Riverbend Journal

  Due to other circumstances, we have decided that this past year was our last year for our farm garden and we are proceeding full steam ahead on our urban garden. The radish crop was a success until the local deer population made it a failure so the fence solution is tucked away in the building in this picture to be installed first thing in the spring. With the lack of additional nutrients added to the soil with the decimation of our radish crop, I looked around for sources of composted manure. We have some on the farm but it would require a lot of effort and time to get it up to here and scattered out. The farm compost is also full of weed seeds which guarantees a lot more future effort in weeding, for weeds types currently not a problem behind our house.  So after scouting around, I walked into the last place that had any of it in bags still available and bought all they had, 95 bags worth. I carted the bags down and scattered them out using the wheelbarrow and then my kids...

Image Creator by Bing A.I. I love to read and reading is my choice of time diversion. People often see me reading out in public and comment about how they should have brought a book. They are of course being polite and never read books but I on the other hand, never go anywhere without one. I just keep it with me and whenever a few minutes presents itself, I'll open it up and read. It is something I treasure doing the older I get. But the world is always against me it seems. Just the other day, I had my vehicle in for servicing at our local dealership. Normally I go into the showroom floor where there is a bench in the corner and read instead of the provided waiting room. It is always full of people loudly talking about the most inane of subjects, watching a blaring television or playing games or videos (with sound on loudly) on their phones. It is always quiet in the far corner of the showroom. But I had the first appointment of the day and the waiting room, with it's nicer pa...

  My youngest daughter's teacher started assigning her and one other girl extra projects at school. Since they are both top in their class, she is doing so to challenge them and keep them interested in learning. Her first assignment was to collaborate and do a slide slow presentation on school 100 years ago. When I learned of the assignment, my mind immediately gravitated to this picture which I scanned in a handful of years ago. My great grandmother is seated in the second row far left (from the camera vantage point and not the front of the room) and the picture is probably 105 years old at that point. So I found it and sent it to my youngest daughter to include in her slide show. It could have been the end but I found myself inspecting it further now that I had it pulled up. The buttons on the boys clothing appear to be really large compared to modern standards. All the girls and boys have their collars buttoned all the way up and two of the girls appear to have some sort of bow ...

  A.I. generated picture I got from typing in "celebrating Thanksgiving with fellow bloggers in the style of Dali." I thought it appropriate to head this post. With my extended family deceased and my immediate family scattered across this country, our Thanksgivings recently have been pretty low key. This year will be no exception. As years go by, we tend to focus more on giving back to our community and others over celebrating the holiday for ourselves. I belong to a fraternal organization that does periodic fund raisers throughout the year. One of the things we raise money for is to create Thanksgiving boxes for those in need. We usually get a ham and all the traditional fixings for a dinner, put it in a box and then give them to another organization that deals specifically with a certain clientele within our community. Many of their clients have mental issues. Others are destitute and just can't get to other places that serve the needy on that particular day. This year,...

  My wife's employer has always given all their employees a turkey. This year for reasons I didn't hear, my wife brought home two turkeys. As normal, they give them to us way early and so I have to debate on what to do with them until our American Thanksgiving day rolls around. This year, the birds were given to us two weeks early. I ended up putting them into our refrigerator which was no small feat and letting them thaw out. They were fully thawed out and ready to cook 9 days before Thanksgiving and so I decided to do the next best thing. I smoked both of them and they are resting on the counter as seen above cooling. When they cool, I will carve them up and freeze them. Then a day or two before Thanksgiving, I can just thaw them and reheat everything in the oven before eating, perhaps leaving the other bird still frozen and awaiting a rainy day. I'm not sure how long I've been smoking turkeys but it has been for a long time. I suspect it coincided when I was gifted t...

  A.I. Generated Artwork Every once in awhile, a story comes along that surprises me. I was talking with family about past tenants of our farm land over the years and we got to talking about land owned by a particular family. I have found old pictures of their homestead and we were looking at one of those pictures of the various buildings and geographic features. It was casually brought up that the tenant built a pond behind the house and to create fish habitat, sank a Model T in the middle.  Although I haven't in several decades, I have fished in that pond before though I don't remember any lure snags or even fish stories. But it certainly got my mind wandering about what if anything remains of that Model T. Wouldn't it be neat to dig it out? Looking at old aerial photographs, the pond didn't exist in 1960 but did in 1970 so it is somewhere north of 50 years sunk at this point. In reality, I suspect the Model T was thoroughly shot before it was sunk into the pond and w...

  In my genealogy pursuits, nothing has been more difficult to track down than my 3rd great grandmother Mary Meyer's parents. It is my shortest branch of my family tree and it would tickle me to no end to someday be able to extend it at least a notch or two further. Briefly, Mary Meyer married my 3rd great grandfather John Kuck and died at age 42 in a diphtheria pandemic along with five of her seven children. Because of her short life span and the frequent moves this family did during their 19 years of marriage, there are few records and none of them help me in identifying her parents. So casting a net, I have looked over the course of years for other Meyers who were born in Switzerland that were in and around the Galena, Illinois/Dubuque, Iowa area around 1860 who are of the right age to have been her parents. Mary may have immigrated alone as she was between 18 and 23 at the time of her marriage depending on which source I use for that fact, but I find this fairly rare and I have...

In total, I ended up spending four days cutting sprouts out of places they shouldn't be and replacing terrace tile risers to the places that they should be. Along the way, I saw five eagles fighting for dinner over a deer carcass resting in one of the fields.  It was a long ways from this field where there is a world class eagle nest up at the top that probably weights hundreds of pounds in construction material. It's been a few years since I've been around during eaglet raising time to see if it is still being used but I'm guessing the answer is yes. It was nice to see all the corners of the farm again and not once, was I ever bored. Quitting time just seemed to arrive way to early every day. I understand why farmers never leave the land, at least short of a body bag. I nearly got caught myself while looking for a wayward tile riser in tall canary grass. I somehow snagged either my pants or shoelaces on a hidden fence post and spent what felt like 2 minutes frantically...

  This year my brother couldn't make it up for our annual few days spend on the farm driving through all the fields and doing necessary maintenance now that the crops are out. So on this particular day, it was a solo endeavor and I most enjoyed myself. I had my isotunes headphones on playing some music and muffling the noise of the Polaris Ranger I was driving that contained all the necessary gear for the maintenance. One of the key jobs is to check the terrace intake tubes. These perforated orange tubes are put in low spots of the field, with large terraces that funnel any excess water towards them. These tubes then funnel the water underneath the fields to somewhere lower on the edge of the field where the water can be released again. This prevents excess dirt from being washed away if the water was left to run freely. The tall grassed that help filter any sediment out before reaching the outflow pipes can sometimes obscure them causing them to be run over and knocked down by far...

  The stars aligned and last Friday, my wife and kids joined me on another fishing expedition to the pond that is slowly draining out and probably in danger of freezing up completely this winter and killing all its resident fish. On my prior solo trip, the fishing had been spectacular and I wanted my children and wife the same. With four poles in the water, I thought we would catch all we cared to clean in minutes but for some reason the bass weren't biting for the longest time. I was beginning to think perhaps I had caught them all the last trip when like a switch, they began biting. I could barely keep up with unhooking large bass from the poles of my wife and children. Great fun and lots of squeals of delight abounded. In less than 2 hours, we had 13 large bass and one large bluegill and called it a day, probably a year.  Back home, I fileted the fish out and froze 3/4ths of them for later eating. The heads were saved for fish head soup. The skin and bones went into a large...

After fixing my tablesaw fence, I set about winterizing the garage. This meant mostly getting my snow blower from it's place in the corner and putting it in the center of the back wall of the garage so I can retrieve it for use clearing the driveway without pulling either of the vehicles out of their snug places in the garage. All the summer garden hoses, produce wagon, buckets and other things get tucked in the now vacant corner where they are out of way until spring when I reverse the process.  With that done, I set my eyes on prepping for the next project. Some may recall that last year, I did the great bedroom swap. My eldest moved downstairs to the MIL suite, my MIL moved up to my youngest room and the youngest moved into the eldest room. As part of that swap, I had to replace the carpet in the new MIL room upstairs and took the opportunity to start redoing the laminate flooring downstairs in the now eldest bedroom.  Over the years, I've touched every room and just about ...

  Above is the workhorse of my wood working projects, a table saw. I had an old Craftsman from the early days and it was a fine saw though a bit on the under powered sign. I would still have it today if it wasn't for it's miter slot system. Any accessories that used the miter slots, or slots cut across the table top, had to use their proprietary T-slot system which was expensive, didn't allow one to easily make jigs for various jobs and was impossible to adjust to any sort of accuracy. So not quite a decade ago, I upgraded to this Rigid hybrid table saw with normal miter slots like everyone else. It is a hybrid because it looks and has the functionality of a cabinet style table saw but has casters that when pressed into use, can allow you to easily move the saw around your shop like a contractor style saw. For those who don't understand these terms, thing of it as the best of two different worlds put together. It was a perfect fit for my shop and I have made many jigs t...

  A.I. generated photo of the USPS losing my mail in the style of Dali My last grandparent passed away this summer and because she happened to be my maternal grandmother and my mother is also deceased, I received a 25% share of my grandmother's estate. Her estate was almost entirely in an Edward Jones account and her financial adviser is doing a fine job of dividing up the assets between my uncle, brother and I. But it hasn't been without a couple hiccups along the way. Many of the assets were life insurance policies rolled over under an annuity umbrella. Now that the time has come to collect on these policies, I've been surprised at hour forthright the insurance companies have been in notifying us of policies but how difficult it has been to get an actual check sent.  Despite a will, executor and the controlling entity of one of the policies, Edward Jones, dictating that the check be made out to the estate and sent to the Edward Jones office dividing up said estate, the in...

  Thirty years ago, a friend of mine called my dorm room asking if I wanted to go see a new band in a small bar/eatery on campus. I agreed and as we walked in, the first song I heard them play was a cover song by John Prine called "Angel From Montgomery." Even back then, few had ever heard of John Prine and certainly nobody my age so it really grabbed my attention that these two young kids were now singing it to the crowd of which I was a part. The night went on and I really enjoyed their music enough that I soon purchased their debut CD. I no longer recall if it was available then or came about soon after but I do know, that was one of their first concerts The Nadas ever performed. Thirty years later, at a concert my wife took me too for my birthday, they announced they would be playing a 30th birthday show back in the state where I live and we both thought it might be nice to attend. We never bought tickets though as it was a long way off. Then a new farm-to-table restauran...