Month: May 2020

There was to be no new fencing this year…

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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Annmarie told me this year I was not to fence.  I had a lot to do and after spending most of last year doing nothing but fencing I needed to focus on other things this year.  Now I do not disagree with this but we really did need some more fencing…

Barb Morehead took this terrific photo of our little beautiful calf, and kindly shared it us.  He is named Valentine for the heart he wears on his forehead.  We were really hoping he would be a she.  He will still be good eating.

We have been slowly working on getting our berry/lavender grow area ready.  Unfortunately, this necessitated building a fence around the space to keep the herbivores away from our food.  The pine trees got cut down several years ago and I sprayed the area with Roundup a week ago.  This plant attack has done nothing but point out where all the thistles are located.  I have been slowly killing the thistles with a shovel.  I cannot use any other kind of herbicide or I will kill anything I plant in the ground.  I also tried to order ground cloth so we can plant our lavender through it but could not get any online that was not horribly expensive.  I still spent almost $400 on cloth and thought I had gotten a good deal.  I had to drive to the Tricities to pickup our bathroom vanity so I bought all the ground cloth that Home Depot had available.  The only reason they still had it was it was in a box high above and no one had bothered to check there yet.

A Pallet of stained brown tire chips was delivered on Thursday in one single great big bag weighing 1100#.  I need to finish killing the thistles then weed eat everything down to the ground then put the ground cloth down.  I have had a couple of boys working on the fence.  Since they were going to do most of the work I decided that we needed to fence in the orchard also.  Our orchard area is fenced in already but I wanted to just put up an interior fence around the fruit trees so that we can take all the skirts around the tree down.  I want to keep a 2’ tall cow panel ring around the trees only.  This will keep any animals from rubbing on the tree or eating the bark at the base of the tree.  This will also double the number of rings I have available for more trees.  There are seven young fruit trees so we can plant seven more trees.  I picked up two at Home Depot Thursday, Hardy Kiwi trees.  The fruit only gets to the size of a Kumquat but it is supposed to taste like a kiwi and it looks like a kiwi.  I bought two as they are small!  The plants are about 2 inches tall and its a single stick.  We will see in 3-4 weeks if they were alive or not.  We also bought some coconut fiber mats to go around the trees to keep the weeds down.

While we were working on the fence today the alpaca kept trying to sneak in through the gate.  I had to exit the gate to get wooden fence stays and they tried to bum rush the open gate.  They are very curious animals and will seek out new experiences.  One of them stood by the fence and made super weird noises today.  A noise even I had not heard before.  They won’t move if they are laying in the road either.  They will win a game of chicken every time, even into death.  The delivery guys are scared they are going to cream one, I am kinda surprised they have not hit one yet.

Today we got the orchard fence completed.  It looks good and even our border collies cannot get out of it.  I can move the border collies to the orchard and let the sheep into our yard to mow now!  If you try and keep the collies inside the house all day so the sheep can eat the front yard they make you crazy.  Zeke keeps ring the bell  hanging from the front door.  You have to remove the bell or he will just keep randomly ringing it and laying in front of the door waiting for you to let him out.  Mouse will come lick your hand repeatedly until you let him outside.  It is a tossup as to which Border Collie is more annoying in their attempt to get what they want.

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I also found out that we have a red fox living on the property.  It has been spotted twice this week and I am sure I am down at least two more chickens.  I thought it was a raccoon and tonight when I was putting the sheep into the ram pasture I found a dead chicken head on the hillside.  I am told it has a den over by the fencing supplies storage area.  I will have to take a look for myself this weekend.

Bathroom is Taking Shape

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I have been tinkering in the upstairs bathroom all week.  I sneak up for 30-120 minutes to try and get some more work done.  I managed to get the right side of the backsplash sided and needed the mirror installed to start working my way up the wall.  I took the mirror apart and scrubbed the wooden base in the kitchen sink with a lot of Dawn dish soap and a nonscratchy pad.  It was filthy.   I had to just put a temporary board in at the top to keep the mirror in place.  I pigeon toe nailed the wood above the tiles.  I wanted to cut off the curves and make it a 90 degree angle.  This would have made cutting the side piece much easier.  I was vetoed.  So I have attempted to cut all the angles and getting the tongue and groove to match at the same time.  I was pretty dang close the first time, but Annmarie cut me some paper angles to make the curve part easier. I have not attempted my second try.  I had broken my jigsaw (at least 15 years old, cheap and made of plastic) on the first attempt so figured I needed to replace it if my second attempt was going to work out.

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I took Thursday and made arrangements to drive over to the Tricities and pick up our completed vanity top.  They had our vanity, the top (they made it) and our sink, this was to ensure that they got all the parts matched.  It was sitting up against the wall in their office and the person that helped me carry it to the car was sad to see it go!  He said it was their display piece and showed off what they could really do.  I happen to agree with him and he said it was a pleasure to work on as it looked very nice and the cabinet was well built and would take the weight of the granite slab without any problems. All of those are included in the reasons why we wanted to use this old washstand that was in the house when we moved in.

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I had to cut out the right side of the drawer so the plumbing can all go on the right half.  The problem with this is we still wanted the drawer to work.   So I built a box and reinforced it and cut out the part where the plumbing is going to go.  The picture on the left is from underneath the cabinet looking up at the bottom of the drawer.  This was before I cut the holes in the top for the water supply and sink drain. I used old Zinc flat head screws that have been on the farm for forever to put all the pieces together.

Today I started drilling holes for all the plumbing.  The water supply side (small hole) needs more wood cutout from underneath.  There is another 3/4” piece of wood along the back of the cabinet and I need to move it back 3/4” from the hole so that the faucet can be clamped down to the top.  Two boards and a piece of granite make the hole too deep for the faucet per the instructions I found online.  The plumber has the actual faucet and will bring it, the toilet and all the plumbing parts to complete it once we get the walls installed and oiled.

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I will need to hit this with some Murphy’s wood soap before I take it upstairs so it starts out clean.  I am really looking forward to having a second toilet in the house and especially one that you do not have to go downstairs in the middle of the night to use!