Running Errands

Maybe four months ago I had asked the lady at the Mennonite type store east of here to get oat groats for me. She can usually get most any grain I want. She tried for a month or so and told me she was having a hard time getting them and when she did find them at one place, they were pretty expensive. I told her it was ok . . don’t waste your time trying. It took a couple of tries but I was able to get them from Azure Standard and ordered quite a few in case they get harder to get.

Yesterday I got a call from the lady at the store that she had been able to get my oats! I wouldn’t have ordered more but I’m surely glad to get them. They were about $15 cheaper than they are at Azure. I told Vince I was going to run up there today and get them and a few other things I needed.

Vince said . . I’ll go with you and stop and see about getting what I need to get my truck plates renewed.

Already, this trip was not sounding like a good idea.

We left this morning, went up to the store, got the oats. I asked the lady about hard white wheat because I haven’t been able to get that from Azure either. She said she’s having a hard time getting it but she had an extra 25 pound bag she would sell me so I took that. She had two more gallons of molasses so I got one of those, some rye flour, caraway seeds and more strawberries. Her strawberries were less than the ones at the farmers’ market and looked and smelled better.

We left and Vince said “Do you think she wonders what we’re doing with all this grain?” I told him . . no, she probably looks at us and knows what we’re doing with it! 🙂

Next stop – Aldi in Carthage. We needed more peas and carrots for Rita’s food. Of course, we bought a few more things but not much. I did buy Oscar a new bed that’s bigger. Oscar and I talked about him NOT chewing on it but within five minutes he was chewing on it so I took it away from him. Poor Oscar. He’s back to his second bed which is too small for him but he’s already started chewing it up so he can keep using that til he’s ruined it and then we’ll try again with the new bed.

On the way home, I mentioned to Vince that I would like to get two straw bales and try growing sweet potatoes in them. I know . . I said I was done planting. I told him I’d rather get straw from a local farm supply store than from Walmart. He doesn’t understand why and maybe straw is straw but he told me to see who had it. On the way to the courthouse, we passed a farm supply store . . right in the middle of town (Carthage). I called and the lady told me they had just gotten in more straw this morning. Apparently it’s a bit hard to get.

We were in Vince’s car so we couldn’t get straw. He said he’d come back in the pickup in a day or so and get it. We went to the courthouse. Here, you have to provide proof that you paid personal property taxes on your vehicle before you can get your plates renewed but you only pay the taxes on whatever you owned as of January 1 the previous year. That was January 1, 2021 and the pickup and Vince didn’t get here til April, 2021 so there were no taxes due on it. He had to go to the tax taker (I don’t even know what it’s called here) office and get the sheet showing we owed no personal property taxes on the pickup this year. He went in and he had to have the title or the registration. He had brought the VIN number but they had to have the papers so, we came home, unloaded the groceries out of the car, got the title to the pickup, went back to Carthage. He went to the courthouse, got the slip showing there were no taxes due, went to the license place where there was not one person in line. He walked right up and got waited on, had his renewal in about 5 minutes.

Then we went to the farm store and got four bales of straw, went to eat Mexican and came home.

The bread is now baked. We have the four straw bales set up. I’ve started watering them. I’ll do that for three days, then put a high nitrogen fertilizer on them, water more, add more fertilizer. Hopefully by the time the sweet potato slips I ordered arrive, the bales will be ready. I’ve also started some sweet potatoes that I hope will produce a few slips . . we’ll see. In the end, I could probably have purchased a lot more sweet potatoes than I’ll produce for a lot less money! But, that’s how gardening goes. The fun of the process cannot be factored in to the cost . . but Vince might not agree with that statement.