Iowa, where Russia sends their prisoners

[BA Deere]

They say in Siberia your spit freezes before it hits the ground, it`s about that bad here.  Aw, it`s only 13 below, but that 30mph wind is nasty, I had a watering hose and pinched it off to 3 minutes of chores and it was frozen only a trickle and it was freezing faster than it was dribbling out, on this first full day of winter. 

Great Uncle would say "Dagene blir lengre  vinteren blir sterkere"  The days get longer and the winter gets stronger .  Usually we don`t have this crap until mid January.    

Welcome to Iowa!

[Hobbyfarmer]

Tain't any better down here in South Podunk Country.

Brutal in Southern Iowa too.

Didn't take long for the cattle in the lot to figure out the corn stalks I rolled out were to lay on.

[rsbs]

BA, I assume that phrase is Norwegian. When you look at how a sentence is put together in Norwegian vs. English, and how similar the words are, you can see why the Norwegians so easily assimilated.

When you look at Spanish, you should be able to have some sympathy on why "they" are a little bit slower to learn American English.

[BA Deere]

Red, I had to go to google translate to get the spelling 😀  They say 90% of communication is non-verbal so Norwegian is understandable...depending on the Norwegian that`s speaking, of course.  It`s -12 here now... not that I`m complaining  I was expecting it would fall to the -17 dew point,  but many times about 7:30am is the coldest.  It`s expected to warm up to a negative 5 today, the winds will gust over 40. We already have 4 foot drifts in the yard, doubt snowplows will be out until this simmers down.   30s above zero next week!  😀

[rsbs]

BA, I was up earlier for a while, and a link to the ill fated Donner Party came up. Lot of interesting stuff and twists there.....it did not have to end up the way it did except for some bad decisions. One twist was that Abraham Lincoln could have been part of the Donner party except he had recently married, and Mary Todd was preggers at the time. Think how different American history may have been in Abe would have been part of the Donner gang during that winter ordeal.

Our lot in modern life is not so bad....my new place has an LP fueled generator that automatically kicks in if the power fails, seamlessly, so you don't even have to restart the computers. House stays comfortable from top to bottom with even programmed heat, and it is pretty easy now days to work from home so you don't get behind when you can't make it to the office. A far cry from frozen cattle watering tanks, wheelbarrowing cow manure out and piling it up until spring comes, shoveling the snow out of free-range hog lot fences etc. All the fun stuff of my youth that made me who I am today. And giving the old H farmall a shot of ether and hoping it would start to clean the driveway for the milk truck so you could get the milk to market. Seems like a life someone else lived, and I am glad that it was not for that many years for me.

Whenever I drive by an ethanol plant and see the clouds billowing.....heck, I can see them from home most days....I am reminded of how prosperity actually came to the midwest and am appreciative of the win-win of ethanol fuel. Think of what farming would be like without the ethanol market, and what the coming 15 percent mandate means. In fairness, Trump really wasn't a friend of ethanol. He was a big oil guy, and that has a place too. 

[lsc76cat]

All those years of doing chores in all kinds of weather makes one appreciate that Grandma is warm and cozy.  I went out in the garage twice yesterday and that was bad enuf.

[BA Deere]

😀  Those old Farmalls like H`s and M`s were sure good starters in the winter "rrrr....  rrrr........rrr..................................rrr tut tut tut   varoom! " and that was 6 volt, if it had 12 volt, you were golden.   We had a F-20 for chores, tea kettle of hot water on the carburetor and a couple cranks and they would fire, depending on the condition of the magneto.  

I follow Kevin Mason a historian with interesting stories.  Hope he doesn`t mind if I give him a little plug on here.  Imagine now, this was 90 yrs ago, a grain of sand in time and now we talk about $30,000 farmland like this will never end (it might not, what do I know) 

https://www.notesoniowa.com/post/iowa-history-daily-december-21-iowa-falls-bank-failures   

snip

Although the stock market crashed in 1929, hard times hindered Iowans starting in 1926 when average input costs for things like equipment, seed, taxes, and other expenses crept below the breakeven point. From 1926 to 1930, the average farmer paid 35% over income to try and scratch out a successful crop. By 1932 the average Iowa farmer paid 50% over income by the end of harvest.   

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It looks like they are raking corn into a threshing machine, it sure isn`t a 1200 Minneapolis-Moline sheller  😀   Those are some nice looking pre-hybrid corn ears.

[CR9060]

Global Warming! Of course!

[roarintiger1]

If our President would’ve just waited, Britney Griner could’ve ended up in Iowa without a prisoner exchange.