Tuesday, August 12, 2008, 18:58
Never a Dull Moment
Randy had come home with yet another load of hay Friday evening. He spent all week hauling hay home 30 bales at a time in the pickup truck for a total of 250 bales. We bought some from a neighbor a few miles down the road at $2.50 a bale.
I was just heading to the glove box to get my leather haying gloves so I could help him unload the hay when the telephone rang. It was my big sister. I sat down by the table to talk to her.
A few minutes later, I heard a tremendous crash from the living room followed by the sound of breaking glass. Before the sound had died away, Dora went streaking down the hallway.
"I think Dora just broke something in the living room," I said to my sister.
I went into the living room. Sure enough. There was my glass lamp with one of the sections broken out of it. My little black kitty Dora had knocked it off the piano.
"Oh, yes," I said to Loretta. "Dora did break something. The glass lamp on top of the piano. I have no idea what she was doing up there. They've never bothered the lamp before."
My sister paused for a moment. "Didn't they break a bowl once when we were on the phone?"
Ah, yes. My vintage green claw-footed bowl.
"That was Henry," I said. "He knocked it off the microwave and broke it into a thousand pieces."
My sister paused again. "Never a dull moment, is there."
Nope. Never a dull moment. (Sigh)
The week that was
This past week has been something else. We hauled 250 bales of hay home. We finally got the oats combined and sold it to an ag supply place. My nephew and I hauled the oats on Friday. We baled the straw, got 209 bales and hauled 150 bales of it to a gentleman who bought it for his strawberries. We hauled another 30 bales of straw to a neighbor. And we kept 30 bales.
The oats did not yield as well as I had hoped. But what can I expect? It's so dry around here now that even the weeds are wilting. The ag supply place said they were paying $3.25 per bushel. But as it turned out, they subtracted 40 cents per bushel because the oats was "light" (it went 30 pounds to the bushel instead of 32) and they subtracted 10 cents per bushel because the moisture content was 14.2 percent instead of 14 percent. We ended up with $2.75 per bushel.
After paying for seed oats and alfalfa seed and timothy seed, and after buying the hay we need, and after selling the oats and straw, we are only about $800 in the hole.
On Saturday I took my books to a craft sale in a little town about 50 miles from here. I am done going to craft sales during the summer, I think. The craft sale was not very well attended, either by shoppers or vendors. When I was trying to find my way out of town because all of the streets were blocked off for the "celebration event" that the craft sale was part of, I finally discovered where everyone was.
At the beer tent on the other end of town.
On Sunday, the "tornado show" that was put on in my hometown on June 7 was put on again at a turn-of-the-century theater as a fund-raiser for renovating the municipal building in my hometown. I ended up being one of the readers for the show, and Randy ran the computer program with slides of pictures from the tornado.
The show went well, except we had kind of a bad moment before we were getting ready to go on stage. One of the ladies used a restroom backstage. She got locked in the restroom and couldn't get out. They had to find someone with a key to help her. The theater is reputedly haunted by the young lady for whom it was built as a memorial. She died when she was 19. Mabel loved the theater. So her parents (lumber barons) built the theater as a memorial to their daughter. The place is gorgeous. Hard wood and marble and gilt and ornately decorated.
I wonder if Mabel had anything to do with Mary getting locked in the bathroom?
LeAnn R. Ralph
Thursday, August 07, 2008, 05:58
Almost . . .
Well, we *almost* got our oats combined on Wednesday.
Wednesday morning started out clear and sunny and warm. My nephew came with the combine early in the afternoon. He had quite a time getting in here, too. The combine head was too wide to go through either of the driveways (trees on both sides), so he ended up going down the road, turning around, and going in through the neighbor's field driveway. That was after I called the neighbor to make sure it was all right.
Of course by that time, the wind was practically gale-force out of the north and the sky looked very threatening. Still, with the kind of weather we have been getting, the sky looks threatening, it rains six drops, and that's the end of it.
Unfortunately, by the time he made the second round, it had started to rain. Even a little rain makes it impossible to harvest oats. Not only does the oats get wet, but the straw gets wet, too, and plugs up the combine. So, he took the combine back home.
It didn't rain much, not even enough to register on the rain gauge. Only just enough to put a halt to combining the oats. Rain fell for maybe five or 10 minutes. And that was it.
I'm anxious to see how the oats is going to yield. I have called one ag supply place (they make calf feed, as I understand it), and they are paying $3 a bushel. But, I'm just going to have to wait on that to see how the oats is running.
Good news
The print galley of *The Rural Route 2 Cookbook* is on its way here. Once that all checks out, the cookbook will be available for purchase.
LeAnn R. Ralph