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Ed
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Jun 13, 2020 11:36AM
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Russell delivered 200 bales of hay last night & used the neatest hay bale grabber to pull them on & off the wagons. It was mounted where the bucket would be & picked up 8 bales at a time as a flat. It set them in the aisle of the barn, so it was easy to toss them sideways on to stacks. Amazing time & work savings! Apparently he has an attachment to the baler that catches & stacks them in the flats, too. The grass has been so good this year, we've been able to keep the horses off the north field & he'll be cutting & baling in over the next few days. That should be about another 100 bales, so we'll be set for the winter. Whew! That's always a relief. It's great to have it done before July, too. No foxtail which has become a problem.
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Take for example this "review" from a few days ago
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It already has 23 "likes", but the review is nothing but a word-for-word copy of the book description. Why would he do that? Why would so many people "like" it?
I'm going to prune my friends list. Some are not useful for me to interact with.
Yes, I also don't understand/like that either. Doesn't make sense to me.
We've got the 300 bales of hay in that we'll need until this time next year. That's always a relief, especially getting it done before July when the foxtail (grass with a prickly head) comes in. It was a lot cheaper this year since about half came from one of our fields & a LOT easier because Russell got some new equipment. There's only about 5 acres usable for hay, but we got better than 30 bales/acre - 167 total. As you can see the grass is really thick. Here the hay has been tedded, cut, & raked into windrows.
The first part of the new equipment hangs behind the baler. The hay comes out of the baler & is set in a pile 1 bale high, 4x2 wide.
Once 8 bales fill the rack, a gate is opened in the back which leaves them in the field all ready to be picked up & set either in the barn for stacking or on a wagon by the front end loader. It grabs them all at once, a huge savings in labor.
If you've ever dealt with hay bales, you're probably as excited as I am by this innovation. No more dodging hay bales as the kicker shoots them at you while stacking on a hay wagon or, worse, picking them up off the ground & tossing them on to the wagon. In the barn, it's just as nice. He set them in the aisle & we dealt with 8 at a time, only having to toss them to the side & stack. It was fantastic!
I grew up in a small agricultural community in southern Ontario. Your photos bring back memories, Jim.In 2006 my husband and I went on a trip to Romania. They were still cutting hay with scythes in small areas, so they wouldn't waste anything.
I can recall, as a kid, helping my dad get bales of hay up into the hayloft of the old barn, in the old farm we were renting, on the edge of town (Stillwater, OK). You can take the boy off the farm (professor of animal nutrition, first college grad in his family), but not the farm out of the boy!One of MANY events that convinced me I wanted NOTHING to do with farm life! Oddly, my second sister, who married (literally) millions, is running an organic meat supplier, https://firefly.farm/ in rural Conn. She certainly wasn't helping with the farm chores as a kid! Horse-crazy, though.
A few weeks ago, I took 2 maple trees out of the woods to a neighbor to cut into boards. One had blown over & the other died recently for no known reason (termites in the roots?) but both had about 26' of good wood about 14" in diameter. I just picked up the boards today & stacked them in the barn. Cost $120 for about $750 worth of wood. I'll have to let it dry for a year, but that's not a problem.
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Only for pick-up at the door, but that is good enough.
Ed wrote: "My Library is Open! Oh Happy Day!Only for pick-up at the door, but that is good enough."
Ours too, we have to order online, book a time for pickup and stay for only as long as it takes to pick them up. But to quote an old favourite book of mine "... heaven had been offered her and she was not about to question the platter on which it was served."
TWO books waiting for me, at the pickup point, about 40 minutes away. One even from the next county! So our local system is starting to show signs of life. Our local branch reopens in a little over a week!
Our libraries are open for pick up as well.
My son & his family left yesterday. It was nice seeing them, including the 2 grandmonsters, but it was also exhausting. We're in the middle of a heat wave (mid 90s with high humidity) so outdoor activities were somewhat limited. Still, we went to the local wildlife center, Ren Faire (jousting!), tractor rides (in the front bucket), & plenty of time on horseback, of course.
Went to the book store for the first time since March! Man oh man what a joy.
That is a joy! I'm waiting a bit, mainly because I still have double rows of books on my shelves.
Started off the day with Pip treeing a baby coon on one of the bird feeders about 4:30am. Got Pip inside & tried to chase the little guy off, but he jumped right at me & got punted for his trouble. He wandered along the top of the fence for a while before finally taking off. Looks awfully young to have left his mother. I don't need that sort of excitement before I finish my first cup of coffee.
Jim wrote: "Started off the day with Pip treeing a baby coon on one of the bird feeders about 4:30am. Got Pip inside & tried to chase the little guy off, but he jumped right at me & got punted for his trouble...."Raccoon punting? Is that like cow tipping?....8^)
Papaphilly, I said, "Shoo!" He snarled & leaped at me like Superman. He was tiny, about 6 lbs, so I kicked, rather than shot him. Besides, I didn't want to tear up the bird feeder. I spent a lot of hours making it. If he'd been any bigger, I would have shot, though. I knew a guy that kicked at his yearling pet coon when it went after him one day. The coon ripped through his leather work boot like it was paper.Ed, I never would have guessed there was a book on it. LOL! Thanks. I'm no expert, but can tell a baby from a yearling & I think I can tell when they're over 2 years old. Then they're fully mature & can get pretty big, especially an old sow. I had to buy a bigger live trap for one old sow we had around. She was so big & powerful that the previous large trap I'd used for decades wouldn't close on her properly.
Mod
I never thought I would find a legitimate(-ish) reason to refer to it!
There are many editions of it. I think it is one of those cases where someone finds 1000s of out-of-copyright works and makes low-quality e-book versions with no thought given to which books anyone would ever actually care about.
Jim wrote: "Papaphilly, I said, "Shoo!" He snarled & leaped at me like Superman. He was tiny, about 6 lbs, so I kicked, rather than shot him. Besides, I didn't want to tear up the bird feeder. I spent a lot of hours making it. If he'd been any bigger, I would have shot, though. I knew a guy that kicked at his yearling pet coon when it went after him one day. The coon ripped through his leather work boot like it was paper...."We had a full grown boar next door to us. The neighbors Akita got it. That was the biggest boar I had ever seen and it never stood a chance against the dog. The dog was not even scratched. Never knew a yearling to attack.
Wow! I knew Akitas were tough, but so are boars. It is odd for a yearling to attack, but a few years back I had a baby skunk attack me when I was herding a mother & 4 kits out of my field. Unusual, but that's animals. Deal with enough of them & there's always a surprise.
Jeopardy is now showing old shows. Just saw the first one from 1984. Wow! Things were different then. Fun to see.
I have been watching them also. Amazing how much faster the show went.
Mod
Alex spoke a lot faster. His voice wasn't as smooth & soothing as it is now. Everyone & thing was slightly faster.
I actually have been watching some of the Celebrity Jeopardy skits from SNL on YouTube. You can't beat Will Ferrell as Trebek, and Sean Connery is hilarious - so are Nicolas Cage and Burt Reynolds. Also funny, the "Black Jeopardy" skit with Tom Hanks.
All the Purple Martins are gone! I noticed it a few days ago. How weird. They usually hang around until the first week in August. I wonder if they flew north to beat the heat for a while?
I wondered if they sped up the first Jeopardy so it would fit in the time they had since Alex spent some time explaining about the reruns. Nope, just as fast on the second round. It's definitely different. They can ring in before the question is fully read. That was changed in the second season. Funny end tonight. Everyone wound up with $0 & got consolation prizes. Money was only handed out to the winner.Thanks, RJ. I've seen some of those. SNL has never tickled my funny bone much for some reason, though. I don't seem to like a lot of popular humor, though.
Jim wrote: "SNL has never tickled my funny bone much for some reason, though. I don't seem to like a lot of popular humor, though...."
Have not watched SNL since the original players left. Have seen one or two skits, but not much more
Jim wrote: "Papaphilly, I said, "Shoo!" He snarled & leaped at me like Superman. He was tiny, about 6 lbs, so I kicked, rather than shot him. Besides, I didn't want to tear up the bird feeder. I spent a lot of..."Holy shite! And people say Australia's wildlife is dangerous and out to get you. Never been attacked by koalas, possums or wombats yet.
Jim wrote: "Wow! I knew Akitas were tough, but so are boars. It is odd for a yearling to attack, but a few years back I had a baby skunk attack me when I was herding a mother & 4 kits out of my field. Unusua..."
What? The skunks too? Really American wildlife sounds way worse than ours.
Deborah wrote: "What? The skunks too? Really American wildlife sounds way worse than ours."I don't know. You all have BIG spiders & other really weird things. I guess it's what you get used to. We have possums, too. I don't mind them. Last one we had was twice the size of Pip, but it curled up under the back deck steps & stayed that way even when I shoveled it up & tossed it over the fence. It hit the ground & uncurled slightly with a gasp, but then curled up tightly again pretending to be dead. It was gone 15 minutes later, though.
I find it worrisome that the large predators are coming back in force. Here we only have packs of coyotes, so far. they stay outside our fence, thankfully. I'm sure the horses would kill them if they came in. In other places in the state, feral pigs & Black bears are pushing further out of the wild, both can be dangerous & destructive, though. People seem to think it's neat to see a black bear or a cougar around. They seem to have this weird idea that they & their pets won't get mauled or killed.
We also have a lot more hawks than we used to. In the 1970s, it was unusual to see a hawk, but by the 1990s they were back in force & by Y2K chickens had to have a protected run. It makes them too expensive for me. We've had a pair of Goss hawks in our woods for a decade & often see Sharp-shinned hawks around. We'll notice the bird feeders aren't being used & find one hanging around looking for a meal.
It's fun watching the young Goss hawks. They'll often sit on our porch railings or on the fence of the backyard. It's amazing to see them dive into a thick bush or tree after a bird. They somehow manage to kind of fly & thrash their way through, but rarely get the bird. Seems like way more effort than the bit of meat would be worth. They're better off waiting a bit longer & getting one of the rabbits that pester us.
In Toronto there are coyotes in the ravines and wooded areas, so people do have to keep an eye on their pets.We also have peregrine falcons that build their nests on high rises. I have seen a couple of birds at rest. Once I saw one sitting on a lamp post in a parking lot- there wasn't a pigeon in sight!
I hate the idea of a Space Force, but this article by Time makes a case for it already being done in all but name by all the major powers. https://time.com/5869987/spaceforce/
That kind of wildlife sounds so interesting to me. It is also kind of funny that here we keep our pets confined to protect the wildlife, there you keep them confined to protect them FROM the wildlife.
That is true, Deborah. Years ago I knew someone who had a pet dwarf rabbit snatched by a bird of prey.
Rosemarie wrote: "That is true, Deborah. Years ago I knew someone who had a pet dwarf rabbit snatched by a bird of prey."That would be heart breaking. I have a pet Cockatiel and with smaller birds in Australia we do have to be pretty vigilant to keep them safe from the predator birds, as well as from snakes. I have heard a few sad stories about pet birds lost to raptors.
If you haven't read Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, you can pick up the omnibus Lilith's Brood at Amazon today for $3.99 at the Kindle store.https://smile.amazon.com/Liliths-Broo...
Mod
“If I recall my childhood, I recall that house,” she wrote. “It is where everything happened. It is where I happened. … Writing this, I wonder if much of my understanding of what a novel ought to be was taught to me, ultimately, by living in that house. If so, perhaps all my life I have been trying to rebuild it around me out of words.”
If any of you were unsure of what to buy me for my birthday, this would be an acceptable gift.
Mod
I thought that with the new year that started yesterday ('pataphysical calendar) things would start getting less apocalyptic, but no.
It's only september and I already broke my year record of pages read. It sure is a good year for reading.
I'm sorry it's such a mess out your way, Ed. It looks like most of the northwest is on fire from a map my cousin posted. I'm glad the fire isn't near you. One of my cousins in northern CA has had to relocate & is scheduled for knee surgery which might not happen now. She's a nurse, so getting time off scheduled was a drag. Her mother & older brother are in southern OR & they're at a class 2 alert & might have to leave at any time. I hope you keep the electric & aren't too bothered by the smoke.I think I've read a bit less this year. More time on the computer. I have had a chance to catch up on some of the movies & shows I've been accumulating. I often have to wait for quite a while for people to get back to me since I'm not in the office. I'm on call about 13 hours a day, so I watch something while I'm waiting.
Leo wrote: "It's only september and I already broke my year record of pages read. It sure is a good year for reading."I am way behind on my reading this year. COVID has left me exhausted an not much energy to read. I am 13 book behind my usual pace.
Since a couple of days, I don't receive any notifications. I just found this in the FAQ, fyi: [10/2] Email, in-app, and phone push notifications temporarily disabled
Hi everyone,
Goodreads is currently undergoing website and app maintenance to improve protections against spam, and as part of this we have temporarily turned off email notifications, in-app notifications, and push notifications to your phone. These notifications include when you receive a new message from a Goodreads member, new friend additions, new followers, new group additions, and any other event, comment, or activity notifications you've signed up to receive in your Account Settings. We're working on bringing these back soon.
We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and will provide updates right here on Goodreads Help on when we’ll reinstate these notifications, so please check back for more information.
Thanks for the update, Leo. I hope it is only a couple of days. GR support has been very unresponsive for months.
On the topic of GR weirdness; now every time I log into Goodreads I get a notification from Chrome that my passwords may have been compromised. Odd thing is that I only get it from Goodreads, nowhere else. Is anyone else getting this / can understand this?
The Evolution of Science Fiction
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