Anything worth doing is worth doing badly!

  For years I attempted to teach seminarians, staff and others the truth that 'anything worth doing is worth  doing badly.'  This is a very important truth and one that can ameliorate the damage done by the pernicious idea foisted on many unsuspecting youth that 'anything worth doing is worth doing well.'  That's a very destructive idea that is often paired with other unhelpful advice like 'you can do it, it's easy.'  Now after hearing that why would any child try?  If he/she fails it's a double failure because he/she has been told 'it's easy' so failing is proof he/she is really incompetent.
  So what's wrong with 'anything worth doing is worth doing well?'   It's a prescription for perfectionism.  Initial attempts at anything significant are going to be very imperfect so if the person had been given permission to do it badly he/she would be more likely to persist until it may be done well.
  Let me share a personal experience that makes my point.  When I was in the Marines a few of us were recruited to help paint a married Marine's apartment.  I had no previous painting experience but was given a brush, a can of paint and told to paint that wall.  A few minutes after I began painting the Marine whose apartment we were painting came over to see how I was doing.  He watched me a few minutes and then said "Al, why don't you go buy the beer?"   I got the message.  Thinking I had to be able to do it well I avoided painting after that and to this day I've hardly painted anything.
   This all came to mind yesterday when the Curmudgeon said to the Curmudgeonette "let's wash the windows."  The way this works out is that the Curmudgeon washes and the Curmudgeonette points out streaks and missed spots.  The Curmudgeon operates from an 'anything worth doing is worth doing badly' perspective while the Curmudgeonette assumes 'anything worth doing is worth doing well.'  Besides every window should graphically show both before and after.  (Yes, being on the 15th floor does require a long ladder.)  
  But the windows are clean (more or less) and Curmudgeon and Curmudgeonette are marching toward their Golden Wedding Anniversary.

The egg lady said. "I didn't get a number."

  Saturday A & MQ had their acreage sale.  The house, out buildings, and ten acres sold for $115,000.  It was an old two bedroom in good shape.  The consensus at the sale was that it was a fair price.
  A&M had loved there many years and are downsizing to an apartment.  It was a perfect day for a sale.  It rained during the night so farmers couldn't be in the field but by sale time the sun was out, there was nice breeze and the temperature was very comfortable
  The egg lady, from whom I buy fresh eggs for $1.25 a dozen, said "I didn't get a bidding number" when I asked her what she bought.  "That's smart I said"  thinking that would keep one from impulse buying.
  I did have a number and the first thing I bought was a tap and die set, look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls if you don't know what it is.  The second purchase I made was a gift for the curmudgeonette; a recliner.  That was followed by a belt pulley. Perhaps that's what led me astray!  Because my next purchase was a tractor to go with the pulley;  a 1950 IHC Farmall M.  Then I left the sale.

Adventures in the corn field!

  Perhaps the field spraying is just not supposed to be finished.  Friday I loaded up the  4-wheeler with sprayer and drove to the field.  However, at the field the 4-wheeler wouldn't start.  So, those last thirteen rows remain unsprayed. The corn will soon to be too tall to spray.
  With the sprayer uncooperative I switched to cultivating which I accomplished with a few difficulties.  The fuel filter plugged once so I had to blow that out.  One shovel fell off  which I was lucky enough to find and replace. The tractor ran hot so I had to cultivate in 3rd gear instead of 4th. There was much new weed growth so it was helpful to get it done.
  The rain gauge at the field showed 2.2"  which came in three showers since I last cultivated...ideal!

Father's Day!

Father's Day was grand with LN, LN, MT, Mai-Evy and here for dinner.  The Curmudgeonette cooked the last of the pheasants from the freezer and a good time was had by all and Al too.  Mai-Evy's dad took a couple of pics that I like so I'll include with this post.  I'll also include one from her ND trip.

Pheasant Report.

 The winter of '10-'11 was devastating for pheasants; long, cold and lots of snow.  It was followed by an exceedingly wet spring which was devastating for pheasant nesting success.  Consequently the pheasant population was down significantly in SDak.
  The winter of '11-'12 had almost no snow and nesting conditions this year have been grand.  In conversation with a local farmer, DM, this week he reported seeing two hens that together had 54 chicks!  He had also seen a brood that were old enough that they were able to fly. Those were exceptionally large broods and those fliers were a very early hatch.

PS to Spillville

  Leaving Spillville we drove a few miles to Festina which boasts the world's smallest church which seats 8 people. It was built in 1848 by a pious woman who promised God that if her son would return safely from a war in Russia she'd build a church.  He did and she did.  Iowa is full of treasures!

Adventures in the cornfield.

  Last year my corn grew with relatively few weeds. That lulled me into complacency.  So I planted some sorghum with the corn.  The corn is genetically modified so allow spraying with Roundup. However, the sorghum is not Roundup ready.  This year there is a bumper crop of weeds; Canada Thistle, Sunflower, Foxtail and Cockle-burr.
   The weed specialist, JW, at the Sinai Cooperative Elevator recommended Moxy, the generic form of Bucktill. With a borrowed four wheel sprayer from WN I was off. All went well until, with 13 rows left, the four wheeler died. Unable to restart it I decided to let it cool its jets and took out the 1950 JD B with the mounted two row cultivator.
  Now, if I was a real farmer, I'd probably have waited a few days from spraying to cultivating.  But with rain clouds in the south west and a desire to get back to Mpls. I set to cultivating.  With more than enough weeds to go around I thought it better to get it done.
  All was going swimmingly, with only 4 rows left, the right side of the cultivator fell off the tractor.  Nothing broke.  The nut came off the main bold holding it on.  The cultivator twisted in a way that I could not move.  So, there I was in the field with two disabled machines.
  Ah, the utility of cell phones, soon WN came to my rescue.  We fixed the cultivator and loaded the 4 wheeler into his pickup and I completed the cultivating. Back at home WN fixed the 4 wheeler and I was all set to finish spraying in the morning.  When I awakened to thunder and a nice rain I decided the spraying would have to wait.

In 1928 a million dollars was a lot of money!

 We took a little IA tour over the last weekend.  We visited the curmudgeonette's college roommate, the curmudgeon's Marine Corps buddy and his ministry partner and took in Zion Davenport's 150th anniversary. A rich trip with a significant serendipity.
  The serendipity happened because the roommate, who lives in Decorah, keeps local tourist information in her guest bedroom.  We had a day to travel from Decorah to Iowa City, approximately 135 mile trip.  In that tourist information was an article about Spillville, IA. which is only a few miles from Decorah.
  I'd known for years that Antonin Dvorak spent a summer in Spillville and had written some of his music there.  It was also common knowledge that there were some clocks in Spillville.  So, with a little time on our hands, we took a very slight detour to see the museum.  But I wasn't prepared for what we found.
  The Bily (pronounced Beely) brothers, Joseph and Frank, sons of Czech immigrants indeed carved clocks. The first floor of the museum is filled with their clocks.  Upstairs is the Dvorak displays in the building in which the Dvoraks lived the summer of 1893.
  But those clocks, how can one describe the carving and mechanisms?  Stupendous?  Significant enough that Henry Ford offered a million dollars for one of them in 1928!  And the brothers wouldn't sell it.  They planned to give them to their sister but when she died prematurely they were set to burn them.  A neighbor intervened and they were placed in the museum in Spillville on the condition that they never leave town.  The Smithsonian Museum would love to have them but they cannot be moved.
  Oh, yes, the brothers never traveled more than 35 miles from home.

Goodbye for the summer!

Noble's last day of school is Friday but today was my last time 'till fall.  It was a walking field trip to a park and to the Dairy Queen in Robinsdale.  The students and teachers have become very special to me and I look forward to seeing them again this fall.  I do wonder if I will see any of them at Farmer's Market over the summer. My 'thank you' gifts to the teachers were copies of Kao Kalia Yang's The Latehomecomer. They were all familiar with the book but none had read it. I recommend it.

Fifty years and one day!

 The day went by and it didn't dawn on me what an important anniversary it was.  Important enough so at one time I used it as a way of remembering my wedding anniversary. On June 4, 1962, I was honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps, fifty years ago yesterday.
  After two years in California, most of which was at Camp Pendleton, and a year in Asia I was due for discharge when our ship docked.  The papers should have been prepared aboard ship, the USS Princeton, so that I could of been released as soon as we landed.  That wasn't done so I had to wait, and eventually bribe some clerk, to get them typed.
  In Los Angeles, CA.,  I bought a 1954 Austin Healey, drove to San Francisco and picked up EV.  Then we drove up the coast to the Seattle's World Fair.  From the Fair we went to my cousin LN in Port Angeles.  From there EV went back to San Francisco and I drove home to South Dakota accompanied by my cousin's son PN.  It was great to be home again, the first time in two years! 

Cultivating Corn.

  While I was cultivating corn June 1, remembering that I planted on June 10, last year, I was again struck by what a slow process it is.  This year it was almost trouble free, no tractor failure, etc., and yet the rate was 1.25 acres an hour.  At points it seemed forever yet it was only a few hours.  Memories came back of all the hours I spent cultivating during my youth.
  It also made me think of my father.  He was a horse man and came to tractors late. In 1941 he bought his first tractor, all 17 horse power of it, a Farmall B. With this and a team of horses he farmed until after the war he bought a Farmall H...1948 I think.  How did he do it?  By spending hours and hours in the field.
  Perhaps he should never have been a farmer.  Born in 1883 he moved as infant with his parents to a homestead in SD.  The oldest of four children, perhaps farming was assumed.  He was a very intelligent man with wide curiosity and he loved to read.  His education consisted of a few years, maybe 6, of a few months a year, in the same one room school I attended much later.  He did take a short agricultural course as SD State one winter.
  What did he think about during those thousands of hours in the field?  My first bishop, Elmo Agrimson, said not to underestimate farmers who had all those hours to think.  My few hours in the field gave me a renewed appreciation for what he patiently endured to make a living.