{"id":4658,"date":"2014-10-30T19:43:45","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T01:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/?p=4658"},"modified":"2014-10-30T19:48:59","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T01:48:59","slug":"its-battle-hymn-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/?p=4658","title":{"rendered":"It’s Battle Hymn Time."},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a really gorgeous fall for the first time in recent memory, so it was extra-shocking when it suddenly became winter this week. Ok, not technically winter, but cold enough for me to acknowledge that I’m not going to feel my fingers and toes again until April or so. (And that<\/em> is why we vacation.)<\/p>\n

So I’ve joked for a while about how we’re farmers, and nobody ever believes me, possibly to do with the fact that I’m scared of farms and the middle of nowhere in general. But now I have photographic proof of our farm! Since we were there during the harvest, we even got to combine soybeans*, which I assume will be made into tofu for me to eat posthaste**!<\/p>\n

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* We rode along while one of Matt’s cousins drove the combine.<\/em><\/p>\n

** This is totally a lie.It’ll probably be soybean oil or something.<\/em><\/p>\n

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That’s all of our soybeans piling into a giant trailer that syncs up with the combine via the wonders of GPS, so they don’t have to stop working. The trailer then drives over to a semi truck parked in the field, and the semi takes the soybeans to one of those many grain silos in the background.<\/p>\n

Konrad Farms is an immense operation. (Matt’s uncles and their kids run it, about 9 families in total.)<\/p>\n

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When I say I’m a farmer, what I mean is that Matt now owns 80 acres of the property, which is his dad’s portion of the land. Since they knew we were coming for a visit, they specifically saved that section\u00a0of the farm so that we could see the harvesting on our land. It was great.<\/p>\n

A bunch of other family members just coincidentally happened to be in town that weekend, from places like Denver and Baltimore, so it turned into a giant family reunion. Not surprisingly, Matt’s entire family is hilarious and super easy-going. Shocker, I know.<\/p>\n

Since you were wondering, this is how they serve sandwiches in Farm Country, South Dakota (it’s called a hot hamburger). I was just glad they had a grilled cheese.<\/p>\n

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We spend the night after the farm visit in Mitchell (home of the world-famous Corn Palace, which is currently under renovation and without its onion domes!) with Matt’s parents. We had a wild night on the town (as much as you can in Mitchell… we spent a couple hours talking to a Packers fan from Nebraska whose kid was in town playing football), and then headed back northward on Saturday. We had lunch in Brookings, home of SDSU, which had a great little brewery and a hamburger place that Matt drools over in his sleep. We also stopped at their dairy bar, thus completing all obligatory small-town activities.<\/p>\n

Since we’ll be in California over Thanksgiving, we’re trying to plan an early family Thanksgiving the week before. I’m hoping that works out, because I’ll be sad if I can’t have a Celebration Roast sandwich this year. (God forbid I buy Celebration Roast for non-Thanksgiving purposes. It just makes no sense.)<\/p>\n

Our CSA wrapped up a couple weeks ago, with a pretty spectacular finish. I didn’t really know how well it’d work for us when we signed up, but we ended up looking forward to it every week. We’ll for sure be signing up again next year.<\/p>\n

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Let’s see… in the past few weeks, we saw Lucy<\/em> at the Riverview (cringeworthy), Mouse Music<\/em> at the Trylon (educational), and John Wick<\/em> at the Mall’o’murca (awesomely ass-kicking). We went to see Ana Tijoux at the Cedar, who is an amazing Chilean rapper you should really listen to<\/a> (if Somos Sur<\/a> doesn’t make you dance, you’re broken). My company won another award, so we had a party. We went to see Orsi and the Rollergirls at Roy Wilkins, because I haven’t seen the Rollergirls since they were at that crappy rink somewhere in the north suburbs. This was a huge upgrade, really.<\/p>\n

Since it’s winter now, I’ve been knitting like a crazy person. I finished a cardigan<\/a>, a cowl<\/a>, and a shawl <\/a>for my mother-in-law for Christmas. I’m working on a fair isle ski sweater\/cozy<\/a> for our tablet (shut up, it’s adorable) and a Christmas table runner<\/a> that involves a lot of beads. I still have a few older ongoing projects, such as this beast<\/a> that I’m attempting to add 12 rows to each week, because it means I’ll be done with it by the end of 2015. Seriously.<\/p>\n

And don’t go thinking I forgot to mention the most important thing that happened recently. IT’S HOCKEY SEASON!!! Here are the Gophers celebrating their first sweep at Mariucci.<\/p>\n

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Get used to that sight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a really gorgeous fall for the first time in recent memory, so it was extra-shocking when it suddenly became winter this week. Ok, not technically winter, but cold enough for me to acknowledge that I’m not going to feel my fingers and toes again until April or so. (And that is why we …read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[93,15,29,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farming","category-hockey","category-knitting","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/15508889302_735bab3f09_k.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po9qt-1d8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4658"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4674,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658\/revisions\/4674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}