Category: Chores

Late Summer Projects Update

I have finished most of the fencing for the old llama pens in the side yard next to the house. These pens are conveniently located and make life easy daily, but especially in winter, for feeding and caring for the animals. I have two goats in the pen I am looking at keeping the calves in for their winter feedings, and I have let the calves out into the pen, too. The gates are in where I want them, finally allowing access to those pens for things like the lawn mower, and hopefully one day a tractor large enough to lift out anything that dies in the pens. It happens. Best to make it manageable. The only bit of fencing left to do there is along the east side of one of the pens where there is electric fencing at the moment.

The new driveway is serviceable to some degree now! It is rough and could really use a smoothing out. I have been hoping for years to get a tractor to do this sort of thing, but one never comes. The resources to do so may come soon, finally. If so, I would like to level it out and push a little out to grade and give it a smooth transition out to the road, rather than through the shallow end of the borrow pit, as is there now.

I have all the hay stacked in one place now, rather than sitting in a trailer. I need a lot more hay for over winter. I’ll have to have help loading it all, as there is too much for me to do on my own. I have about 75 bales now and need a total of around 300. So that’s an ongoing project. I also want to get a feeder to help keep the hay off the ground in the pen, though I have seen one farmer who successfully feeds on the ground in a field all winter. It is an opportunity to get one, and I probably should, though. It will serve more than just these cows.

Firewood had had a moment of pause as I have worked on the fencing and focused a little on getting hay. I have a decent pile in the Service Yard that I brought home in spring. It needs to be cut to length and split and stacked before I will really know how far I am from having enough for this winter. I do need a bit more, I am sure. With the summer being quite as hot as it has been, and the heat knocking out a good portion of working hours, I don’t think I am ready yet, at all, though I am close, and I would really love to be ahead or next year.

As I write this, we had one day of reasonable temperatures. There are more autumnal temps coming, too. Now is the time to act! It is time to boot the projects that need to be worked around the weather forward. Those include hay gathering, wood gathering, and things like getting up in the attic and running an electrical wire that needs putting in for the outlet I installed in an awkward corner of my den. The high temps are forecast now for two mid 80’s and the rest to explore the whole of the 70’s for the next ten days. There is also rain in the forecast, which would be a very welcomed relief from the dry summer we have had. Although, when I checked my weather records on our station, it was surprising to find this year was actually not the driest recorded. Quite the opposite! The summer months have recorded quite a lot more rain than in previous years. August pulled in 3.44 inches, while previous years have hovered closer to less than one inch, for example.

There are other projects to tackle in the cooler weather, as well. I can get back to the shop, where I can work on the lathe, and candle making. It needs a little clean up in there. I’d also like a proper workbench for wood working. In addition to all this, there is the apparently annual cleaning of the barn that is required before the snowy season starts. The granary has some things stored in it that should not be there. I want my cast iron out! The woodstove will need a servicing before the burning season begins, as well as the chimney cleaning out. I also have some firewood that wants splitting to use in the woodshop. There will be a period when the autumn is too cold, and the shop will be too, and it will want a little heat to keep it, till the winter sets in properly, and makes it all too cold to do anything in for more than a few minutes. That will be the time when I will have to transition any light work into my den, and I can make candles and do leather working in there. All of that must be arranged for.

So that’s where things are as of September 10th, 2022. Let’s see how much we can get done before the end of the month!

Today’s Calf Report

The Holstiens did great today. Both feedings went well. They were eager to eat, and all of them got through their bottles fairly quickly. I dropped in a bit of hay to see how they might take to it. But as I recall, I need to feed them out on the bottles till the six-week mark because their digestive systems are not made to handle hay only right now. I’d not want to feed them and them starve to death.

Speaking of hay, I am figuring on the need for 300 or so bales of hay over winter. I started collecting that today. I went to the dealer I used to buy from before our neighbor started to deliver large bales. But he took the year off, so the old guy it is. He has an honor system with a mailbox for the money to go into, and the hay out in the open (under a shelter) to pick up.

I picked up 57 bales today. I am not fit to pick up 57 bales. Holy crap! I thought I was going to die while lifting them, I thought I was going to die after I got home with them. I napped twice and rested the whole day till after that second nap. Can I have my tractor now? The hay is, of course, still on the rig out in the yard. The new fencing is not up yet, and the firewood pile that needs to be stacked only grew after I got to feeling better this evening. So, I have got a chores list waiting for me tomorrow.

A Cow Update & Etc…

The first two evenings we fed the cows, there was one during each feed that gave us troubles and did not eat. Aside from those two evenings, they have all eaten just fine. I don’t know if it was the stress of the move, but we have had the last two feedings, and indeed all others, go very, very well. We have three cages that we put the bottles into on the fence, and they all do a great job of keeping to their bottles and clearing them out. The fourth bottle gets held by our youngest daughter, and she does just fine with it. I need to go look for a fourth cage, to ease her efforts, as she has had enough time to get at least a rudimentary understanding of how strong a calf is, and the way it ‘bumps’ for more when it is out, or when the bottle nipple is not flowing fast enough for it.

The day before yesterday I went out to buy a roll of four-foot horse fencing, and the shop I went to had them marked at $199.99. I asked for one, and the lady at the till said they were in the computer at $209.99. It was clear they intended to raise the price, and they had not yet been marked on the actual fencing. She said she would sell it to me at the price marked. So, I asked her if she would sell me two? “Yes,” she said. So that is how I came to have two 100-foot rolls of horse fencing in the back of my truck. The plan is to measure out and use it for the original intended fence repairs to the dog and goat runs, and then sort out one of the llama pens for the calves to stay the winter in, then move the goats to that pen come spring, when the calves get moved to the pasture for summer grazing.

I kind of wish I could have blown another $200 on more fencing to put up on the property line and keep the over-all place in order. That fence is old, and of mixed type, and could really do with being replaced with something new that will hold in any animals that escape from their pens and into the main yard. There are plenty of places they can escape! In addition, it would make it painful for stray dogs and the like to get into the place.

Once I get that fencing up on the llama pen, I think I may allow the calves out of the hospital pen they are in together now and let them go around in the bigger pen for their benefit. I could turn some goats loose in there to rake down the weeds first, and to that end, it’s best I see how everyone is doing, and how I feel about it when the fence job is done. But if the goats will take to the weeds, that ought to save me a few bales of hay.

To do this fence update, I have to take down some electric fencing first. I will surely put up a wire at the top to keep penned animals from stressing the fence. Nobody likes the grass on their own side, especially among cows.

So, hay. That is going to be expensive this year. I will be paying $10 a bale, which is still $9 cheaper than the most expensive hay I have seen since coming back to America 12 years ago. There was a shop in Nevada that was selling them at $19 a bale, and that was back in the first year since we arrived. So, $10 does not entirely intimidate me. Besides, I may be able to talk the seller into a lower price if I am buying a hell of a lot of hay from him, which I will be, if he has it. I will be starting today, so maybe he will. But then again, with gas prices so high, I’ll understand if he doesn’t.

I’d go with another seller, and buy big bales, if I could. But I have no way of unloading them from the truck and trailer. That brings me to the tractor. I have none. I want one. I thought about buying a cheap one for the field, but I would still need one with a loader to do things like unloading the hay. So why blow an extra $3-grand? It gets hard when deciding priorities like a cab, which would benefit for long stretches of the year when the weather is bad. And after a recent sinus infection, that was a good reminder that protection around me from even little things blowing in the wind are worth the extra cost. I have picked up an infection before from just handing alfalfa hay. Conversely, that is a little more expensive than adding a backhoe to the tractor, which would help me get pipes for the water supply to places such as the garden, and the animal pens, rather than having to deal with long hoses that freeze in the winters. Sure, I could rent for that, but there are so many other jobs to do, too. I need a septic system installed, and I need to dig out old stumps, and sort out some of the waterways here. There is also the use in stirring compost, though to be fair, I could probably look at another way, using the loader, and should probably do that. Perhaps that is the crux of it. Otherwise, in a short amount of time, it would probably be cheaper to own than to rent.

I split more firewood last night. Looking at what I have got, I could probably make it through the winter with what is done and what is still on the ground. It won’t take long till the stuff that is cut is through the log-splitter, and I can get the last of the long branches into the mown clearing and cut them down to go through. At this point, I think anything I bring home from the wood-yard is ready to go towards next year’s burning. Then that wood will be properly seasoned! The miracle of being ahead! If I could just do that every year! Honestly, I am torn between getting firewood later today, or getting hay. But hay is in seriously limited supply if I don’t get it now and get a lot. So, it is probably best I do that. I have till about November to get the wood. And I still have permits to go into the mountains to get some maple, too! Hopefully that will come soon. I need the help of one of the older kids to do that. With no cellphone service up there, a person wants the help of someone who can drive to a hospital.

So, this turned out to be more than a cow update. It is just gone 4:00AM, and these are the thoughts that get to me at night. Now it is time to see if I can get some sleep, since loading hay is probably on the agenda for today.

Masks: A Cautionary Tale

I have always been the one who has not masked up for a bit of sanding, cleaning with bleach, or running the leaf blower. Who can be bothered? Besides, it does not bother me that much. But now, I actually do own a decent quality mask, and when I went to clean out the chicken coop two days ago, I brought it along with, and I put it on. Then I went crazy with the leaf blower and cleared out loads of loose feathers and lots of dust and debris. After a session of that, I took off my mask when everything had settled and cleaned up some of the larger things in the adjacent tool shed. More dust! I ran the leaf blower again for a short bit and did not bother to put on the mask.

I was barely out of that end of the barn before I knew I had given myself a sinus infection. I could feel it on the right side, and soon my eye felt that corresponding irritation that comes along with. I gave it that night and the next day to see if it would feel any better, and it did. But now that the overlying sinus infection pain has settled a day on from that, I feel pain that resembles that sharp hurt one gets with a sore throat. Only it is above my throat, and below the sinuses.

Lesson learned; wear the mask! Always wear the mask! I watched my stepdad nearly die when I was younger because of a sinus infection that exploded into his brain cavity. It is not something I want to replicate. And now, with kids of my own, I don’t want them to have to see their father go through something like that, either.

It’s early in the morning on that third day from the cleaning. It is abundantly clear I could have avoided this situation. It is also abundantly clear to me that I am not young and impervious to the things I once was. I also have little people looking up to me to set them a good example, and to treat things like masks as though they are serious, not silly.

Summer Scything

I was awake at 5AM this morning, and it only took one YouTube video about medieval scything to get me up and send me out the door chasing g the tall grass along the side of the road before the sun rose. I only cut one tenth of an acre before the sun peaked up over the eastern mountains. It is enough grass for a couple of days of feeding, and puts off the purchase of hay for a little bit longer.

While cutting it was easy to imagine parents of the past scolding their children for leaving strips of grass uncut as they passed. On second thought, I wonder if they said it was okay, as those would drop some seed soon, helping to prepare the field for next year? It is hard to know exactly what the conversations would have been in the practical sense, so the chore has to be done time and again to really master it, and get into the mindset. People were not just stupid dolts then, and the chore would have been, much like all aspects of life, mastered.

Knowing that the people of the time tended towards piety, or were at least led to guilt, it is easy to see how the metaphors of death and God were woven into the daily chores.

Back in for breakfast and two cups of coffee as I was joined soon by the rest of the family to start our day off together. Missus began with working in the herb garden while I lent her a hand at moving some potted bushes to the back border of the space, gathering some fallen grass up, and bringing out the box with solar lights in it.

After finishing up the day’s work in the herb garden I went out back and started watering the trees, and I removed the fire ring that had grass growing up all around it, which made it impossible to see. I used a pitchfork to find all the stone, and pull them up, but once I found the perimeter of the ring, I ran down the grass around it with the riding mower, to make it easier to see where I was working, and less intimidating. Once everything was loaded, I took it to separate it out to a stone pile next to the granary and a compost pile next to the llama pen. Some things went to the bins for collection. The whole fire ring removal was a fair amount of work by itself. Time was, it would have been about half of my day’s work, but today it was less than a quarter, and I never got bone sore like I used to. I got tired. But that was fine. I had to sit and soak that in, because for once, I was able to get a lot of work done, and I was not sore for it.

There were various other chores that I got to today, too. But those are the highlights. We are expecting company tomorrow when our oldest comes to visit. That will be a highlight all in itself.

Summer Stuff

My daughters and I went down to the city dump yesterday to pick up some firewood for winter. We got a pretty good amount already cut down to length, and I cut some more to size also, so it’s out of trailer and right onto the log splitter. There were some birch pieces at the dump too, so we picked up a bit for me to try on the lathe.

I think we got a cord and a half or so . I need to get everything split and stacked and see if we have got enough to last all winter or not. Hopefully we do. We’re certainly a bit closer!

This morning I could not sleep from 3AM, and finally at 6AM I gave up and got up and went out to the roadside with my scythe and cut down a good two or three days’ worth of feed for the goats and the llama. My process is to cut a bit then pull it up in a couple of days to feed. At the moment it goes right from the ground and into the feeder. I am not storing any in a pile anywhere.

This afternoon I worked in the herb garden, putting down mulch and finishing beds, boarders and all. I cut the grassy paths, too. I hope that the work in there will help Missus catch up on what she wants to get done there and make the garden into what she is dreaming it to be.

This evening would be a great time to top up the water troths while I feed the animals, as well as get some of that firewood split and stacked. The herb garden is not finished, but the progress on it has been substantial enough that I won’t feel guilty for doing something else for a spell.

Wood

It’s a cool morning here on the farm.  The storms that flooded Yellowstone north of us barely brushed by and touched our little home on the valley floor.  The greatest effect here was cooler weather with a dash of wind.  Cooler weather is good for splitting firewood ready for winter, and so I did yesterday, with the help of the girls, stacking it while I gathered a new piece, and hefted it to the splitter, then ran it through.  We did a little more than half a cord yesterday, before being distracted by anything that was not work. 

The wood is still wet this morning, as is easily seen by the flies gathering on it to drink where the fresh splits were placed yesterday.  There was a little water around the top of the aircleaner colver on the log splitter, which reminded me that I needed to cover it before leaving it overnight, which I obviously had already done.  It is a a splitter we bought a couple of years ago, before the company that makes it redesigned it and put on a new cover that does not drink all the rainfall if can, and fill the carburator, and then the cylendar.  When I started it yesterday morning, the piston barely would move as I pulled the starter cord, but move it did, and I could hear the water squeezing out the exhaust valve.  I dabbed up any remaining water in the carb with a paper towel, then pulled the cord till the pison moved freely, and finally dumped some gas into the carb, and pulled again and again till it finally started. 

It is not an ideal situation.  The solution is not great, either.  But it solves it, and with much less effort that pulling things apart.  So I’ll take it. 

I took a log from in the way in the shop yesterday and mounted it to the lathe and made it into a scepter for my daughter for when she is ruling her “army of darkness,” also known as the barn cats. It is not a particularly useful project, but it is practice, and the log was not what I would have wanted to build something from, and it was just in the way. There is another one out there, so I may do one more.

Writing is done on the front parch these days. I have put on a tab with YouTube open, and Debussy playing. Debussy and the sounds of the birds chirping outside; could anything be lovelier? Maybe the same situation with hand tools on a bench in the shop, working a piece of wood into a chair? That’s the goal.

I have a reading date with my youngest daughter in a few minutes. We are working her through Rascal, about a boy in Wisconsin a century ago, who took in a raccoon. She is having troubles reading, so we are working on getting her some daily practice.

Spring 2022

Times are tough these days, with inflation high, and everything else that is going on withing the United States, and without. One of the biggest bug bears on our farm is the price of animal feed, and especially hay. Two years or so ago I was able to secure some grassy alfalfa mixed bales of hay from a neighbor for a mere $60 a 1,200# bale. This year he’s not growing hay, and I have had to go looking elsewhere. What I have found is the same bales, only more pure alfalfa, selling for anywhere from $200 to $360 a bale! I got my scythe out and sharpened it on the same wheel I use for my lathe tools and got a great edge on it! Now I am cutting grass from the roadsides and anywhere I can grow it without it being required as pasture by another animal, such as the horse or any of the pastured llamas.

It is still a lot of work considering the condition I am in at my age, but I think of the money it is saving us right now and keep on cutting till I have enough for a day or two. Once I have that, I try to leave it for three days till it dries and is time to feed, but I have had to put green grass in for the goats and llamas, which I sort of regret as I remember it is not that great for the ruminants.

I have a load of firewood that needs to be cut and split. I need to get off my lazy backside and do it! It’s honestly the other labors that slows me down, along with my bad hips and legs. I’ll push through it, but I may need to get a new log splitter soon as ours has pushed the maul right out of the track enough times it has now broken the rather industrial welds on the side of the track. I am hesitant to work too hard with it right now as I may break it and have to repair or worse, replace it, and cannot budget that just yet. To pick up an equivalent splitter with a better design looks to be just shy of $2K. Yardmax looks good to me. It doesn’t look like it would have the issue of water getting in the carb, nor the channel that broke on my Champion splitter. Without the channel, there should be less clogging, too. There are other features, too, but the biggies are the inherent weaknesses of the channel, and that leaky carb cover. Yardmax looks like the push pieces that separate a stuck log from the maul are replaceable, rather than just breakable like on the Champion. That entices me! All it is missing is a lift arm to put the heavy logs on the table for me! Maybe I should hunt one of those splitters down!

I am raising meat chickens this year, for the first time. I need to pick up a second batch. I bought 15 originally, but the brooder was too cold on the last chilly days of spring, and 9 of them died due to lack of oxygen while huddling too close together. I do need to fix the brooder, or just plan on raising such birds in the summer only. Since the weather has warmed up, the birds have been fine, even out in the cage next to the egg coop. They are larger now, but they still have a little way to go till they are full size.

I have been practicing a few things in the woodshop. I finally got a jig to use on the sharpening wheel and accurately sharpen my lathe tools. That is going to take a little working out as far as how to do it correctly and consistently each time, especially based on my preferred cutting edges, which have yet to be determined. But I have used firewood to make a couple of little stools, each a little more refined than the last. I only added glue to the stool I made yesterday, as the previous have been assembled without. All are holding together just fine, by the way! Yesterday’s stool can either be a garden stool for Missus, or a little seat for our grandson. I’ll leave that up to Missus! As I get better at this, I want to lead up to building a chair, then another and another, till I have a few for around the house! Maybe then it will be time to try a table! Whatever the case, the little stools are a good way to get started on an easy project with some of the required skills.

So that’s a summary of the things here that require my attention now. There are many more things, both house related, and family related, but those are for another space besides this blog. The best to you for now!

The Weather and Heating

According to an article I just saw, January was in a drought, officially, in our part of Idaho. I can confirm that anecdotally. I have not seen much new snow at all. None, really. If you were to look in our yard, you would find snow that has been there since December. Forecasts for the rest of February are not promising.

As for temperatures, it has been warming for the last week, giving the feeling of an early mud season. The grass has been wet, and some of the snow has melted away. There is still a lot covering the ground, but the clear patches are getting larger.

Our upstairs furnace started producing carbon monoxide on the 29th of January. We had a visit from the fire brigade, and then after the weekend, we had a visit from the repairman. The repairman took one look at it and said he could not fix it because it is in a bedroom, and as a combustion furnace, it is out of code. We had some things to discuss in this house, let me tell ya! The furnace upstairs is there because there is no route for ducting from the downstairs to the up. The downstairs furnace has not operated since 2015.

We decided to order some 400-watt panel heaters that hang on the wall and produce constant heat. The effect is similar to a radiator. I ordered three, but so far have only installed two. Between them and the woodstove in the dining room, the house is easy to maintain at about 70F throughout. That’s with the temperatures outside in the tens and twenties. I am actually concerned that when the temps get up into the thirties and forties, it will get too hot inside, and will be hard to keep at an even temp throughout the day.

I have yet to be updated on our electrical usage, but the two panels are using about as much electricity as two or three always on computers. Either way, we are no longer using propane, so there is a cost saved there where the money to cover the extra electric cost can come from.

As for our firewood, I think we will be running out early this year. I need to get more each year ready for winter. I have some green wood that we can burn into to keep warm after we run out of seasoned. There is still about a cord of seasoned left, mind. But once it is gone, I will need to watch the chimney more closely. Green wood burning clogs the spart arrestor. It also clogs the pipe if not kept clear, so I may have to have it apart for that. We are fortunate to have a bend in the bottom of the masonry, which is also out of code, but it collects what drops much faster than the rest of the pipe clogs, and it keeps me after that pipe, and aware of the condition of the entire thing. Once I have to clean that bend out, it is not much of a stretch to just clean the whole pipe. The whole job only takes about an hour. Small price for heating that has proven safer, easier to service, and much more reliable than our furnaces. Less costly to feed, too!

So that’s where we are at with our heating situation. It is a little unconventional, but it seems to be working. It is also redundant, still. I think in a perfect world, I would run a couple of dedicated circuits to carry only the heaters, and put a dimmer switch over each one, allowing them to be individually controlled, and turned down, especially for spring and fall.

Half-way through February, it is getting time to start making some solid plans for spring. Missus has said she would like to try a garden again this year. I would REALLY like to put water in near to the garden spots, so it is not all hose dragging and maintaining. It really kind of ruins it having to carry upwards of 300 feet of hose around the yard to be able to reach everywhere. It’s a pain where watering animals is concerned, too.

The Many Things of Today

I got up this morning knowing I needed to get animal feed and a couple of Kilner jars because I keep buying them and filling them up before I get mayonnaise made and put into what I have bought. After my little one finished school for the day I get her shuffled out the door to go get what we needed, which I figured could fit easily into the car. That’s when things went wrong.

We got out the gate and down the road about 750 feet when the car claimed it was in a faulted mode and overheating. It was only 27 degrees out, and the car had been running for about five minutes, so there is no way it was overheating. But, modern cars being what they are, ours went into self-defense mode, which prevents it throttling. I hate it, because it can do this on the freeway and almost instantly cut power to the motor and leave a family stranded in traffic with no recourse to getting it out of the lane if one did not make it out in time. It seems extremely dangerous to me, which I think I expect from a Ford. Say Pinto with me. Once it dies, the driver may be able to shut off the engine then restart it a couple of times as it continues to act up, then get it moved a short distance. I barely made it back home. We took the truck out.

We went to the feed store and got much of what we needed there, but I knew I needed some Kilner jars, so I decided to pick up dog food and cat food at IFA in Logan. They did not have the jars I needed, nor the cat food, so I went to Smithfield Implement to get the jars. Then we went to IFA in Preston to get the cat food, which they said they had, then called back to have it brought up front and the guy in the back room said they were out, despite the computer claiming there were four. Then he came back as said there where two, and I said I’d take them both!

When home, we rested off the trip, then I put the animal feed away and fed my animals for my chores. Then I checked the car. Still playing like it was overheating. So I checked the coolant reservoir, and it was below the minimum line. I added water and restarted the car. Still in fault mode. So, I remembered that I needed to find the OBDII port scanner… That took a while. By the time I did, I put the thing where I could find it tomorrow. IT was too late to mess with is anymore, and I went and played a game.

Goodnight!

Oh, also. I did look into the weather station data to see if I had recorded the shockwave from the volcanic eruption at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai.

Volcanic Eruption Shockwave
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapia volcano erupted violently on the 15th of January and sent a shockwave around the world that was recorded in barometers. The gray line shows it here in SE Idaho.

And there it is!