What Are You Doing Today?

[Hedi Mitchell]

North Carolina, paradise. Where my heart lives while my body lives in Florida....

I feel your pain .. I miss Texas,,but not all the traffic, and other bad stuff.

 

[Marie Miller]

I've got a Black & Decker Workmate (portable work bench) that I've had for 50 years. It's been real handy no matter where I've lived. The one challenge to doing driveway projects is that the tools end up getting scattered all over the place...tape measures, squares, screwdrivers, drills, bits, screws, saws...they're either in the way on the work surface or they're laid all over the ground so you're tripping on them and can't find what you want.

I went to do a project today and decided that I'd finally add some removable shelves to the darned thing so there's a place to put tools where I can find them and keep them out of the way and off of the ground. It makes a big difference. I should have done this a long time ago.

I will show this to SO. One of those things has been around here forever. Uses go from workbench to serving table.

 

[Marie Miller]

I feel your pain .. I miss Texas,,but not all the traffic, and other bad stuff.

Heidi, what do you miss about Texas?

 

[Marie Miller]

Grass got cut. SO discovered the little beastie is self propelled. I got all the wood work in the half bath shining like new. Merlot with Voltaren or more Merlot?

 

[John Brunner]

I will show this to SO. One of those things has been around here forever. Uses go from workbench to serving table.

I put a couple of small blocks under the top shelf to prevent it from sliding in either direction. I felt silly I had waited so long to do this because the bottom seems to be set up to drop a shelf in it.

 

[Connie Bennett]

Except for feeding the horses and unloading 15 gallons of farm diesel from the Saturn, I have been a beached whale today.

Early Tomorrow, Friday, hay is being delivered and stacked. I pay premium price for premium hay and for them to stack it

This year I have to pay a big fuel surcharge because the hay is 47 miles away. We all know who to thank for that, so I will leave it at that

The surcharge means I had to cut my hay purchase down to 105 bales. I still have ~30 bales from last year so hopefully that’s enough until spring 2027. There are only two horse on grazing 19 great acres…….

The very nice (NOT) County RE appraiser saw fit to increase every landowner’s value so they could collect more money without raising the tax rate. My property value tripled —-TRIPLED. I will say I have not been solicited to sell my property since that happened . I am still considering putting this in a conservancy if it would qualify.

 

[John Brunner]

Except for feeding the horses and unloading 15 gallons of farm diesel from the Saturn, I have been a beached whale today.

Early Tomorrow, Friday, hay is being delivered and stacked. I pay premium price for premium hay and for them to stack it

This year I have to pay a big fuel surcharge because the hay is 47 miles away. We all know who to thank for that, so I will leave it at that

The surcharge means I had to cut my hay purchase down to 105 bales. I still have ~30 bales from last year so hopefully that’s enough until spring 2027. There are only two horse on grazing 19 great acres…….

The very nice (NOT) County RE appraiser saw fit to increase every landowner’s value so they could collect more money without raising the tax rate. My property value tripled —-TRIPLED. I will say I have not been solicited to sell my property since that happened . I am still considering putting this in a conservancy if it would qualify.

I've heard of folks contesting those heinous increases, Connie. It's worth a try. Such increases been going on around me (3 adjacent counties, butnot so much my county) and I'm concerned because I have over 50 acres. It's large enough that I get a discount for registering it and promising to keep it in its existing state (don't develop it.)

 

[Mary Stetler]

I've heard of folks contesting those heinous increases, Connie. It's worth a try. Such increases been going on around me (3 adjacent counties, butnot so much my county) and I'm concerned because I have over 50 acres. It's large enough that I get a discount for registering it and promising to keep it in its existing state (don't develop it.)

The problem is that people have been willing to PAY that insane amount for land etc. I think prices will fall eventually because not everyone can afford them. But farmland is at a premium around here. That is why the small farmers are quitting. That and the kids don't want to be farmers any more.

 

[John Brunner]

The problem is that people have been willing to PAY that insane amount for land etc. I think prices will fall eventually because not everyone can afford them. But farmland is at a premium around here. That is why the small farmers are quitting. That and the kids don't want to be farmers any more.

My old place in the northern Virginia suburbs of DC sold for close to $500,000 for the 1/3 acre lot with a house that had to be torn down and disposed of. The buyers put a new home on it more aligned with all the McMansions that had replaced homes like mine in the neighborhood. When I left there in 2010, my property taxes were under $5,000/year. I happened to look a couple of weeks ago, and the taxes on the new place are $15,000/year!! The taxes on my current house on 51 acres are way less than what I paid on the old place 16 years ago... for now.

Regarding farmers selling out: If someone offered me an amount equal to 10 generations of best-case farming profit--guaranteed--with no work and no risk, I know what I would do.

 

[Hoot Crawford]

Will head up to the nursing home to see my lady friend later, then to my heart doc's office so a technician from the pacemaker company can make sure things are okay, and are going tick tock instead of tock tick

 

[Hedi Mitchell]

@Marie Miller , there is not enough time to mention them all...but what family I have left, the medical doctors and practices they use vs here. My shops I could drive to in a few minutes, vs too much travel time here to get any where. My Texas wine, Blue Bell ice cream and Mrs Baird bread

 

[Marie Miller]

@Marie Miller , there is not enough time to mention them all...but what family I have left, the medical doctors and practices they use vs here. My shops I could drive to in a few minutes, vs too much travel time here to get any where. My Texas wine, Blue Bell ice cream and Mrs Baird bread

As you have family in Texas why not visit?

 

[Marie Miller]

Driving to Tulsa to hopefully find a round kitchen table at a store associated with Amish furniture producers.

 

[Beth Gallagher]

@Marie Miller , there is not enough time to mention them all...but what family I have left, the medical doctors and practices they use vs here. My shops I could drive to in a few minutes, vs too much travel time here to get any where. My Texas wine, Blue Bell ice cream and Mrs Baird bread

Plus... Texas is home.

 

[Beth Gallagher]

Seems like it has been raining for the past month and it's still pouring today. Guess I won't be playing in the backyard so I might as well dust something and clean the bathrooms. Ugh.

 

[John Brunner]

@Marie Miller , there is not enough time to mention them all...but what family I have left, the medical doctors and practices they use vs here. My shops I could drive to in a few minutes, vs too much travel time here to get any where. My Texas wine, Blue Bell ice cream and Mrs Baird bread

For neatly 50 years, I lived in a suburban area where there were several strip malls, grocery stores, restaurants, etc. within 1 mile of my home. I moved to a rural area over 15 years ago and put more miles on my truck the first year here than I had in the previous 5 years living in the suburbs up north. The nearest stores are a 16 mile round trip (probably not as far as you drive) and options are limited. I make a 50 mile round trip every week to grocery shop because the quality of the produce there is not as bad as it is closer to home (it's still not real good, but it doesn't suck.) I make an 80 mile round trip every month to pick up a specialty prescription from a compounding pharmacy, but at least the grocery stores are top-notch. Before that pharmacy location opened up I was making a 150 mile monthly round trip to their main location.

It's an interesting perspective shift. Anywhere in the surrounding counties are now my "neighborhood." The funny thing is that my long trips here take no more time than short trips in my prior congested hometown, so the driving is way more enjoyable/less stressful. Even commuter hours are pleasant.

 

[John Brunner]

Yesterday I fashioned a booster rest for my feet on my zero turn, as well as a booster block for the pedal to raise and lower the deck. The machine is an imperfect ergonomic fit for me (or at 5'9" I'm shorter than average), so I gotta sit too far back (in order to pull the control levers in full reverse) for my feet to reach. And the deck weighs over 600#, so you practically have to stand on the pedal to budge it. The blocks fix all of that.

I uninstalled the blocks this morning and have the first coat of black lacquer paint drying, so they look "factory." Then I'm gonna put some self-adhesive non-slip tape on them.

 

[Connie Bennett]

My hay got delivered by 8:30 AM They did stack it the way I asked but every other suggestion went right out the window

I asked them to take the push broom and sweep the loose hay off the trailer straight back off the end of the trailer into the yard. I would shovel up what I wanted, feed it to the horses and just mow the rest of it back into the ground. That didn’t happen. It got pushed off the side of the trailer onto the driveway and then raked into the barn.

It was a different driver & stackers from the previous two years. He claims to have driven semi for Walmart, but he didn’t know how to jackknife the trailer around the side of the barn so the kids could just offload the hay right into the barn. I was half tempted to ask if he wanted me to do it, but I kept quiet. I have done it several times with the dually and the bumper pull race car trailer. Their rig was longer but it was a 5th wheel so jackknifing it would have been easy.

I have folks, including the new farrier, tell me I should play Deliverance music coming up from either direction.

The driver had commented he wasn’t sure he was gonna be able to make the bend coming up the last hill to get here. I said I knew you’d make it because you’re not 60 feet long — anything 60 feet or longer cannot make it up either end of this road to the top of the hill.

Then there was getting the rig out my driveway lol lol. I told him he could go out the opposite way. That it would be a little bit better, but not much, and that he would have a tight turn leaving because there is barbed wire fence directly across my road, which is barely more than one lane. So the answer to that was he painfully backed that trailer out my driveway, barely missing my water box by three or 4 inches. And thankfully missing the neighbor’s mailbox.

All this from a 60 something-year-old man who professes to be a retired semi driver. I guess maybe he is only used to interstates, backing straight into a dock and pulling straight out again.

They were all very nice. I tipped them because they did stack my hay the way I requested, but by golly following instructions was difficult for everybody. That was something new for me. I’m used to farm help knowing what to do with me just pointing and grunting but that wasn’t the case today.

Good farm help is hard to find. It will be something if these folks make it to the end of haying season.

 

[Krystal Shay]

Good farm help is hard to find.

Isn’t that the truth! I still have some family that are farmers. They can’t get summer help from high school kids anymore. No kid wants to work out in the heat long hours and get dirty, nor do they want to work weekends. I remember when my brother was in high school jumping at a job putting up hay all summer long, as were his friends. Maybe because the farmer would give all the boys a couple of cold beers at the end of the day. But of course, some of these boys stayed at the owners farm, if the weather conditions were in their favor; working sunrise to sunset. Heck, I use to help stack straw bales on the wagon at my Grandparents farm, as a kid, plus so much more. They didn't care about child labor laws.

 

[Mary Stetler]

I've been looking at my hay field which I free leased to a neighbor years ago. He shallow tilled in some alfalfa/timothy in with whatever was wild out there. I intended to take some, as it was offered to start with, after baling, but he always waits too long to cut it and I don't think my animals would eat it. He feeds it to 'beefers'.
So for years I would buy my hay at auction from people who had it loaded on a truck instead of a trailer because they are generally the guys who would deliver and unload it for me. But my old hay guy has taken pity on me. His hay quality is consistently good and he doesn't want to go far to sell his hay any more. I don't need much as I did when I had horses and cows. But I am close and I don't cause paperwork.