Category: Improvements

Nearly Done with the Rounds

I got out today kind of mid-morning and started splitting the rounds in the Service Yard. Got a break when the kids came over to pick up our grandson from us where he had spent the night. That was good times as always. After they left, I got in a short nap and went out later in the evening to get at it again. I think I could fill the bucket on the tractor three more times, maybe four and that would be it.

When I finish the rounds I am on about, I will be picking up all the little pieces that are from branches and from mill slabs and sorting them out in the woodstove bunk or in the fireplace bunk, as I keep two separate collections of wood because each appliance can take a different length of wood. I also prefer to budget what goes into the fireplace as it does not produce as much heat, and us used more for ambiance than for heating with. Who’d want to burn up their firewood on a fireplace and not have enough to get through the winter and stay warm with the woodstove, which definitely produces more heat?

I am fixing to get the wood covered soon and get milling the logs out back, too. I still need a couple of cords of firewood, but it is not a complete disaster now that our son helped us split up as much wood as he did. I think I could get to it before the snow starts falling as long as I put my effort and mind into it. I might get the splitting done tomorrow, but there is another chore to get at then.

I need to finish that rabbit hutch, which will require planing a board down tomorrow. I want to do it in the electric planer and get the thickness just so. I’d like a nice finish on this hutch, with the hope it will last many years to come.

I have wood set aside in the shop to make a butcherblock style top of our kitchen island. I admit it is poplar, but that is what I was able to find for free down at the dump where I get my firewood. I have heard of people finding black walnut down there, but I have yet to actually see a log. So, the poplar will do. I am still trying to figure out if I will do a smooth finish on it or give it the scooped plane finish with a scrub plane. It would make it interesting and fairly easy to repair cuts and scratches on. I’d plane everything down to a consistent thickness with the power planer and then glue up and add the scrub plane finish, then top it with some Odie’s oil. That’s what I am thinking at the moment, anyhow. I think I would aim for a two-inch-thick top. I am pretty sure I have nine-quarter heavy. If memory serves me. Or I could walk out and measure it. Nah. I’d get sucked in when I would rather go to bed soon.

Maybe I’ll just do a smooth finish. Who knows?

I finished most of what I needed to do in the trailer for Missis to use as her little shop. I’ll have to make her some more quarter round, I am sure. I also need to frame in a pegboard that is next to her register desk. But those are easy and won’t inhibit her from getting the thing done and open. Hooray!

Long Awaited Lighting

Little things such as proper light in the yard make a world of difference! It has been some eleven years that I have winted a light over the concrete driveway. Now, with proper electrics in the shop, I finally have done it. I got a farm style light, and put it up just under the peak of the gable on the front of the shop. I put in a 100W equivelant LED that throws light all the way over the driveway, and some more. The best bit, to me, is that it accomidates my desire to comply with the Dark Sky Initiative. I can see plenty in the drive, but the light doesn’t spoil my view of the stars above. Plus the fixture is a red, farm style. So we accomplished the ligth with a little bit of class. The only thing left to wire to the switch panel is an outlet for under the eaves to produce power for Christmas lights.

The light over the door has been a pleasant addition, but the light out on the driveway at the other end of the shop really illuminates one of the darkest and most vulnerable parts of the yard.

I know there are big problems in the world, but the little joys make little differences. And those add up!

Do I Need to Tell You?

It is hot! Summer weather gets a bit unbearable at this time of year. I think there are places where the temperatures have exceeded their normal range by a bit, and records have been set. Our highs have been a bit more in line with the norms of the past decade, though I have not looked in the records to compare. It seems like fairly normal hot weather. So why would I be moaning about it then? I suspect that it is because summers in say, southern Nevada, get hotter, but winters stay much warmer. If the lows barely break into the freezing range, compare that to our winter low of -21F this year. Our total range has been closer to 120 degrees F in total. I am not speaking for anywhere else, so much as just saying that the reason I am feeling overheated may be because of the severity of our temperature swings throughout the year.

This coming week we have a lot of work to get done! The weather will give us a break, and it should be much more bearable for a bit, so we will be taking advantage. We have really got to get a few last pushes through in order to get our home-based businesses started. We have things to organize, and we have some cleaning to do. IT is time to see about things like windows on the house, too. I have a bit of work to do around the old chimney to try to prevent a leak where it meets the roof. I hope to see a man come by to offer a price on getting our septic redone, so we can get the yard into a state we can live with. There are many projects to get done!

My personal push needs to be to get the shop in a working state, with all the workbenches cleared off, and the tools organized and put in places. I have the likely last of any major purchases on order now. It is a set of blades for my plough plane. I’d like to do more than just build, though some of the blades will help with that, but also be a bit decorative, which some of the other blades will accomplish.

About that firewood…

I have a happy setup established with the trailer, a winch, and the tools required to bring home logs just shy of ten feet long. Those are great for the mill, and produce some scraps for the firewood pile. I also need to get some proper splitting rounds to add to the firewood pile. It has taken longer than I hoped to get the collection tools gathered and working properly, and while I can work in the mornings when it is still cool, it heats up quick and puts a damper on getting the job done in a day from collection to putting everything where it belongs here ready to process. It is best for me if I can do that. Hopefully a little break in the temperatures will turn into a long break, and I can get down to get more wood soon. It is always one of the things that is hard to get my head around; going out in such heat to get firewood! One has to keep in mind just how cold it really gets here in the winter!

It is getting pretty close to time to eat! I am off to have a lovely Friday evening and enjoy the company of family before we spend our last weekend as people who are not in a hurry running our own businesses.

End of February Update.

It is definitely still winter here at the farm. We have good chances of snow for most of the coming week. Looks from the weather radar that whatever does come will likely have to form, as nothing closer to the west coast seems to be heading our way. It was warm today, though! We got up to 38F according to our weather station.

The SDR Radio I got the other day worked as expected. I got it running that day and played around with it, then delivered the second one to the desktop computer upstairs but did not yet set that one up. It’s fascinating how it can read or see the whole spectrum, and portions of it visible at once to tell where different signals are and have a hint to what kind they are. FM Radio signals are amazing, especially where they have digital encoding on both sides of the frequency. Even stations without that digital encoding are amazingly powerful compared to the rest of the spectrum. I will have to work on reception and an improved arial.

The tractor reached 200 hours yesterday. That’s just shy of five months! I cannot believe we are coming up to five months of ownership already! It still seems new to me. Most of its work here has bene snow clearing, but as soon as the weather breaks to spring, I think it will see a total shift! I may move big snow piles into the orchard just to get the trees started for the year. I may have to move a lot of hay off the garden and start it for tilling. I want that space tilled four or more times prior to planting in May and June. There will be post holes to dig, too. I am going to have to reset some fencing and clear some old areas out. Then there is the firewood. I don’t expect to muck about with that this year, since I want to be two years stored by autumn, and since I want to have a load of wood to work with. I hope to see this whole area of my chores severely altered to what it has been in previous years.

I got the second GoPro camera that I have been thinking about. If I am going to do a YouTube channel, then this setup I have is good enough to do it with. I would benefit from a lavalier mic, but I have a separate sound recorder that can also do the trick for now. I’ll have to give it a try. I am having a card reader delivered so I can put one on my laptop and one on my desktop to unload videos and edit. I have tried out the GoPro cloud, and I am not terribly thrilled with any of it, apart from the discount they offer to users while shopping. I’d rather keep the filed local, I think. Then I’ll only upload final cuts to the Internet. I have yet to see any real advantage apart from having apparently all the space I need to keep every crap video file I make. That may turn out to be the seeds of a problem. But who knows? Maybe in the next few weeks I’ll get a video created and uploaded to the channel again.

Mondy is anticipated to be the day we have our deli slicer delivered. I have been wanting a proper one for many years now, and we have what appears to be a decent one on the way. It is a Berkel 300 Redline. I am a little worried about it after seeing the shipping details. For whatever reason, it is listed with a shipping weight of 122 pounds. I am having trouble believing that, but I worry that I believe wrong. I guess we’ll see what it is like when it gets here. But honesty, how can a home line slicer weight so much? Maybe they packed it in a wooden crate?

I have very few hand tools left in my wish list now. A shipment arrives also on Monday. It is just a few things, and while there are a couple more planes to be desired, I think I have enough to get a real start in my workshop. Spring will give us access to the barn for cleanup, and to rearrange our storage. I have a permanent wall to fix into the old garage door of my shop. That wall wants a window built into it for some heat and light. Missus has a kiln on order that also wants a home in the shop.

So, a lot is going on this year. I think we will be able to reach closer than ever to self-sufficiency. I have always said that it is a very expensive state to reach. On the upside, I am where I can start building some of the remaining tools I need. I am even considering building my own travishers. I’ll still have to buy the blades, but the handles and bodies will save me around $100 each. That’s not small potatoes. Small potatoes come from my garden.

There you have it! An end of February summary. That’s what’s going on, and where we are at, and where we are going for the moment. I am excited to be at the point in life where I feel like I finally have a life, and all the things that that entails. Having moved country twice and other events that have left me with next to nothing, it is a hard thing to recover from. But I feel quite like I have arrived. Everything else is just improving things up and building equity. For me, that’s a good place to be. Oh, and I am about two weeks short of my 52nd birthday.

Autumn Proper

The first week of November is already by, and I am already starting to lament the thought of that long period between Christmas and spring planting, when the seed catalogues come, and the season never seems to go. Everyone who lives with plants knows just what I mean. As for those with animals, unless they can afford plenty of hay, they will understand the anxieties I have right now about the amount of hay we have on hand, and how well the tarp is staying on it, or not. Anyone who survives the cold with only wood heat and limited access to the wood knows the other anxiety I am suffering right now. I know we could be a lot worse off in so many ways. It is just a part of the agrarian life that one lives with when each year one gets just enough to get by. I hope that during the coming year I will better this situation and get truly ahead.

I have got so much done in the past month since the tractor arrived that I am amazed. I am half done with the land bridge from the main property across the street to the other side of the swale at the bottom of the place. Once that is done, I will be able to wither carry on with the idea of planting trees along there and calling it Willow Bank, or I could let the livestock over to graze at their leisure and have about 4/10ths of an acre more land to feed from. It’s no small thing as that would support a cow for a while. Every little helps. But if we do the Willow Bank idea, it would be best to leave it as an untouched natural space for animals and picnics. Willow trees would just finish it over there, providing shade and play.

I went out to do some work in the shop yesterday but noticed the llamas giving attention to something at the bottom of the property. I could not see what it was, so I went over instead, and found three hounds had trapped a raccoon and were biting and barking at it. The raccoon was in a struggle, but I could not do much to interfere with frenzied dogs who would only ignore my pleas for them to stop and let it be. I checked with some people who I saw on the next property, but the dogs were not theirs. I went back and the raccoon was still alive, but had no fight left in it. I thought the dogs were being fairly inefficient at killing it, then realized what was going on. They had worn it down, then one bit on its throat till it choked to death. It was a maneuver that they could not have pulled off with the raccoon fighting back. It was a sad thing to see, but they were not my dogs and I could not stop them, and I did not want to get tangled up with a raccoon. If there are rabies, then I’d be the final victim. No thank you. I now know who’s dogs they are, but there is not much I can do about them, as they live close enough that unless they are going to keep their dogs permanently locked up, they will always end up over on ours. Also, we have had horses break lose and end up in their pasture before, too, so it is probably best to keep an understanding with these particular people. It was a raccoon. It was not one of my animals. But it does mean that I have limits to what animals I can keep over there, as small ones and waterfowl are probably out of the question. It is best as a grazing pasture.

I am nearly done setting up for a welder in the shop. I need to clean up in there, so I don’t set a fire or cause an explosion. I just need to install some gear I have got in order to plug the welder in, then I need to get some practice in. I have got me some learning to do. I put in all the electrics into the cottage for Missus, and now I am doing a bit of work on the shop. Much of it is done already, and things are working much better in there. For example, the air compressor is kicking on at full power now and runs without tripping a breaker. It sure feels a lot safer without worrying about all the power coming into the shop down a single extension cord from the house! That has also relieved a circuit in the house, too! The kitchen ought to run better, and we have finally closed that window on the front porch all the way. There is the door out there that could do with being replaced, and I think it will keep much warmer in there going forward from that.

Tractor Work

So many years ago I picked up parts of an old walk that went from the front door to the roadside. I did it when we decided to put in a fence and cut off access straight in with it, circle drive, and a tree. I used some for crazy paving in Missus’ herb garden, and I used two big square pieces under the garbage bins so they could be sort of roadside, but on the outside of the fence, ready to take out on garbage day, and easily accessible with the kitchen rubbish on all the days of the week. It has worked really well, apart from the slabs having gone in crooked, and they were too heavy to fix at the time, as it took all I had in me to get them there in the first place. I promised myself then that when I got a tractor, I would fix it.

Today came the day it got fixed. I took out the slabs, and leveled the dirt under where they belonged, then put them back. It was nowhere that easy as the area is fenced in, and it took a lot of patience and care to avoid damaging the fence! But finally, when it was all done, I put the bins in, and instead of sitting all wonky, they are straight and true, and since they live near the roadside, we finally look like we did this with intention, rather than on accident.

In addition to fixing the bin slabs, I tried again at grading the roadside where the main driveways are. Water comes off the road in the rain and puddles right next to the pavement. Passing drivers easily come off the side of the road a little in that spot, in addition to our passing through from the drives, and with freezing temperatures, we have been at risk of the roadside crumbling into a massive pothole that we could count on the county not addressing. So, I have been trying to grade down the dirt next to the puddles to let them come off the roadside. That is not entirely straightforward as the place where the water should head off to is the front of our house. I needed to level the dirt gently, then slope it past the place where the garbage bins sit, and into a grassy area in front of the cow pens where nobody really drives. Hopefully this will eliminate the pooling of water in that spot! I’d like to prevent the road being destroyed in front of our house!

I finished putting in several electrical outlets in my wife’s cottage yesterday, making electricity available along her entire workbench. I need to set in some outlets in the comfy side of the cottage next. That should be easier. It is a lot closer to the panel, so there will be far less drilling involved, anyway.

I also started rewiring my shop, setting up for all of the lighting I want to have in, and outside of it. I also got some of the outlets sorted. I have been running power in the shop off an extension cord for the last ten years, so this has been very exciting to me!

A Storm Blows Through the Farm

I woke up this morning around 2:45 and noticed the ghostly sound of children screaming. Turned out it was just the wind. I was out doing chores last night and noticed the tarp had blown off the hay pile. Well, that will never do. That is one of those fixes that has got to be handled immediately when the forecast suggests rain. I put the tarp back on and fastened it down as best I could with all the bungee cords I could find. The big tarp is not in great shape, and the grommets are not all in place. So, fastening it down was not straightforward. After waking up this morning, I found myself lay in bed listening to the wind and theorizing on the best way to fasten a tarp so that the wind does not catch it and flap it to pieces. The conclusion I came to was ropes pulled taught, not tight, and one on every grommet to prevent any flapping. No metal to prevent any tearing of the tarp too. But it’s too late for the tarp we have at the moment.

I finally got up and dressed, then went out to give it a look when I realized I had nothing else to do but worry about the hay. Our whole winter’s supply is in one stack, and if it gets wet, rots, then generates heat and catches on fire, then we lose everything all at one. That is not acceptable at all. I need to do something about that.

When I went out, I took the tractor along, and it provided lots of light and the loader provided a step to help me up onto the pile of hay to try to get a handle on the bit that I found flapping lose. That is very destructive to a tarp! It also left the two new big bales exposed. The grommets were gone along that edge, so I did what I could do, which was to grab the trailer for the lawn mower and put it on top of the tarp on the hay pile. Naturally, the lovely loader on the tractor did all the lifting! I should go out and buy a new tarp in the morning and put it on before the weather takes a turn for the worse. Saying that, it was nearly 60F out when I was out messing about with the tarp!

In other news on the farm, the electrician came to do the job of installing panels in our two outbuildings yesterday. I am at ease with the work that needs to be done from the panel to each light and outlet. But putting in a proper installation from the service to the panes was not something I was comfortable with. We put in an underground cable, and it required a splice to come to the two buildings, and that was also something I worried about. But having seen it now, I think I could do the same work to some sort of smaller scale if needed in the future. But I foresee only a single breaker from the cottage out to the chicken coop in my future. They could use light and some heat for their water. I also would love to see some lights on the exterior of the barn to help illuminate against the wild animals that come visiting.

In addition to electrifying the cottage, I also will be able to give the shop a proper installation of electrical outlets and lighting. I have been working off of an extension cord thus far, which is ridiculous and unsafe. It also meant leaving a gap in a window on the front porch for the cord to lead out of. I’ll be able to close that up and see how warm we can actually get it out there in the near future. Furthermore, I will be able to install things like my welder in the shop and run enough power to install dust collection and proper power tools and such. I would also like to arrange easy access for a fridge to sell eggs from the front of the shop, near the road. I would also like very much to get a bandsaw in the shop that will allow me to make some flat stock, do some resawing, and make some blanks for the lathe. This is all very exciting stuff! Let’s hope Home Depot has got the breakers I need in stock when I go later in the day!

Progress is always a wonderful thing!

The New Tractor

Well, I guess it was October 4th that the new tractor was delivered to the farm. It showed up and I must say, I was not impressed with the dealership’s delivery. They forgot the tiller, they brought it with a broken wiper fluid lid, and they brought the key to another tractor. The coolant was low, and overall, it seemed they just put the tractor on a trailer and brought it right off the lot without reviewing to see if it was ready for delivery or not. It didn’t even have an SMV sign on the back. There were no manuals, and they was no offer to go over anything with me when they dropped it off, but rather, they just wanted to drop it and go. I only noticed after that they dropped it off with only a quarter of a tank of fuel. I called and asked if that was their standard practice. When the guy came back with the tiller, he also replaced the wiper fluid lid, and put the manuals in and topped the coolant and fuel tanks. Later in the week I had to tighten the fan belts on the alternator and on the air conditioner.

Dealership problems aside, the tractor itself seems pretty good. I put it right to work and have put hours on it. I in fact am ready for the machine’s first service already! It wants a service at 50 hours to clear any metal worn from it being new. I’ll be talking to the dealer about it tomorrow. But the work I have put it through so far has cleared a ten year long to do list and caught up on as much as I could possibly hope to with this machine as it is. If I had a backhoe, then I would have cleared more, and that would have cost a lot more.

I killed a goat pen next to the barn, a mess in front of the granary, finished a driveway on the west end of the home lot, and made a pad to set a new shed down on. I have hauled home large round bales of hay and unloaded them and cleaned up messes and the like just about everywhere, including the wood yard, formerly the Service Yard. I also build a massive compost pile and loaded it with horse apples and llama poo from everywhere I could find it. I made a ramp down from the canal path over where the canal people piled tailings so high, I could not get my truck over it to haul down a dead llama last year. I cleaned up the dead llama finally and felt a huge sigh of relief when I put him someplace far less conspicuous till his remains are gone naturally.

Oh, and the firewood I have moved! I brought over the wood that was left across the street a few years ago when that massive cottonwood came down on the neighbor’s farm and delivered here. What a wonder it was to be able to move that at last!

I am set up to lift logs, till gardens, level land, haul trailers, and lift large bales of hay. And all of this with a tractor of only 24.5 HP! But it does have a cab! It has a cab that is more protective than one without if I roll a bale of hay over towards me, and against loose hay blowing in the wind, and the wind, and the rain, and the snow, and the heat. It has a radio, and it has all the bells and whistles I could want to grow old in on my little farm.

So, what’s the plan?

In the coming summer, I want to put the old dog to work making flower gardens and vegetable gardens and cleaning up the property across the street from the canal company mess. I want to be ready when they put the canal into pipes underground to make the land good and clean. I get to clear our own snow this year, and even keep our drives clean inside the gates. I hope that with the tiller, I can beat back more of the grass and weeds that come up in the gardens. I plan to compost the gardens well with the heap I have been building. I will be able to remove dead animals regardless of their size and weight!

There are so many things I can do! And that is the key to the whole deal. I can do! That is what excites me most! And with that, I have been doing. It was lovely today to go out and work in warm air while the weather was cold outside. I went over the road to collect more to feed the compost heap with, and it never bothered me in the least. Granted, this is the beginning of the cold time of the year. I have yet to plug in the block heater. But I suspect I will be doing that soon by the way the old dog started this morning. We are putting electric into two outbuildings where I will soon be able to install a dedicated outlet for that and sort out a proper parking spot for the tractor.

So, for now, all is better than well on the farm. I have not yet come to a chore the tractor could not do. I suspect that may change soon as I am getting the largest bales of hay I can get hold of delivered in the next couple of days. We’ll see if I can even move them once they are on the ground here. Luckily, I will have them put where I can take them apart to use if I really am unable to move them at all.

In other exciting news, the weather has changed from summer like to autumnal. We have gone from warm and lovely last week, to snow all the way down the mountains in the west and nearly as far in the east just this weekend. It has rained, which is a first for the month. But the temperature dropped, and the rain turned to snow overnight. My daughter came in with firewood this evening, and said she was going to go back out and after and watch the snowfall. We lit the woodstove Friday evening, and I suspect it is going to be going constantly from now till Spring. What a time it is! I am glad I got the tractor when I did and have been able to get the farm ready for wintering over and bursting out to life in the Spring!

I think we are in for a cold winter. The rheumatism is speaking clearly, and so is the dry patches I get on my hands. Everything about this autumn just feels like we are in for it this year. Only time can confirm this feeling, though. I have some machines to service this week, and a lawnmower to put away for the winter. Once all that is done, I think a trip to pick up some dry wood to bring back to split up and add to the winter pile is in order. I am not too happy with feeling like “I hope we have enough,” and am ready to call it “I KNOW we have enough.” I’d also like to start getting enough ready to start piling up a year in advance now that wood is probably going to be easier to manage, and I’d like to pile up enough to start selling on the side. I can procure in the cold and the hot, and I can saw and split in the temperate seasons. That ought to give some extra money.

I have been too busy to write since the tractor arrived. I have even been too busy running the thing all over the farm to shoot a picture of it. I am familiarizing myself with it from top to bottom and scoop to three-point hitch. There is still a lot for me to learn about it. But I hope to write more as I get settled with it. It has been so exciting to finally be able to start working this farm to live up to my dreams for it.

Without a backhoe I have a few things to either seek help for or hire out for. We have to replace the septic system here and put in a few hydrants to help with getting water to the animals and to the gardens. I think with those in, this place will be able to reach a much higher potential. The only thing it could do with more would be irrigation over in the pasture. Who knows? Maybe such a thing could go into the works. Again, time will tell.

Well, it is getting time to walk the dogs and have a bite to eat before bed. Tomorrow is Monday, and this week promises to be productive and to see a lot of things done to ready us for what could be one of our best winters yet here on the farm. Hopefully!

Last Day of Summer

I received a report this morning that the last of the chickens in the goat pen is dead due to raccoon. I really liked that chicken, and am sad to know it. I will be out in a bit to feed the animals, and I’ll clean it up then.

I bought animal feed yesterday, with hopefully enough to get through October, apart from hay, which I won’t need for about three weeks or so from now. If so, this will be the cheapest month on record for us for years, ringing in at just under $100. With only two pigs left, and the animals still on the field, the cost is low for the moment, and will be till around November, when I need to get the livestock off the field and start feeding them hay.

With costs low for the moment, I am taking advantage of it and tooling up the workshop to be able to do some wood projects. I started last night making a drawer, complete with dovetail joints. There are a couple more tools coming to help me finish it. Starting it has helped me figure out what I still need, and what is hard to work with, and what will be easier. I want to be able to build a dresser by hand before say, November? Not that I need one. I want to be able to do it. I am really enjoying the hand tool odyssey. It is far less violent than power tools, and it is a lot quieter. It is helpful to make mistakes at a much slower pace, too. I buggered up my first dovetail, and fixed it because I did not want to redo all the other ones as well as it. All good lessons.

The drawer I am making will probably be used in the kitchen where we will soon be putting in a new oven, and I will reset the microwave box above it, leaving a space for a drawer above, below, or between them, which I figure will be great for holding the hot mitts and such, handy for the cooking appliances! There may be enough space when finalized for a second drawer, too, which might be good for stirring utensils and such. I will know for sure when Home Depot bothers to send me a notification to tell me the oven is in.

It was cold again this morning. We bottomed out at 28 degrees! And no, that is not Celsius! I have a fire going in the wood stove, and it is clear that it is time to replace the gasket around the door! I should probably pick that up when I am getting the oven and the wood to finish around it.

Autumn begins tomorrow at 1:20 PM. It is time to get serious about getting the firewood cut and stacked! Lucky I got dry wood in the spring when I was hunting it. It will be ready and fine to burn in a few weeks when we are really needing it to stay warm. The propane tank was filled yesterday. That was a costly thig to do! They charged over $400 for it! We only have a 360 gallon tank! Still, I would like to get both furnaces serviced this year, and running. That would probably be good for time to sell the house!

Today Was Restful

We decided not to do much today. Missus has wrapped up so much in the past week, and her arms and shoulders have been hurting for it. We were also thinking that the girls start school in the morning, but the school has not been great at communicating till I checked back into the calendar today and found that it is not actually meant to start for another week. So, all that rest today was in vain. Well… as they say, hard work often pays off over time, but laziness always pays off now. What is a wasted day of rest?

I worked on the firewood holder next to the wood stove today. It has a box built in under it, and some robust pieces of wood planking on top of that to set the firewood onto. It is meant to hold the wood off the ground so I can reach it without bending down too much. Atop of all that is the cast iron shelves, and it is all set into a corner next to the stove, and between the wall and the built in hutch.

For a long time I was not too sure how I was going to finish the planking as it has firewood thrown on top of it all the time in the winter. It has held up really well as bare wood, especially as it is rough cut fir, and does not show indents from the firewood. So today I used my hand planes to smooth the plank tops down some, leaving a little of the saw marks for the distressed look, then finished them with linseed oil, to give them that almost varnished look, while keeping them easy to refinish as necessary, and waterproof at the same time. They look really good!

My oldest daughter came to me this afternoons and said the boy goats were out. We have two young Billy’s we are keeping in the chicken run, to keep them from the girls. They managed to push the gate open, and leave. The gate is about 18 inches high so that there is a fence along the bottom, which makes it easier for me to get in and out of when the chickens are close as they cannot just walk out, and it is elevated to make it easy to open when there is snow on the ground, too. I went out, and walked around the other goat pen slowly, which pressed the escapees round it, showing me they did not want to be messed with. Kirynie was still in getting shoes on to come help. I grabbed a scoop of corn and put it on the ground in the run, and left the gate open. I put the scoop back, and looked back, and the goats were at the gate, looking in. Just then, Kiry came out the back door and looked up at what was going on as the two goats jumped back into the run, and I stood there cool as a cucumber while they did. She smiled and laughed, as she was expecting to come out and chase them! I walked over and closed the gate, and added an extra fastener on it after, while Kiry laughed, and high fived me for being so effective. I am glad she learned the ways of the wise today.

I have more boxes to put into storage tomorrow. I need the farmer to bring us some hay as we will use the last of it tomorrow morning. I also need him to dig a test hole for a new septic system. I need to fill out some paperwork, and get the county inspector over, too. I also need to set an appointment for the girls and I to get our eyes tested, and buy new glasses! That seems like a good plan for tomorrow! Aside from all that, I can carry on packing boxes, ready to go to storage.

I tried chopping at the weeds in the empty llama pen today with my scythe. They are long, and it is hard to reach through to get their stems and cut them down. I tried fitting the riding lawn mower through the gate, but to do it, I would have to remove the mower deck, and that is just enough of a pain that I am not that interested in it. It would really improve the look of this place if I got those weeds down. Lessons learned here are to use wider gates, and to make the pens goat tight so I can set the goats loos in it to sort out the weeds. I like the way I set the gates up to be able to use only two gates side by side and combine the pens into one, but next time, either way, wider gates are a must! The four foot ones are too narrow to be useful when a machine is required for mowing, or for removing a dead animal.

I’ll probably take the mower deck off tomorrow or the next day. Depends on how busy other things get.

Finally, our oldest has at last asked his girlfriend to be his fiancée. I have heard nothing of a date yet, but that is fine. They have a lot to think about, and a lot to do to take the next step after that. What’s most important is that they do things that make them happy, and at a pace that makes them happy, too. But congratulations to them both for taking this step. Whatever and whenever next is next, at least everyone can know he has designs on her, and is committed to her, and her to him. They have been together too long to doubt it, but this is a step to make it something more.