Chores – The Peasant's Manor Farm

Chores and Errands on Wednesday

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

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

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!

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.

Wax Melter and Tractor Chores

So far the test on the wax melter has gone really good. It has melted the wax at a temperature close to what it says on the digital screen. I should put the thermometer in and see how it measures at the bottom, and see if that is accurate. It was off a bit when I measured at the top, which could be expected as there is likely more heat just down by the heating element. I adjusted the temp down and will see tomorrow or the next day how it does, but first, I have it shut off right now to see how it does at reheating a full pot. That is a lot of wax. It has cooled to the point it has solidified, but it is still warm tonight. I can see why one person I either watched or read or met said to put a large pot of wax on a stove in order to keep a room warm after the fire is out. It has been warmer up in that room since I heated the wax up to begin with.

I traded rear implements on the tractor today and scraped the driveway up the side of the house smooth with the box blade. It is not great, but the outcome is better than it was before when I would drive across that area and wobble left to right and front to back over all the bumps in the mud and ice. I also sorted out a pile of mud out by the mailbox and made that area smooth again.

The shop is a bit messy by the door, so I cleaned up in there a bit so I can get to the workbench and do some work there. It is cold, but I think I have a couple of decent days in the forecast to get out and do a few little things.

The animals got fed, the firewood brought in, and the only thing oreally out of sorts was a little extra chore today when I drove over to where I check on the llamas across the street and also looked for the source of some gunfire there. We don’t allow hunting on our property, but sometimes around here, people don’t really respect that, so I have put up signs which have fallen down and I have to go out and see what is up when I hear gunfire. Whomever it was turned out to be off our place, and from the sounds of it, shooting a .22 caliber. While I was sat at the roadside I scared a couple of pheasants up, which I suspect was what they were after. In the end, I never saw the hunter.

It’s 8:30, the kids are having more fun than any kid should be while doing dishes, and the cats are going nuts tearing through the house after each other. My goal will be to go upstairs soon to do some learning time, then go to sleep. With the end of the year coming on, I would like to do some resolutions this year for my own good. Those will include more shop time, and more time milling and making candles. Let’s see what kind of a business I can make out of those, shall we? On a down side, it feels like another cold is coming on. And I am not the only one in this house to feel it. What a season it has been!

Summary of Yesterday

It is Thursday morning, and it is raining a little. It has been all night, apparently. I went out last night to get firewood in just before bed, and it was 45F. Really lovely for the time of year it is, and for nighttime. But I went up to bed and just as I settled in, the wind started kicking up and rain began to fall.

Yesterday I got one of the short poplar logs up on the mill and cut into bolsters and stickers. Then I put up an Aspen log and milled it into boards. Most of the output was 6 inch by 8 foot boards, but there are also four sort of 16-inch ones as well. All of them were milled to 1 inch thick. They should come out at 3/4 finished thickness. Then I put them up to dry on the bolsters and with the stickers I had milled.

I helped Missus out with some of her work after the milling, then went to get the girls from their bus stop after school. It was a busy day, and I got a lot done. So my reward was to spend a couple of hours playing a VR game in the evening. It was good and relaxing, and a nice change of pace. I don’t play games much. But I will play one or two once in a while.

This morning is still wet, but as soon as it dries, I should get down and pick up some hay and maybe get that log milled that I put on the mill last night just before changing from the forks to the bucket on the tractor to bring the firewood in. I have some work to do with Missus this evening taking photos of products to put on her website. Meanwhile I will be figuring out this farm and fixing the broken joint on one of the kids’ bed.

Off to get my day started!

A Lovely October Day Working

It has been a day of work and family down on the farm today. Our second son came by and helped out with the wood again, and it was very welcome help, for sure! There was a distraction from getting started, and I should have seen to it before we walked out to the log pile and started the splitter.

First things first, I sent the kids off to school. After coming back from meeting the bus I back dragged the driveway where there is a bit of mud in a couple of places. Always good to have a flat drive, and the weather promises to be in the 60’s and 70’s this week.

The distraction was the cardboard in the trailer. I suggested we could either throw it out on the ground temporarily, or we could go up to his place and get all his cardboard, take it all to the recycling bin, then come back with an empty trailer and get started on the wood. He took that option. When we got to the bin with all the cardboard a whole heap of wasps started circling one of the big boxes from his house and confused us because he has kept is cardboard inside, and it has not been there that long. Made no sense that wasps would build a house so quickly this late in the year. I grabbed the box and tossed it in the bin, nonetheless. It was only then that I realized we would be stopping into the salvage yard next door to drop off the broken microwave that I had dumped in the trailer at the very beginning of loading it a week or so ago.

At the salvage yard the guys there were friendly and helpful as always. When asked if we wanted it weighed, I passed as it was not going to net enough to walk in and collect on. There is only so much worth actually dealing with.

We came back to the house, and I took the trailer with the tractor to the back and set it down next to the end of the log splitter. Then I began the job of picking up the wood with the tractor to set it on the log splitter, rather than lifting it all by hand and back. Most importantly by back! I lift it all in the bucket and then use the bottom of the bucket as a table even to the table height of the splitter.

Son kept his self busy splitting as fast as he could, and tossing the readied logs into the trailer to carry around to the log bunk all in one go.

When it got close to time for him to want to leave to get ready to pick his son up from school I suggested we stop a little early so he could go visit with his mom a bit first, rather than run in, run out, and go. He wanted to do that rather than get in trouble with her.

After it all, I rested a spell as I was still tired from all the work. Happily, I was muscle tired, and the bones are well today. I Am thrilled about that! I got the girls from the bus stop, ate supper, then took a nap.

The evening found me putting water out for some animals that had run low, and getting a couple of huge logs from the front of the service yard, as I might was well get them processed and burned so I can clear up the service yard. It is getting to be a mess in there, and it really doesn’t need to be. Far from!

It’s 8:00PM now, and about time to start looking forward to bed. I need to get ready to do more wood processing tomorrow, and hopefully even get some boards sorted out for the long ends of the rabbit hutches. I have the water carrier ready out front so I can go fill up some more animal troughs. I suspect there are a couple who could use a top up. I am also informed that we are down to one gallon of milk in the house, and that the whole corn in the feed bin is about gone. There are two more jobs to get at as soon as I can.

So that’s it for today. Time for this old man to go wind up his day before bed.

Snow on the Mountains! Peachick!

I am sat down with a hot cappucino at hand and lip, and am reflecting on the day I had today. It was a good one! I have nothing to complain about. But there are comments.

First, I managed to keep the snooze button on any anxieties pressed till 6:00AM, then got up and got a good start after getting well rested. That made a nice change from the normal routine I follow! Then I took the girls to their school bust stop. After I came back, I got ready to face the day in the firewood yard down at the dump in the city. It was sprinkling a bit before I left, and on the way down that picked up to a decent rain. Breakfast at McDonald’s did not give it enough time to clear, and before I knew it, I had my snacks and drinks picked up and was sat in the woodyard, dreaming of those sunny summer days. Well, let’s be fair! I hate those sunny summer days for their heat, so I got out and got to it.

The first two logs I picked up were of a yellowish wood with white bark, and a decent smell of honey. I cannot identify it for sure, so I won’t try to say. I also got some willow, I think. It had the right type of bark and white wood, but there were no sprouts of any kind, so it may have been different. After loading some 3,000 pounds of wood I decided that was enough for the day and took off. I was not too sure of the weight till I hit the scales on the way out, so I decided to leave before I overloaded the trailer. Turned out I had a bit of room to spare. Not much, but some!

While loading wood I tried out the little device I made to fit over the top of the trailer’s front, top rail, and has a hook under it to hold the snatch block that the winch rope goes through. I built it because the chain never stays in the right position. This device worked perfectly, and made the whole job a lot easier because I was nto spending so much time preventing the rope from dragging through the second rail. That wears the rope severely. I have already broke one.

Happy with my device, and with my wood haul for today, I came home to help Missus with several things she had going on, then unloaded the trailer. That is a process that does not go perfectly, and I am still working out some kinks, especially to do with getting the log tongs to grab hold and let go when I want them to, as they are not mechanically driven.

I helped with a couple of short jobs while Missus was making a shepherd’s pie for supper, then went and got the girls from their bus stop. It was on the way there that I noticed that there was snow on the mountains! This is the first I have seen any for this year, and it sure made me want to go get more wood and get it all cut and split!

After a lovely meal, I went out to feed the chickens that I remembered were out of food. That’s when I found that another peachick has hatched, and the poor bird was getting tumbled by the chickens. I grabbed it up right away, and brought it in to Missus, as the peafowl are her project. It is now sat across the room from me under a heat lamp in a wash tub with a bit of wire mesh over top of it. It sure is noisey, and I think, quite healthy. We did not have luck with the lest couple that had hatched, so we are really hoping and trying to get this one off to a good start.

Now it is about an hour till bedtime, and I still have to get the rubbish out to the curb for pick-up tomorrow. Apart from that, I would like to relax a spell. It has been a busy, and really quite exciting day!

Wednesday Morning by the Fire.

It is snowing again this morning. Nothing like yesterday though. Just a little flurry. I see California is having rain again, so give that 24 hours and it will be here. It was warm overnight, and this morning I did not started a fire early this morning and am only getting around to it right now as I write this. It is coming up to 10AM. It’s not cold in here, but it is cool, and I figure one good blaze ought to take that chill off for a while. Plus, having a fire going in the stove is good for drying off those cast iron pans from breakfast, or softening the bacon grease enough to pour into the bin. I am doing both now. It’s much better to bring the grease up to a temperature warm enough to pour and put it all into the rubbish bin than to pour any of it into the sink, and down into the septic system.

I got a chance to get out to the shop for a few minutes this morning, and just a little cleaning put it into a place where I know what to do for my next steps that will make a big difference in cleaning it up ready for the new workbench. I will get to those steps this afternoon when I get a chance to get some things to the barn. When that is done, a few things need to get sorted off the foosball table before I am ready to be able to push it aside for the workbench to come through and set up. I am excited, but the tracking info still shows it has not moved yet. Do they ship stuff once a week, or does the shipper not actually have any tracking system? Who knows? When it gets here, it gets here.

The fire is not burning hot this morning. It really could be doing better. I just put a couple more logs on to see if that will help. I am thinking that closing up space in the stove will concentrate the heat better, and maybe those new logs will burn better. I think the wood got wet in the recent weather, even under the tarp, and not I am paying for that. I would really like to build some woodsheds out there to keep the wood in without messing about with the tarps that blow off in the wind. A good hard roof and sides would do a lot for keeping the wood ready to burn. Add that to the summer chores list. Add that to the current cost of doing anything! A fella wouldn’t complain about having a sawmill right now.

The extra logs helped the fire catch. I helped one of our daughters with her Social Studies. Missus has walked back and forth a few times with her computer in hand, and her headphones on while she works. I am back to a moment of peace now and can worry about that fire and some cleaning up around the house. Best way will be to put down the blog for the time being and get at it.

Snow Handling with a Tractor

It’s two degrees above freezing outside right now, gone after 5:30 PM. This winter has been pretty warm. The snow on the ground seems wet, and we keep getting puddles then ice skating rinks all around. I plow the dog walking path, and the top has a new finish on it by morning when the flat snow has melted during the day, then iced over during the night. It’s not the safest environment to walk in. Then again, we have had worse. But as winter seasons go, this is not a cold one, for sure.

So far this year we keep getting little bits of snow. We put in the footprints, then within a few days they are gone. It snowed maybe an inch and a half last night! It was just enough to want to clear it, but not enough to change the world or end the drought. But who knows what the cumulative effect of all this snow will be? We just need it to keep coming!

I am not entirely sure that the tractor would handle a single heavy snowfall. If I had a proper snow pusher or plow blade, then yeah, I think it would do amazing things. But with a loader bucket and a box blade, it has limits to what it can move in each pass.

All the snow clearing burns fuel. The cost of fuel is not very low this year, as you know. And as it keeps falling in these little bits at a time, I get to burn plenty of fuel to keep the place clear.

Between all this, I am trying to establish a snow strategy. Where are the best places to pile it up? How much should hit the ground before I clear it up? What areas should I clear off, and what should I leave? It’s great to have a cab and be able to work any time of day or night and stay warm.

One of the things that has really paid off with the tractor though is the ability to walk around outside without being forced into little foot-made paths that weave around almost randomly. I have full walkways and plenty of room to drive vehicles around without getting stuck.

Feeding has been so much easier this year! I put a bale in the bucket and take it around to where the llamas and horse is and deliver a couple of flakes per animal. By the time I am done with the paddocks with one or two animals in each, I have a final one with three that I can just dump the rest of the hay into. It is dead easy. It means I only end up out of the tractor three times after I have loaded the hay into the bucket. And those three times are very short, and don’t really require a coat. Makes a lovely winter chore list! There are other times I am out of the tractor for longer, but for feeding the goats, and for loading firewood into the bucket to take to the house. The bucket can carry a full load for a 24-hour burn. That never takes too long, so I have hardly been cold this winter compared to previous years!

There is a lot to get doing soon. When my workbench shows up in the next week or two, and I get it set up, I expect it to increase my opportunities to work in the shop. All I need to depend on is being able to warm it in there and being able to find some wood to work with! I can sure imagine a few things to build on it! I can also image being able to clear up and do some more candles.

That’s what is on my mind right now. All that and a bag of popcorn. I think I’ll go get that popping!