Month: June 2024

Siding continues

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The siding is really starting to come together. We can see how good it is going to look by the time they are done. I figure another 3-4 weeks before they will be finished. It will be nice to have everything done and to not worry about letting Milo out into the yard. Once that is done we can think about putting gravel around the base of the foundation.

The next big project to happen will be the Gazebo. The new throttle part for the compactor came, so once it is installed and all of the hay is inside, that will be the next project.

The mice are making us crazy this year. This is the worst year for mice in 17 years. We have them in the house and it has been very hard to get rid of them. Today, I put poison in the subfloor of the second story and down near our animal food storage bins. We have already killed four mice but we hear them in the ceiling every night while we are watching television. It’s annoying. The cats are not doing their jobs. Neither are the chickens or the dogs. Everyone should be killing mice at every chance they have.

It has rained a couple of times but not a whole lot. Just enough to make some spectacular rainbows but not enough to soak the hay bales on the ground.

The wife was gone last night, she has a convention to attend, so I was able to make a BTT sandwich for dinner, Bacon, Tomato, Toast. I even added pepper to the bacon! It was very good and as a secondary benefit I used up the last of the bacon, the last of the bread and an old tomato from the fridge. I didn’t want to dirty a dish so I used the cutting board dirtied when I cut up the tomatoes as a plate.

I have graduated to using a Peg Leg for getting around without crutches at home. I get tired of using the crutches and it’s hard to do any chores around the house with crutches under your arms. I can do the dishes, fold and rotate laundry and cook dinner with the peg leg. I have only fallen once so far and it was on the crutches trying to take the dogs outside for bedtime potty after a long day. I was too tired and lost my balance and fell back on the stairs. I did not injure anything other than my pride. I am still sleeping downstairs in a boot, propped up on pillows every night. By the end of the day my foot is still pretty swollen. Sleeping with it propped up is not ideal but first thing in the morning there is not swelling! I will be glad when the swelling stops. My foot is a nice, purple, yellow green color.

Haying is progressing with a little help from my friends

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The big obstacle after breaking my foot was going to be getting the rest of the hay baled and then put up in the barn. The day after I broke my foot the baler broke, it is skipping a drive chain due to all the wear on the gears, the gears need replaced, adjusting the chain length and tension is no longer working. That same afternoon the John Deere tractor blew out seal and quit moving due to a malfunction in the front right steering mechanism. Turns out this is a common issue and a design defect that eventually rears its ugly head. The tractor is over ten years old and has been used hard, It has over 2000 hours on it. Due to it not being able to move they had to come out and pull off the assembly. This took about a week to fix but the cost went from $2000 to $4100. This is a lot cheaper than a new tractor but not pleasant. Especially, when you consider I had to order parts for the baler.

The baler is an Abbriata, made in Italy and really only one dealer carries parts in the United States. When I called to order parts the first time I learned that the company no longer sells this brand small round baler. Abbriata was sold recently and the prices jumped almost 50%. So my $13k baler is now $20k. This made it easy to order replacement parts. I got roller gears and chain ordered then the next day remembered that we forgot to order the small gears. I called back and got the same service representative and those got ordered, I now have $2k worth of spare parts coming for the baler. On the plus side, I will be able to sit in a chair and help direct the baler repair. I am getting used to working on it even if I don’t like it.

The Go Getter, Mr Rainman and the former Gimp, now called the Mermaid volunteered to help me bring in bales. (The Gimp made an argument for a name change. Normally, I don’t do name changes for the blog but she was compelling and she stated that a Gimp could not pickup hay and that currently I was the Gimp. It made sense in a convoluted way and she was correct as I was wearing the walking boot not her.) This made me the designated driver but since we were starting first thing in the morning and I could only use one foot to operate the gas and brake simultaneously the first trip was a little jerky jerky and I killed it about ten times before the engine warmed up and I did not have to keep my foot on the gas 100% of the time. We managed to pickup four loads (by we, I mean that the puppy, Milo, and I watched while everyone else did the hard work). It was a Friday so he had to come with me so the siding guy could use the boom without fear of driving over the puppy.

Luckily, the Gingerman offered to come down the next weekend and rake and bale the hay we had down. It took a solid day but he was able to bale around 150 square bales equivalent to 6 tons of grass hay.

Mr Rainman, the Go Getter and Mr Second Career came over during the week and picked up more bales in an attempt to get them out of the fields. Mr Second Career had borrowed the Kubota to mow down weeds and volunteered to help pickup hay. The Go Getter just feels sorry for me and volunteered to bale me out. They got most of the hay into the barn or lamb shed. The square bales are a lot heavier so they went into the lamb shed as they are easier to load and don’t get stacked as high.

The Gingerman tells me there are about 70 round bales in field one still to pickup. He thinks he can do it on Monday. Once that is done we will only have the orchard to mow and rake. I think we will just pick it up loose and feed the alpaca. The last bit down by the school house is about 25-35 bales only. But we have to have the round baler working and the small sickle bar mower working. Both spaces are very small and tight and need the small equipment to be able to fit. This won’t happen until after Fourth of July. I am unable to help with this issue.

Sidelined the hard way

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Fridays the puppy and I hang out, do some housework and then eventually go out and do some other things. The siding is still being installed so the puppy cannot be running around the yard with the overhead lift being used. So we worked on installing two more eye hooks on the green bean bin so we can tie up the bean pole evenly and keep the wind from bending it under the weight of the bean vines. We also had to go out and drill about 25 holes in the asparagus/strawberry bin. It was holding water again. The drain hole at the bottom is working but its slow and it cannot keep up. I have holes at all levels now so it should drain out just fine now.

The correct siding came on Thursday, the wrong kind had been delivered, so on Friday the base row needed to be set. It takes this special metal hanger that is installed first then the siding sits on it. The worker was having quite the time finding a way to run a level around the base as in some corners there was a 2” difference over 10’! He spent a lot of time getting it set in the correct spot. The first piece of horizontal siding went up on Friday. I was able to leave the puppy in the yard so I could go work on the sickle bar mower. It looks like they just need to get the horizontal siding on and then caulked and they will be done with the siding job.

There is a piece at the outer edge that pushes the outside edge back into the middle. It got bent so I wanted to take it off, beat on it with a hammer and decide if it needed anything else. I was working on it with the sickle bar in the upright position and it was slow going. I opted to lower the sickle bar to make it easier to work on. I undid the bar holding it upright then just dropped the bar. There is this chain mechanism that usually catches it. Upon later reflection that chain only engages when the three point hitch is elevated which it was not. I dropped that bar directly on top of my right foot. To say that I may have said a few choice words after a solid howl is an understatement. As soon as I could catch my breath I went on a verbal rampage against the sickle bar. It took about 15 minutes before I could move or feel my toes. Once I could move my toes I was pretty sure I had broken my foot, the pain and swelling were getting localized.

I had called Annmarie, she was still at work, to come get me. I considered driving but it was my right foot and I could not walk. My car is a standard and I was certain I could not drive with my right foot. I made such a raucous that the siding guy hollered out and asked if I needed any help. I yelled back that I had just broken my foot but was fine. He went back to siding. I ended up in the ER, I broke a metatarsal in my right foot. I am on crutches, wearing a boot and am 100% non-weight bearing for the next eight weeks! This totally sucks! Luckily, Mr Rainman is chugging away at the hay. He has another 300 bales done and two more fields cut. There is hope that he can be done with haying by the end of the week. Once the haying is done then the gazebo is the next project. I have a new throttle cable coming for the compactor and once that is installed we can prep the pad for the gazebo.

This is really going to slow down my summer. The hardest part of the whole thing is just sitting around. I hate it already and its only been two days!

Farm 3/ Predators 3

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The predators are gaining ground fast. We had another chicken killed the day after the first two. I have been going out at dark and again at 0200 armed with pistol and spotlight. I need more light than a flashlight, 400k lumens of brightness. I have not seen the raccoon since the first night I shot at it. Unfortunately, Mr Rainman and Gingerman have both spotted a raccoon but have been unable to get a shot off as they were unarmed. So everyone is starting to pack all of the time now so they can snag a predator.

Friday evening the Gingerman missed out on an opportunity to shoot at a coyote because he was unarmed. We had a cow die and he went up with the pallet forks mounted on the Kubota to remove it from the field and place it on the bone pile. It was one of our original heifers, so she was 15 years old. Unknown cause of death, but she had just been walking around earlier that morning. Luckily, Gingerman got to her before she popped. It has been very warm and they bloat up pretty fast and opening up that will make a very odiferous mess. I expect the vultures to show up in a couple of days. They fly up from the reservoir and can eat on that carcass for over a week. We might even get an eagle or two scavenging. The eagles will chase off the vultures, they chase off everything! No one wants to mess with a bird that is that big. We have not lost any sheep that we know of so far.

I did tear apart the John Deere driveline this week. I was convinced it was the U joints on the driveline. Surprisingly they made it really easy to remove. Pop the snap ring off, drive out the shearable pin then drive the shaft toward the back wheels. The back end slides along splines and then once the front is off you just drive the shaft off the rear splines. Nope, once the thing was off the U joints have zero slop in them. I think it is the rear spline attachment getting sloppy because the rubber guards have been missing and this allows grass to wrap around the U joints and drive shaft. I dug out all of the dirt in the rear cavity and installed both U joint guards, rubber sleeves. I need to order some more parts so I can fix it. I have started a new shopping list with each piece of equipment a category and then just list the part I need under that category. This way when I get around to ordering parts I don’t forget something.

Gingerman took out the radiator on the 1957 truck and is getting it repaired. Once it is repaired then we can drive the truck in to the brake shop and they can finish adjusting the brakes. The drums and pads will need to be inspected. Once that is done I will need to work on a 12 inch rail going around the truck bed to hold in the dirt and or rocks that we put in the dump bed. They have to be attached to the bed so when you engage the dump bed you don’t throw off the racks every time.

Farm 3/ Predators 2

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There tends to be an optimism that persists whenever you are talking about predator control. Maybe it’s hope, maybe it’s bragging rights but whatever it is it does happen. I have had to decrease the farm score this year as last night a raccoon killed two chickens. It was most likely the same raccoon I saw at 0200 when I took the puppy outside to potty. I was of course in a robe and slippers without any glasses on. No way it was a cat as it jumped out of the large wild rose bush and proceeded to run down the creek and under the fence and then down the creek. It was very noisy. I was ignoring it until Mr Rainman sent me pictures of two dead chickens today with a third one injured. If the stupid chickens would go inside the coop this would not happen.

So now I am going to have to go out, check on the chickens and then just stand around looking for frogs to see who can out wait whom. A classic game of prey vs predator.

Since the farm is ahead of the predators I decided I had better be proactive tonight and make sure all of the chickens went into the coop before the automatic chicken door closed. All of the chickens were inside and the only animal I spotted was the grey barn kitty down by the creek. I was standing by the coop looking into the back creek with my spotlight trying to find the noisy frog that I know was right in front of me when a damn raccoon jumped out of the bush next to the chicken coop. It was running over the overhead soon to be roof supports. I had my trusty suppressed 22 pistol and started flinging lead into the sky. I for sure hit it at least once if not twice. By the time I got around the coop and into the ram pasture it was running toward the barn. I am a firm believer in more lead matters, so I continued to fling it. I managed to get off nine rounds and had to search the barn. I was unable to find the raccoon in the barn. Annmarie thinks it is living over the tack room during the day.

Mr Rainman came out today and repaired the sickle mower for the Kubota tractor. Later he went out and finished cutting field one. I think there is about three acres left to process in that field. I really need to focus on repairing the u joints on the John Deere tractor tomorrow. I had to dig out some grass on the driveline on Sunday and the U joints are bad! I have all the parts to repair it but have not taken the time to actually do it.

We had to take a break today to unload the antiques we won at an auction. One of the local antique stores in Pendleton was having multiple clearance online auctions and today was pickup day. I had to make two trips with the pickup to get everything. Now I will need to wash and polish everything up. We are going to rearrange our living room and Annmarie’s office to fit the new furniture. We are actually going to get rid of three items and replace them with three new ones! I scrubbed the bronze book ends and small brass sculpture tonight. Plus, I managed to score some more old marbles!