Monthly Archives: July 2009

What was he thinking?

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After putting in a 12-hour day at the office on Thursday, I was more than ready for a three-day weekend … and then I realized I hadn’t found the time to write a blog.

Here it is again … writer’s block.

Fortunately, an idea struck when I logged into the blog site and there, at the top of the most recent blog posts on Area Voices, was this picture. I’d seen it a couple of times before … an outdoors reporter has it as his signature art, kind of like the cute little goat I have at the top of my blog.

Anyway, every time I see this picture I have to ask myself … what was he thinking?

Now I don’t know much about boats … but I at least know you have to back it into the water.

This picture just begs for comedian Bill Engvall to walk up to the guy and say, "Here’s your sign!"

Well, my brain is giving me a sign that it’s time to get some sleep. Have a good weekend and watch for some new blog posts on Monday. Nephew Blake is coming to spend the whole week at the farm and I am so excited! I’m sure he will be good for some blog fodder … and I wonder how many questions he’s going to ask me this time.

Motorcycles and metal frisbees

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I just returned to the office from the Rock County Fair in Luverne this afternoon, and Interstate 90 is busy with motorcycles heading west toward Sturgis, S.D.

I counted 45 of them on my drive to and from Luverne … and nearly all of the drivers and riders were not wearing helmets.

To me, not wearing a helmet on a motorcycle is dangerous to begin with, but when you’re traveling 70 miles an hour down the highway, it is … well … beyond dangerous.

I’ll never forget the time I interviewed a young man from Chandler who was an organ recipient. He said transplant patients have a different name for motorcycles … they call them donorcycles. It’s morbid, yes, but I’ve never forgotten it!

And today, as I was driving toward Luverne, I had good reason to remember the phrase.

I was following a tanker semi when another truck — pulling a trailer containing a large metal unit of some kind  — decided to pass the tanker. They were side by side on I-90 when one of the sheets of metal let loose from the contraption and went flying like a frisbee through the air.

Fortunately it hit the shoulder of the road rather quickly, but then bounced back into the lane of traffic. I had to quickly swerve to miss it … making sure there wasn’t a vehicle along side me.

I couldn’t help but think how much damage the sheet of metal could have done to my car … visions of it going through my windshield and decapitation flashed through my head … and then I thought, thank goodness there wasn’t a motorcycle in my place on the highway.

The most wonderful time of the year

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“It’s the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids leading cattle
And the parents’ battle, ‘Should have started last year.’
It’s the hap-happiest season of all
With those warm summer greetings and fun 4-H meetings
When friends come to call
It’s the hap-happiest season of all

There’ll be livestock for showing
And veggies for growing
And leading goats into the show
There’ll be wonderful stories
And tales of the glories of
Fairs from long, long ago

It’s the most wonderful time of the year
There’ll be much competition
And great exhibitions
When it comes to the fair
It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”

It is fair time in southwest Minnesota and northwest Iowa, and it is, indeed, the most wonderful time of the year for this farm reporter and former 4-H’er.

I love the fair … the livestock shows, the photography exhibits, the needle arts projects, visiting with old neighbors and new friends … and the smell of mini-donuts.

I was a member of the Ocheda Beavers 4-H Club for 11 years, and the fair was the most exciting event to cap off the 4-H calendar year.

It was also the most stressful, as I’m sure many a 4-H member and former 4-H’er can relate.

I can’t tell you how many times I was up late the night before entry day, putting the finishing touches on my posters and projects for non-livestock entry day.

Then, it was a quick trip back to the farm to fill up the bucket with warm water, grab the bottle of Ivory soap and lead the goats, one by one, to the milk stand outside for a bath.

When the goats were washed, it was on to the chickens and turkeys … I was already covered in water and soap suds anyway!

With the goats, I had only to worry about them kicking the water bucket over and then shaking like a dog after the hose ran over their back.

The chickens and turkeys, well, that was another story. They have claws and wings … a nasty combination when you put them in a shallow barrel of warm, sudsy water.

Despite all of the hard work that went into getting them ready for the show, the pretty ribbons I received were well worth the effort.

There will be many pretty ribbons awarded during the next few weeks in Rock, Jackson, Pipestone, Nobles, Cottonwood and Murray counties. I encourage all of you to get out to the fairs, admire the hard work our young 4-H’ers have done and enjoy an evening of grandstand entertainment.

Sweet corn theft

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I was supposed to drive out to the family farm Monday night to paint a sign for my dad … I stayed home to mow my lawn instead.

His first sweet corn patch is almost ready … mmm, yummy … and he needs a “Sweet Corn” sign made so he can come into town with his crop and sell it at a roadside stand. I guess I better drive out there after work today to make the sign.

I have never purchased sweet corn in the grocery store or at a Farmer’s Market. I wait anxiously, instead, to get my share from the family farm.

It seems that my dear, sweet loveable mutt Molly, however, cannot wait as patiently.

Mom had to scold her the other day while tending to the massive garden. She was working in the tomato patch when she heard a familiar snap and looked immediately to the rows of sweet corn. There was Molly, yanking an ear of corn from the stalk.

Molly is the only dog I know who loves sweet corn.

I have pictures of her eating ears of corn, one paw on either end of the ear to turn the cob so she can gnaw at all of the kernels. If I find one of the photos, I will post it here.

My parents’ dog, Misty, doesn’t bother the corn. I’ve never seen her take a nibble of any kind of vegetable, in fact. Misty is finicky and chubby … Molly eats anything and is a lean, clean barking machine!

Molly just better stay clear of the sweet corn patch or her foster parents might send her back to live with me. While I would gladly take her, she would hate being cooped up in a kennel, and I’m sure I would be bombarded with angry neighbors complaining about the dog who barks at everything that moves.

Death of a farm

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In the more than eight years I lived and worked in Redwood County, one of my favorite pastimes was traveling the countryside and taking photos of abandoned farmhouses. There were a lot of them up there … a lot more than there are here in Nobles County.

Redwood County is one of the top-ranked counties in the state when it comes to corn and soybean production. Farmers there also grow sweet corn, green peas and some sugar beets, though counties farther north have considerably more beet fields.

Having grown up in the land of corn and soybeans here in Nobles County, I had a bit to learn when I became the farm reporter for the Redwood Gazette. I’ll never forget the time I called up the agriculture Extension agent in the middle of July to write a crop update story and I asked him how the sugar beet harvest was going.

There was silence on the other end of the line … and then a laugh.

Sugar beets are late-season crops … harvested about the same time or later as corn. How was I to know?

I could have tried to save myself a little embarrassment by saying, "Uh, I mean how is the green pea harvest going?," but I wasn’t quick-thinking enough.

When you get older, you realize there really is no such thing as a stupid question and it doesn’t pay to get embarrassed. I’m a reporter, for goodness sakes, it’s my job to ask questions … stupid or not!

Anyway, about these abandoned farmhouses … I really don’t know a lot about them. The one shown at the top belongs to a dairy farming family west of Wabasso. I was granted permission to go on the yard and take pictures, and it was the only abandoned farmhouse that I’ve ever visited by myself.

Usually I’d have a co-worker ride along, or the nieces and nephews when they would come and spend a weekend with Aunt Juwee. There’s just something a little creepy about a house that has been left to weather and rot.

The abandoned farmhouse shown to the left was hidden behind trees and thick brush along the Minnesota River Scenic Byway. The road is gravel, and I generally traveled the route that traversed from north of Seaforth to north of Morton. Along the route there are ruins of the Farther & Gay Castle, a monument honoring those killed in the Sioux Uprising and several tree carvings, including those of a prairie family, an ear of corn and a bald eagle.

I know that the abandoned farmhouse below is no longer standing today … I noticed it the last time I took a detour from the drive to Grandma’s house to travel through my old stomping grounds of Wabasso. There is probably a corn or a soybean field in its place today; and the non-local passers by will never know a once stately farmhouse stood up there on the hill.

The photo at the bottom was taken of an abandoned farmhouse southwest of Wabasso. It actually is the home where one of my aunts grew up. Her parents are both gone, and the land has since been sold to a neighboring farmer.

I don’t know if the house remains standing or not. It had been vacant for several years.

I think part of my fascination with abandoned farmhouses stems from my own years growing up in a large, two-story farmhouse in Bigelow Township. The house was torn down in 1980, shortly after we moved into our new home, built several feet in front of where the old one had stood.

I was nine years old when we moved into our new home. It was the first time I had a bedroom of my very own. In the old house the upstairs had three bedrooms, but only two of them were used. When we were young, all four of us shared the biggest of the rooms during the winter … that way we only needed to use one heater. There was enough room for three twin beds and a double and we still weren’t crowded!

It got so cold during the winter months that Mom had a hard time getting us out of bed to get ready for school. We didn’t want to climb out from under the layers of quilts, and when we finally did, it was to race across the cold floor, down the even colder steps and sit in front of the heater in the living room until she got after us again!

That old house had its faults, but it had its charm too. A lot of memories were made there.

If these old, abandoned farmhouse walls could talk, I wonder what they would have to say.