I’m going to start tonight by placing blame, because it’s never my fault. Really, I swear. OK, maybe sometimes, but not tonight. I’ll spread it around a bit, just to be fair. Actually, now that I think about it, it could be partially my fault. I had some time this evening while waiting for the alfalfa to pick up a dew so I can finish baling third cutting. Lord knows I have countless projects that need done, but I decided to do a little canning instead. So, on to the blame game.

First is Big Al. She’s got a new kitchen, she’s always posting amazing food she’s prepared, and to be honest, it gives me a serious case of culinary envy. Last time I envied her I ended up drunk, playing the piano, and singing to the dog. It wasn’t that bad this time.

Second is Marci. She’s canned enough amazing treats to survive at least two zombie apocalypses. It looks so easy. What could possibly go wrong.

Next is my lovely bride. She didn’t actually do anything to deserve this except love jalapeno jelly. I’m looking at my little jalapeno plant yesterday and I thought it would be nice to make her some, just because I kind of like her.

Finally, and the true culprit, would be Laurel. I didn’t have enough peppers to make a batch so I asked her to stop by the farmer’s market and pick some up. And this, my friends, is where the story takes the turn.

She got the prettiest little jalapenos, but that’s not all. I think the veggie stand must have had some trouble moving one of the other varieties today, so Laurel came home with a half dozen ‘Infernos’. I do believe that they might be the most appropriately named peppers on the market.

I couldn’t waste them though. I could actually feel myself channeling my grandmother. Don’t waste anything, use everything but the moo. So, I chopped them up and threw them in. I’m a slow learner, most of you know that. My fingers started tingling a little when I cut them up. It made me sneeze, which made me wipe my nose, which made my eyes water, which started a kind of fiery domino affect. I put all the ground up peppers in some cider vinegar and put them to boiling. That released a pungent, noxious vapor that rapidly filled the kitchen much faster that the vent could remove it. The combination of the toxic vapor and constant rubbing of my eyes made me temporarily blind, but I got it strained, jellied, sugared and canned, purely from self preservation. I was sure if I didn’t get it in jars, it was going to kill me.

I did have a little left over to taste, but I can’t taste anything quite yet. Hopefully tomorrow. My beautiful bride tried it with cream cheese and crackers and in her eternal optimism said, “It might mellow.”

One final note. If anyone knows the recipe people, I did notice right when I finished, trying to read the last of the directions through squinty, bloodshot eyes, in microscopic print, it said, “WEAR RUBBER GLOVES.” I feel that tidbit of information could be in much larger print and maybe at the top of the directions.

Once upon a time; Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away; It was a dark and stormy night, etc, etc. Like many of you, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about rain, or lack thereof. I feel like I’m going to be sitting around the campfire telling the grandkids about how water actually fell from the sky back in the old days when the grass was green and hay was cheap.

Then again, rain is sometimes overrated. (I’m telling myself that anyway, just for sanity’s sake) For example, many, many, MANY years ago when I was still young and impressionable, I had one field of flood irrigated corn that I watered with siphon tubes. I was on the ditch and Paul Hengen was the ditch rider. For three months he held the power of the universe in his hands. When Paul said you had water coming you set your canvases and got ready to open your box. When Paul said you were done, he closed your box.

I did enjoy siphon tubes. It was quiet and peaceful, when you weren’t frantically scooping dirt trying to fill a breakout. It could also be exciting coming face to face with the local wildlife in the middle of the night, and once I convinced myself that I was related to almost everyone buried in the cemetery beside the field, nights were better. Because the field was odd shaped, my sets were not uniform, so I found myself changing water around the clock. I had it for 60 hours, so when I opened the gate for the first set, it was a race to get over the field before my turn was over.

On one occasion, I was down to my last set. It was just after midnight and it had started to sprinkle. The way the lighting was going in the west, I figured I should have just enough time to change water and go back to bed before it really started coming down. It sounds ridiculous to some, but I wouldn’t have water again for a week, so I had to finish.

I had my hip waders on as usual, but because the rain was starting to come down harder, I put my rain pants with suspenders on and rain jacket over that and climbed in the ditch and started changing tubes. About five minutes in, it started to get exciting.

Now, granted, the scene I have described was already questionable at best, with the rain and lighting, standing in two feet of water, 1 am, alone. But I wasn’t alone. Not even close. Something or someone was inside my pants. Not my rain pants, but my jeans, under my rain pants and under my waders. Not only was something in my pants, but it seemed that whatever it was was hungry. It started in on the back of my knee and as soon as it did I started scrambling out of the water. By the time I had done the slip and slide out of the ditch it had moved to my inner thigh and was doing a buzz saw impersonation. I started peeling clothes, but it was a long ways and many layers to whatever was wreaking havoc in my pants.

By now, the rain was coming in sheets, and the lighting was illuminating the headstones on the other side of the fence constantly. I was hopping around trying to pull my wet jeans off when it breeched my boxers. I feel no shame in telling you they too came off. An enormous beetle came off with them, and I’m here to tell you he had fangs! There I was, naked, wet, beetle free, hoping no one drove by.

You know, I’d say I’d never want to go through that again, but……..I wonder if it’d make it rain? hmmmmmmm.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, YouTube, and occasionally peruse Facebook. It seems lately that all of them have decided that I am in dire need of some personal grooming. I’m suddenly inundated with adds for ‘manscaping’ tools and special manly organic soaps to make my private areas smell better. For starters, I was a little disappointed that the term ‘manscape’ had been hi-jacked. I’d always used that term when I trimmed the hedges and flower beds with a weed wacker. Secondly, and I direct this to the younger males in my readership, so called ‘manscaping’ will soon be the least of your concerns. Allow me to explain…..

I was sitting in my chair not too many days ago, reading. Another thing you will find as the years roll on, is the need for reading glasses. I buy mine in bulk. This particular evening there was something on my right lens. I wiped it off a couple times but it remained. I took them off and gave them a good T-shirt cleaning to no avail. I still had what looked like a hair directly in my line of vision. I became suspicious and walked to the bathroom to look in the mirror. To my horror, my fears were confirmed. A half an inch long hair was growing right smack out of the end of my nose! Not out of my nostril, no, right out of the end of my nose. If I let it go and let the keratin build up I would have been a rhinoceros in no time.

I’m not going to lie. That was a punch in the old ego. I plucked that hair, then my eyebrows, then got out the super duper trimmer and went after my nostrils and my ears, inside and out, then had my lovely, and incredibly understanding bride shave my neck. I sat down on the edge of the tub, defeated, depressed, and ‘manscaped’ in not nearly as sexual way as the advertisements would lead one to believe.

I was reflecting on my younger years, my younger body, my younger hair that stayed were it belonged, when……when…..HOLY COW!!!…. I think I may have just solved one of the great mysteries of our world. This is so exciting. I can’t believe no one has thought of this before. This is truly scientific and I’m not waiting for publication in some fancy schmancy journal, nope, I’m going to announce it right here, right now.

Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Yeti, they’re not sub humanoid species, or even their own class or family of mammals. Not at all!! They’re just old dudes who stopped caring, went out to the woods and stopped shaving, plucking, trimming and ‘manscaping’! Man, I get it. If I could, I’d wander out in the trees, grow hair all over, eat raw meat and wild berries. Don’t you get it, they never get caught because after a few months of wandering around messing with trail cameras and arousing local suspicion to possible bigfoot sightings, their wives come out and say something like, “You’ve got to go to the family reunion” or “you have to go to the wedding” and they come in, shave, clean up, ‘manscape’ and POOF, bigfoot is nowhere to be found. That’s it! I can’t believe I figured it out all by myself.

I know everyone is wondering. How hard is the wind blowing in Hershey, Nebraska? Well, I’ll tell you. I just got in from tagging calves, and it’s tie your ear flaps down, blow your bag of sunflower seeds away windy. If that description is good enough and your stomach is weak, you can stop reading and just trust me. It’s breezy.

The rest of you brave souls are going to find out how dang hard it’s REALLY blowing. I knelt down on a calf, got him banded, vaccinated and iodine on his navel. Momma was supervising, eye to eye, but not overly aggressive. I was getting ready to tag the little bugger, and thought that it really wasn’t too bad, sitting down in the sunshine, back to the wind, cow not trying to kill me. I was just grabbing his ear when momma’s head shot up and she backed away. There was not a cloud in the sky, but out of nowhere, junior and I were drenched.

A cow was looking over her shoulder at me, not in an evil way, but with a look of relief. I know that a cow can drink about thirty gallons or so of water, but I have no idea what they expel. I do know that the wind is blowing hard enough to soak stockman and stock at a distance of approximately twenty feet when they do ‘expel’. Well, on the bright side, it’s not snowing and I had my back to her.

The ‘Kromer’. It’s standard cold weather wear on the farm and ranch. Shades your eyes, keeps your ears warm, and ties down when the wind gets out of control yet still makes for stylish headwear. Will and I were doing chores a few days ago and I wondered aloud (within earshot of my lovely bride) why William looks so much better in his Kromer than I do in mine. Without hesitation she said, “Because you’ve got a little tiny Peanut.”

That’s not what I heard. I was taken aback. How could the size of one part of my anatomy so affect the fashionableness of another. And why in the last thirty years hadn’t she said something. I mean, I wear hats all the time. Do they all look funny because I have a….well…. you know….because, well, doggone it, I shouldn’t think that should make a bit of difference, and I started to stew about it right then and there.

She saw the consternation on my face. I blurted out, “Why didn’t you ever tell me that THAT (and I pointed down there) made my hat look bad?!?” She gave me the strangest look and then started laughing. “Peanut, Peanut, PEANUT! You’ve got a little head!”

I cleaned my ears thoroughly and will pay closer attention to others enunciation from now on. I promise.

I’ve decided to start 2022 out with a devotional of sorts. In the sixth chapter of Galatians it says “for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Now, don’t get your shorts all in a wad. I’m not going to get caught up in linguistic semantics or start a fight over doctrinal differences. Be patient, and you’ll see where I’m going with this. Maybe.

Last month I had to doctor a steer. He had a abscess on his cheek about the size of a grapefruit. William and I got him in the chute and the fun for me began. It wasn’t hard yet, so I made a small incision and drained about a pint or so of goo out of it. I couldn’t find my forceps, so I soaked about two feet of gauze in iodine and stuffed it into the wound with my fingers. I turned to tell Will to shoot a little wound spray on it. I meant for him to coat it in wound spray, but he held the bottle out, about three feet away from the calf and shot a little out into space. He had turned an interesting shade of grey and said, “That smells really bad. I think I’m going to go sit down for a minute.”

I shouldn’t have teased him about it. I was about his age when the vet would make his antibiotic recommendations based on my reactions. He would hold whatever he drained from an animal and have me smell it. If I vomited, it got a full dose of LA 200, a simple gag equaled a reduced rate. If I didn’t have a reaction the animal apparently didn’t have an infection.

Fast forward to this week. Varsha got her wisdom teeth pulled. It was an adventure to say the least, and I won’t bore you, or make Varsha really, really, really, mad by sharing all of the details of her experience. To bring the story and lesson full circle though, my 20 year old daughter had to have dad hold her hand while Doc pulled her teeth. I was rather enjoying it, watching the shots and asking questions. It was fascinating when he started pulling them out. The bottom right one gave him some problems though. He wiggled and pried and drilled and twisted, but it was determined to stay in her mouth. He took an instrument that looked like a little stainless steel garden hoe and got it in under the roots to pry. I was right in there, taking it all in when, POP!!, the tooth broke in half.

I’m telling you it got HOT in that dentist office right now. I told the assistant that I didn’t think I needed my silk scarf anymore,…..or my vest,…….or my sweatshirt. Before I knew it, it looked like I had done a strip tease because I was just throwing stuff on the floor. I was hanging in there though, because Varsha wouldn’t let go of my hand any longer than it took me to take another layer off. Things were getting slightly hazy and I was much less talkative than I had been. I was fairly certain I was going to fall off my chair when fate intervened and Doc’s drill quit and the assistant had to go get a new one. It was just the break I needed to recover. A couple more minutes and I would have been mostly naked and passed out.

Once again, as in most of my stories, I kind of forgot where I was going with it. Well, be kind and show some grace and mercy to the people around you this year. It’s bound to be better than last.