Dispatches From The Farm

Cold Hard Facts

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

I was working with one of my daughters on her schoolwork yesterday, and to complete the assignment we looked up the month of March from 2019 till this year to compare precipitation amounts recorded on our farm’s weather station. Precipitation recordings can be seen on the graphs below as the vertical blue bars reaching up. Each month has a different scale as the software adjusts it for relative size on the page. In other words, 2019 and 2023 both have similar scales and are showing the greatest amounts of measurement. As there were freeze cycles on some days, this does not show actual precipitation days as such, but it does show what was collected.

2019

2019 did not show a lot of precipitation. Two years prior to this was an El Nino spring, and a couple of feet of snow settled onto the ground all at once, leaving our farm with a very high water table. 2019 was not just a low year for precipitation, but one of several drought years.

2020

While 2020 had more precipitation days recorded, the scaling is lower, and there was little but often.

2021

2021 was a true drought year. It would be followed up by 2022 and in combination these years would seriously hurt not just us, but the whole of the western United States.

2022

2022 was definitely a drought year, and it was all the talk. Rivers like the Colorado were running low, and usage agreements of the past were called into question.

2023

This spring has shown a serious amount of increase in precipitation days, and in the amount collected each day as the scale reaches up to 0.50″ in order to show the higher amount collected on each bar than previous years excepting 2019 which has a scale that goes to 0.60″.

It is easy to want to complain about the high-water table this year, but remembering the previous years, and having no occupied basement under our house, we are getting by at the moment. The old root cellar is cause for concern, so we are not free to just enjoy the gross amounts of water surrounding our house. Given the choice, I would rather close that old root cellar off for good and fill it up. But those are our problems, and not the problems of the greater world around us, and the troubles that the drought has caused are far worse.

So there we have it. Some cold hard facts about what the climate has been like for the past five years, from dry in March, to almost torrential. I picked March because Springtime in the Rockies. Spring is when the winter gloom lifts, and with the changes of the weather snow tends to fall in abundance. Some of our earlier years here in Southeast Idaho saw some serious rainfall in the summer. The last few years have been dry, but given the uptick in spring snow, I wonder if we will also see rain coming down again as before? Summer is not far off, and we’ll soon know. This may be an important year to put in a garden, if the ground out there ever dries up enough that I can till it without losing the tractor into a quicksand-like bog.

The Day Has Arrived!

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

It is with tremendous satisfaction and great happiness that I can now announce that the day has arrived! We are finally set to see temperatures up in the forties and fifties. The forecast at the moment shows a few days that will dip in the mornings to below freezing. Apart from that, we look set to have actual springtime weather! The fields around us are still frosty and white, and covered in a fair amount of snow. I have heard some farmers are complaining about a late start to the year, and how that may affect hay prices. I have also heard it said that this is how winters here used to be. Seems conflicting. But as the precipitation we have had seems to have put a dent in the drought conditions, I sure welcome it! Hopefully the reservoirs will hold enough I can recklessly grow a garden this year!

A note on precipitation, I notice the forecast shows none of that coming at all. That is a real change from recent weather! We could use the chance to dry out! The ground is saturated, and the water table is high! It is showing itself around the house, right in our own yard! So I am happy to see a break. Mud season has been hell this year! I can barely get my tractor back to get hay from the stack. We have new trailers that are stuck in the front of the house due to the mud, too. I could not possibly drag them back to put them away. But that’s okay. There is some work yet to be done on them before they are ‘put away.’

Even though it got cold last night, I woke up to a morning when the pools of water around us are steaming, and hopefully showing signs of evaporation in the sunlight.

Missus is squeezing in some time during work hours at home to do some spinning on her spinning wheels. I have to say, she has really improved so far this spring. She has gone from art yarn to something narrow and consistent in its appearance. I am pretty proud of her! I hope she is well proud of herself, too!

It is grandson’s weekend over, and he has spent the night a day early due to his mother and father’s involvement in a friend’s wedding. Right now, it is time to go fight with him over his attitudes about getting dressed in the morning. Oh, the joys and trials of being five!

The Forecast Improves!

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

This week we have snowfall coming till Thursday. After that, things stand to improve, and if the computer is to be believed, and is predicting it right, things will seriously improve!

As can be seen for the following week, we should see temperatures in the fifties! I think that with that, and a lack of precipitation, we could see the end of mud season!

The current temperature is kind of wintery, but for here, that is not true. This is early spring weather! Our records show what this place can really be like in the summers and winters, though those records are nowhere near normal cold temperatures. In fact, we are normally around 0F in the dead of winters. The recent years have brought us exceptional extremes. But whatever the case, at least for now, there is a tolerable improvement in the weather coming!

Our temperatures have been pretty insane over the last few years. Prior to July 2021, I would seldom see the mercury rise over the high 90’s. By seldom, I mean I don’t remember it ever having happened at all. I am pretty sure I saw the first time our area hit the 100’s since moving here a little over ten years ago. I cannot be so sure about those lows. But I can say that I have had this weather station installed since October 2018, and it has been keeping an eye on the weather every minute since. The only gaps have been where the computer failed, and I had some of the data saved in a separate database by the time I put a new computer in. There were no record setting extremes during that period that would have come down to what can be seen on our current records.

So, as the week progresses, I’ll be keeping an eye on the weather forecast, and hopefully we will see the prediction ring true, bringing us an end to mud season first and foremast, then an end to burning firewood, too!

And that’s the last thing I want to talk about here. Our house has only fair insulation and bad windows. Nonetheless, the forecasted weather for this week requires only a small fire burning in the stove. By Sunday we may not need to burn anything at all. So long as the sun shines in the day, and the house gets warmed by solar radiation in the days where the overnight low stays about 35F or above, we tend to not need to burn a fire. Given the wood remaining in the pile, I think we will be quite adequate for the year of the temps are taking a turn they intend to keep. Of course, there will likely be a drop here and there, but even those could keep us in snow and warm enough temps to be tolerable. Either way, it is certainly workshop weather!

It’s Amazing How Tired…

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

A fella can get from driving down to pick up a trailer, then another one. The trip was maybe 40 miles each way, but the driving and maybe the stress takes a toll on the old body. It is the arthritis playing me up, for sure.

But the point is, Missus has a new trailer to take to the Farmer’s markets, and I got one to put the tractor on.

A nice box trailer with a ramp on the back to make a mobile shop for Missus to use at the Farmer’s Market’s and out front of the house. This will allow her to set up a shop space without the month-to-month cost that I believe can kill a small business.

This flatbed trailer should help in many ways! It has stake pockets so I can build sides to keep long logs on it, and it has D-rings and ramps so I can load the tractor on it. I’d like to put a winch on it to load a dead car, truck, or tractor onto it.

Both trailers seem good, with solid jacks and decent LED lights. The electrical connectors are great compared to the other trailers I have, and the chains and spare tires are very nice. The rigs feel adequate for their purposes.

So, I suppose at this moment, I can hire out for tilling for spring gardens if anyone needs it. I should also be fine to do box blading, and post hole digging. I don’t really want to do junk haulage and have to pay out of my citizen’s account to unload at the dump for others. But I do want to get firewood and logs for milling on the trailer and bring them around to the house to work on.

So that’s where I think we’re at. We have more projects to handle now, since these trailers need a bit of customization to complete them. And right now, the mud is so bad, I cannot even take them to the back of the house or over to the designated trailer parking to get them off the front drive. It’s storms for the next few days, then we have warmer temps finally passing through! I’ll have plenty to do once the ground finally dries up!

Arrived! One Sawmill

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

When I ordered the sawmill, I did so early in the season, expecting it could arrive at any time, even months from now. But it did say it would leave the warehouse within a week, and I guess if there is nothing else they are good at, it is keeping their IT and inventory up to date. Woodland Mills deposited the mill with RL Carriers, then waited like four days till they e-mailed me to tell me they had. I got the e-mail on Saturday, and thought it would mean it was going to be a day or two till it was picked up and put in transit. The e-mail even said so. But I decided to run the tracking number anyway, and it had already been moving four like four days! Given the track record of this particular carrier, I figured it would arrive mid-week this week. But they did not use a last mile carrier, and as you can tell from the title of this post, the mill is here.

The mill is here, and there is nothing I can do with it, but cover the box with a tarp and wait till the ground dries up, and I can get some wood to mill and start collecting what I need to build it a covering.

The load was meant to be 1,295 pounds. I took that off the truck with my little Kioti tractor. The tractor had a hard time lifting at that height. But it did get the couple of inches needed to move the huge box off the truck. I say huge. It is not as big as a mausoleum or anything like that, but I could fit a coffin in a vault and put them inside, I’m sure. I was not impressed with the driver when he got between the box and his truck where I could tip forward and smash him. I’d really of liked him not to do that! I remember granddad moaning about the people he worked with when he was on cranes, and how they would constantly endanger themselves. Like him, I just want to be able to sleep at night.

So now the mill is sitting, waiting with all its parts, for a better day to put it together! There is snow and mud all over this farm, and no place to set that old thing up.

So, the mill arrived ten days after ordering it. I’m sure it is going to take a lot longer to set it up!

The Drive Back From Malad

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Our drive back from testing was when it was most interesting. But even so, it was not bad at all. The snow sure came down though as we went through the canyon. As you could imagine, in the summer it is a beautiful drive! I took the video in hyperlapse mode to keep it a reasonable watch!

School Testing

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

As our kids have been in an online Academy that is state sponsored, we have some advantages, like reimbursements available for school supplies and some activities. Money to use to teach our kids is a very positive thing! But that comes at a cost to us. One is reporting to the Academy what our kids have been learning each week and keeping up with Learning Goals, which also has to be demonstrated in that reporting. Another is testing. Our kids are required to do state testing, which during Covid was done online and from our home. But before, and now after, we have to go to a location to do that testing in front of a proctor. That’s all fine and well, and I don’t really mind it, as long as the kids are good with it.

We had testing for our youngest yesterday and have another session today. The location of her testing is the problematic piece for us. We have to drive to a town thirty miles away for it. There are a couple of ways to get there. The easiest is the thirty-mile route through the mountains between us and that town. It’s a short, pleasant drive along a two lane that winds through beautiful scenery. The other routes are much longer, double or more. One goes north, around the end of the range, and then back south again. The other route goes over the mountains at the southern end of the valley we live in, then north again.

The short route has a gate on it at the next town nearest us and can be closed during the winter due to lack of maintenance. But the weather was great yesterday, and the gate was open!

Today snow has fallen in a spring storm, and we are meant to get more. There are a few inches on the ground so far, and we are meant to get up to eight inches. That’s here, in the valley. Not up those mountains. We are due to be there by eleven o’clock in the morning, and there is a session scheduled for 1:00 PM, so I think that if we show up late, it is no big deal. We’ll try the short route, but if it is closed, we will go up and around the north end. That is the easiest plan B available. South is much longer. To do this, we have to leave in 45 minutes! If we are never seen or heard from again, someone who finds our house empty one day will be able to look into this blog and figure out where to look for us.

Okay, so not so dramatic. But it ought to be an interesting drive! Perhaps I’ll get the GoPro going on this one! At any rate, is it homeschool related, and a part of our story, so I thought I’d share it.

Candle Making & Etc…

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

I have one of the crock pots full of wax and heating on the stovetop right now. The candle molds are waiting next to it. I have the wick out and ready to be cut then primed. My ten-year-old is doing her schoolwork, then she will be joining me to learn how to mold the candles for use. It is a part of her Homestead Economics class lesson. When these are done, we have the option of selling them, or using them ourselves. It is the using them ourselves that has me tempted to get some lovely bright candle lanterns from Townsends. Getting enough of them to be really useful would be expensive. But I would like them that much, and that is a thing.

& Etc…

I have not yet received any shipping confirmation on the sawmill. I still have not had any buyer’s remorse, either. I need to figure out where to put it, and I am working on ideas for that. If nothing else, I can put it on the other side of the street and have all the room I need to work all I want. I think if I had ordered an industrial mill, I would. But as a hobby mill, I think I would be more content with it on this side of the street, where I can use it with a bit more ease, and less of the officialness of leaving for work, as I would feel I would do if I were to cross the road.

A lot of my concern is the workflow of the mill. There will be logs to go in, lumber to come out, and off-cuts and sawdust to manage. I would prefer to use the tractor rather than a log deck to load the mill with. I want to stack the lumber straight into stickers, and onto bolsters. I think I have the flow worked out, and the position of things in relation to the mill itself. I guess I’ll have to go out with a measuring tape and confirm my ideas.

& More…

It snowed last night. WE got maybe 2 and 1/2 inches of it! Things were looking like they would clear up, and suddenly we are back under it again. Despite that, it was not a cold night. I burned wood, but not a lot of it. The temperature out right now is 36F. It feels fairly nice. That should tell all about the winter we had, when I was outside a bit ago in a short sleeve T-shirt and feeling quite nice.

According to the forecast, we are in a similar, though gradually cooling state till Monday. After that, the weather will come back up again to what it has been over the last week or so. It looks like we are on track for plenty of spring snow. I have no complaints about that. The more water that gets relocated to our area, the better things like hay prices ought to be. Really, everything else, too.

& A Little More

So, what’s the point of the mill? Part of it is living independently. It’s about being able to make whatever we need here on the farm rather than having to buy everything online. My arthritis is too bad to let me build a saw pit and saw lumber with a big old hand saw, but I can buy a mill, and saw trees down to boards and cants and posts, and whatever else I want. The wood species are a bit limited around here, but since I started splitting my own firewood, I have never run into having none of any kind. I have often had access to rather large logs and even whole trees. So why wouldn’t I want to take advantage of that? Furthermore, there are a few things that Missus wants that I am better off trying to build myself than looking for to buy. A single weaving loom of a certain size would cost as much as the mill did. A few smaller ones would certainly pay for it, too. So why not build it and make several and she can sell some? I also would be happy to operate as a neighborhood mill, making lumber for folks close by who need it. Small neighborhood operations are how the world once worked, and what we want it to come back to. We are trying to get to that.

Sawmill

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

If I were to open a business with a sawmill, I think I would be inclined to call myself “the Sleepy Sawyer.” It’s a name that makes sense. I think sawing logs is all I would do, day or night.

It is a possibility, you know. I did actually put a hobby grade sawmill on order and could do some light jobs to earn some of the money back. It is hobby grade, but it is large, and has a decently powerful motor to do the cutting. It is a Woodland Mills HM130Max. I did not get the trailer option, but instead got a bed extension that will allow me to cut longer logs with ease.

There is not much to say about it. It is a big bandsaw. I looked at Woodmizer, and I ran through the checkout process. What bothered me with it the most was that as I got to a total with a sensible breakdown. I would then press to the last step before putting in the card number, and it would suddenly raise the charge by $150 with absolutely no explanation of what it was charging me that amount for, and it being past the point of anything that should be charged. Woodland Mills simply did not do that, and charged half as much for shipping. It is made in Canada, so not America, but at least it is on the continent. I think we are allies, unlike all the stuff for sale at Walmart.

So, what’s a fella to do with a sawmill? Well, the first plan is to go get some wood for it. I have that all sorted out so long as the status quo has not changed. Then I need to build it a house. If I am successful with that, then a house for the log splitter would be great. Then the wood that I intend to saw and dry will require a house, too. As will the logs I intend to split. If that does not give me enough practice on sawyering, then I am not cut out for this at all. Ideally, I will then begin to collect lumber for future projects. All the sawdust will go to the compost bin. Scraps will go to the woodstove. That includes branches and the like. Lumber will be available to sell, or to use in my woodshop on furniture and other projects around the house. I like to think of myself as similar to Maddox Restaurant which has next month’s meals standing in a field that is only separated from the building by a butchery.

Is it my dream sawmill? For the price it is. What it lacks in hydraulics, my tractor has. It has an electric start. I have added a piece that raises and lowers the blade head with a motor rather by a had crank. Reviews have said things like “this is by far the best upgrade I have done to my saw,” and “saves a lot of shoulder pain.” Given my state of arthritis, I think it best to go ahead and do that. I added some blades, and the tools to sharpen and set the blades. With the extension on the bed to make the cut capability longer, I think I am pretty set for having spent the same as the second to entry level mill at Woodmizer. Plus, it promises to ship from the warehouse in about a week, whereas Woodmizer says three weeks or more. That should get me to work by the time spring becomes real.

So my next big task will be to empty the trailer out and go start collecting the wood I intend to put on the mill. Maybe excess lengths would be a good place to start collecting next year’s firewood. I will need to build a foundation for the mill once I figure out where I can put it and not disrupt Missus at work, and access the sides necessary to do the work from loading, cutting, unloading, storing, and cleaning up the sawdust. It would be ideal to cut and spray the dust straight into the compost heap. I have not got any of that worked out yet, and the mill may end up across the street.

A Passing Snow Squall in the Night

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

I woke up nearly at 2:00 AM last night. After tending to my personal reason for waking, I went back to bed, and checked the weather on my tablet. There were four weather alerts but two were about actual precipitation. The first was a typical winter weather advisory, and the second warned of a snow squall about to hit our place. Well, I have heard of blizzards and the like before, and seen them on occasion. But a squall? I may have been through them before, but the only way to know for certain was to stay up the fifteen minutes necessary to let this squall set in over us. Once the allotted time had passed, I checked out the glass of the balcony door. Looked pretty much like a blizzard to me! There was little visible but sheets of snow hammering down from the sky. I could see the neighbor’s house, and the people next to them while their light was on. But beyond that, nothing could be seen but the snowfall. It came down pretty steadily at about a 45-degree angle. It would have certainly laid down a lot of snow if it stayed around for longer, but it only lasted about an hour. Then we were back to a clear night with high cloud cover. Nothing to worry about.

By morning about three inches of snow topped what we already had on the ground from previous days. I cleared that from the dog walk and the mailbox approach with the tractor. It was light and fluffy. Would have been great for skiing in! As we are only about two weeks till the start of Spring, I sure welcome it! Go ahead and do your will, old sky. It’s not like we don’t need the snow to help us long!

My next task is to get the dehydrator going and put in some meat I got to make jerky with. It has marinated long enough by now, and I need to do this before it goes bad. I thought I had reports due for the school, but they are not due till next week. I won’t want to keep it till then, as it is my birthday then. It is a happy Sunday here on the farm!