Well when I put in the trellis for the old trumpet vine that was growing on the side of the house I did not take in to account the 500 pound chunks of ice that slide off the roof.  So my trellis has taken a beating over the lasts three years.  I need to add in some more supports and double the cross members.  Another $100 in pressure treated wood and at least one day maybe two.  Definitely going to wait on this one until it warms up.  No super rush on this,  I figure another big snow storm will be the death of the left side.  The trumpet vine is ancient.  We are guessing, but at least 40-50 years old.  It looks great in full bloom when you are looking out the dining room window.

So I have started to gather facts and am brainstorming the new bridge.  The fact that we need one is a foregone conclusion.  We had to submit a picture of our new siding to the insurance company early last year, so we just used one we had laying around.  They called back immediately and asked if there was another way to get to the house or was that bridge the only access.  I reassured them that we had a second bridge (worse than the one pictured) or we could drive through the field and walk in our side yard gate (doable in a pickup). So it was on the list to be fixed but these last two Winters have just escalated the damage.  I suspect the daily use is exposing the rot and disrepair that has been there for years.

 Annmarie found a nice arched bridge design made out of wood.  I want something that will last 50 years so we don’t have to redo the bridge when we are in our 70s.  So that pretty much leaves us with a culvert and gravel walkway.  I wanted to put in a 8 foot culvert last year for volume in case the back creek diverts (it did three years ago because the creek was allowed to dam up with tumbleweeds).  I have since decided that a 6 foot culvert would work.  I decided that some actual measurements might be in order.  The bridge is 34 feet long when only measuring the wooden portion.  It is four feet wide.  Now it is only 6 feet to the water surface from the walking surface of the bridge.  It is 6.5 feet to the creek bottom.  Obviously, that 6 foot culvert I want to use is not going to work.  We want to put used bricks down like pavers to use as a walking surface.  We are going to have cedar posts about every 6 feet with hog wire panels between them.  I know it doesn’t sound very pretty when I say it that way.  But, we saw quite a few of these fences when Annmarie was living in Bellingham and they look good.  I am going to put in a 10 foot long, 4 foot high culvert.  I will ramp the gravel (using compactor) up to 8 feet at the top.  The path that you walk across will be six feet wide (two feet wider than it is now).  I am even thinking about removing 2 feet of the chain link fence and adding a new gate.  But that will be the last thing I do after the bridge is finished.  Pricing culvert is the next step.  As an added bonus, there used to be a bridge in the barn lot.  The ramps are both in place and I am going to install a piece of culvert there also and back fill it in with gravel.  That way we don’t have to keep driving through the water to get to the other side.

I am going to add one more outside light next to the yard fence on the far corner of the bridge.  The lights come on automatically when it gets dark so you can find your way to the front door.

I had every intention of an easy day today.  I picked up a premium shift at work yesterday so didn’t get home until this morning.  It was a long and stressful day.  I didn’t think that it had effected me much till I went outside to do a little work.  I went out to thin out the roosters.  Sarah is the main chicken wrangler and she was busy elsewhere.   So I had to do it.  Even with them in the coop it is not easy and all those chickens together just getting agitated as I attempt to grab a hold of a rooster who then starts squawking incessantly until silenced.  I finally managed to get six extras leaving 2 roosters alive, unfortunately when I went back outside later with Sarah she pointed out a third rooster.  Maybe it is a rooster, the color is right but the tail is mighty small.  Sarah thinks it is because everyone was picking on that bird.  A couple of weeks will prove one of us right.  A couple of the hens have started laying eggs in the wood shed again.  Just one more place to check for eggs.  A friend of ours made some wooden eggs for the chicken coop laying boxes.  I finally found them today in a bag stashed by our child.  I have them by the front door so I can take them out to the coop tomorrow.  I am hoping to entice the wood shed hens back to the coop.

I needed to go up on the hillside with our pickup.  The first problem with that is it has been about six weeks since I have started the pickup.  Yep, it didn’t want to turn over.  I crossed my fingers and tried again.  Holding the starter for 15 seconds before the engine finally caught and took off.  This meant I needed to go on a small drive to recharge the battery.  The pickup kept dying every time I let off the gas.  Killed it 4 times before I got to the end of the driveway.  So I drove it about 8 miles and then decided to use the field entrance at the top of the hill.  It is very wet and muddy here and I didn’t want to make the ruts in the barn lot any worse than they already are (the rancher leasing the fields feeds every day and the rut just keeps getting deeper.  This necessitated me cleaning the weeds out of the barb wire gate.  Up on top of the hillside I saw a band of mule deer (around 20 animals) and a rarity for us I saw two chuckars.  We are a little on the small hillside order for the chuckars but I do spot them occasionally.  It had been over a year since I had seen any on the farm.  I passed a large pile of old rotten wood .  I cleaned out the bed of the pickup (leftover hay and sheep poop) while I was at the bone yard.

Back hillside where we are growing the rocks for our front bridge project.

On the way back down I stopped at the pile of rotten wood and spent a whole hour tossing the pile back together as it had been spread out over the last 30 years!!  I need to put some flame to that pile.  I noticed two more piles down below that need to be burnt also.  Since, I have decided to redo the bridge I need rocks, lots of large rocks (which we have in spades on the back hillside).  I want to face both sides of the bridge with large field rocks.  So I stopped and pitched a pile of rocks in to the back of the pickup.  I did not fill the back as the rocks got very heavy quickly, almost exponentially heavy the more I threw into the back of the truck.
 On the drive up the driveway I spotted three more piles of scraps and twigs/tree branches that need to be burned.  I emptied out the pickup in my “rock pile” area and went inside to get the child to go do her outside chores.

The creation of the Bridge rock pile.

We ended up enticing the sheep into a pen so we could catch the two little male babies so I could rubber band their testicles (castrate).  I tried with the littler boy first.  I could get one testicle in but the second one kept falling out and hiding in the belly.  I tried poking the belly to get it to pop out.  No such luck.  In the end I just let him go.  So onto the older baby, which went much better.  More to hold onto and much easier to tease both testicles through the rubber band and then it was done.  He laid on the ground for about twenty seconds then ran over to his mama.  The rubber band is tiny and thick , there is a special four prong pair of pliers that stretch the rubber band out so you can slip it over the scrotum.  So I will get the other baby in a week or two when things are bigger.

You never no what life is going to throw at you.  So take it day by day and cherish those days as if they were your last.

Here are the youngest twins.  The brown one on the right is the one I couldn’t castrate yet.  The four littler sheep at at the top of the screen are some of our girls we purchased.  They are getting nice and fat.   Hard to believe it is beginning of February in Eastern Oregon looking at this picture.

  I made $25.31 for the month on an average 27 hens laying (all my hens are now laying, the babies that were supposed to lay blue eggs are now laying small green eggs).  Obviously, for the year I am positive $25.31!!!!   Woo hoo!  I had $52.19 in expenses for feed (250#) this month (I had some carry over from December and the weather has been exceptionally warm for January so the chickens are foraging quite a bit).  We collected a total of 437 usable eggs (46 more than last month) averaging 14.1 eggs/day collected. The chickens ate 0.57#food/egg.  It cost $0.12/egg or $1.44/doz for January.  The quail produced 24 eggs.  At this rate I will be able to make pickled quail eggs every 2 months.  I already have the recipe picked out.  The price of feed is still up.  I need to buy some more bedding this month and build an enclosure for the quail so I can get the baby area ready for another dozen hens.  So it is looking like the price increase is coming.  I am going to start telling the customers it is coming, probably in the next 1-2 months.  I will try and delay it as long as possible.  
Annmarie wants some bantam chickens. She is afraid the cats will eat them.  I have been scoping out a spot for them and a small coop.  I am thinking 6-9 hens, with an elevated chicken coop and attached nesting boxes (would only need 2 boxes).  I already picked out a spot just across the creek in front of our house.  I would just need to add a little fencing.  This is a future project.  She can have whatever breed of chicken she wants.  The coop would be small enough that I could use a solar powered shed light to give the chickens light during the Winter so they would keep laying.  


It is looking more and more like the bridge rebuild is the Spring project.  It needs to be done.