Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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The time interval between snows and storms up here seems to be getting shorter. Last week our Monday snow arrived on Sunday; this week it arrived on Saturday. Mother Nature has taken this jumping ahead on the time to an insane level. She’s out of control. I don’t think we got that much more snow, but the 40 mph wind certainly made for some very deep and new drifts in our yard. In the space between the propane tanks and the lilac hedge just to the west of the tanks, the snow had shrunk to a depth of 18 to 24 inches. It’s now running 3 to 4 fee...
Can we all agree we hate the biannual time changes? “Losing” that hour each spring seems harder than “gaining” it back in the fall. In reality, all we are accomplishing is messing up everyone’s time schedules. It’s an arbitrary insult to all our systems. Even Mother Nature got thrown off her stride. Her regularly-scheduled Monday snowstorm arrived Sunday morning! My preference, if it counts for anything (and it doesn’t) would be to now and forever remain on daylight savings time year-round. I’m more than willing to have that hour be forever...
Depending upon how you view reading my musings, you’re either in luck, or doomed. There was no major snowstorm on this Monday morning, March 2, just wind. And that wind was more of a breeze than the major gale we experienced Sunday. It had been warm enough that the fresh snow from the week before partially melted and compacted, so very little of it moved in those gusting winds, although it was drifting across the highway closer to Opheim. It’s still whiter up here beyond the Middle of Nowhere than we’d like. Ah, well, spring is coming. The b...
It seems as though on Monday mornings (the time I take to write this column since it is due by noon, after all) Mother Nature decides to frown on us and deliver another helping of unwanted snow. It’s almost enough to make me want to discontinue writing a column, just to see if I’m the cause. Almost. But then I think of those of you who approach me when I’m in town to tell me you enjoy my scribblings. I do so like hearing those comments. Who wouldn’t? So here I am again. The extent of my gardening this week was to water my houseplants. And to...
We had planned to head to the Outpost Cafe in Opheim on Valentine’s Day for their steak and shrimp special. Mother Nature intervened, disrupting our plans with a short but intense snowstorm. Our home is only about 50 yards from the highway, but in the midst of this mini-blizzard that highway disappeared into a wall of white. We’ve been caught out on the roads after dark in blizzards before. It’s not an experience we care to repeat, so we stayed home. I found a package of rib steaks in the freezer. The defrost cycle on the microwave was emplo...
I’d copied a recipe from a magazine quite some time ago. It was held by a magnet on the exhaust fan cover above my stove top, where I saw it daily for months. I’d put it there so I’d be sure to try it. But there were ingredients I knew Dennis would balk at, so it continued to sit there. That visual reminder finally got to me when I had an epiphany. The thought of combining this with the chow mein recipe I’d gotten from his mom 40-some years ago entered my head, and that got me going. I’ll first give you both of the recipes, as originall...
I feel as though I don’t have much to talk about this week, but, being a woman, talk I will. We aren’t still in Florida, so there aren’t comparisons to be made between Montana and Florida flora. It’s a long time until spring returns, no matter what that groundhog (he’s a rodent, for heaven’s sake, not a meteorologist) says. The seed catalogs are showing up in droves in my mailbox, but I haven’t opened a single one. It’s much too early to start dreaming of days spent mucking in the dirt of my garden. I do have one more older amaryllis in bl...
While shopping for fresh fruits and veggies last Thursday, I was greeted by a friend in the grocers. He accused me of being the cause of coming bad weather. (We did get snow flurries, a bit of rain, more heavy snow, and strong winds Saturday, causing icy roads Sunday.) He claimed the weather always turns nasty upon the return of the snowbirds. I protested that title, as we’d only gone south for a short vacation. That encounter prompted me to look up the official definition of snowbird. There are three: 1) birds that winter in cold climates, e...
We are winding down our Florida sojourn. I am not looking forward to returning from this green semi-tropical paradise to our frozen white tundra. The grandsons had a weekend off from hockey, so we took advantage of that and visited a beach. Shark Tooth Beach, near Venice, Fla., has darker sand than other beaches we've been to on previous Florida trips. It's fossiliferous sand, formed from the sea life that was left behind when the waters receded millennia ago. Apparently, a lot of that sea life...
We're still vacationing in Florida, and watching lots of hockey. We did throw in a real circus last weekend. The contrast of the heat under the big top to the chill of ice arenas was similar to walking out of a warm home and into -30 degree temps. We ventured to Daytona on Jan. 12 to watch the middle grandson. He had two games: a tie and a big win. The youngest had games in Orlando. His dad took him. He is the goalie and notched a shut-out. The oldest played in Fort Myers and scored the winning...
We are in sunny Florida, visiting our middle daughter and her family. Don't be jealous. While it's sunny (for the most part - we did see lots of rain Saturday) and green, we're still experiencing some cold. But this cold is man-made. Our grandsons all play ice hockey. Maintaining ice here means lots of cold. The youngest grandson is seven. He is both a player and a goalie. In his jamboree yesterday, he only played goalie. He had four games, 20 minutes each, in Ellenton, spread over the entire...
Mother Nature gets a huge F for how it's treated us the past two holidays. I think we're all hoping the frost issues and power outages are over for good. I know the linemen (our heroes) hope the same. The continuous accumulation of frost over three days, while pretty, was dangerously destructive. In the spring, once the snow is gone, I'll be busy for quite a while constructing a new pile of broken tree limbs. I'm afraid it will be quite a large pile. I've wanted a small wood chopper for years....
Merry Christmas! Due to the holiday falling on “going to press” day, this column is being written very shortly after last week’s piece. I’m sure next week’s will be due early, as well. Strange thing about New Years always following Christmas by exactly one week, huh? It’s kind of like my very-young-at-the-time niece being amazed that her birthday fell on the same day EVERY year. The Courier is working on curing my strong tendency to procrastinate. It’s for my own good, really, that I have this push. I should officially thank them - but I won’t....
Just yesterday my husband noticed one of my older amaryllis bulbs is sending up a flowerbud. I have seven older ones sitting in their original pots in the south-facing dining room windows. I really should repot a few of those. They're splitting into multiple bulbs and distorting their plastic pots. They also have volunteer mother-of-a-thousand plants joining them. One even has a decent sized jade tree crowding it. My newest amaryllis, purchased this fall, is sitting in the kitchen, a bit...
Another week has come and gone. Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. The weather was not nice at all, so we stayed home, thankful for warmth, a well-stocked freezer, and each other. (We're also thankful for television.) I'd made both a candy apple and a chocolate pecan pie on Wednesday. Our plan had been to attend the community feast at the Outpost Cafe in Opheim, but the howling winds coupled with fresh powder and bad weather warnings changed our minds. I rustled through the freezer and...
Let me offer up apologies for those of you who may have missed a column from me last week. I did write one, but it was all recipes for the holidays. So the Courier rightly put it into the holiday recipe special. I hadn't even really thought about that possibility, so the error (if such it was) is all on my lack of judgment. We've had another 6-8" of heavy, wet snow in the past week. I've been reduced to "indoor gardening" again. I've had a philodendron plant for over eight years. It was a plant...
Editor's Note: This column was written on Nov. 4. Due to space, we had to hold the column over to this week's issue. We've had yet more rain and some snow. Most of the earlier snow has melted away, but flakes were in the air again this morning (Monday). There's a heavy frost, but most of the ground is clearly visible this morning as I write this. My gardening is now limited to trying to keep the plants I brought indoors alive. I can still do a bit of weeding as some are popping up in the...
We managed to knock off another 1,000 acres of wheat, with some help from a neighbor. The remaining 1,000 acres will not get done. It’s all basically feed wheat now anyway. What’s left is mostly on the ground, where it will remain. We have a couple blocks that are accessible by a very poor road, which is in such deplorable condition that we wouldn’t be able to get the truck over it. It’s not feasible to run the grain cart 3.5 miles one way to unload what grain we’d be able to scrape up. There will be a meeting with the crop adjuster early nex...
So when I wrote that harvest had been killed, I was wrong. It had merely been wounded, severely, but not dead. The resurrection has us back in the field, harvesting what's still standing tall enough to get, without risking picking up rocks with the header. We know the quality of the wheat took a huge hit, so the value of the crop isn't much. Prices were abysmal before. Now they'll be worse. But the more we take off the ground now, the less we'll have to deal with next summer. What's on the...
Editor's Note: This column was written on Oct. 7. Due to space, it was held over to this week's issue. We are done with worrying about our wheat crop. The snow and strong winds combined to finish it off. Most of it is broken off or lying on the ground. Now we wait to see if the crop insurers agree with us and how they'll treat us. I do still have tomatoes. Covering the plants with blankets and then with old truck tarps has kept the plants green. I think it helped a lot that the cages and stakes...
Now that this year's formerly promising crop has probably been ruined (the strong winds and heavy snow looked to be crushing it to the ground) we're regrouping and trying to think of a plan B...or plan C. The quality of the wheat is way down. It might be feed wheat, IF we can get it. Even though we knew this horrible weather was probably coming, the garden isn't finished. There were long days trying to combine the wheat, and then it was just wet and miserable outside. I wasn't going to pick...
We might have 25 percent of this year's crop in the bins now. Harvest is going to be a long, drawn-out affair. Dennis was born Sept. 25, 1950, and his mom tells us she and Dad were only half finished with harvest when her time came. We aren't even close to half done yet. Of course, the farm has grown these last 69 years, but so has the machinery, which has advanced such that considerably more can be done in a comparable amount of time. We are being held up by Mother Nature and her gifts of...
Another week had passed without any wheat being harvested. Unfortunately, there’s still more rain in the forecast. Granted, only small amounts are forecast, but it’s just enough to keep things from drying enough to go after our wheat. The humidity is so high there’s a heavy dew even on the dry days. It’s very frustrating to see your year’s work (and income) going bad in the fields and there isn’t anything you can do about it. As a friend who works in the weather service said to me, “Farmers! You all want rain until you don’t.” The g...
I was tempted to use last week’s report again this week. The rain is a bit of deja vu, although we were able to get some of the wheat crop in and binned. I’ve spent a few hours this last week out in the tractor hauling the grain cart between the combine and the semi parked at the end of whatever field we were working. The first afternoon (Wednesday) of combining was done without my help. He was just going to “try” it, and the tractor I use needed some repairs. So he trundled the combine back and forth to the truck while I stayed home. A call...
The weather seems as though it just doesn't want us to harvest our wheat. First the cool month of June delayed the start of the crop. Now the cool, wet August has delayed the ripening of the wheat. Yes, I know it's now September, but that cool, wet August is lingering. I want more summer. I'm not ready for fall. I'm afraid the wheat harvest is going to drag on until it seems like forever. The hours we can actually combine will be short. Last week I did manage to get all my onions and shallots...
