? I doubt any other followers besides collieguy and G706 have seen it. It was a bit dark. Perhaps there are some lurkers who remember as it you could find it by looking for thedailystrumpet.
I think it was either digwemust.blogspot.com or therestandstheglass.blogspot.com.
I've been trying out the internet wayback machine.
Ok, cat left on his own. Back to work we go... Dig We Must!

More idiotic regulations

2012-01-10T22:26:00.000-08:00

SO I got this confusing letter from the Oregon Department of Transportation. I need to have a physical, (yes I knew that) but now I have to send proof of it to ODOT and there is a different physical to drive across state lines and it is my responsibility to send in the paper work and if I don't I will loose my CDL.
Or at least I think that is how it works. I really don't quite understand it. Since I don't really need a Commercial Drivers License and I could have the less expensive Farm Endorsement I'm not sure I care but fees are involved and I could end up without a driver's license at all and I still have to have a medical card for my Farm Endorsement.
Of course this is all completely stupid. First of all, I doubt lives have been saved by making drivers have a medical card. It is a pretty simple physical. They basically make sure your are alive.
AND most importantly you already have to have a card showing you have had your physical or you will get a huge fine and I have heard you must show that card if stopped by the police regardless of whether you are driving a Commercial Vehicle or your car. I don't know this for certain. The last time I got stopped for having a tail light burned out I was told I had better get my medical card or I could get in trouble.
I know I am going to screw up sending that card in and loose my license and forget about the whole thing and then get hauled off to jail for driving illegally.
More and more annoying regulations.
No wonder the economy is in the toilet.
I wonder if it would be better just to immigrate to China? At least then you know where you stand!

Things to do in the winter

2012-01-10T07:25:00.000-08:00

I am thinking of switching my obsession from Dynaco tube amplifiers and the Rec-o-kut turntable to solar energy.
I found this site showing how to build your own solar power from damaged solar cells bought in bulk off of ebay.
Anything to keep me from doing real work.
Yesterday I installed two motion sensing lights on the house.
They didn't work...
Today I am going to make more pig feed. My customer is really running through the feed. He thinks it is the consistency of the feed. It is ground finer so it goes though the slats in the feeder faster.
I suspect the pigs are getting bigger and eating more in the cold wet weather. Or I didn't get the feed value up high enough and it is taking more feed for them to grow. However, the material is quite dense which generally means there is more grain in the mix. The low protein stuff is annual ryegrass screenings which has no weight to it.
I am not so good at doing calculations using pearson's square.

Will someone drag me out of my chair?

2012-01-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

I took my daughter to school this morning. She likes to get there early to help in the library. I braved the young mothers parking in the fire lane confusion.
I came back home, had a cup of coffee and I was going to go to work.
I went out and got the extension ladder to work on the broken motion sensor light that my wife has tried to get me to fix for six months. But, my boots were on the porch and they were cold inside so I brought them in an put on the heat register.
I also discovered that the glue on the turntable base has not dried so I brought that in as well. It looks pretty rough. I am not a carpenter.
Then I sat down in my chair.
The fellow who is helping me prop up the shop sent me a text that he hurt his back.
Have not seen my helper.
I have not heard the front door slam at my bother's house so I don't think he is outside looking for me.
I'm having just a bit more coffee, but I have work to do!
I bet Orin is out working, probably Mr. Goff is as well, I know Ed Winkle is working. I suspect collieguy is just "fiddling around." MuddyValley is probably barbecuing coffee beans, Gorge has a real job, Pumice and Msladyd are working, and I suspect Mr. G706 is in the loo.
I guess we don't call it the LazyFarmer blog for nothing...
If I could just get paid for doing this!

2012-01-09T08:08:00.000-08:00

Go over to From My Brown Eyed View and read about the morons in the Georgia public school who got themselves in trouble.
It was your typical idiotic public education approach, an ill-advised attempt to combine subjects and stimulate thought but instead they came up with something quite offensive.
I brought this up for a couple reasons.
1. I've got nothing really to say this morning...
2. Public purposeful misunderstandings are a pet peeve ever since my clever jokes about Al Gore inventing the internet got state.
3. I left a meandering spiel on someone else Weblog and I really hope she is understanding of my lack of racial sensitivity training.
4. The comments on the BBC article show only certain types of hate speech are actionable.
5. I misspoke on Brown Eyed View. I said I thought the teachers should have to be janitors for a couple weeks and see what it is like to have to work for a living. What I meant was, they should have to trade their "high status' status job for a "low status" job and see what it is like to have to function in a job with a diverse group of people. I know this because my wife who is a teacher took on janitorial work at the school in an attempt to maintain her full time status. It was an eye-opener and she teaches at a private school.
Anyway...
I have come to believe we are, shall we say, "racist" by our very make up. We form social structures at an early age. Like people group together. Other groups form. Alliances are made, insults are given, challenges are made. It is the nature of our instinctive social makeup. Like chickens and cows and other herd animals.
Instead of recognizing there will always be conflict and trying to develop ways to minimize the conflict we alternate between ignoring it, exploiting it, and making it a sin above all other sins.
What really amazes me is the hatred expressed by liberals and progressives towards poor white Southerners and Christians. They are only groups left that it is acceptable to hate.
So what is the point?
I think we all should get along. I think it is harmful to confuse insensitivity or stupidity to racism. I thing the charge of racism should be restricted to a purposeful and malicious intentional action against another race and I think the term hate speech should be eliminated. I don't think that name calling should be prosecuted.
Here is another example.
I went to George Fox College. Private Quaker College with a lot of Volvo's in the parking lot. In 2008 some students used clear fishing line to suspend a cardboard cutout of our future dear leader from a tree. They attached a sign with an obscure reference to a scholarship program at the school.
Here is the first story on Oregon Live.
and
Here is the second story on Oregon Live.
Nowhere do you see an explanation of what really happened.
Even though I had long since graduated I can tell you what happened.
Our dear leader was not hung in effigy.
The clear fishing line was used to suspend a cardboard cutout from the tree to make it appear that he was standing in front of the building that the liberal arts stuff is housed. The sign said he was a reject of a minority scholarship program. I think it is a statement about internal GFU frustrations.
I have to laugh. A wry cynical laugh. Some George Fox students actually thought on their own about something and tried to make a statement. Boy did that go wrong.
When I was there the only social statement seemed to be the peace and love people hating on the Zionists and loving the exploding people... (See, I just made a racist statement and some of you laughed)
Anyway... This topic now bores me. I lost my point somewhere along the line. I hope I didn't offend MsLadyD on her own blog!
I'm going to work.
Have a nice day...

I have been otherwise occupied

2012-01-08T19:18:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I loose my focus.
I have stuff to post about.
There was the safety training. The safety training and information was really good. The regulations are insane. The real reason we are having an economic depression is trivial over-regulation and utter failure to enforce needed regulation.
So...you can completely pollute the Gulf of Mexico due to company negligence and then you can poison the Gulf by using a toxic chemical and get by with it because it was in your spill mitigation plan?
But, woe to me if spill 50 gallons of diesel. I learn on Curious George that during storms the water will overflow the city sewer system and dump poopie directly into rivers or the ocean, but if have a dairy and your worker leaves the end plug off the irrigation line and you accidently pump a few thousand gallons of poopie into a stream you go to jail. And you certainly can't make the two bit bureaucrat feel justifiably nervous or you will get a visit from a SWAT team, and you can thank you Republicans for that one!
The whole safety seminar put me into a funk.
The real issue is not safety but it is about exerting pressure and collecting "protection" money.
So I have a whole range of topics to write about.
I even got a donation from Anonymous in Reno! (Thank You Very Much!) I'm spending it on a WWII book.
I went to the GarageSale Store and found a whole pile of virtually unplayed records from the 1960's. Two Allman Brothers records, an obscure artist from South Florida who predated the Byrds and whose name I can't remember, The Monkeys, The Ventures, and a really cool test record. For some reason I also bought a Jethro Tull album in perfect shape. It is perfect because it is so horrible and pretentious I couldn't stand to listen to more than five minutes of it and I'm sure no one else could either. Reminded me of all the idiots in college who read Tolken and wrote stupid songs about caterpillars turning into beautiful butterflies and thought they were so profound.
I also found an ammunition box. You can never have too many ammunition boxes. They are quite useful.

Then I obsessed about turntable plinths for a while. Then tube preamplifiers. I looked up Dynaco and Dynakit and attempted to figure out the difference between a PS-2 and a PS-3 preamp and what a Dynaco 120 was and how to repair the blown crossovers on my Baby Advent speakers.
Then I attempted to work on a building that should have been bulldozed in 1974. Then I attempted to clean the shop and got more depressed. Then i got a lecture about how I should sell my 1960's stereo collection to real collectors before I ruined it, and buy something modern and just download mp3's from iTunes like everyone else with half a brain. Which kind of translated well into a metaphor for our whole farming operation. Which led me to think about all the real farmers at the safety seminar which made me even more depressed.
Then this afternoon I decided that if I continued to worry about the difference in density between Baltic Birch Plywood and MDF I would never have a turntable base and so I just built one out of scrap lumber and the original plywood top which already had the cutouts.
I am not a good carpenter.

Have a nice week.
Sometime this whole blogging thing seems like mental self-abuse. As in personal self gratification. You complain and then someone tells you that you are wonderful. In the end you still go blind...

It is going to be a beautiful day and I have to go to school

2012-01-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

I hate the safety training meetings. I sit though hours of training and add up in my head the fines if we get inspected again, and I start to sob quietly. We are old school farmers with piles of junk everywhere and despite my effort to install PTO shields on every tractor, the ones that I delegated to be installed are sitting on the floor under the bench and my helper is sitting home on his couch.
Oh well...
Yesterday I helped MuddyValley move a safe.
It was a major tactical error, but he made me feel guilty/empathetic by giving me valuable stereo equipment. Well, valuable to a very small niche market that collects vintage tube equipment.

(yes I need a new phone camera)

Muddy grew up in the big city in a house that matches my every imagined picture of what his father would own. Dark wood floors, a dim study, with indirect lighting, real oak paneling, leather chairs, shelves full of tomes on psychiatry, secret panels, and one of those couches straight out of Mad Magazine.
I felt like Holden Califield, (or rather, Alfred E. Neuman) just walking through the door. And then, to top it all, I found, in a dark dim corner, (next to the National Geographic from 1952) four tattered books, in German, very old, and it appeared to be the collected works, or an in-depth commentary, on Goethe.You have the science, the learning, the journals of psychiatry, but in the dark corner you have Faust arguing with the devil. If only I were a writer I could make something out of that!
I think MuddyValley was a bit amused at my wonderment.
But, I am a Philistine and I don't care.
The safe was a bugger! (not to be too offensive)
We had to use jacks and pulleys and levers and blocks and I kept thinking about that Harbor Freight cherry picker with rubber wheels setting home in the shop.
Anyway, all is well that ends well and now I have to go ~~to the Loo to~~ school.
Have a nice day...

And the first major news story I see illustrates what is wrong with this country...

2012-01-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

It is about gun violence. (Click here)
Here is a synopsis of the story.
A crazy gun nut joins the Army. Goes to Iraq, gets in trouble with the Army, comes home, has PTSD, hangs out with crazy gun nuts, gets in a gun fight, runs to the mountains, shoots a park ranger, SWAT teams are called, everyone in the huge park is rounded up and subjected to weird paramilitary stuff even though the guy is miles away in chest deep snow-in a t-shirt and tennis shoes, the ranger dies because the SWAT team won't go near the shooter (I bet you money), the guy dies from exposure less than a mile from the scene, and it is made into an issue about guns being allowed in National Parks.
There is a whole list of problem issues here and the only issue brought up is one which has no bearing on the case at all. The issue of guns in National Parks. Which is a stupid issue. Parks are so huge that you don't even know when you cross the border. People have been prosecuted for hunting one foot over the line. (look it up)
But, I digress.
I probably shouldn't have used a gun issue because it is such a hot topic but this story is such a perfect example of the stupidity that is the USA.
Look at it this way,
Crazy person gets involved with government agency, crazy person gets worse, crazy person does not get treatment even though it becomes more and more obvious he is crazy. Crazy person does something stupid and illegal and dangerous, Crazy person makes a code violation.
There is a chase, people die.
The discussion is not about mental health, police response to a crisis, the waste of money on SWAT teams, if everyone in the visitor's center should have been made to kneel with their hands behind their head when the threat was miles down the road, no the discussion is about guns in the park.
Like it would have stopped him...
It was a field day of Law Enforcement. (Click here, Taylor said there was a plan at some point yesterday to use an armored vehicle to evacuate people, but authorities instead let visitors drive their own cars under escort.) Oh, my! Well, better safe than sorry I say!
I can't find the first story I read which talked about the kneel on the ground with your hands behind your head treatment of people at the visitor's center.
Kind of ironic perhaps that with all the screwing around and panic and SWAT teams and technology and emergency drills that the guy died of exposure.
There will be countless studies and training adjustments and stupid regulations and self-congratulations and you can bet that everything they learn will be wrong.
Probably could have been resolved in two hours 40 years ago and would have only involved a couple park rangers with .30-.30's.
Just makes you tired...

Back to my regular life

2012-01-02T08:13:00.000-08:00

The Holidays are over. That magical time that starts just before Christmas and ends January 1st has past. It is the only time of year I don't think about work or plans for the future. I enjoy the Christmas tree and getting and giving presents.
This year we had good dinners and good family events. Daughter and I spent a lot of time watching Hogans Hero's. I was able to obsess about something unrelated to farming or finances.
New Years Eve the kids went to one house to play the Wii and my brother and his wife came over and we played "Scattergories," and listened to records and watch a movie about people in Wales and a guy who went up a hill and came down a mountain. Then we set off some very old fireworks which made the kids pretty happy.
Today it is back to work.
I'm having a hard time getting started.

They say what you do on Jan 1st makes a statement about the rest of the year...

2012-01-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

But, then again "They" say a lot of things. Perhaps is a good think I have moved from violating the pooch to violating vintage stereo equipment. Perhaps 2012 will be a banner year at Shepherd Farms!
I have been enjoying my slightly violated Rek-O-Kut and drinking huge amounts of coffee.
I wanted to hook it up to the good stereo in the "den" but I need a certain amount of space to balance the turntable level on the floor. I'm using old books that I grabbed at random out of the bookshelf. Including a vintage "Florida Days," a hardcover first edition of "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Grass, an Anthology of Agriculture, 1948," a biography of President Garfield, "Diseases of the Horse," (1920?), and "Gunny, Mostly a true Story," an autobiography by a local WWII hereo.
I found "Through the Five Republics on Horse Back" by C.W. Ray. A book I've been looking for, so I took it out of the turntable support system. I had a better version that I actually sold on eBay some years ago.
It is interesting view of the world from 1926 and is autographed by the author. Alas it is a bit worse for wear and tear.

I find it a bit hard to concentrate on a book after five cups of coffee.
I'm listening to the Kinks. I started out with "Village Green Preservation Society," and have moved on to "Chronicles."
Actually, I started with the Beach Boys, "Endless Summer," and a collection of Stephen Foster Songs I found in the Goodwill pile. I paid wife and daughter to organize my record collection. I had forgotten I owned the Roxy Music album with the topless girls and anything by The Jesus and Mary --- Chain or Courtney Love "----" Hole. I think a couple records will go on Ebay. My daughter was a bit offended. I don't even like the albums. I just acquired them along the way.
But I digress,
The Rek-O-Kut sounds ok. I have it hooked up to my Optimus SA-155 which is now part of our new entertainment center which is a LCD TV nailed to the wall, a Wii, and a Wallmart special DVD player, and my old Baby Advents. The Advents sound good hooked to something overly bright like a modern DVD player but sound quite muddy playing analogue music off a turntable. So, I strung about five patch cables and several adapters of dubious audio quality all together and hooked it up to my old Kenwood KA3500 and the new to me Dynaco speakers with the sparkly grills. Not much on the stereo imaging and it is kind of giving me a headache but then I just listened to swing versions of Stephen Foster songs, the Beach Boys, and Village Green Preservation society four times. That is probably enough to make you a bit daft...

My listening and reading schedule for today...

Muddy Valley is breaking my heart. First he sold the truck I've lusted after since I was 16 and now I find out the massive speaker system I wanted is actually worth money. Not to mention the Rek-O-Kut he gave me is also worth money to collectors. I suppose I should give it all back. I have visions of the Lansing speaker system sitting in my living room hooked to my vintage scott tube amp with that pink Legendary Stardust cowboy spinning on the Rek-O-Kut.
Alas, it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Sorry for the long post, I guess it filtered out all the ADHD subscribers.
For those drawn here by a search for repairing your Rek-o-Kut with a torch and 12" Crescent, I will have a shorter post with details on changing the oil and freeing up the drive bearing. I also found links for a new belt and plinth building. We shall see if I can stay focused.

I violate a vintage Rek-O-Kut!

2012-01-01T01:49:00.000-08:00

I am pretty sure no one cares about 2012 and really wants to hear about my restoration efforts on my recently acquired Rek-o-kut K33H turntable.
The K33H is a belt drive 33 and 1/3 rpm turntable with a heavy platter and powerful motor. I don't know all the motor details as I have been mostly worrying about the Fairchild 282 tone arm which was broken off of it's pedestal bearings in transit to my house.
It appears from looking at sites such as AudioKarma and ebay that both items are somewhat collectible. The K33H is a solid and pretty quite drive and it is a fairly easy design to mount in a heavy plinth.
The Fairchild 282 tonearm is reputedly a Raymond Loewy design (think Studebaker) and represents the ultimate in the old 50's style heavy mono tone arms. So basically this state of the art for the late 1950's and early 60's era. Pretty much fits in with most everything else in my life.
The issue with the tone arm pedestal bearings is a fairly serious problem. The bearings are little hardened steel pins and there are small set screws which the pins fit into. There is a corresponding hole on a pin which goes through the pedestal that forms the bearing base for the pins. You can tighten the pins with the set screw and this appears the only antiskate adjustment you have.
After three days of searching the internet I could find nothing so today I decided to make the best of what I had.
I took the turntable to my "clean room," and assembled my tools.

I first attempted to put the arm on the base without taking anything apart but that proved impossible. I then desoldered the wires to the tone arm and removed the pedestal from the base. After first marking everything with a Sharpie.

I soon realized that the bearing pins were higher quality steel than the mounting pin that goes through the pedestal. (See photo) And that the top pin had broken off with such a small indention that it was going to be very hard to remount it using the old parts.
First I tried drilling out the old pin. But the drill drifted immediately.
Next I tried the site adjusting tool for my old AK-47 which is kind of a clevis and clamp mechanism. I almost would work but it started to mushroom the head of the pin. Finally I just found a brass punch and knocked the mounting pin out. This didn't help all that much.
The broken bearing pin that was stuck in the mounting pin was too hard to drill and I gave up on my initial plan of chucking the pin in the lath and drilling out the bearing.
I tried a magnet to get the bearing pin out. I tried a tool steel pair of tweezers. I tried tapping it. Then I tried heat.
If you heat up a pin stuck inside of a larger mass the smaller piece will cool at a faster rate than the larger piece and they will shrink at different rates. This will break the part loose from each other and facilitate removal.
I just don't have a lot of delicate precision tools...

Finally I just said "oh fiddle!" decided to put it back together and see what would happen.
It was pretty touchy to get the little pins aligned in the tone arm. They fit into hollow set screws that threat though the tone arm and then the pins fit into indentions in the pin that goes though the mounting pedestal. The pins are tiny and worn down. I suspect they should be pointed but I can't get the broken pieces out of the pedestal mount.
The following photo is pretty blurry but it shows the size of the pins. The set screw is below the pin setting next to the screw in the turntable base.

A number of times of almost losing the little pins I got it. I set it up a little tight and figured it would wear in.

I carried it back to the house. Soldered the leads back to the connection block under the turntable and hooked it up to my stereo.

It worked!
I still need to figure out how to adjust the side to side drag of the tone arm. On other arms there is an anti-skate adjustment. The tone arm is a cantilevered arm which also pivots in the middle. The second pivot point is between the Fairchild logo and the pedestal arm. You can see the setscrew for the hinge in the top photo.
I also need to adjust the tracking force as it seems to be balanced with very little down pressure and so it tends to skip a bit.

It has a Shure High Track cartridge. I can't tell you the model number with out getting my arse out of the easy chair but I am sure you will find out in another post. It would be worth a whole lot more money if it had a Fairchild mono cartridge or what seems to be quite rare, a Fairchild stereo cartridge.
It sounded surprisingly good. There is not a lot of noise with the belt drive, even in the horrible non-audiophile mounting setup of a piece of plywood setting on two stacks of books. There was no hum even though I did not have it grounded.
It did rattle in the high end on loud passages so I will have to investigate that issue.
Truth be told I have no business with this tonearm at all. It should be in a museum or in the possession of a collector. I'm probably going to break it. But, on the other hand, it was not even usable before this evening so we shall see.
Happy Nude Year... As in Nude Elliptical!

I may move to North Dakota

2011-12-31T08:40:00.000-08:00

I sold chicken feed to a fellow yesterday who has been working in North Dakota. He had a contracting business that failed when the economy stopped. The local economy has not and probably will not recover in the foreseeable future.
It is pretty unbelievable how government in this state gone out of its way to kill private business. Licensing fees have gone up some 300%. To license an over 26,0000 GVW truck it costs over $1,000 per year. Building fees, permits, fines, RV licenses, everything connected to government has increased in price. Of course when faced with a less than expected return on the draconian tax increases the clever folks in Salem decided that problem was not outrageous fees and taxes driving business away, no it was lack of funding for tax collection!
My chicken feed buyer opted not to pay licensing fees on his truck and his business, instead he decided do what few jobs he could get by licensing his truck at a much lower Gross Vehicle Weight and move his trackhoe when scales were closed.
Then he found a job driving water truck in North Dakota. His long term goal is to move his trackhoe and dump truck to ND where there are jobs and you can license afford to license a truck you only drive once a year.
He says he can help me get a job as well. I have to commit to three months. Housing is $100 per week. I would start at $20 an hour. He says you can work extra hours if you want. Since it is an under 150 mile haul you are not under the hours of service regulations. Here is a link. I'm not sure if it is the exact link. He is in Dennison, ND.
I need to get my CDL medical card anyway.
My wife says it is ok to go.
Should I be suspicious?

Things that make me laugh at 11:44 p.m.

2011-12-30T23:45:00.000-08:00

Click on this link and then read the paragraph, "Grandma got ran over by a condescending novelty song."

Once again I prove how out of touch I am and that I am a bit of a prude

2011-12-30T08:23:00.000-08:00

I admit to enjoying dirty jokes. I have glanced (perhaps twice) at the pictures girls send of their naked selves you my young helper's cellphone.
But on the other hand when forced to make moral judgments I set jokes aside and tend to err on the side of prudishness. I don't know if it is my separation of fantasy vs reality or some horrible moral dichotomy that will condemn me to perdition in the end.
In fact we were discussing this all at supper last night. What if you were being raptured and you got about 50 feet off the ground and you exclaimed "oh shit!" Would you fall back to earth? My daughter was of the opinion that God's grace would be sufficient but I am not so sure...
But I digress...
We now have television.
My wife bought one of those LCD TV's that have been on sale. It is smaller that the huge Plasma TV that we got as a hand-me-down from her Father, but it has a much better digital tuner.
We now get four channels of OPB, FOX, The Hispanic Channel, and a station from Eugene that fads in and out.
So it was with great excitement I sat down to watch "The Big Bang Theory." I had read a number of reviews on The Eye of Polyphemus and frequent updates on Kaley Cucuo and so I was thinking I had missed quit a lot in not being able to watch the show.
It was then I realized how completely out of touch I am.
The show seems to be a long compilation of not that funny sex jokes hung on a thin plot. Ok, are there any TV writers who were not beat up in high school? Or were not nerds, or were completely happy with their sexuality? (gay or not gay)
I have a theory about TV and movie writing. There is either a script writing program or there is a huge dart board. Script writers get drunk and tell sex jokes and then throw darts at the board. I imagine they are drinking Peppermint Schnapps with a snooty name, mixed with Red Bull and they are throwing darts. On the board are various plot devices. Nerd, pretty girl, car chase, misunderstanding, roommate is a nerd, roommate is gay, roommate can't communicate, racial stereo type, gay stereotype disguised as enlightenment, and so on.
Every time they hit something on the board they tear off the tag and paste it into the storyboard. If they hit words like Gay, Singing, Lets Put on a Show, then it is a storyline for Glee, if it is Sex Joke, Nerd, difficult roommate, Hot Chick, then the storyline is for Big Bang Theory, and so on.
Anyway, I know all of you that watch TV on a regular basis don't mind all the sexual innuendo and it all may be funny.
My daughter walked in the room during the show and was shocked and turned around and left.
So I've been thinking about this for a week.
We have all heard the stories of teens having sex all the time and sending naked photos over the internet and we all know how accessible internet porn can be.
I wonder if the utter pervasiveness of rude TV has more affect than anything else? The daughter is somewhat offened by the open sexuality on shows and I see her covering her eyes or leaving the room frequently. We have not been real hard line on that kind of thing. Somewhat rude jokes are made in our family. There have been real live examples of things that are joked about in TV shows and we have discussed them.
I suspect that our family and Amish people are perhaps the only people in the country who do not have TV and so have not noticed the general lack of morality shown over the airwaves. The television is actually worse than movies. I enjoyed "The Hangover" greatly but I did not show it to Lulu. I was offended by "Grease," but it was also not one long sex joke.
The problem with TV is that it purports to depict everyday life. What is normal on TV may be normal in everyday life. I suspect anyway.
It seems that you make a decision to look at sex on the internet, but you are exposed to a pervasive attitude of sexuality when you watch evening TV shows.
I have no idea if I am right or wrong or if anyone cares about my little rant.
It is pouring down rain and the river is flooding.
I don't want to go out of the house.
I suppose the biggest joke of all is myself. We don't have network TV because I am too cheap to subscribe to something I think I should be able to get for free. Then when after a few hundred dollars wasted on various antenna amplifiers and antennas and the joke of having an aluminum extension ladder leaned up against the side of a ~~trailer house~~ manufactured home, I am shocked by what everyone else takes for granted.
Or perhaps the joke is that someone like myself who enjoys off color humor and pictures of girls who are no-better-than-they-ought-to-be has such a double standard in real life. It is like I told my 20 something sometimes a great helper, "I will make the jokes and rude commentary but I have no illusions of being some sort of "player," if she gets within two feet I will run... Laugh at me if you will-I don't care, I yam what I yam..."

In one breath they talk about farmer's living on government welfare

2011-12-29T08:36:00.000-08:00

( Read this article...)
What does it mean when farmland is worth more than what you can grow on it?
What does it mean when the Portland Pravda finally figures out what I have had the bitter experience of knowing for the past decade?
Why do I do it and why do I desperately want some ground of my very own?
So the usual topic is how farmers live off of government assistance and subsidies and now their ground is worth more than the crops they raise.... Just where is this train of thought going?
And why do I feel a continual sense of unease?
(aside from that ever present threat of aliens abducting farmers)

In case you were wondering

2011-12-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

I really have nothing to say...
The wind is blowing and it is raining. I checked the river levels online to see if my truck would go under water. Then i realized it was pointing the wrong was and I would have to tow it backwards up the hill. Then I thought about the chances of me actually rebuilding the engine and I decided not to worry about it.
Muddy Valley bought me lunch at Ashes Cafe Monday. It was a good hamburger. He also brought some Wasabe stuff which Lulu loves and an old Rek-o-Kut turntable. I have been obsessively looking at online instructions on building plinths since then. Apparently the most common scheme is to stack layers of Birch Plywood and glue them together with hide glue. It HAS to be hide glue and you don't cover up the edges of the plywood as if you do it will reflect the sound waves back into the plinth and increase rumble. Unless you leave a 1 mm gap between the plywood edge and the cover. I don't know what 1 mm is because I'm not a communist.
This is what I want it to look like...
Have not figured out how to reattach the tonearm yet.
Got a book of mystery stories for Christmas. Read a couple stories.
Went to bed early.
I do not want to go to work this morning. Rain, mud, piles of junk farm equipment, obsessive old folks, more junk, rain, cold, I think I may do some electrical wiring for my wife. If I am lucky I will get a jolt of 220 which I have read gives one super powers. I had a nice talk with the PGE inspector last year and made it a point to ask him if he knew of any instances of people gaining super powers after being shocked, perhaps in conjunction with a bite from a radioactive spider and he said "NO." I'm sure it is always covered up as they don't want people running around sticking to buildings and throwing lightning bolts with their fingers.
Have a nice day...

We go to the City

2011-12-26T08:26:00.000-08:00

My lovely wife does her best to keep drag me out of my odd little shell.
The latest endeavor was to get me to go to Seattle to see Brian Setzer and His Rockabilly Riot at the Showbox in Seattle.
Now I admit to not being real enthused about the whole plan. It was decided on evening when I was tired and frustrated and for some reason I did not give my automatic, "no..."
At the time I was thinking we would take Lulu and see the Space Needle and the mechanical windup toy shop in Pike's Place Market, and eat at the Mecca Cafe, and perhaps buy some "longhair" music at the used record store up the block.
But then we heard that the Show Box was not an all ages show. Not to mention the questionable ethics of taking a ten-year-old to what could be a pretty wild show. Of course, thinking of the median age of the average Stray Cats fan, what would there be- a walker fight?
Anyway, I did not want to go but I was committed as the tickets were purchased and a groupon for the hotel and dinner was non-refundable and I hate controversy at Christmas time.
So we drove up, meaning my wife drove...
My extreme tension grew with the traffic. When you come over that little hill heading into downtown Seattle and suddenly there are buildings, and cars zipping everywhere, it is suddenly sound and movement and stress. Kind of like the cow going down the chute to to get a big old worm pill down its' throat and a rubber glove up it's rear...
But my wife drove...
First we stopped a the huge Seattle GoodWill. There I passed up a pair of $400 speakers because I couldn't remember the same. I bought a 45 of the "Hovercrafts," because there bass player has the same name as my daughter, (Lulu). There was a wealth of funky album covers but the vinyl was scratched on all of them.
We had a pretty cool hotel.
I wanted to go see the oldest elevator on the west coast but...
The old Rainier Brewery is now artist space and condos.
We had an excellent steak dinner on the Groupon voucher for our hotel. We tipped really well. We saw kids waiting around the block in freezing weather for those stupid shoes.
Then we got a call from my wife's sister. We were to meet her and her husband at the Showbox for the concert. It was something like three hours before the show. She was worried about getting good seats. We looked at each other and out at the folks shivering outside and said we were "waiting on our food."
We played that game until her sister went down and started waiting in line herself. She was first in line.
Finally the guilt got to us and we walked down to the Theater which is new Pike Place Market. It was cold. There were ten people in line. I was dressed warm. We waited a coupe hours. My wife and her sister had a good chat.
Later we discovered that we could go into the bar and wait where it was warm. We found that out 45 minutes before the show. Fifteen minutes after they quit letting people in the bar.
However, the show was absolutely incredible. Brian Setzer absolutely played his heart out. The opening band was good. Setzer played a good two hours straight. The guy is not as young as he once was. The guitar playing was fantastic. Later in the show it appeared that Phantom and Slim came out and played as well. At one point there were dueling Stand-up basses on stage. Setzer even came out and played bass.
We were a little far from the stage. After standing four hours in order to sit for two hours a compromise was made on the seating. We had a table back where the sound was terrible. My wife found a spot close to the stage and her and I saw some of the show up close.
I was pretty amazed at the guitar playing and the energy level. Those guys are old and they were working hard.
I had to think back to 1982 and how bad the local radio music was. The local stations never have been real innovative. I swear KGON was playing the same heavy rotations of Aqualung and Stairway to Heaven with the occasional "Walk this Way," thrown in as variety.
We used to listen to new bands like The Stray Cats on college radio from Eugene, when we could get it. They were high energy and played old songs and were a breath of fresh air when music was dense and over produced and boring.
So anyway... I guess we were just trying to be different and hip. Who knows.
Here is a view of the show. I got to go to work. Christmas is past...

Oh, I did get the Lego Alien Spaceship and several Lego figures have been abducted. If only we had a lego cow...

Merry Christmas Post

2011-12-24T21:19:00.000-08:00

My lovely wife and I traveled to Seattle. It was nice. We saw a Christmas display where pigs were pulling a sled.

And we saw a banjo player.
And we found out we would probably die a horrible death from lung failure due to the lack of filters on the incinerator at Pike Place Market. I know this because I saw several people fall over dead in front of the communist book store. They explained in depth how and why as they died and also seemed to talk a lot while they were dead. I wanted to take a photo but there were a lot of cops around and I know they don't like to have their photos taken, so you will all have to imagine it all.
Then we looked at cheese. There was a lot of cheese...

And then we came home.

Anyway... here is a nice Christmas card for you all...

and a little puzzle and I hope you all have a nice Christmas!

And a nice Christmas song for you all...

Something to think about

2011-12-22T07:50:00.000-08:00

When criminals rule the word
I think it explains a lot.
My favorite conspiracy is that it started with LBJ...

Development trends in our hip and sustainable city of Portland. I don't know if one should laugh or cry or ponder the concept of irony.

2011-12-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

I read Jack Bog's Blog every day. It has too many "B's" for me to say out load but i enjoy it anyway. As someone who is partially dyslexic I sometimes get confused and it is about canines in Portland and then I am a big disappointed. But, it is always interesting.
Here is a post on development in the city which prides itself on embracing all the buzzwords. Sustainability, Diversity, and the preservation of historic places.
Mostly the the preservation of historic places is important if that history spot happens to be owned by the McMinimum (spelling? I'm in a hurry, short lunch break at 2 p.m.) Brothers and being turned into a brewpub.

Anyway you need to first click on this link to YouTube and then click on this link to Jack Bog's Blog entry and read about another ugly development in Portland.
Portland is a pretty neat city. Lots of cool old bungalows from the 1940's and old brick buildings that must have been something interesting years ago. I still have not forgiven the city for tearing down the old Henry Wienhardt Brewery down by Powell's City of Books. (Which used to be the most cool used bookstore in the world.) The smell of warm malting barley in the air on a cold winter night while on your way to hear some obscure band in some hole-in-the-wall venue, or just wandering around looking at weird people, is a fond memory from my college years.
But, all must change, and now the little snobs who displaced the funny old hippies in the dive bars in Portland run the city. It reminds me how much I hate progressives...
Anyway, if you want to keep on track of what happens in Portland read this blog. The fellow probably doesn't appreciate a link from a grumpy farmer who lives off of government payments and blocks traffic on Highway 18 with wide farm equipment, not to mention I once burned a wheat field, but I find him interesting.
Have a nice day, I'm going back to shoveling clover seed. It is cold out today.

Pocket Gophers in the Zoo?

2011-12-19T21:36:00.000-08:00

I found some photos in my camera from the daughter and my trip to the Portland Zoo.

I think it is pretty funny that they have an exhibit on Pocket Gophers. I wonder if they were imported from "Gopher Valley" or if they tunneled in on their own.
We also enjoyed the Zoo train. This is the steamer. The engine that pulled us was a replica of the GM Aerotrain of the 1950's. It must be pretty unique. I am surprised Metro didn't scrap it. There must be some old guy keeping it going.

And we walked around and looked at the lights. The Zoo has a pretty cool Christmas light display. We had a good time.

That was last week or so.

It is not racism it is despotism

2011-12-18T22:29:00.000-08:00

While wandering the internet from one article to another I came across discussion of the NYC police tactics for cracking down on crime.
They have a stop and frisk policy for groups they have determined have a high potential for crime. This is not racism. Statistics prove that brown skinned people in NYC commit more crime. The NYC police department is something like 40% people of color. The people commenting on the stories keep going on about racism and they can't understand how black cops can profile black people.
This is because once again we are arguing the wrong argument.
The reasons people of color commit/and/or convicted of more crime is one topic of discussion. Racism may be an issue but what if you just take race emotions out of the question. What if the stats showed that middle aged white guys were doing crimes and so the cops started a program of stopping and aggressively frisking them. Well they would do something about it because it is offensive to them to have a gun put up to their head. So now people are fed up with being stopped and frisked when they have done nothing wrong other than to fit a particular profile.
The real issue is if stopping and frisking people with no reasonable suspicion of a crime is a violation of 1. Basic Human Rights, 2. The US constitution, 3. Counter productive to crime prevention.
As usual the clever folks have no clue. Treating groups of people as criminals, or treating everyone as a criminal puts your personal identification with criminals and against law enforcement. It is the police state concept and it never ends well.
Mostly, it never ends well for us ordinary folks...
To counter my own argument you may ask about racial profiling in airports of people who look like they fit the profile of an exploding terrorist.
To that question I have to admit some uncertainty. I think part of the problem with the NYPD is the randomness and the violence of the search. They are not polite, quick, and efficient and they do not explain themselves. I suspect a program designed to work with the community instead of against the community would be a better plan. However, it is harder to see what works than what doesn't work.
With the exploding terrorist profile I have to say that some specific targeting as in before boarding an airplane has to be tolerated. However, it must be done quickly and politely and effectively. No rudeness, no grannies strip searched, children should not be felt up.
It can be done. I flew into Germany after a terrorist bombing and they were searching everybody and everything. They were fast and polite and there was a soldier with a submachine gun in the corner and he looked like he meant business. I was kind of amazed by how well it worked there and how badly it seems to work in the USA.
Of course they were doing it to actually find bombs and the US is doing as some sort of strange psychological warfare that no one really understands.
Or incompetence...

More depressing news about a once great country

2011-12-18T21:13:00.000-08:00

Read this. A knock on the door. As someone who grew up reading WWII stories and Bible smugglers in China and the USSR it sounds quite familiar. You won't even know what one of a host of regulations you violated. And it is always your fault for not knowing.

The Pussification of America is complete

2011-12-18T19:24:00.000-08:00

We no longer deserve to be called "Americans."
I have often wondered how we got to the point of making a policy out of torturing terrorism suspects and being able to hold them forever without actually charging them. Where and when did the general population get to the point when they would accept these sorts of atrocities?
Today I was reading the Rent-a-cop blog and came across the story of a high school science teacher who made nitroglycerin and is accused of giving three kids chloroform.
Of the three kids involved one actually had the strength of character to stand up for the teacher. “She’s paying the price for our stupidity, the cops are blowing it out of proportion." Of course the teen is unnamed.
I seriously doubt it happened the way it was reported. Nor do I think 4 ml of Nitro was enough to blow up the school. On the other hand the teacher used very poor judgment. We begged our teacher to make nitro and she said no. Even if we did figure out the chemical reaction.
So, I was doing a search for the kid's quote and came across this story in which Salt Lake cops ruined the lives of several teenagers.
They were making bombs out of soda containers and setting them off in a field. They got hit with FELONY charges. These are sort of slow motion bombs using a reaction between aluminum foil and cleaner. The idiots called out the bomb squad.
Said the police spokesman, Brave Dennis McGowan, "If it was important enough to call them out, certainly these devices were quite harmful.With everything going on in the world, that's an additional reason why it gets the attention of law enforcement."
What a maroon! Soft drink bombs as a WMD? It is one step beyond baking soda and vinegar! To charge a kid with a felony over a stupid prank is immoral. In fact that is the action that should be a felony!
We are a nation of pansies. No wonder Glee is a hit TV show!
And so you may ask, how does torture and soda bottle bombs tie in together? Well, let me answer that one for you. If you are such an idiot that you think kids making soft drink containers is a threat to national security you are also unable to make a larger moral and national security judgment as to the rightness or wrongness of any other issue. In short, you have no critical thought abilities. You can't do risk assessment, you can't make a simple moral decision without a specific law to guide you.
Good grief! You know it is just going to get worse!
There has got to be somewhere we can immigrate to. Leave the idiots here...
What was that new planet they discovered?
At some point convicted felons are going to have to form their own lobbying group. As more and more people are changed with "non-crime" felonies why should they tolerate having their rights taken from them for doing things that should not be a crime?
This is going to get me sent to a re-education camp isn't it?

My cousin gives me a tractor!

2011-12-17T09:12:00.000-08:00

My cousin gave me a tractor. I like to think of it as a Christmas Present. Actually I'm going to give him $1,000 worth of planting. But, I hardly ever give him a bill for planting as he helps me out all the time so I guess we are talking about imaginary money here.
My plan is to put a loader on it and use it to load hay. I also plan on loaning it to the guy with the weather station at Muddy Valley but that probably won't work as it is a hydro and the hydro is a little weak. I don't know just how weak. It moves but then it is not 75 degrees outside either.
So here I am a rich farmer with a new tractor.
Highly subsidized I might add...

Which gets me to another subject.
I need a new phone.
And then there is the thing that has bugging me for a day or two...
I got into a discussion about wolves the other day.
I sort of dislike most people in the city...
Read this story about wolves. Read the comments. We are set up for a class struggle. Those durn farmers who own land and are living off the government subsidy programs. We live in the city and drive on subsidized roads and love that food from China and Brazil and the cheap crap we buy at whatever the Portland high class knick-knack shop is that buys from the same factor as Pier One and Wallmart but ups the price and we have lots of plastic and solar power and think we are wonderful because we wear scratchy underwear made by peasants somewhere. Not to mention our fair-trade coffee that kills song birds.
The way to solve the wolf and cougar problem is hunting permits. Hunt cougars with dogs during a certain season. Allow wolves to be shot on sight around livestock, with a permit.
These are quite intelligent animals and they will want to avoid getting shot. So, they will stay away from people and run away from dogs.
This lesson could be transferred to other less desirable species but I don't want to get put on another list at the fusion center so I will leave that one alone.
Allowing wolves to kill livestock and then compensating the farmer just teaches wolves to kill livestock.
Not hunting cougars with dogs makes them not afraid of dogs so you can't chase them away from your house.
Wolves were wiped out by the FISH AND WILDLIFE service on purpose and by using methods like shooting them out of an airplane. You will not wipe out the population of anything with controlled hunts, permits, hunting seasons, and whatever.
I just wish more city folks would try dancing with wolves and cougars on a regular basis. We need less of them...(city people)

The biggest threat to our liberty is not from Islamic Terrorists

2011-12-15T20:44:00.000-08:00

I'm not ever going to talk about the Defense Bill...
This fellow I know had a couple drinks at a local tavern. On the way home he was stopped by the police. He blew under the legal limit to drive a car. But...He ~~has~~ had a CDL. So even though he was not driving a CDL licensed vehicle he got a DUI. I think it will make his life kind of difficult.
If I get stopped driving my wife's car I could automatically get a minimum of a $500 fine for not having my medical card because I have a CDL.
According to the fellow who give me a tractor today, he heard you have to have the medical card with a Farm Endorsement but that information has only been published on a Gubment website no one actually reads.
Just get ready for the words, "papers please..."
Cut the budget...
Read Frank James...

It is raining...

2011-12-15T07:21:00.001-08:00

If it were not for my sick wife, I would go back to bed... I wish I had one of Temple's hugging machines. I'd never leave the house...

Temple Grandin

2011-12-14T07:09:00.000-08:00

Last night we watch the movie "Temple Grandin" about the person Temple Grandin.
It was a good movie and a very interesting story about an incredibly interesting person.
Temple Grandin basically invented the science of cattle handling.
Professor Grandin is Autistic and thinks visually. Because of this she is able to "see" cattle handling as the cow see's it. Her designs allow cattle to be moved quickly and humanely.
Before she studied cattle handling it was basically scaring the critter till it moved.
I remember my father talking about her work years ago when we were designing a corral. Some of it was common sense, actually when you start to think about it, it is all commons sense, but the big feed lots didn't think that way.
Anyway, you can look her up...
Temple Grandin Autism website
Temple Grandin Livestock Handling website
Wikkipedia

I find studying how people learn and make decisions to be interesting. Things like the proper way to move cattle are also interesting to me. I am amazed that small movements by a handler can move an entire herd as a unit. And how quickly loud and aggressive movements can send animals into panic.
Or why people actually climb the scaffolding to the gallows or put their head on the executioner's block. Or get up and go to work in the morning.

Why I am going insane

2011-12-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

Part of it is the sheer volume of worthless crap on our farm. We can't afford to buy a good truck or a sprayer or an irrigator but we have tons of worthless crap that we think we will fix up someday.
This morning I took advantage of the frozen ground to attempt to get a 55 gallon drum of molasses out of the back of a box truck which for some reason is parked in a floodplain in mud. The box body needs to be removed from the truck to be used as a chemical storage unit but for some reason we think we will fix the truck.
This is a stupid idea. Especially since rats moved into the cab and since it leaks a steady stream of oil out of the oil pan and it has been driven.
Of course I attempted to move a 250lb drum by myself and it was icy. I got it onto the pallet on the tractor forks but of course the tractor forks had sunk as of course it is a 1964 Moline Jet Star with an equally vintage loader and the hydraulics just don't hold as well as they once did.
Dropping 55 gallons ($100 value) of molasses from a height of four feet makes quite an explosion even if it is 32 degrees outside.
I salvaged five gallons!
I am covered in molasses. It actually does taste sweet with a faintly salty aftertaste.
I put my coveralls and shirt in the washing machine and start retracing my steps with some wet wipes.
I am a bit grumpy at that point so I stop for coffee time.
My sister in law is making lots of copies and I am not sure if that is why set the uncle on edge or if it was my rant about the amount of crap setting around or if was my comment about the copy machine being an antique or if it was my comment when I thought the door was closed in response to the confusion about when the copier was purchased and when the toner cartridge was installed and the standard for of argument employed at the shop. Where everyone argues about totally different things but thinks they are arguing about the same thing.
My employee was there in time for coffee time and seemed to be in a helpful mood.
But, I left the tractor setting with the molasses covered pallet and two half buckets of molasses I had salvaged.
I went to the house to get insulated coveralls and more wet wipes to clean the steering wheel but before I returned I spied the dog control truck and so I stopped to put the dogs in the truck for a quick get-away and then someone wanted to talk to me.
A customer came after steel and the uncle needed the tractor. It is his tractor after all.
Soon I heard my name called.
He pointed out to me the molasses on the forks and gave me pretty explicit instructions on how i should clean them off.
He suggested ether, or perhaps brake cleaner. I asked what he thought about water but he really didn't think water would do it.
I was a little annoyed and may have said a couple bad words while I was driving away. (I have got to watch that problem.)
I decided I would move my pallet while I was at it.
I thought it was kind of funny that the whole metal cutting and moving process was stopped due to molasses on the tractor forks and I admit to a bit of humor at the thought of them actually standing there waiting for me to clean the forks.
So I found an unfrozen water hydrant and hosed them off.

The uncle made another trip to tell me I needed to use brake cleaner.
I decided to take a little longer.
Then my employee was instructed to pick up all the drips of molasses off of the driveway.

Apparently I did not get all the molasses off of my phone. It made kind of a soft focus effect. If you look in the background you can see some of our crap. We have more!!! We love crap!!!

I could not longer be angry or annoyed.
It had gone into the realm of the surreal or is it absurd.
My employee did a very good job of shoveling the gravel.
My uncle was happy with the emplyee.
I know he heard me swearing. I have got to stop swearing.
I just had to come into the house an make another post. Sometimes I can't contain all the joy and happiness bubbling within me!

An employee update

2011-12-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

My helper has been quite sick. This is true. He is frequently ill. I suspect it is due to 1. His great bulk, 2. His way of dealing with stress, (see (1))
A week or so back he took couple days off and just reappeared yesterday. This morning he texted me that he had an appointment at 10 a.m.
It is kind of funny but mostly sad.
As you may know he was about to get evicted.
He needed to come up with $1,000.
Sunday the dairyman next door called up looking for my helper. When the helper was hauling manure from the dairy he got the dairyman to loan him the $1,000.
Security on that loan is my stacking bill against the dairy.
I am so embarrassed I didn't have the nerve to tell the dairy fairy he is on his own in collecting.
I so need a business manager!

An obscure book- Revolt in San Marcos by Robert Carver North

2011-12-13T08:09:00.000-08:00

I found this book in GoodWill a while back. I thought it looked interesting.
Yesterday I started reading it while waiting for my daughter to learn how to play guitar.
Not a lot of info on Mr. North.
I suppose Collieguy has already read this book.
I read the first couple chapters and am depressed already. The natives have revolted and killed the senor and looted the hacienda. Of course they fought over the stallion which then broke a leg and they killed the cow that gives milk for a BBQ and the burned the Senor and his family in the chapel.
I suppose one question could be made about the failure of Dios to rescue the Senor but I was thinking more of the very fragile link between the genteel 21st century folks in their comfy chairs and the stone age folks who killed the only milk cow in 100 miles for a BBQ.
A particularly apt read in light of the Occupy association of Useful idiots occupying the Port of Portland yesterday.

Who reads this thing anyway?

2011-12-11T21:48:00.000-08:00

Ok, someone just started following me as it says there are 39 followers. Pumice is now at the front of the list but I've followed Pumice for a while and commented back and forth.
The other day I checked my statistics and there are 34 people who check this blog every day. According to the stats they are the same people-returning customers so to speak. There are also some 20-30 random hits from my local internet provider but they are not always the same.
There are a couple odd fellows from from Canada who check frequently and some character from the Albany Mennonite Home who also checks about every day. Probably a has that "old-timers" disease and forgets to shut his computer off...
Then there are random hits based on searches for key words like, can cows walk down stairs, and "alien farmer sex party," and why the click on the Lazy Farmer when doing a search for the latter is beyond me.
The Other McCain has sent me 896 hits this year and I thank him very much!
I think it may be a bit off the usual interest of conservative blog readers. But I also get links from The Eye of Polyphemus, The Griper, and some fellow whose blogger photo shows him holding what looks like a chicken.
All in all I get around 3500 hits a month. I don't know if this is good or bad. I have not been commenting much on other folk's blogs and have not been looking for new blogs to comment on. I suppose I should.
Kind of interesting to look at the stats. I don't know what they mean.
I guess I just I hope someone got a laugh out of the Lazy Farmer today.
I'm going to bed. Seems like a good enough home remedy for me!

A Sunday Rant

2011-12-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

I did not go to Church today. My wife proclaimed me sick yesterday and asked my brother to find someone to replace me in the service.
So, I have been home in bed mostly but I did mess around with the wireless network so we can listen to Christmas music on internet radio.
I see a pickup come into the driveway and pull up to the hay shed. We have a combine and the truck full of feed and the Mixer/grinder and another truck in front of the hay. It is raining and cold. I've been sick as you all know.
So my cell phone rings. It is the hay customer. He has been here before. He knows I generally go to church on Sunday. He knows it annoys me to do hay sales on Sunday. He knows how much hay he has left.
But yet he persists. To be fare he does load the truck himself. But this is not the first time the hay has been blocked and I have not answered the phone.
Why can't hay and feed customers figure out they should call before they can see the bottom of the feed barrel or they are down to their last bale of hay?
What is wrong with just leaving folks alone on Sunday afternoon? Unless you have pie or "home remedy," or want to listen to the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, or want to be friendly (without a hot tub).
Why is that so much to ask?

The Last Straw-Why I officially now kind of dislike Apple Computer Company

2011-12-11T13:37:00.000-08:00

I have owned Apple products forever, it would seem. I started out with a Mac Plus and moved up to a Mac SE followed by a PowerBook 180.
Mac were easy to use and network. While software appeared to be limited, in reality it only meant that you didn't have idiotic programs like "My crappy database designer." Instead there was Filemaker pro, Excel, ClarisWorks, Pagemaker, Superpaint, and Photoshop.
I admit to being pretty annoyed when they went to OS7 but I loved OS9 and would still use it if I could. I've been somewhat nonplussed with the incarnations of OS10 but I love the fact that my computer has not locked up in months. In fact, I have an untitled notepad file that has been open since Thanksgiving and I've never got around to saving it.
I've been officially declared "sick" by my wife and am home by myself on Sunday. So, I finally got around to configuring our wireless network so that we can listen to Christmas music off of iTunes in two rooms at once.
It was all pretty simple till I got to my wife's iPad.
This is why I dislike Apple.
The company has defined the concept of success in spite of total idiotic choices in product feature implementation. There has got to be a name for it. Apple should be on the scrap heap of history along with Triumph, Studebaker, Minneapolis-Moline, Commodore, and Rambler.
The only thing that keeps Apple alive is the competition. My recent experience with Windows on my GPS tablet has convinced me that Windows is so terrible that it makes Apple look good in comparison.
The iPad, iPod and iPhone are perfect examples of what is wrong with Apple. Each one is almost the best thing you ever used. The problem is in the word "Almost."
So Apple has designated the iPad as a "device" and not a computer. So you must connect it to a host computer to do anything with it. This is insane. It is a perfectly good tablet computer. Why do you need a host computer? And why will it connect to a Windows XP computer but not to a Mac running OS 10.4?
Oh, I know the reason, Apple wants me to upgrade. I don't want to upgrade... So, I guess I will have to use my Tablet running XP to upgrade my wife's iPad?
Then there is music sharing over a network and printing.
The iPad doesn't allow an easy way to print documents over a wireless network? Insanity!
I can print with my XP over my network using Bonjour (an Apple program). This network is a conglomeration of wireless stuff I bought off of eBay and it is a mix of Apple and Netgear and it works just fine.
Then there is the stupid interface on the iPad. How do you turn off iTunes?
The iPad is not the first tablet computer and there are plenty of ideas on how to navigate a page with no keyboard. I'm happy to see that Apple has found a less than intuitive way to do it all.
My wife also has an iPhone. I can't even begin to figure it out.
Now to be fair. My daughter who is 10 can do all sorts of stuff with iPad and iPhone, and they are not current generation devices as we never buy new.
Anyway, I guess I don't really care as I am not buying an iPad for myself and I sold my four shares of Apple when Steve died.
Still, I would like to be able to stream music on my airport network and share a printer with a non PC tablet. Seems like a good idea.
Wish Audion would update but it won't happen as iTunes is almost a good program and has dominated the market, plus it is free.
If FarmerGPS would come out with a program for the android tablet i would buy one of those.

Expletive infixation

2011-12-09T20:25:00.000-08:00

So... I went after a load of raw materials to make chicken feed. (screenings they are called). Then I went to the Chiropractor which actually made me feel better. Then I took my daughter to the Asian Buffet which made her feel better but not I. Where we got Bok Choy Boy for 50 cents.
Then I went home to make chicken feed.
It did not work so well. The auger kept plugging and I smelled burning grass screenings.
Then some people came after hay. They always make out the check incorrectly. They were unable to make the connection between me shutting off the hammer mill and me planning on getting them hay. They went to the shop.
Then dad called me four times in a row.
Finally they came back and stared at me for a while.
I got them hay...
Then the bearing went out on the hammer mill. One of two main bearings. It will be a pain in the arse to fix.
I put everything away and went in and laid on the couch. It was 4 p.m.
Now I have discipline my child for not doing her chores even though I asked her like four times if she had really finished them.
Earlier while I was grinding feed. My neighbor was worried about me and brought me some Wild Turkey and Honey as a home remedy. He even brought a glass. He keeps trying to give me a hot tub.
I took a sip and then just drained the glass. I am open to home remedy. He thinks I'm an alcoholic. I replied I was just "taking my medicine."
That was really nasty stuff! It did not make me feel better...
I'm a little worried about that whole hot tube thing...
Have a nice evening.

The sick day that wasn't...

2011-12-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

I feel like crap this morning. I had a cough and the sweats yesterday. My 92.9 year old father has been coughing for a week so I figured it was but a matter of time before I worried myself into a fever. Which I have done.
My daughter is looking out the window at the frost. She thinks it is beautiful. It is covering the ground almost like snow. There is a layer of fog above the trees and so everything is white. The air and the ground.
I have to make chicken feed today. So, I have to start the truck with the 6-71 Detroit in the cold wet fog. I did not hear fire sirens last night so I am assuming that the block heater did not burn down the shop. I suppose that is a good thing... Then I have load my old boxes and pallets on the truck and take them to the neighbor where I will get more 800lb boxes of vetch, oats screenings and wheat screenings. I need to also get some camolina or canola mean but I can't afford it. Perhaps I can find more clover screenings.
The Paul Bunyon-esque fellow is also coming to work on the carport. He refuses to take money for his work but needs some hay. I asked him yesterday if he was angling for free-hay-for-life and he said he was. I suppose this will end badly.
On the other hand a fellow who didn't pay me for a year and a half gave me advance payment for 25 ton of hay and so I can actually pay my rent and the stacker payment both. (I think)
My neighbor was laughing at me yesterday. I had to go and move our combine and borrowed truck out of his shed. They are not so new.
I told him that one day I would be a well off and successful farmer and, and, and, and, well I had nothing to say at that point.
Finally I just sputtered out that I would be a lot less pathetic and went back to work.
Last week the daughter and I went to the zoo.
I commented that I thought it was odd that the Giraffe was outside in 40 degree weather. I'm not so much of an expert but I planted for a fellow who takes in old zoo animals and he told me of the difficulties in keeping a Giraffe in the cold wet Oregon weather.
I guess he was right.
They killed him. Click here to read an interesting blog by MaxRedline. Scroll down a bit to read the short section about the giraffe. I tried calling my zoo animal rescue friend but he didn't answer. I would try again but I have short attention span.
A photo from last week...

Look at this! A rent-a-cop blog!

2011-12-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

Of course which story do I click on?
Of course it happened in Amarillo...
Some years ago I when I hired high schoolers I had a very polite kid working for me. He was just a little too polite, and a little too"yes sir" for my taste. I just didn't trust him.
Then there was the "misunderstanding," about free gas from his previous employer. Then there was a "hot for teacher" scandal at the high school.
His mother was tearfully testifying about the loss of her son's innocence.
Innocence my arse. He stole gas...
So the when kids were telling me about "doing" the secretary at the HS. I gave them two tidbits of advice. 1. Don't tell me any more about it! (tell it has been over for a few years) 2. Don't tell anyone else about it! 3. Don't admit anything when this all goes public because it is kind of like killing the golden goose. Well, that was three tidbits of advice but they didn't understand the thing about the golden goose because they were illiterate maroons who did not realize they had hit the proverbial sexual jackpot and were so incredibly stupid that they later ruined the whole thing by demanding more sex. Then they pretended to be victims. The little shits were not victims and someone should of beat the living snot out of them. They got away with doing wrong on several levels and were rewarded by those in authority. Which is more of a problem with this society than anything else.
The problem is the double standard we accept in our culture. You know Nike shoes are no better than Sears but yet you pay more money for them. You know a 15-year-old boy knows more about sex in 2011 then you know. In fact you have a sex ed class to insure that.
You accept S..... G..... and Justin B. having a relationship which has gotten high school kids on the sex offender list.
Mayor Sam Adams can nail an underage intern-or whatever he was.
But there are select exceptions...
I do think it is funny when the teachers get caught with underage boys. (When it is a girl and a teacher I am highly offended as I have a daughter. But, I do not claim to be a fair and balanced blogger. And I am also sexist and think it is a different matter when it is an underage girl)
What I find interesting about it is the lack of character shown by the boys. The ones who get caught also are the ones who quickly rat out the teacher which brings up these question in my mind.
1. Do the kids fall for the teacher like a moth to the flame because of the same lack of character that causes them to immediately turn on the teacher and claim victim status when confronted?
2. Are the teachers who get caught sex addicts who make poor choices in who they choose for sex because they are really screwed up people? That didn't make sense... Let me say it this way. Is it proof that they need mental help by how easily they get caught? Poor choice of victim indicates guilt?
3. If you were a boy who had no "Christian" values why would you not nail your hot teacher. But, does that same lack of a solid belief system not give you the strength to resist interrogation? The Christian values would be the only reason to confess. If you were true to yourself and had universal humanist values would you not protect the source of your pleasure.
4. Should you teach your kid to resist interrogation? If so how do you distinguish between lying to state authority vs lying to parents?
5. Is there a double standard in this concept? You choose to break the law but you do not rat out your friends. But, I grew up on books from the turn of the previous century, ideas like "God, Honor, Country," and "death before dishonor," and the "Just So Stories," and "Will James, Lone Cowboy."
When my daughter went back to public school I told her to stay out of controversy and to never admit there is a shotgun in the house. She said she didn't want to lie. I said, "but do you remember exactly what happened?" She said, "not always," and I said, "well then stay out of it.. until you talk to your parents."
I have been debating on teaching her how to lie effectively but I suspect that would come back to haunt me. For example, reporting the truth slightly out of context to make a "white" lie. Or imagining a different story in your head until you are confused about the real story, or just doing it "Hilary Style" and not remembering. Or just keeping a safe and happy spot in your head.
When I was in trouble in middle school and in high school I would just imagine the teacher or administrator who was interrogating me naked and taking a poop. Or I would imagine building something step by step in my head which would cause me to give all sorts of confused and conflicting answers and make me unreliable.
I really must not tell her those things...
I will tell her to just start crying and sobbing, "I miss my Grandma..." Oh, I already did that... Wonder if it is working for her.

It's a wonderful life part IV

2011-12-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

I got a call from my uncle yesterday morning. After 30 years of the parts house building falling down, yesterday was the day to repair it. To be fair... I've actually been working on the wall a little bit at a time for two years and this year was the year to repair his section.
Next call was my father who was having computer problems. He leaves stuff on his keyboard and it auto types so he had page after page of spaces in his price list. I fixed it but then there was another problem. It would not "print." Not printing has become a catch phrase for most problems computer related in my father's vocabulary. (Note, he is almost 93)
He would click on the 2011 price list to open it and then exclaim that it was not right and it would not "print right on the screen." This meant that 1. Something in the file had changed due to the scissors setting on the keyboard for a day. Or, 2. it was the wrong file. It did not mean the printer was not working.
After observing him opening and closing the file about five times I asked him if he really thought that it would just change back on its' own. He chuckled a little and said he didn't suppose it would, "but the correct file had to be there, it was there this morning."
So, I checked the recent documents tab and decided it must be price list 2010 and so I opened that file. Dad was still focused on clicking the 2011 file and completely missed what I did to get the 2010 file.
"There it is!" He exclaimed, "Where could that have been... Oh for pity sakes," he said.
I started to explain but then thought better of it. When I left he was trying to replicate his previous success.
Do you have to have melting clocks to qualify as surrealism?
I had find some used lumber for my Uncle and also get some sample bales of hay from Gopher Valley. So I thought I would pay my rent at Muddy Valley. I was on Muddy Valley road and realized I didn't have my checkbook. I had a nice visit anyway.
Later, I had to pick up Lulu from school and meet her mother so they could go to the dentist. I got halfway to my wife's school and realized I did not have my daughter...
Lulu thought it was pretty funny.
My wife said I should probably not tell her when I did stuff like that.
I guess she wold rather me be late because I am a butt head than late because I am mentally challenged...

All I want for Christmas

2011-12-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

Someone at Lego has my sense of humor!
This is what I want for Christmas...

A crock of poo-poo

2011-12-03T21:29:00.000-08:00

I wonder if anyone who makes policy ever talks to anyone outside their little world? Actually I wonder of anyone who makes US policy ever pulls their head out of their arse and looks around at all. Other than to stick their nose up the behind of someone from a foreign country who hates them.
Today I sold some chicken feed to a very interesting person of Hispanic heritage today. He kept referring to the USA as "we and us," and has almost no accent so I am assuming he is native born USA. I didn't ask his citizenship status as I figure that is somewhat impolite.
He and I have been discussing money making ideas and his goal of retirement by age 45. He is looking for some ground to plant blueberries and has been advising me on my goal of planting strawberries.
He says the latest news is that "China" is renting ground in Mexico and planting berries and vegetables.
They are leasing or renting ground for pennies and paying just a little over average wage in Mexico. The locals are quite happy and are rethinking their illegal trek to the USA for jobs. Golly! what a good idea!
China is doing what the USA should have been doing since the end of WWII. They send advisers and investors and they help people around the world. They don't turn their corporations loose on the people to totally rape the country. They have a long term plan. I am sure it is for their benefit and pain may come later. But, they are thinking long term. Plus, the PLA probably knows how to deal with the drug gangs. Perhaps we should leave that one alone...
He also had some pretty depressing comments about who is making money off the drug war. The law is pretty well set up to foster corruption and it is working quite well in that respect. But, I think I'll let that subject go for now. Way too depressing to even talk about. And after the latest baloney with the ATF I suspect it is all true.
So...the US and Mexico have been neighbor's for a few years now, and we have not figured a way to make mutually beneficial economic arrangements?
Mexico has oil reserves, minerals, silver, lots of cheap labor and they generally like us.
Instead, we are fighting a war in two countries on the other side of the world which are no where near important to our economic health and national security as the countries next to us and we think it is a good idea?
Plus, we are allowing people into this country from those countries who want to convert us to a religion which won't even allow women to drive a car, but we won't even come up with a guest worker program for people from Mexico.
Then we have the idiots who are so anti-immigration they will push for a national ID card and really intrusive crap like E-verify but can't step back and see the big picture where economics and supply and demand are creating population movements that can't be controlled by fence and in a free society. (formerly free society)
Of course it is all academic at this point because when China moves to Mexico for cheap labor there will no longer be an illegal immigration problem or any US grown produce farms in any border states so we won't have to worry about a guest worker program either.
I had a little chat with another Hispanic fellow who works for the neighbor. He says the Coyotes are demanding more money now. They have expanded into kidnapping. There are stories of $20,000 payments to get the rest of the person that was attached to the finger you just found on your doorstep. He thought it was no longer "Coyotes" but gangsters doing the smuggling.
Hell in a handbasket was the phrase that came to mind...
Of course if the illegals stopped all those taxes that get paid to the fake social security numbers would no longer go into the general fund... Social services would not be able to expand based on the number of people without insurance or jobs. There would be fewer "oppressed" people for the liberals to love. And I'd sell less chicken feed.

People are stupid and I hate Wallmart part II

2011-12-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I bought basic starter train set for my daughter. It was a Thomas The Tank engine set made by Tomy or Tomica World. I found it at GoodWill for $10.
It had blue plastic tracks made out of a virtually indestructable plastic and a very simple connection that you can just turn the track over to get right and left curves and switches. The trains were battery powered and were the same gauge as all the other wooden train sets.
So...They sold out to Trackmaster which makes a more positive snapping track which looks like a finger pincher to me.
They sell them at WallMart of course.
We have a huge garbage tub of the blue Thomas/Tomica tracks. There are tons of the Tomy accessories on ebay and they are selling cheap. I've got a few listened and they have no bids at all. I am a little high but I may just start playing with the set again. Don't really care.
So we are supposedly in a tough economy. If I were looking for a train for a five-year-old I would buy the Tomy system. We ended up with a track that ran though two rooms with switches and stops and sidings. It worked great with the old legos. Hours of fun were had by Lulu and I.
But buying decisions are made by people who made decisions based on packaging and perception. They are not capable of any sort of long term study and they don't really like the kids that much so they don't really care.
Anyway, perhaps I'm just in a bad mood.
Next on the sale list will be Marx cowboys and tin barns. Hopefully Lulu will stop me.
Anyone need a Nerf Machine gun? I have two. Enough to start a war!

I hate Wallmart

2011-12-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

We went there last night.
I don't think you save that much money. Or, I should say, You don't save enough money to put up with going there.
It is not even the freaky people who go there.
The latest clever ruse to get you to spend $.35 more cents is to put everything in different sized bags.
We were buying dog food. At BiMart and most other stores they put a price per lb in small letters under the main price. At Wallmart they just list the number of lbs per bag. A 13lb bad of dog food? Or perhaps a 19.3lb bag next to a 17.5lb bag next to a 31.345lb bag? Why not start mixing in the metric system? That will fool them customers fer sure!!!
The funny thing was that when I figured out price per lb there was not that much difference in price, other than the difference between high quality and the stuff we feed our dog.
The same with food. There was a huge display of soft drinks and a good price, but upon close inspection it was a special 20 pack of cans so you really could compare the price with out using some calculations.
I'm in favor of shopping local or regional stores so perhaps I'm just easily irritated.
Taking Lulu to the zoo today.
Told my chicken feed customers to comeback another day...

They took our Jobs!

2011-11-29T07:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the Mexican who runs the neighbor's seed cleaning plant brought his friend by looking for a job. Actually, his friend drove him by as I think E. no longer has a license.
I have been reading the VDARE.com website as my daughter asked me about Roanoke Island last night.
I get continual updates in my email from NumbersUSA.com talking about the need for e-verify and how those illegals, They Took Our Jobs!
Here is the deal...
I've had a few people come by looking for work lately.
The one white guy needed more than $15 or it would mess up his unemployment. The other white guy was rather twitchy and I didn't trust him. The third white guy kept telling me how he could run stacker and weld and all his incredible abilities but I already knew he was a moron. The 19 year-old girl who wants a job would be a hard worker and offered to wash farm equipment in the rain in exchange for hay and I actually may get her to help. But she swears, A LOT!
So E. comes by with his Mexican friend who has been spot spraying and doing general labor type work for a neighbor. His English is passable, he has a family, he is polite and seems interested in our farm and what we do. He has a grasp of the concept of farming. He said he does not mind working in adverse conditions and said he does not need a lot of money to start out.
I ask you, which one would I hire?
And, where is my large helper this time of year?
Frankly I don't give a rip if he is illegal. I really object to doing e-verify and double checking his social-security number. I am not the one who left the door open at the US border and I am not the one who makes people wait in line for a week to get a US Visa. E-verify is just an excuse to track every person in the USA. Just like the question of why should I have to prove MY citizenship to get my driver's license renewed. Do I have an accent?
Why does it have to be this difficult?
If I were president I would issue an executive order. All illegals have six months to return to the country of origin. I would set up a fast track visa application where potential guest workers could move to the front of the line if they had a sponsor or proof of employment in the US. The idea would be to make it so they could go back across the border and show their info to the visa office and come back in a matter of days or hours.
Then, if you were arrested for a crime or found here illegally you would be promptly sent back.
I think there should also be a path to citizenship but the applicants would have to take classes in US history and do perhaps, volunteer work, or something.
Just some ideas which I think are quite sensible but nobody on either side of the immigration debate will come anywhere close to anything sensible.
OF COURSE, you know THEY would screw it up....
(THEY-meaning the clever educated folks who know more than you or I)
In the mean time I ain't hirin' no crack heads!

Anyone Remember DAK and Drew Kaplan?

2011-11-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I was always interested in electronic gadgets and sound. The highlights of the holiday advertising season were the Sharper Image and the DAK catalogs. I had already had a few months of the Montgomery Wards Christmas Catalog, but for an interesting look at funny and quirky electronics I enjoyed Drew Kaplan's DAK mail order catalog.
I liked his interesting combination of bulk audio tapes and interesting stereo equipment. Just what would you get if you bought 500 blank tapes? How could you write 500 words about a cassette tape that you could buy at BiMart and make someone want to buy them in bulk though the mail?
He disappeared for a while, there was a bankruptcy, pain and suffering in the 1990's, but I see he is back. On the internet plugging LP to CD conversion. Looks like he has a pretty good setup really. Not sure if it is all a good price. But, it is interesting.
Click here for Wikipedia
Click here to go to his website. I just like reading his copy. I never buy anything!
Click here to learn all about cleaning records!

Why you should get married and have your family at age 19...

2011-11-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

The family decided to camp in the living room. I can only guess that it was an off shoot of the occupy movement. Unfortunately we could not find the pump for the air mattress. Then my lovely wife was not feeling well and opted for the comfortable bed.
My daughter was quite excited by the idea of camping on the floor. So....I volunteered.
Never volunteer for anything!
She was going to read to me but we ended up in a discussion of why we have difficulty in large groups of people somehow ended in a discussion of my childhood vs hers.
When I was a kid, the stories told to me by my Grandparents were of steam trains and going to Colorado in a covered wagon and Grandma going sledding and getting her tongue frozen to a fence wire. My parents stories were also of steam trains, farming with horses, the first airplane they saw, the first car, the first radio, first telephone.
But, the stories I tell my daughter are tractors without CABS, the one hand crank phone I saw, tube RADIOS, hand crank record players, typewriters, and cars without airconditioning. In short, the stuff we still use...
It is not like two different worlds. Grandpa is so old that of course that is ancient history. And we just had a foot of snow a couple years ago.
Anyway, I forgot the point of that line of thinking.
The point is... I slept on a sleeping bag on the living room floor with my daughter. I am suffering for it. Every joint in my body hurts. I'd go smoke a joint if I just had a medical card and if being high didn't really annoy me.
Plus we will probably die of radiation poisoning as the carpet is where all the nuclear fallout from the ongoing Japanese reactor fallout collects from our shoes.
Perhaps I will go eat some Chinese lettuce...
I will feel better after five cups of coffee...Then I have to grind some pig feed.
The sun is out!

Thanksgiving day

2011-11-24T10:06:00.000-08:00

When I was a lad we always went to a big family Thanksgiving dinner at an old church. The potatoes were always cold but the gravy was usually amazing.
My dad's cousins were all characters. They grew up together on a big farm where they did everything. They had prunes and pigs and cut firewood and grew grain and had a prune dryer and broke horses. In the winter they would cut firewood and load the cordwood into boxcars that went to Portland.
With the advent of WWII the government decided to locate a training base in the area and they had to sell the land and everyone scattered. Thanksgiving was the big get together.
After dinner there was a time for everyone to talk about what they had done that year. There was often a devotion and several hymns were song. As kids we always pretended to hate it all but I will admit it was usually very entertaining.
That era is over with. There seems to be no real shared heritage anymore.
We are going to my wife's sister's house in Portland. She is already up there. She has four sisters and they all like to get together they day before Thanksgiving and make pies and tell each other what to do. They enjoy this a lot but all the talking makes me a bit claustrophobic so I am home.
I was attempting to organize my record collection and vintage stereo, 16mm move, and reel to reel collection, as well as books and computer stuff and Marx toy barns and...and...
I think I will listen to the Legendary Stardust cowboy as I am alone and the Ledge seems to get the cats really agitated.
I bought some new speakers.

They are Dynaco A-25's.
I took Lulu with me to look at them. Before we went in I explained my theory of buying stuff off of craigslist.
First I only had the amount of money I wanted to spend. This was not a lie as I was pretty low on cash and I wanted to eat lunch.
Second I was going to look for something to complement the fellow on to build empathy. My goal was to get him to want to sell me the speakers because I was a nice guy. This was all kind of academic as I was not doing one of those deals where you offer the guy a fraction of his asking price and just walk away. I have been doing a fair amount of research and was pretty shocked at the price of 1970's era speakers on ebay.
I took one look at them and cringed.

They were pretty ratty looking and had funny sparkle grills. Sort of groovy, which is kind of a problem. I'm not so much of a groovy fellow. We don't have any shag carpet in our house.
But they sounded amazing. And they turned out to be the A-25XL model which is somewhat sought after by collectors.

I got Lulu to give me a second opinion. She said I should buy them.
She may have been a big preoccupied by the fellows kitty-cat but she has better ears than I and she lends a somewhat critical eye to the crap I drag home.
So I made my offer and there was silence.
I said, well that is what I've got and if you want to wait another couple weeks and advertise them, just give me a call and I will come back.
He helped me carry them to the car.
He was a very interesting fellow. Collects records and plays music. I hope I didn't offend him.
Then I got home and saw my statement from Case Credit...
And there is the issue of paying my rent. I am glad I am completely anonymous and no one to whom I owe money reads this blog.
Then there is the issue of water leaking around the window frame in the house, and the woodstove I was going to buy and... whatever...
After enjoying a complete album side of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, I wonder if Sam Adams would not have been better off trying to roust the occupiers with a blast of The Ledge, instead of a blast of pepper spray?
Have a happy day!

Happy Thanksgiving...

2011-11-23T06:20:00.000-08:00

In order to put us in the mood for Thanksgiving I give you some holiday music...

Over compensated

2011-11-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to a blog I enjoy and the one story that incensed me today.
I've been washing farm equipment in the rain. I just moved a large piece of equipment through town in the pouring rain because my very useful and hardworking employee went fishing instead of finishing the field and the fellow I borrowed it from wanted it back. It was kind of embarrassing. I had to apologize for keeping it for two months.
Then while the neighbor was talking to me I just discovered that for the fourth straight year, no one dumped the lorsban out of the insecticide boxes on the corn planter, nor did they clean out the corn. This is also embarrassing as it shows I am a pathetic farmer. Saying that you told your helper to clean it out brings you no glory. Only pity...
I have to wash my two disk mowers, two balers, a rake, and it looks like the stacker.
It is raining. Not just raining but it is pouring.
I have to get this stuff done.
AND I come in the house to dry off and I see that the U of O football coach is getting a five million dollar retirement. You tell me that guy made the world a better place, or contributed anything useful to society and I would be happy to shove a football up your arse. (Unless you are Sam Adams, oh-wait, I'm too old for him!) Actually that is all a figure of speech. I would not want to do anything that unhygienic. I wouldn't even hit you. I'd probably just leave. I might try to get the dog to pee on your tires when you were not looking. I would certainly overcharge you for your chicken feed. Perhaps spike it with some round-up ready alfalfa.
Anyway, I get to deal with all the morons driving up and down 99W with their green flags and the big "O" on the back of their cars. Every one of them is a jerk who is in such an incredible hurry to see college boys touch each other on the bottom that they can't wait five minutes for me to find a wide spot in the road to pull off.
Does anyone really think I want to be blocking traffic on a Saturday?
So when I come into the house to dry off and have a cup of coffee when I'm soaking wet and cold and irritated and I see people so over-compensated for doing so little I get a little annoyed.
Not that I plan on occupying anything other than perhaps the bathroom for a while...
$40,000 a month...
It's a playground game people!
There is no point to it...
Update:
After washing a tractor and trying to figure out how to get the insecticide boxes on the corn planter dry-and thinking that I'm an idiot because up to last week I could have just taken them off myself and put them in the barn... And worrying about slugs eating our wheat an annual ryegrass and thinking how stupid it is for me to be washing hay equipment in the rain when I should be working on broken stuff in the shop....
I got to thinking about my rant.
Mike Bellotti is one of the special people. Those who are over compensated by far. This class includes the CEO's of large corporations, sports figures, entertainment stars, and heads of various other agencies and people who are not me.
Whose fault is it that they are over compensated? Would you turn the money down? What kind of a messed up society pays a college football coach 4 million dollars a year? Put that into perspective with the cost of tuition. People end up with thousands of dollars in student loans due to outrageous expense of higher education. A service you buy which has gives you no recourse if do not get what you thought you were buying. A service which has no customer protection at all. You can't even refuse to pay that loan. Of course you can come back which the argument that sports are paid for though private donations. All that argument does is bring to light the corruption that goes on inside the sports programs.
The problem is the utter moral corruption of our society and no amount of yelling at police officers will do a dadgummed thing about it. The only thing that works is capitalism and a return to some sort of moral code rather than this I'm special and the rules don't apply to me BS that has become our cultural mantra. Withhold the funding and the market responds. Give people a conscience and the greed is tempered. Of course the belief system we are going to get is probably going to be a bit painful for those of us who cling to the old religion. Off to the re-education camps we go!
But, I digress. I refuse to spend a dime on sports tickets. I almost never go to a movie. I do not support packaged entertainment and I complain a lot. I'm not sure what else to do but I think a few more people should try. I tell my kid to do the what is right, to be honest care about others.
Not very revolutionary but I really don't know what else there is...
And now, I'm going back out into the rain. Well, perhaps after I do some dishes. My wife seemed a bit tense this morning.

We Go To the Big City and See Joe Ely and laugh at hipsters

2011-11-21T22:20:00.000-08:00

In 1989 I saw Joe Ely at the Pine Street Theater in Portland. It was an a amazing show. I think he played every song he ever wrote and sang with such intensity and energy he was drenched in sweat by the end of the show. There were no reserved seats at the Pine Street, in fact the only seating was in the bar so everyone stood to watch the show. I was right up against the stage. He gave me a smile and I took his photo. I even got a guitar pick. He seemed like a pretty decent guy.
Last night my lovely and gracious wife took me to see Joe Ely at the Aladdin theater in Portland. It is always a bit of a culture shock for me to leave the farm. I am a bit amazed at how much the guys look like Scruffy from Scooby-Doo and the girls all look like refugees from an 80's punk band. I get the thrift store thing. Yes, we did that back in college when we were trying to be hip and happening and we had so much more insight into world events because we just took lit 101, and had some freaky angry instructor expose the evils of capitalism and Christians and tell us Jesus was a Marxist, and music was so real and all that BS.
It would seem that 35 years later, not much has changed. Other than the fact that everyone under 60 years of age in Portland is doing this and everyone looks the same. It kind of seems that the whole "Keep Portland Weird," slogan is a cry of desperation. What was cool about Weird Portland in the old days is that no one knew they were weird. They were just doing their weird stuff and living their weird lives and then it was cool. If you have to try to be weird you are pretentious.
But, I digress...
We went to bulk Goodwill were I picked up an Irish Rovers album and some not very good jazz. The scruffies were kind of aggressive. It really bugs me to see people throwing books and records around in the bulk bins. I know they are destined for the trash but I am a polite and respectful person.
I found a dual 1019 in a record console. Someone had pulled the cartridge and the spindle, of course...
Then we wandered around the Sellwood area for a while. It has a lot of old buildings and old neon which we think is cool.
But, again I digress...
Joe Ely was at the Aladdin which has the distinction of showing "Deep Throat" for something like 20 years straight. I'm kind of afraid to use the restrooms. However, the kid taking the tickets was probably born the year the Aladdin peeled "Staring Linda Lovelace," and the "XXX" off the marquee and started booking concerts.
So, I didn't get to use my "two for Deep Throat," line that got a laugh 20 years ago when I saw Ian Tyson there.
The opening singer was terrible. Not that she was a bad singer or guitarist. It was that she talked. She tried to affect a "I'm just a poor black child" attitude and she kept giggling and rolling her eyes. She was very good technically but the in between the songs banter sort of ruined it.
Joe Ely was good. The guy is working class. He grew up in Texas and has pretty much spent his life touring small clubs and singing and playing music.
He brought with him only one guitarist. Well, the guy played guitar, mandolin, and slide guitar, and was pretty incredible in his own right.
The sound was good and tight. They played well together. There was a nice mix of old and new songs. My wife got him to play "Down on The Drag," and he said that was a good choice.
The crowd was older. Of course, since the death of FM radio, where would you hear Joe Ely other than KBOO. I heard him on KFAT/KLOO years ago when they were an alternative country station and played albums. I've heard him on internet radio, but you do have to look to find anything non-mainstream it seems to me.
It was over much to soon. He came back and did a couple more songs. He ended it with his song, "have you ever seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night," which was really good. "Down on the Drag," was good.
I just wished he would have played a bit more. Money is a bit tight and this is a once in a couple decade event for me.
Anyway...
It is pouring down rain and we have 50 mph winds scheduled for tonight.
I'm going to bed.

Blah, blah, blah, once more...

2011-11-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to the Ag Show.
My sometimes-a-great-helper wanted to go and he has a better truck than I. He used to work for me. In fact, when he was a little tyke he used to ride around on the tractor with me.
He has his own small farm and a hay baling business. He works for someone else now. Someone who is much more successful than I. More acres, nicer equipment, works harder, more entertaining. More specifically, if you remember back a few posts, he is the one who said, "M..., I don't like tequila, I want to grow bourbon."
Lulu had a bad cough the night before and didn't get a lot of sleep and they were having a jogathon at school and she wanted to go to the Ag Show. So we took her along.
She is highly in favor of Cat Challengers. They have a buddy seat, a cooler, and lots of buttons and switches. She has decided I need one. I never even discussed the price.
Later we met up with a long time friend for lunch at the local incarnation of the Mongoloid BBQ. (Where you pick out a bowl full of raw ingredients and they cook it on a giant wok)
The show was kind of depressing. Equipment prices are quite high. There are more government regulations to comply with all the time. I have not lived up to the expectations of most farmers I know.
I saw the regional distributor for this company. He wants me talk my uncle into being a dealer for this brand of grain drill and he wants me to sell them. His company has been bought by this company and he figures his time is limited.
I probably should buy one of the drills and get it all set up and then sell it. It has a little different opener set up than what I have. I think I'll get the 30 footer...
The problem with selling them is that farmers in general are not as clever as they pretend on NewAgTalk. I could demo a piece of equipment that might be the greatest idea ever. I could plant a couple thousand acres in the neighborhood every year and they could see the results, but they will buy a John Deere. Apparently when you own a JD you get a special pair of underwear, not that you need to wear underwear anymore, as your poop no longer sinks. In fact, if you even have to poop, it comes out packaged as organic fertilizer, smelling faintly of fresh printed dollar bills.
But, I digress...
The fellow has been after me for like four years to do it. He says everyone is going from 12ft to 20 foot drills and I could cash in. I am sure he is right. Not sure I am the one to sell the state on cream and red grain drills however.
Now I am going to grind feed.
I went to the show to see if I could find a scales for my feed grinder. It looks like it would be cheaper to just buy a different grinder/mixer.
I think I could build a scales from chinese import loadcells for under $1,000 and buy it all off of ebay.
I may do that.
Have a nice day.

Off to a grand start!

2011-11-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

It would appear that the sun is trying to shine. True, we live in a canyon with neighbor's large straw sheds blocking the morning sun, but it sort of looks like a better day today than yesterday.
Yesterday I attempted to make feed.
I say attempted as it seemed all I did was move grain trucks around in the rain. How can you work all day and get soaking wet and actually do nothing?
I don't have a real efficient set up for working outside and in the rain. My feed making setup is pretty mobile and it works best when the sun is out or the hay shed is empty.
I run a hydraulic powered auger off of the 2-155 or 2-135 which I also hook to the feed-mill. I have a electric/hydraulic flow control with the control on a long wire so I can regulate the flow while watching the mill. I dump the barley out of the truck into the auger which feeds the mill. To add other ingredients I just dump them in the back of the truck right over the end gate and that stuff feeds down through top first.
But, when it is pouring down rain you it does not work quite as well. And when people come after two barrels of feed and then a load of hay and then another three barrels of feed and then another two barrels it kind of mixes up the whole routine.
And then if I have to wait for an hour in the rain for them to arrive it makes me grumpy.
So, I accomplished nothing but I got very wet. I have $200 cash in my pocket but that does not seem to be a very good trade.
Update: after getting ready for work and calling the school to tell them my daughter is sick (she coughed all night) I see leaves blowing past the window. Followed by horizontal rain. And the sound of tin blowing off the roof of the old barn.
Perhaps today I will go to the Albany Ag Show, er Willamette Valley Ag Expo. I'm thinking that sound high brow enough I'll wear my short pants.
Wonder if that fellow from Bellfountain will be there. If wonder if he will be wearing his Keens. Will probably be at the BTO booth. Perhaps at the wine tasting...

I'm finished with planting and our occupy experiment failed

2011-11-14T21:07:00.000-08:00

I planted my last 20 acres today. In the rain. No-tilled oats and vetch into chopped wheat stubble. It really worked quite well. A little muddy but only one plug up. One blown hydraulic hose put out enough high pressure oil to pretty much coat the drill. I finished up in the dark.

Later "Lulu" and i continued with our occupy the living room protest. She has set up a tent. We demanded ice cream but it was pointed out that we had chocolate pie for dessert and besides, we know where the ice cream is kept.
Then the mayor of the living room went to bed.
We tried the "occupy" chant and worked on a further list of demands but got bored and looked for our own ice cream. After discovering the rocky road had been consumed during the occupy protest yesterday we pretended to have hot chocolate in the igloo tent with some stuffed animals.
I sort of got kicked out of the tent.
Afterward I was quite successful in occupying the bathroom.
I am currently occupying the comfy leather chair the mayor of the living room found on craigslist. Lulu is reading a book.
Yesterday the occupy protest was interrupted by an angry polar bear who announced he was hungry and his plan was to eat little girls. The little girl in question objected in no uncertain terms and returned with a nerf gun and dispatched the offending polar bear in short order.
We are just not the revolutionaries we aspire to be.

Why I think the Occupy Movement are Useful idiots

2011-11-13T19:45:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the live stream from Occupy Portland.
I've also talked to a few local supporters. I find I agree with a lot of their complaints.
Sure there is a growing gap between the upper and lower classes.
I'm not much of a fan of banks and large corporations.
Student loans are a ticket to debt slavery.
Sure we live in a police state.

But...
Watching the video feed is so frustrating. All this blather about corporations and the 1 percent misses the point.
The big corporations and the huge banks care about only themselves and they always have. Everyone has seen, "Its a Wonderful Life." There was the Industrial Revolution. There was the Great Depression. We have seen it all before.
So we make laws to regulate these guys.
Then it turns out that no one was actually enforcing the rules and that the rules had been relaxed and when the banks got caught in their own Ponzi Scheme who bailed them out?

So, going out and protesting the banks and corporations is pretty silly. They just are following their nature.

And, it appears that we are ignoring huge violations of regulations which have resulted widespread economic problems and personal suffering but yet individuals and small businesses are saddled more and more regulation and loss of personal freedoms which are enforced to the full extent of the law. Amish people are raided by SWAT teams for selling raw milk. A friend of mine faced huge fines for selling beef which was basically mislabeled though several mistakes and misunderstandings and the whole thing could have been handled by a visit by an inspector and a civil conversation.

I think this whole Occupy movement will somehow be used to restrict civil rights in some way, advance some sort of political agenda that will give even more power to different big corporations and big government, somehow it is going to take money and land from small and medium sized business owners and land owners and give it to people who will remain in perpetual dependence on the government.

It has happened before...

It is sad to see that there is no resolution I can see. Do you really think the Republicans have any great statesmen in the works? Look at the morons running for president? The Democrats are worse, it is going to be Obama and change and they are going to claim the Occupy people as their own- I suspect.

Perhaps I'm just negative.

Read a book, as in past tense...

2011-11-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

I just finished "Nanette, Her Pilot's Love Story," by Edwards Park.
I like to read books about WWII. I am amazed by the way ordinary people did extraordinary things.
The author down plays his war record and focuses on his plane. Describing the plane as somewhat of a living creature with a will of her own.
After doing a bit of research I've found that the author was really somewhat of a "hero" in his own right. He certainly put in a lot of flight time in a rather unstable aircraft and made it back home again.
I actually started the book last night.
I tend to read fast and continuously.
I may be finished with my planting. The winter rains have started.
I need another 200-500 acres of planting to make up for my hay baling shortfall this year. I suspect that I will for ever remain on the other side of that 1.2 million dollars I hope for.

Happy Days

2011-11-09T23:22:00.000-08:00

I found some photos from 1994. I'm going to have to scan them. They show my father planting with a nicely restored M670 and my brother riding the back of the drill. It is the old MM with the steel wheels so it is before I started pretending to be a farmer as I bought a sloped side Moline drill with rubber tires when I started. It also shows the G1000 Vista plowing and really looking pretty good.
I was looking for the Heathkit Tube amp/receiver that my father-in-law built himself. I found a place in Portland that rebuilds tube amps and I'd like to get it checked out. One of the amplifier tubes is out and before I replace it I want to make sure that capacitors have not all dried out.
But, that was not really the point...
Not sure what the point was.
Anyway, the helper shows up and seems to be a bit bummed. I was in fine form as I had just made a trip to the bank and discovered I am pretty much broke till I sell some pig feed.
It turns out the helper is about to be evicted and needs to come up with $1,000 by Thursday. This is Wednesday. I had an unexpected expense and I am totally broke.
I don't even have that much cash sitting around so I really am spared the moral quandary.
Then I read that fellow blogger Zeta Woof had emergency surgery and has no insurance.
So if you were considering clicking on the paypal link to give me 1.2 million dollars perhaps you should consider sending Mr. Woof the .2 million and just giving me the even million. Perhaps also sending my helper a case of beer. That would be cheaper than giving him the $1,000.
Here is some music that seems fitting. My lovely wife bought me a CD. Travers Chandler. "State of Depression." I'm enjoying it. Incredibly depressing music.

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

2011-11-08T08:32:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

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...

2011-11-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

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...

Where can I find a Bob Rumson for president shirt?

2011-10-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

My family likes to watch things like "The American President," and "The West Wing." Sometimes I find it painful to watch them.
It is kind of funny to hear a Mini-14 or an SKS referred to as an assault weapon. Especially in the context of Eric Holder selling AK-47's and M-16's to Mexican drug lords.
I especially like the irony of the President really and actually being in bed with a lobbyist.
Kind of funny.
I always need to be reminded of how much Hollywood and the rest of the clever folks hate people like myself and most of those who follow the Lazy Farmer.

Although... I would gladly take Andrew Shepherd or Jed Bartlet for president over the one we have now.

Here is a typical bipartison mess which shows what is wrong with government

2011-10-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

So the clever folks are going to censor the internet. Of course it has a clever Orwellian name. And OF course it doesn't sensor what we need to have censored.
What it does is protect the establishment content owners who have big money to send lobbyist to Washington and it allows the State to restrict freedom. The best of both worlds for those who run things in the 21st century.
And it creates Felons out of everyday people who do occasional foolish things. Easy folks to arrest and prosecute.

What it does not do...
Sensible stuff, like...
I think it should be harder to access porn by accident. I think porn sites should have a .xxx tag so that you can program your browser not to allow access them.

What you can't do...
Protect the identity of idiots who post all their personal information on facebook.

Anyway, that is just my opinion... I though the law was a pretty good example of all the stupid laws that go though congress. Like the food safety act that makes it basically illegal for small farmers to sell their products direct.