Category: Repairs

Troubles Getting Things

Does nothing work right now? I have tried to order a set of mower spindles for the mower deck on the riding lawnmower. I ordered a pair from Walmart because I could get three pairs of them for the cost of one pair off the manufacturer’s website. Walmart’s website is still showing it as not delivered, but the tracking button leads me to the USPS website, and that shows it as delivered and left on the front porch in Boise, Idaho, which is not where I live.

I got hold of the obviously foriegn chat to secure a refund, then I went to Amazon and ordered two more spindles for about the same price. I hope since Amazon has a track-record of delivring correctly to out house, they will show up soon.

The parts are so cheap compared to the manufacturer that I don’t know if I am getting weak knock-off’s, or if the manufacturer is way over inflating their prices. I am going to have to find that out the hard way, infortunately.

Meanwhile, while all this is going on, I am watching the economic summaries of what is going on with other countries, and where the US is decoupling with China, and China has a severely crashing housing market, and there is Russia and its sanctions, and the German economy is not growing, there is a severe economic forecast on the horizon. While the US stands to do well over-all, I think we should expect a serious influx of immigrants as many other countries will be affected by the recession this will kick off. So, however wrong it feels to try to order parts now, I think things are not going to get better anytime soon. It’s the best time ever to be settled on our little farm.

Oh, and as a final, weird little side note; Hurrican Hilary is meant to make landfall in southern California Sunday night. One of the most densly populated parts of the country it about to get hit with torrential rain, howling wind, and everything its dirt-made mountains need to really raise havoc. It’s like the train is approaching the site of the broken rails on the track, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it before a crash. This stands to be not a pretty sight.

Today might be a free to work day for me. I really only have one thing left to get done to move major repairs along on the farm. Yes, I am still having troubles getting someone to show up and replace our septic. I need to get in touch with the company that currently holds a copy of our permit and has promised to get back to us. Other than that, I have been milling boards to repair the barn, and need to finish getting those set up. I may also start milling some boards to put around the front windows of the house where the old ones were taken down when siding was put up. We took the siding off the front porch, and now have to replace those.

Well, this has been a pretty Doom & Gloom post. Not to be a worried old man, but just to chronical what is going on that will undoubtedly affect everyone, and our little homestead here, too. Next we muster up our way forward.

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.

Late Autumn, 2022

It’s the busy season again! Time to shop and buy things for the family and get them the things we think they would enjoy. It’s time to receive cards and be embarrassed that once again we are too busy with our little immediate flock to get cards out to those who live far away, both friend and family. It’s time to wrap things and hide things and plan and prepare for the things we repeat year after year, but put a different spin on each time, to maintain tradition, and to keep it interesting. We are setting the traditions of our family with the things we do and hope they will grow older with ideas for what to do with their own young ones.

The kids are down to one week of school left. Winter starts in a week and a half. The worst of winter is usually January and February, getting too cold to bear outside for very long. Those are the months that are the hardest to keep the house warm, and sometimes ice forms on the insides of the windows, so we leave the window coverings closed, and although it means the house is darker inside, it is much warmer, too. One day we will get new windows, and hopefully solve that problem once and for all. But the old house needs so many things. Flooring, windows, a couple of doors, carpets, a new septic system, and a couple of jacks in the basement, to name but a few. We’d also like to change the fireplace insert to a woodstove style one to help heat the house a little more efficiently. And then there are the outside things to do with fencing, landscaping, a bit of electricity to a few necessary places, finish the driveway, sort new pens out for the goats and such, and a decent dog run. There is a lot to do! Once the place is up to scruff, then we could work on the improvements!

So close to the end of Autumn. I am very excited for this Spring. Things will be a changing!

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.

Out With the Old, Propane

It’s -2F outside right now, three in the morning. The house felt cold, so rather than try to roll over and go back to sleep, I got up to answer nature’s call and to put some wood on the fire. It was a hot bed of coals when I got to it, so I scooped those to tone side and added three medium sized logs to it and let them light. Once the plasma had formed, I shut the door and set the damper for a fair burn, enough to keep the flames going, but not enough to burn quicker than a couple of hours. Missus will be up and able to add more wood when it goes down.

The furnace upstairs started producing carbon monoxide last week, and we have had to shut it down. We had a fella come by and give it a look, and he right away said he could not repair it simply because it was not properly vented for where it existed, in a bedroom. The only way we could carry on with it where it is would be to replace the existing unit with a direct vented unit, or an electric one. Also, he understood my reluctance to give up on this particular unit for reliability. It is an old Whirlpool unit, produced here in the USA, with a tag on it that states it was produced with Union Labor, that he said was about 60 years old. He said what would need to be done on the unit to get it working properly again, which I am not qualified to do, and am not so sure I would want to for the reasons he gave that he was not allowed to repair it. Sucking up all the oxygen in the room while there are sleeping inhabitants was mentioned.

So, with the furnace shut down, we are heating on wood alone at the moment. It is enough to keep the cold at bay and make the living spaces quite bearable even in the temperatures we have been experiencing, which has ranged only from -8F to about 30F, on a good day! It’s bee cold! But it has been easy to keep the whole house at mid 60’s and above, even through the night.

Missus has been using a wall panel heater that uses half the wattage of a normal space heater and having great success with it. It is not the kind of thing that heats a room up to hot, at least in the large room where she is using it. But I think in these smaller upstairs rooms, they ought to keep the space quite nice, and hold the cold back plenty well if they are put in the right places. I have ordered three more of them and will be giving them a try. We also added more smoke alarms in preparation for any methods of heating, as we did not like the idea of carbon monoxide being made in the house. The alarms sense it, in addition to smoke. As they are on battery, they will have an advantage over the sensors that went off last week. Not that we would be producing carbon monoxide when the power is out, and the sensors would have to be on a battery to function. Then we would be on the woodstove alone, again, and I think I have only ever set the alarm next to it off one time in all the time we have used it to heat.

With all these changes, we will be shutting down our propane tank and using strictly electric heating and the woodstove going forward. The money we save on propane will go to the electric bill instead, with the woodstove doing the bulk of the work during the winters. I think our propane dealer is going to be disappointed. We are their best paying client apparently, because of the way we pay. Rather than requiring a fill and then struggling to pay the balance, we have always paid $50 a payday (twice a month), then asked for fills out of our credit on account. We have a credit now, and a full propane tank, and no way to use it. At best, I could probably have it connected to our barbeque and use it up that way, but that is sure going to take time! How long can I operate a barbeque on 300 gallons of propane? It has lasted us half a winter on constant use with that old furnace!

I’d like very much to have the propane tank moved out of the garden it is in and put somewhere more convenient for filling and use at one of the outbuildings. I think there is a lot of use in it still. In addition to the barbeque, there is the idea of being able to heat water on a range for chicken processing. This all leads to a change in how we use the granary, which we have considered before using as an outdoor kitchen. Is this the year to do that?

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!

Sunday of Rest

Today was an easy day. I did not do any work at all. Nothing happened. Not one thing. I mean, I did my chores. I cannot leave the animals to starve, can I? Also, I freshened up the water around most of the farm today, too. After all, I cannot let the animals go thirsty, can I? I drove Missus down to Franklin for a personal errand, too. We picked up milk while we were there. After all, we need milk if all the milk we have is set to expire tomorrow. After we got home, I did some miscellany, such as taking the rubbish from the kitchen bin, and the like. It’s no good being piled over with rubbish, is it?

I did do some work today, after all. I worked in the workshop. I found a nice piece of cherry, 2 x 3/4 inch stock. I used planes and a spokeshave to bring the size of it down to fit into the pipe that we set up yesterday for water monitoring. Then I put markings on it on one side to measure depth from the top down, and on the other side to measure from the bottom up. It should be useful for more than one application that way. For now, I need to measure once a week from the surface of the ground to the level of the water under us. Sadly, that can easily be measured with an eight foot stick, and a foot of pipe sticking out of the ground.

Oh well, the fun for me was working with the planes and shaves and getting a feel for them in a nice hardwood. I set the stick to have a thin flat for the lowest three feet or so, then it transitions to a more rounded shape, before topping off much more rounded. As the pipe is only two and a half inches in diameter, I did not want a huge stick plunging into the water, and displacing it up the pipe and making the measurement apparently deeper. I also didn’t want it to break off in the pipe, so the top is quite a bit thicker, and more robust. Anyway, it work a treat!

Okay! I have a kid in school tomorrow! I better get to sleep and be ready to help her with it in time for class log-in.

Saturday Fun and Work

Today was somewhat restful. Our grandson was over last night, and had me awake at 5AM. That’s not an ideal Saturday morning wake up! But we hung out a bit and talked, which is great as he is not yet talking fully. Interesting stuff comes out of that kid. When his parents came at noon to pick him up, we took them and their friend who came with them all down to Casper’s to get ice cream and then go play at the park next door. Casper’s is where Red Button ice cream is made, and they have a shop at the factory where we were able to get eight ice cream treats including banana splits and the like for only $22.

Playing at the park was good fun with the kids. I knew grandson was not going to chase me around in the soccer pitch, so I picked him up, and carried him to the middle where he would have to chase me back. It was all good times from there as everyone got involved in running about and racing each other. Only thing was, I made the mistake of running a race against my two daughters. Everyone in the family assumed I never run, till I did, then they found out I do. Or at least, I can, just fine. I just hope they don’t come to expect that from me more often!

We came home and packed up all the stuff that had been piled onto the dining room table, and got it boxed for an eventual move. When the time comes, we don’t want to be swamped with it. We would rather just have a few personal items and the furniture to pack, and the rest of the decorative and less often used stuff already boxed and set aside. That said, still no nibbles on the property over the road. I don’t know if that is because the agent handles them, and only forwards the serious offers, or because there is no serious lookers at all.

My farmer friend came by with his backhoe and dug the hole for me to put in the water monitoring spout, which is just a 2 1/2 inch black drain pipe. I have to test and measure the water below the surface much the same as one would check the fuel on an old Farmall tractor. Only it has to be surface down measure rather than bottom up.

I split a bit of firewood on the log splitter today, too. The wood I split was all for next year’s pile. It is still wet. I need to cut down to length the wood intended to finish off this year’s pile. More than half of this year’s wood is cut and split and stacked, with only a bit to go to hopefully have enough. If not, no worries! There is always that pile I have been setting aside for next year, in a pinch!

Tomorrow we plan on a quick clean up in the library and the panty, which should go easy. I have some water to top up for animals. Then I think it will be an easy day. We’ll just see what takes us along.

Backhoe

My anonymous farmer buddy came by today with his backhoe and did a little digging for me. It was great to see him with that tool! I watched him work and realized just how impossible the tasks I had him doing would have been for me to do with a shovel or something.

He started out right in the back, digging a test hole for a septic system replacement. That started caving in just as soon as he finished it, and by the time I last saw it before coming in for the evening, it was in pretty bad shape. I think I may need him over to re open the bottom of the hole when the inspector comes.

Next thing he dug was an short aspen stump from a tree that died and I had to cut down several months ago. I crisscrossed the top with the chainsaw so it would catch water, and it definitely began to soften up quite a bit, but it was nowhere near the damage Mr. Farmer did with his backhoe! He soon had it torn out of the ground, and I was free of that old mower hazard!

Lastly, Mr. Farmer took out the big stump from the blue spruce tree that we had removed several years ago. It had come loose in a windstorm, and the ground around the base showed cracks, so we had it cut down as it was twice as high as our two story house, and too close to risk a fall! That old stump was pretty rotten, but even with all the force of the backhoe, it would not come easily! Mr. Farmer finally dug around it and broke up some roots before pulling it out.

I have cleaned up most of the debris, and levelled out the yard for the most part where the stumps were. I need a bit more soil from the hole in the back, and I ought to be able to make the yard relatively scar free. Before long, the grass ought to grow back, but hopefully, we won’t be here to see it! Only time will tell. But at least those are a couple of jobs done so that we will have a better looking house to put on the market when the time comes.

I tried to lift the propane tank with the high-lift jack today, and as it turned out, it was easy! I think I will be able to get it up on cement blocks when they are delivered. I sent a message asking for them today. I don’t see this being too big of a problem. When it is done, I will ask for a refill on the tank, then see where our account sits with the propane company.

Next up, I ought to get the downstairs furnace fixed, and running. That should also be a plus for selling the house. We have been heating the downstairs with the wood stove for so long, I cannot even image what it would be like to have that old furnace up and running. I don’t want to heat with the furnace. It is expensive as can be. BUt I need to have it running in case we do actually sell and move.

So that is a bit of an update for today. Tomorrow it is eye exams, the county health inspector, and maybe Mr. Farmer by. I get to have lunch out with my daughters, so that will be a wonderful day for me!

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.