My Man Card....Revoked?

I was on a call with a customer today and she asked me who I was rooting for (in the Superbowl.)  Yikes, I had to admit that while I actually do know who is playing this year (thank you Jay Leno) I have not watched a single game this year.  So, in an attempt to retain my man card, I shall now describe my manly activities:

• Last night I hotwired my tractor (can't find the key doggone it) and used the front end loader to flip my bushog (PTO-operated field mower) over so I could use my grinder to sharpen the blades.  You see, in traditional farming, the winter is the time to work on the implements to get them prepped for the summer season.)
• Today I spent the day flipping between my binoculars and the scope on my 30.06 trying to coordinate with a coyote so that he would stop for a moment while he was on my property and I had my rifle up with him sighted in the scope.  At the end of the day, he had only stepped onto one small corner of our lot for a brief moment - I had no shot.  But I do have a call and I will get him one day.
• Tomorrow I am going to buy an (almost antique) sickle-bar mower.  It is essentially a gigantic (7-foot wide) set of clippers like your barber uses.  It mounts on the tractor and cuts hay in a hedgetrimming-type of fashion.  Since it just cuts each blade once (rather than beating each piece into a million pieces like my rotary bushhog mower) that grass can then be gathered up and saved as hay.  I have been wanting to do this for some time now.  

Is that enough?  Should I go spit or something?

OK, one final thing, this video is just plain hilarious - I found it while surfing Youtube looking for video about coyote hunting.  This is the "best shot ever" taken:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu9bmEKysos

Ol' Betsy

Great news from a study in England, our milk cow Betsy is predestined for greatness.  Observe:

The researchers found that farmers who named their cows Betsy or Gertrude or Daisy improved their overall milk yield by almost 500 pints (284 liters) annually.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/01/29/happy.cows.milk/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Fixing the Nation's Financial Crisis

I'm not sure of what Obama plans to do, but this guy Joseph E. Stiglitz pretty much has me convinced. His article on how to fix the financial crisis can be summarized with this one single quote:

To be sure, shareholders and bondholders will lose out, but their gains under the current regime come at the expense of taxpayers. In the good years, they were rewarded for their risk taking. Ownership cannot be a one-sided bet.

In farming-related news, I made a bad judgement call today.  Let me set the scene:

• I had a gun in my hand
• I have been wanting to shoot some coyote
• I saw two coyotes on the neighbors pasture (it is leased to a guy who runs cattle on it)

I guess you can surmise the rest.  Anyhoo...I figure one of these days I'll get my call and lure one of them out in the open on our land and lay into him.

Welding

This has been a week of welding.  My dad brought his utility trailer over and we tore off a ton of old wood to reveal a rickety under-built frame.  We have been reinforcing, rebuilding, and replacing metal on the thing all week.  Every night I work on it for hours and hours and dad has come out to help several times as well.  It has been fun and I have been getting some serious welding time in (which is good because I can use the practice.)  

Unfortunately, I am starting to wonder if we mightn't rather should have just taken the axle off the thing and started from scratch.  It has been a lot of work and much of it was shoring up around where the old one was weak.  Anyway, tonight we pretty much got it finished (from a welding persepctive) so now it is on to paint and installing flooring (wood) and lights.  I think Jessica will be glad when it is done because we have been spending a LOT of time in the shop this week.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that the goose bailed the very next day.  We should have fricasee'd him before he had a chance.  Next time, we'll know what to do.

Improving the Tone

OK, I repent for the negative tone of my last post.  Unfortunately, as I felt guilty about it and decided to make a concilliatory post to undo the negativity and as I thought about positive things that have happened since then, the first thing that popped into my mind is that "he hasn't gotten us into a war yet."  OK....that is not really positive.  I'm not doing so well here.  So, here is some positive stuff and while it wasn't the first thing that popped into my head, it did eventually pop in there:

• "O" froze admin salaries in the white house over $100,000
• "O" took the oath over again to ensure that there would be no problems - a preemptive strike that was well-reasoned and implemented without fanfare
• "O" talks like he means well (I'm sure this is why he has received international support)
• The whitehouse new website looks great

How do ya like me now?

The "White Man"

First of all, I did not get the national poet's poem.  In fact, the prayer was far more of a poem to my untrained eye than the poet's was.  And speaking of the closing prayer, can I ask why (without being accused of being a racist - as I was by my wife) it is that the red man gets "ahead man," the yella man can get "mella," etc., but the white man has to "get right?"  Is it too much to ask to not get slammed during the closing prayer to our nation's inauguration?  

Gaggles

I've been talking recently to some buddies about how I find it strange that the Canada geese that we frequently see flying over us never stop at our lake like the migratory ducks do.  I have also thought about getting some domesticated geese just for the effect (and for a Christmas goose and an occasional goosegg.)

This morning, we have a very unexpected visitor and I (being a modified redneck) am at a quandry.  Do I kill him or feed him?

For killing:

Guaranteed goose for dinner

Yum

No goose poo 

One less animal to feed

He is very loud

Might attack the kids

For feeding:

Maybe he/she will stick around and be our new pet

It's cool to have a goose hanging around