Month: January 2017

Just when you think it cannot get any colder

Steve HardinLeave a comment
 
We have a routine down now when it comes to the animals in winter.  Because of Mika’s bad hoof, we have to keep her feet dry.  To do this she is spending most of her time in the old milking lean to off of the end of the barn.  So in the morning we go out and water her, feed both horses and scoop poop out of her area.  We both go to work and in the evening we water the horse again, feed both horses and clean out both horses hooves with a hoof pick.  We then use the dogs to push the sheep out of the barn and feed them two bales of grain hay and one bale of alfalfa.  Since we are feeding the two groups of cows a large bale each about every 10 days I push a new large bale in their area for them to eat.  I get eggs every night also.  This takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes every night and about 15 minutes in the morning.  
 
Tonight when Annmarie went out to feed she found a pair of brand new twin baby sheep in the back of the barn!  I knew a few ewes looked mighty fat but I figured we had a little more time.  These are first time mom’s and their cycle is way off of the others.  I am going to have to get all dressed up and go out into the single digit cold to check on the baby sheep.  One was laying down flat in the straw when we left.  We did watch it sit up completely and look around when it was startled so we did not remove it immediately.  Hopefully, it will be just fine and looking around when I go out and check on them.  
I checked on the babies last night before bed and they stood up and walked a few steps to get away from me.  Annmarie said I needed to stick my finger in their mouth to make sure it was moist and warm, but I figured if they had enough energy to get away from me then they had been eating just fine.  
 
Annmarie called me at work today to get me to come home while the sun was still up to feed the animals.  I had one thing to finish, three things later I got out of work at 1610.  On the way home she bargained with me that she would feed the animals if I cooked dinner and did the dishes.  Usually, the cook, does not have to do the dishes at our house.  We were having salmon patties and it is one of the few dishes that I do well and Annmarie has to work at.  I suspected she did not want to make the patties and just tossed in the dishes as an added bonus!  She fed, I did dinner and the dishes.  It was COLD outside.  The newborn sheep are doing just fine.  We are leaving them in the barn for a few days before they get to go outside.  
 

Internet vs4.0. The only option

Steve HardinLeave a comment
I had visions of high speed internet. Those visions are crushed. 
I was unsure why our internet had quit working in the night. I was waiting until 1100 when the dish guys were coming to go outside. The rental company had called and said they would be out this afternoon to pick up the boom.  They showed up early.  My mother-in-law called to tell me it looked like the semi might get stuck. By the time I got outside the semi was stuck in six inches of mud.  I brought over some gravel with the tractor and a shovel in the hopes we could gravel a path back to the road. While we were doing that the satellite guys show up and barely got around the truck. They then proceeded to get stuck by machine shop and powered their way over to the road. The semi is going no where so the driver decides to move the boom around the machine shop. But it is only 2 wheel drive, advertised as 4 wheel drive and it cannot hardly move. The operator is making the problem worse by trying to power through the mud. He cannot around the machine shop as the road is slightly elevated so he had to come back. Unfortunately, he cannot get around the semi truck either. I think he wanted to use the weight of the boom to help him gain some traction in the the semi truck.  This was a large “negatory ghost rider” moment.
Once he got out of the way with the boom the satellite guys got their truck in place and tried to aim the dish.  One of them came over to me and said the pole was loose.  I went over and crawled up the tall ladder on the end of the machine shop.  The collar that was 2/3 of the way up the mast had spread and slipped down in the wind some time in the night.  Wtechlink high speed internet is just not going to happen!  They took the dish down and we laid the mast down on the peak of the roof.  I will take it all down in the summer.  Annmarie called the phone company and asked them to restart our old service.
The flat bed driver finally managed to get chained up and backed onto the road. The entire area looks like a mud derby was held in the vicinity.  Our poor road has huge tracks in it and is mostly mud.  I ordered 30 cubic yards of 1.5 inch gravel in an attempt to actually get the road back in shape.  
 
 
The next day I spread out 20 cubic yards of 1.5 inch gravel on the road by our house and on the dirt road I made this summer.  The dirt road looked pretty good.  Our road turned out to be incredibly bumpy.  Gravel this size is really not just 1.5 x 1.5 inches in size.  it only has to be 1.5 inches narrow on one side to go through the screen.  It is a lot bigger than that.  The nice thing is it is staying on top of the road.  The bad thing is it is staying on top of the road and the cars don’t like it.  It got dark so I could not keep driving on it with the tractor.  The next day it froze and it has stayed frozen since then.  Annmarie is not too happy with the rough road.  As soon as it thaws out I will take a load of gravel in the tractor and drive up and down the driveway to push the gravel down into the road bed.   
 
We are now back to telephone internet at 1.5 MBS max speed.  On a plus note, our phone/internet bill went from $110/month to $60/month after we cancelled for one month for the exact same services.  I truly don’t understand why businesses do that.  We do now have power at the machine shop and we have a light in the hay room.  Both very good things.