What a month! I'm an optimist by nature, perhaps in reaction to having grown up around confirmed pessimists. The last half of June might have tested my resolve, though, were it not so deeply ingrained. It's minor in comparison to a couple of other things that happened, but most recently my computer suffered a hard drive failure. Or very nearly so, we caught it just before, it appears. I had everything backed up, but was suffering inexplicable boot disc failures. I'd taken it to the Doctor once, but true to form it worked perfectly there. Not any more, though.

This is where it's incalculably better to have bought local. If it were a Dell, you'd have to just pray for death, or buy another. But no, the guys at ReCompute are replacing the hard drive under warranty. True to form, though, these things tend to happen just prior to the weekend, and so I'm reduced to using my old Dell, the one where they had to send me three misery boxes before I got one that worked. Kinda. At least it still kinda works, although refuses to recognize my Microsloth Natural Keyboard, and so I'm further reduced to using your basic no-frills Dell keyboard. And I tell you what, I just about can't type on one of these. It's WAY slower, anyway, and I'll try to fix the typos as I go, but please bear with.

Oh yes, these things go in streaks. Just got a call from my son, and the transmission in his truck is kaput (no big surprise). It's a classic, a '76 GMC shortbox, but the only good thing about it has been the paint job. Mechanically... well, we put a new engine in it, which coincided with our mechanic neighbor selling his place & moving away. It had a hot-rod Edelbrock carburetor, which I suppose were fine enough at sea level back when gas was $.35/gallon, but aren't worth a crap in Montana winters (or summers), and so the thing never ran right. Until we replaced the carb with the stock quadrajet a month or so ago, & now the tranny... We were afraid of this, and luckily have a replacement on hand, but somebody's gotta switch it, & I know who that's going to be...

All that sort of pales in comparison to a banking episode gone awry earlier this month. I'm in too bad of mood to elaborate much about that right now, but will at some point as it was way beyond the pale. This was with an institution we have multi-decade, uniformly positive (until now) experience with. And yes, it was just one guy, an isolated incident of mind-bogglingly bad judgement on his part. Besides unjustifiably jerking me around, he withheld key information about his background despite direct questioning, like the fact that he has considerable experience (at least as a State bureaucrat in the Dept. of Agriculture) in the very things I'm doing. Small-farm alternative crop development and marketing. But no, the son of a bitch sat there while I laid out my plans in detail, and not only failed to reveal his background in these very matters, but was trying to steer us into a potentially disastrous financial arrangement. It became apparent he was not operating in our best interest, & I said "no thanks", and then I found out he'd been holding out on me!

Luckily I have extensive references plus a long-standing and perfect credit history with their organization, and a letter to the top of the chain resulted. My antagonist has no viable explanation for his misconduct, and so, I guess we'll see what happens. In the meantime, though, I also get to shop for a new ag banker. Blast it!

Oh, well, all this too shall pass, I trust. At least I'm planning to take some relatives from California on a mountain horseback ride tomorrow. That should be a pleasant change of pace, at least once we get Cody's truck towed home.

What a difference from last spring! It's been raining, and raining, and raining some more... The old timers say this is how it used to be here in the Valley of the Flowers. Last year, we received nary a drop from about April 8 until May 25. This year, it's starting to get hard to keep track of, but just since about mid-May, let's see...

Disregarding a few showers resulting in a tenth or four, the first soaker resulted in 1.8" here at our place off the west slope of the Bridgers. Then, right after I finished seeding we got the 1.4" verified in the adjacent photo. This was completely surpassed by the next deluge of 2.6", and now it's drizzling again! Believe me, I'm counting our blessings, and we're nowhere near sick of it yet. I think a lot of people in southeast Montana are approaching that point, though. I-90 was closed over the weekend in the Crow Agency area due to flooding. A lot of streams in that area are out of their banks, as they received ~4" out of that storm that gave us 2.6". That's been the pattern, and since soils in that area were already saturated, this abundant if not excessive moisture is mostly running off.

Not here, though, we're still soaking it up like a sponge, and I must say, things are just flourishing. Our camelina, golden flax, and clover were seeded a smidgen later than I like, but unless the spigot turns off (which it could at any time) I think we'll be OK. For a change the jet stream is sending every storm system that hits the Pacific coast our way, & with any luck...

I'm really looking forward to one of our upcoming projects; getting our oil press hooked up and putting the squeeze on some of the oilseeds we grew last year. By then we'll have experimented with enough test batches of biodiesel to move up to 50 gallon batches, although if we're lucky the human consumption prospects will render it too valuable to burn. That will be fine, a grand problem to have, and the least of our concerns as reliable sources for used vegoil are falling together. It never ceases to amaze me, how contacts and conversations that seem inconsequent at the time can grow into far more than one ever imagined. There must be something to this Golden Rule stuff.