Been A While Since I Checked In

[jennys_mn]

Wow - what a fabulous fall here in SE MN.  It's nice to be retired and able to enjoy it.  I turned down an offer to go back to Oklahoma and teach - they weren't going to offer me hazard pay  Oh well.  I have plenty of projects around home here to keep me busy for a while.

I am finally making inroads in getting my shop cleaned up and sorted out.  It's amazing how much stuff gets collected and stuffed in a corner and never again looked at for years.  If I haven't looked at it for years, then I guess it wasn't too important and maybe needs to find a new home.

Doom and gloom seems to be the order of the day (month) (6 months) as far as the markets go.  Back in June when I went to Florida I reported on that I felt the crops here in MN were amongst the best in the nation.  And they were as it turned out.  What an awesome harvest for many folks.  The fellow that bought my farm in Central WI even had a good year, with most of his soybeans on my former farm going in the 60's.  He sent me a text showing the monitor on his combine at 103.5 bu (yes - soybeans) at one point.  Unreal.

So, we got this big crop.  And the prospects for any sort of bounce in the markets looks bleak, for the time being.  It's always darkest just before sunrise guys.  Hang in there.  The fix for low prices as we all know is low prices.

I see that elcheapo has taken up the cause in bad mouthing the CBOT.  Probably deserved.  Sometimes, the markets don't make a lot of sense these days.  It's the same in the stock market.  There's no accountability for anything anyone writes.  One day, the markets are down because we are going to raise interest rates, the next day they are down because the Fed didn't.  It's maddening, it really is.  Elcheapo - I'm with ya.  I know what you mean.

A lot of good people have been driven off this site, for many different reasons.  It doesn't take a lot of negativity for someone to say "Screw it - I have more important things to do".  But this site is important for you guys.  At least I still think it is.  There are those who don't want farmers talking together and sharing ideas, and I think that is at least some of where the negativity comes from.  It's too bad that so many people come on these sites with an agenda.  The truth is hard to decipher from all the lies.  

I was watching Dr. Phil the other day (ya - I know)  and he had a husband and wife having problems.  the wife was saying how she couldn't trust here husband, because it seemed like he couldn't tell the truth.  He said that he was a car salesman, and because lying was just the way it was in his line of work, that it transferred over to his personal life.  How sad it is.  And what a greedy, deceptive people we have become.  I'm glad I am as old as I am.  

That's all I have to say about that......

Jen

[ihtractortherap]

Sad when someone can't sell a car without lying. I say wife has big problem. Hopefully he can staighten up before he gets traded forva new model

[JCCWIS]

Jen : Good to see your comments and perspectives ! Yields were pretty decent in N. Central Wi. Prices suck but that goes with the high yields across the country. We did have really nice Fall for getting corn and beans off the field. One BTO has corn out yet but it will come off fast.....usually has 3 or more combines running together

Snow stayed well South overnite. Most Fall tillage done.....some more may be done , but ground is slowly freezing up..

This will be a slow week farming......deer season starts TODAY ! Please be SAFE out there !!!!

John

[ECIN]

Hi Jen ! Sounds like your having a good time at the retirement home  

For what we went threw this season - pretty good year to -    had something to cut and shell - Still made a few million to boot .

 The New pup is growing like a weed ,

Have a good one

ken

[jennys_mn]

I mentioned some projects I was working on.  Here's a few of them you guys might like to see:

We have needed to redo the front of our house for a long time.  This is an overlay done on our porch.  It's only 1/4 of an inch thick, a couple of powder releases put on, and then stamped.  It was a LOT of work.  Before I had my heart problems some years back, this was a part time gig for me.

The photos really dont do this justice, but you get the idea.

We also had to redo the steps, and cut in some lighting on each of the 6x6 posts.

And then we built this waterfall at the entrance to the house.  It too, was a lot of work.  These projects were on the drawing board for a long time.  But until now, I haven't had a chance to do them.  It's nice to have it mostly done.  

The best thing was that my health allowed me to finally work a bit.  It's been a long time since I have been able to do these kind of things.  The Doc said, that if my heart had enought time, it would be able to reroute some of the blood flow around my damaged areas.  Apparently, it has begun to do that.

The pumpkins - they were from our garden.  We had 10 of those big ones on one plant.  The plant was just amazing.  It was still flowering when it froze a few weeks ago.

Jen

[ECIN]

Pretty , Pretty concret work !  I really like that Stamped stuff  . Nice looking Jen - All of it 

[jennys_mn]

That stone in the front that has the pumpkins sitting on it is one rock.  I bought it some years ago for this project.  It's a foot thick, 6 feet wide and around 9 feet long.  I figure that it weighs somewhere around 17000 lbs.  I couldn't lift it with the high lift.  I had to drag it and push it into place with a combination of my skid steer, high lift and the mini excavator.  It was nice to get it finally in place.

Overlays are tough.  So many things can go wrong.  I would much rather pour the concrete and stamp it, than doing the overlay.  It's easier, and you have more working time usually.  I approached this overlay project with one recurring theme - be afraid, be very afraid.  I enlisted some extra help to help with the mixing, and an extra finishing person to help me get the finishing done in a timely manner.  The verticals are tough.  And you always have something unexpected happen that costs you time, something you don't have when doing a project like this.  But it went OK.

Jen

[OKdon]

Jen the school systems in Ok are a disgrace that is if you are used to Iowa or minnesota. Schools are thinking of going to a four day school week when they hardly are getting it done in 5 days. They even give scholastic credit for participating in music and sports. As if football is preparing you for life. I don't know why parents would ever tolerate such a systemunless they jsut don't care. Two of my grand daughters moved here from Owatonna and they thought they were at least two years advanced over their classsmates in OK.

Two of our younger grand daughters go to private schools and pay about $7K to do so. Lucky their parents are affluent.