Author: The Lord of The Manor

Preparing the Herb Garden, 2024

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

One of the boys and I went down to the woodyard on Monday to pick up some firewood and a couple of saw logs. There were a lot of new piles in the dump suggesting that it is cutting season for the tree trimmers. This time it went really well, and we got two big sawlogs right up into the trailer in no time. It was our 26-year-old who came along with, and I thought when we unloaded that it might be nice to show him around the sawmill rather than starting on the log splitter already. We easily got a couple of hundred dollars of poplar boards out of a small-ish log I had sitting on the mill already when we got there. I took mostly 1-inch-thick cuts out of an 8 inch wide by nine-foot-long cant. That left some thick flitches that will burn just fine and saved us messing about with little things.

Missus and I got into the herb garden yesterday and cleaned up from the winter and got some plants in shape for their growing season by pulling grass around them and preparing for some fresh mulch. We also worked the front yard some. Missus put in some seeds in the planters out front and I took out an old planter by the gate. We had intended for me to move that one, but the bottom was rusted out and all the contents stayed as I picked the metal planter up with the tractor. We mowed and edged in the herb garden, and I scythed and even got down on my knees with the sickle to cut around where a litter of kittens have been growing up nicely.

I went down to get something from the tool shed on the front of the chicken coop and noticed a dead duck as I passed the outside run. It wasn’t much of a corpse suggesting the visit of a raccoon. Then I saw two more fresher, slightly more whole corpses in another part of the run. That left only two ducks, a goose, and two chickens in that run, along with the rabbit hutches. I did not get a chance to find the hole a raccoon would have come through, and I suspected that since the electric wire atop the fence is inactive, it may have climbed over. By the time we were done with the day and all the work done, I was in no state to sit up and watch for a raccoon to shoot at, either.

Missus had to redo a wall in her tiny shop trailer that she had tried a paper on for decoration and had come down at the corners. She was fed up with it and decided to paint instead. For her to do the work I had to take some shelves off the wall first. I put them back up yesterday, too. It was a pretty easy reassembly and did not take long at all.

Missus and I will be back at it again today when the day gets started, and we hope to finish the bulk of the work and ready for the season. I put the tiller on the tractor yesterday evening ready to use today to prepare beds for some peas and gourds. I topped the gearbox up with heavy oil, and I will grease the zerks before getting started today. But tilling is a job I will do whenever she is taking a break. It is pretty easy sitting in the air conditioning and driving slow. Also, the tiller is a pretty good counterweight for unloading sawlogs tomorrow when we come back from the woodyard.

It’s coming up to 5:30 in the morning and I have got Garrison Keillor telling the news from Lake Woebegone playing on YouTube. There is about an hour left to get a little rest before it is time to get the kids to the bus stop. Time to get to work on that rest!

First Wood Collection of the Year

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Things have been busy around here on the old farm lately. I have been doing some cleaning out in the yard to get ready for the season. I also got fed up with the grass at the front of the house, and how the land leans and keeps water too close, so I got into the tractor and sorted that out. Now there is no grass there, and a couple of old water troughs that leak set there as planters. I filled them up and will be putting in some flowers soon. I was ready to get at some work the day before yesterday when there came a knock on the front door.

The knock was the guy who owns the house just down the road from us. He lives in town and was having a tall pine tree taken down in his yard up there. He asked me if I wanted it. Well, that’s a silly question! I went up and spoke to the tree man and specified how I would like the wood cut up. Then I got the trailer the hay was on and took it up for pickup. Sadly, I did not have much luck getting the hay off the trailer in a neat and orderly fashion as I was not sure how long I had till the wood was ready to start piling on. So the hay ended up knocked over in the yard, and of course it rained since. So that’s a bit of a problem! But in the end, the gentleman who owns the tree decided to have a second, shorter tree taken down too. It was under a power line, so it was actually wider in the trunk than the tall one because it had been topped over the years.

So I have all that wood in the yard now. I am thinking I want to do the milling as soon as the ground is dry, then put on Anchor Seal to reduce cracking. That stuff has worked really well on the wood I milled last year. I think a couple of pieces will get milled into large blocks, and the long pieces will be milled into boards. I’ll have to see what the knots in the cant look like! The rounds and branches can be put into firwood, and some of the smaller branches want slicing into coasters and Christmas ornaments for the laser. Maybe there are a couple of signs hiding in there to be laser cut too. I’ll be keeping an eye out.

Spring Cleaning was begun this morning in the kitchen. Some sense and order is being applied to make things more serviceable in there. It was pretty bad. But we made good progress on it today till we wore out, and we will finish it tomorrow, I am sure.

Despite the warming weather, I see two frost days coming up this week. As that is the forecast, and it is always guessed at about two degrees warmer than we actually get in our specific location, I think there may be more. Missus has me warning her each night so she can do any quick saves required.

The kids attend school for four more weeks till they are set free for the summer. I am really looking forward to it! It will be nice to have them about, and to free up the schedule so I can start going out to get wood for the fire and for the mill. It is time for me to start drawing up plans for the woodshed. I have been thinking about it plenty, but I have not put pen to paper on the topic yet. I think I know what I will have to put in place, though it is not exactly what I want. But perhaps I can refigure as I recently found out I am allowed a larger build than I thought without a permit. So, there is that to look at first.

Well, it’s evening here now, and time to get settled and ready to rest for the fight of another day!

Chores and Errands on Wednesday

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Yesterday (Wednesday) was busy with errands and some cleaning and some paperwork here on the farm. I had to run into town to get copies of a couple of receipts and pick up a couple of things at the store. Finally, I ran down to the thrift store in Smithfield and picked up an auction winning, then take the kids to get some ice cream at the Fat Boy factory in Richmond.

I helped Missus with some of her work in the little shop-in-a-trailer out front. I also did some clean-up with the tractor out back on a debris pile I accidentally made out of a compost pile. There is some good soil at the bottom. In between the soil and the debris was some dirt I could use to fill low spots in the driveway. There is still more work to do out there on that pile. But I got some of it sorted.

I brought up some firewood for today as it is meant to be wet and a little cooler.

It was enough to keep me busy most of the day. It was interspersed with a few mandatory breaks to keep the arthritis pain at bay. Lunch was provided by Subway.

It’s very early as I write this. I am not sure yet what today brings. I won’t be working out in the muddy yard if the precipitation is what the forecast predicts! The tractor rips the yard up pretty bad when the earth is muddy. I am trying to cure that problem as it is. There are errands to run again, and Missus may need some help with a few things. Failing that, I would not complain to get some time cleaning up in the shop a bit. There are some, shall we say, organizational issues. Let’s see what the day brings!

The Last Tuesday of March, ’24

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

The garbage bins did not get picked up on Friday, and I did not want to let them sit another day as they were full, so I loaded them into the trailer along with the aluminum cans and any other rubbish that I could fine about and readied the trailer for a trip to the dump. To travel in the county with solid waste, one must cover their trailer with a tarp to help prevent anything blowing out on the roadways. I had to change the hitch on the truck from the heavy load hitch to the light duty one. Once that was done, I aligned the trailer to the hitch, lowered the tongue of the trailer, then locked the clip, only to find that the locking clip was missing. It took a bit to find a reasonable substitute, then I took off and went right to the farm store to get a replacement for the missing clip.

Once that was sorted out, I went to the dump to drop off all the garbage and throw out some of the debris from the truck. That went quick and was easy. I checked with them if they would do firewood, but they did not offer it. I didn’t bring any oil or anything, so it was easy and off to the salvage yard.

At the salvage yard it was also even easier. There was a guy there to help out! 56# of cans netted me $20. Nothing else there, I was right back home to help out with some of the tax work we needed to get done before soon. It was after we finished that for the day that I got out and did some chores.

I fed the livestock and removed the trailer from the truck as well as moved the trailer back into the house yard so I could secure it within the gates.

After all that, I was beat and needed to sleep off some of the arthritic pain and such, so I talked the kids into a DIY supper and letting me have a bit of a nap. It didn’t last long, but it was enough to knock the edge off, and that helped. Now it is time to do an evening and hopefully relax ready for tomorrow. More to do then, of course!

Hey, the weather was amazing today. It sleeted several times, most of the time I was outside for the first half of the day, as fate would have it, but it was on and off, and looked amazing interspersed with sunlight. What a show our mountain valley put on for us today! It is muddy out again, and I sure miss the dry earth we had last week, but it is not deep mud, so that is a great thing!

What to do on a Wednesday

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Yesterday Missus had us down to town to pick up some supplies she needed for the Artist’s business. We also went to see a couple of cars on the used market.

I did my chores when we got home then put the five-foot log from the log stack onto the sawmill. I kept that simple and took a couple of four quarter boards then made a cant out of the middle. The final measurements were ten inches square by five feet long. After cleaning up the sawmill mess, I sealed the ends of the cant, but it is still our on the forks of the tractor this morning.

I might cut it in half and use it for the base of a little shed to store fuel in. I’d like to have a little shed just for fuel to keep it away from all of the other buildings and yet still shaded in the canisters. The shed would not amount to much more than a set of shelves with well vented walls and a roof to keep all the fuel cans and some of the oils and such in. Might seem like overkill, but I don’t have the space for the stuff in the shop or the barn, and I’d like to make it fire-safe by keeping it away from the valuable buildings. I’d also like to keep it light enough to possibly lift with the pallet forks so I could move it about if needed. Just set the bolsters that I’d cut from this cant on a few cinderblocks, and there we go.

It is early Thursday morning. I will deliver the girls to the school bus stop shortly, then we have help coming by to target Missus’s cottage for clean-up. She is going to try to organize and get her workspaces so she can find things easier. It’s going to be a busy day! This cleaning project may just end at the cottage door, or it might extend into a few other places.

Lastly before I end, I need to figure out a place in the yard to put up a gourd tunnel. I have got enough cattle panels to do twenty feet of it. I’ll need to till a spot then drive t-posts and wire the panels to them. I’d like to till a couple of times over a few weeks before putting in the tunnel. I’d also like to see it in where the garden hose is close by. We’ve only one hydrant on the place, so that really narrows the options.

Time to get the day started. Have a good one yourself!

March Has Arrived, Spring Comes Soon!

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

It is snowing lightly today, and too cold to be outside for just about anything unless it is urgent or necessary. This morning one of the kids messaged and asked if he could come down and use our driveway to change his oil. He said the car was running funny and he thought it might have to do with him neglecting it. I asked how long it was since he last changed it, and he said 8,000 miles. Well, I don’t know if that is why his car lost some power coming up the hill, but I am pretty sure it will be much happier about its life in general for him changing it! Okay, he went way too long, but it was good to see him do the job all on his own, as it was the kind of work he never took interest in when he was younger and still living at home. Better late than never. It was especially good to see him at it rather than me! Oh sure, I handed him the ratchet, and helped him find a few tools, but he was the one on the ground, in the snow and cold.

It struck me as funny that it was only this morning that I checked our truck for its due date for the next oil change, and I was excited to find out it was not today! I have got some 800 miles left, which I’ll bet I can stretch till spring, and warmer weather! Suits me right down to the ground!

Missus asked me to go get her drum carder out of the craft cottage this morning. I don’t know what she has planned for it, but while I was out doing my chores, and helping the offspring keep on eye on his oil as it dripped out during the oil change, she cleaned it up and made it look nearly new.

I was also assigned the job of making a few more of the wire coilers she needs to wrap wire on to make chain male loops. They consist of a rod with a small hole at the far end, and a handle that helps her grip and avoid pain in her hands. I drill a hole in the rod and give it any finish work required. Then I make the wooden handle on the lathe, and drill a hole in the end of it for the rod to fit down into, tightly. Done right, it does the trick and when I am done, she will be able to make different sized loops in her wire. Good enough! I made a handle two weeks ago, and can put it to task on this job, and it will be fun to make some more.

This week is fairly free for me to work on the business. Where it is too cold to do anything outside, I can do some computer work, and things in the house. A nerve is pinched in my shoulder and hurting all the way down my left arm, so it will likely be computer work for today, though even that hurts. Painkillers first!

It is coming up time for the clocks to spring ahead. 2A.M. on Sunday morning, March 10th is when to set the clocks ahead one hour. I guess that means that where I have been noticing light in the mornings when I wake up to take the kids to school, we will not have that anymore till the days get longer still.

Late in the ten-day forecast the temperature guess is 50F! That’s short sleeve weather here in Cache Valley. I am hoping this year it will also mean I want to mess around with the cameras and make some YouTube videos. Maybe watch out for that. Meanwhile, I will surely be enjoying the warmer weather, as I have looked forward to it because of how low our firewood started out this year. This house does not really need a daytime fire going when it is sunny, and the temperatures go above 35F. Open the front door to the porch, and enough heat comes in from there to take care of everything for the day. 50 will certainly exceed that and make the whole experience more pleasant. I can switch off the wall heaters, and that will cut the electric bill. No more worrying about if the pipes under the house will freeze. Shop days and milling days will be unrestricted if the rain and especially the lightning stays at bay. But even on a rainy day, that does not slow the shop work down! None of this is to show any sort of enthusiasm on my part, at all. No. None. Not at all.

My tractor is already approaching 500 hours. Seems high. I wonder if the meter reads correctly. It seems crazy that it has gone that high. I should dig out the old stopwatch and give it a test. It probably is correct though, as I have always held to the idea that if I was going to spend the money to buy such a tractor, I best use it. I can’t imagine how high the hours would be if I could plough with it!

Before I call this post done, I thought I better mention that the chickens have started laying again. I think it looks like about two of the birds that have got going. I will have to collect all of the eggs then set up a reminder to do it each day to get them fresh. I’d like to make some serious changes to how we raise chickens here on the farm, and really get selling the eggs. What we do with these old birds is just the beginning of figuring it all out. I need some more time out in the coop to come up with some ideas, and to figure out how to set up for a free-range flock to keep the costs down and the health up.

It Stands to Reason

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

It was only this morning that I decided to break my temporary silence on the blog and complain about the warm weather we have been having, and the fact there has been so little snowfall. Apparently, I should have looked at the weather app, or at least out the window.

I am just back in from some chores and the situation is…

It was probably snowing when I wrote this morning’s post, and it is now noon, and it is still snowing!

Down the road where I go to feed the llamas on the back field.

The one thing I do know how to do to bring about the change I want is to jinx myself. Just a good complaint about how nothing is going right, and suddenly it does! The weather app suggests that the snow will taper off this afternoon but is likely to get going again tomorrow. It’s President’s Day tomorrow, so the girls will be off school, and we don’t have to go anywhere. Fine with me. Let it snow! Even if my farm is not growing hay and using irrigation, It sure does help the hay prices when there is enough water to grow plenty!

Not Winter-like

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Taken just last week while waiting for the girls to come out to get a ride to the bus stop for school. Not cold enough to snow overnight.

These winter nights get down to the low 20’s, mostly. But there is seldom snow. We have had rain overnight lately. The days light up and the temperatures come to the high 30’s and sometimes even the mid 40’s. I have said for a while that this place would be more tolerable if the temperatures were more like Denver when I was growing up near there in the 1980’s. This year it has been trying it on.

Snowfall has been minimal. What has come down lately has melted quickly, and the older stuff from earlier in the year has left some remnants, especially where the snow has been piled up from clearing driveways. Rain and snowmelt has kept the ground muddy. I worry about the tractor getting stuck in the mud, especially in the Service Yard and the area of the driveway right in front of it. Water has trapped there, and the mud is deep.

So this winter’s conditions are such that the firewood is lasting despite being a minimal pile, but the ground does not support outdoor work due to this being an ancient lake bottom. A few days have got warm enough to put a fire in the stove in the shop and work out there on a couple of small projects. Based on the time of year, it won’t be too long till I can easily be out there daily. It certainly doesn’t feel right for having just passed mid-winter a little over a week ago. That is what makes everything a bit uncertain! Really, we could dive into typical cold weather or be inundated with typical spring snow.

I had a look online yesterday for arial photos of our place and found some as early as 1956. That showed where a couple of buildings once were on our property. I’ll be using the information to do some metal detecting later this year. There was one out on this side where I have found some metal last year by the northwest corner of the garden space. There was actually two across the street. One looks like a garage right about where the gate is now. I’ll like to look again to see how far from the roadside. In the 1956 photo the swale at the bottom of the pasture at the back of the property across the road was fresh dug with nothing growing on top of the piles of excavate. It was only by the 1974 image that the house was set on a single acre of land this side of the street. The property over the road has evolved a bit over the years with what looks like a small dwelling and a stand of trees right across from the house, but at the back, by the canal. It’s all interesting stuff, and I am glad I happened upon the sites that host these photos.

The wood pile seems like it will last till spring. We are not burning as much as we would normally be this year. I am not sure it would be too much trouble to go down and get more wood if I needed to. I am not panicked about it. I do worry about how hot this summer will get, but all we can do is ride it out and see.

Candle Making Night

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

In a change of fortunes on our weather forecast, we have snow predicted for most of the foreseeable future. It’s been so dry till now that it was beginning to worry me for the coming summer. Warm weather has been scary as is, but we have not been building up a snowpack for summer irrigation for our farmers. There goes the hay prices!

Today’s work outside got the wood to the door and the hay to the animals. I have also been messing about with the DigiBoil to try to get the wax in it to melt. That has not been going as well as I would like. I put it on last night and have let it sit all night and all day today, and it still has not melted down. I started it out at 150F, and now have it up to 160F. Hopefully it will melt through soon. The heat is slowly climbing the pot and can be felt through the jacket. In fact, I think I can feel it in the jacket more than I can when I reach under to feel the side of the pot.

I had to take a break from writing about 30 minutes ago and came back to find I could stick a butter knife through the wax at the top of the pot that was still solid. That allowed me to make a flow hole and push the top surface wax down into the pot a ways, which I hope will melt it rather than making temperature barrier with it that blocks the top to allow it to solidify. I checked the temperature of the wax that flowed up and it was right at 170F. That’s a little to close to burning for my liking, so I have turned the temperature down a bit to try to prevent that, even at the risk of creating problems with the final bit of the wax melting. I’ll check it again in a bit and try to determine if I should have just left the temperature up. I assume the wax is convecting in the pot, and the hot wax will rise rather than just stay low and burn.

So while the melted wax was at the top, I set up a mold with some hemp wick and poured it for some six-inch candles. I’ll be watching them for color and I will probably test burn two of them and put the rest into inventory.

Now I have just topped the candles for shrinkage and noted that the wax that was spilled out on the top of the mold was an excellent color, very light, and quite where I want it for selling. Maybe I will do some more molds tonight to lower the level of wax in the pot so the next time I melt it all, it will be easier. I think about three-quarters full is a nice limit if I am to keep a solid batch in the pot between pouring days. It is really hard to say for sure but spending more than 24 hours to melt it all down again is a bit much. I think it is better to add a block when required and try to keep the pot between half and three quarters full. That’s a hypothesis at the moment. I will write it into theory when I have tried it and know more information.

I poured two molds then let them cool before I started this paragraph. Meanwhile, the wax melted completely. I have shut the melter down to 150F. I’ll see how it holds overnight. I’d like to leave it till tomorrow afternoon.

I learned a lesson while doing these two molds. I poured a little in each candle mold, then came back around and poured more, then again to top each off. Not pouring each to the top left a little line in the candles that looks like they could break on that spot. I’ll be using them for test burns or personal or both, really. I could melt them down and start again, but why not set them aside to test burn them to be sure I know what I am selling?

Overall, I am happy with the gear I am now running and the methods I have developed over the last little bit. I wish there was a way of getting the wax from the pot to the candle molds without spilling and cooling. That’s really the most difficult part of the whole thing.

I want to make some old-style furniture, especially come spring. But sticking to the ideas of tradition, candle making was a part of the life for people back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s how they lit their nights. I’ll also be making some candle boxes. It is only sensible. I plan to offer them in the candle shop. Just got to get the arthritic hands through winter first!

2024 Begins!

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Happy New Year!

There are a lot of things to be done on the farm this year. There are a lot of personal things to sort out too! This Holiday Season is coming to an end for our household, and to be honest, while we really enjoyed the family time, our health in this house has been absolute rubbish. So, the first thing is to see about getting up and about and up to things. There have been good days and bad ones, and clearly, I am going to have to make some adjustments to deal with my changing age. But I have experimented, and I think I know what I need to do. But all of that is on the personal side. On the farm and professional side I will push forward with what we have spent the last few years setting up for, and get this place finished and operational. It’ll be a challenge, but meeting it will pay off, I think.

So, what’s the big plans?

We have got to get this farm running as a profitable farm of some sorts. The immediate thing to do is sell llama fiber, and to make plenty of firewood. There will be byproducts of all that, but on top of it, Missus will be opening her little shop soon for local buyers, and as a basis for her Etsy and online shop. We’ll mess around with products, but our goal is to make enough to get by on or better by making what we want from here on our place. It means to be home manufacturing at a higher level of quality than comes out of mass production. Face it, it is every homesteader’s goal. I will be getting things going at last on The Prospering Peasant, too. I already have the idea for the first proper post there, so check soon.

My projects on the farm will require a lot of work. I have cameras for some basic filming and hope to put some videos on YouTube showing those, and a bit of furniture making. Everything is dependent upon hos I get through this little health crisis I have been having this winter, of course. The arthritis inflammation can derail the whole thing. But I won’t before I get a chance to get started, so let’s take this as it comes. As far as the furniture making idea goes, even if poplar is the only wood I can get access to, building from solid poplar has got to be a step up from the rubbish sawdust wood that people get online. It’ll cost them more, and it will be painted because of it being poplar, but I plan on Milk Paint and the farmhouse style. And then there are wooden spoons and the like.

All of this can really get going come spring. I’ll do what I can in the shop in the cold, but again, arthritis. Meantime I have everything I need to get the candles going in the house. I have a couple of things to work out just before I get an Etsy shop going. There will be several beeswax-based products, including candles, tool-wax, and beeswax impregnated food wraps. The fabric is ready for cutting and dipping! As for the candles themselves, I am starting out with molded candles circa the Colonial American period. I’ll provide either cotton wick or hemp wick candles as requested. I have considered hand dipped candles and for some occasions I perhaps will, but if time is a constraint, those will be the first thing I’ll give up on.

I will also look to get my firewood piled up for the next two years so I can go a year in advance after that. Then I will try to do excess to sell. I’d be happy to do the same with the lumber I cut and don’t use once I am adequately stocked up in advance.

Projects that I need to do are a woodshed, a fuel shed, and it would be good to put the sawmill in something. Once those are done, I think making chickencoops would be a good side hustle. None of these things can happen in a vacuum. But also, again, arthritis. So let’s see how it goes.

Photography is a lifelong hobby of mine. I never quite made a business out of it. It has to be a part of this even if only for the purposes of listing things online. The photography is not to be trifled with. I intend to do that well.

So all this is what I have in mind for 2024. I will be happy if we can get by on our efforts. If we can do better than that, then I will be elated! Look for changes coming to my online presence soon. No more excuses. That is what I intend to be about this year. Life is slipping by too fast to mess about.