Stewart Creek Somethings

Well Winter has decided to sit in the wings and wait to pounce, this has been nice. The entire farm has greened up and we have gotten to hold off on feeding the animals. Mr Rainman came out on Friday and cleaned up the old house. There was quite the pile of dirt under the freezers. We had not ever moved them. I want to get a little more stuff moved out of that room then I can move the three other large items from my “room”. This will let me start wiring and ripping into the wall to reframe a doorway. I have all the wires pulled but I cannot get to the outlet boxes with all of the “stuff” in the way. I would like to be able to work on it intermittently through the winter. It’s inside so it won’t matter what the weather is like. Especially, if I can get that inside door installed, a small electric heater will keep the room at a temperature that is comfortably workable, pretty much anything over 45F. Mr Rainman also went into Alcatraz and burned out the sticker bushes (thistles). Our new bull was raised by a young man as a 4H animal and is very curious. You can scratch his head but he will toss it in annoyance that you are touching him. He won’t leave though. One of our rams is very tame also and it is disturbing when a 180# sheep sneaks up on you and you turn around and he is one foot from you and wants a scratch. He will then proceed to follow you around wherever you go. It’s unnerving. I keep thinking he is going to decide that I need a head butt and I have seen how him and the other ram go at it and frankly I don’t want to end up on the ground. So far he has been a total gentleman. Which is good cause otherwise he will make it into the freezer.

I was fairly flighty yesterday. I went into the freezer room and added a second window to the inside so I can have a “double panel” window setup! It’s really just two windows in the same hole but the second window can have foam stripping applied so there is no airflow into the room. This will help the room stay warmer in the winter so when I am in the man cave I won’t have to heat that room as much. It will also help with the insects. I had to dig around and find the right hinges and short screws so I could screw over the plywood covering the first pocket window opening. I knew I had something that would work, I just had to find it. The window frame wood is so hard I had to predrill the holes to get wood screws inserted. I still need to insert the weatherstripping. I don’t use it so there is none laying around.

I need to start putting out mouse bait or setup traps to clean out the mice. I found a mouse accidentally yesterday, it had fallen into an empty five gallon bucket I had up on a shelf. I don’t want them to get into the wife’s office and chew anything up.

I am pretty tired of the predators. There have been no raccoon tracks outside the chicken coop after I dispatched the raccoon last week. Someone reached out to me this week about needing to offload some chickens so hopefully I can replace the ones lost this summer. The three stooges came out this week and only saw two coyotes but they saw them in the CRP and its too tall to get a clean shot. So they will be concentrating on the lower portion where visibility is better and wait for them to come out of the CRP. The neighbor told me his has a friend with a thermal scope coming out to his place also. He also stated that a nearby neighbor lost a calf to the coyotes and since the deer population is fairly low the coyote meal train is leaning towards domestic tastes. Mr Rainman found a fresh carcass that was nearly stripped on Friday just across the creek in field 5. All dead animals are now going to the bone pile. It’s going to cause the coyotes to have to come out on the back hillside or cross the wheat field where I can see them. I was given an infrared scope that amplifies light I just need a new rifle now! There is some discussion around this at the house but it seems my motivation to get out of bed at night is being weighed in on the purchase. I do know that I will not be getting a thermal scope any time soon. Honestly, this is a stupid problem, but I am unwilling to spend $2k/year to fix it with a guard dog yet.

The sheep got out and in and around the vehicles. A gate got left open but since it is only pregnant ewes they are pretty easy to direct. It only took about five minutes to get them back into the correct space. Despite all of this we are very fortunate to live here. There are times I just walk out and realize that not everyone has the luxury of living in beauty and dealing with the natural process. It’s the best place in the world to live.