Month: October 2025

Bathroom remodel day 48

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Well it is only day 48 of the main bathroom remodel, but it is week 36! Annmarie tells me I have to have it done before the wedding. It is gonna be close. I need to get the Sheetrock installed and start the mudding process. I am not very good at it and it takes me some time to get it right. Yesterday I really wanted to get the sand spread out in the Gazebo and then compacted down so we could lay bricks. Rainman and I could not get the compactor started and it had a pretty serious fuel leak. I need to get a new float gasket and try again. We ended up moving furniture for the Mother-in-law and then went and got a new sewing cabinet for the wife from MiltonFreewater. It was cheap at $80 but they said it was heavy. They were not kidding, the thing is solid wood and very heavy. We will get rid of the cheap one now.

I started working on cutting shelves for the bathroom cabinet. Unbeknownst to me, I was failing to account for 3/4” from the back piece in my measurements. We had to recut every one of them today so they would fit. At least they were not too short! I used the Kreg tool to install peg holes for two adjustable shelves and another Kreg jig to put in screw holes to attach the boards together. I was going to leave the holes but I found some wooden plugs you can glue in place to make it all neat so I will be doing that. The plugs are ordered. Mr Rainman helped me get it all assembled then we tried to dry fit it into the bathroom. I had to rip out the corner crown molding as the cabinet is about one inch from the ceiling. It is very tall and a ladder will be needed for the top shelf. We were barely able to stand the cabinet upright once we got it into the bathroom. If we had made it 1/2” taller it would not have stood upright. As it was we had to get it square to the wall and ceiling and turn it on the long side to minimize the arch height. Once it was in place we took a level and worked on getting it moved around and level. It will need to have some trim added at the bottom to keep it level. Mr Rainman reminded me we could just screw the cabinet into the wall above the tile once we had it level. This way I could then work on getting the custom trim job in place to cover all of the weirdness. This is a great plan!

I was supposed to get some wider oak today when I went to Home Depot and I forgot it. I did get some stuff to put on the finish and picked up a single chunk of gutter to put over the office/old house porch steps. They had ice build up on them last winter and I don’t want that this year. That will also require another trip to the hardware store as I grabbed a gutter end from the right end box and one from left end box. When I got home and tried to set up all of the gutter I realized that I had two left end pieces.

I was going to stand up the cabinet in the old house and seal all of the surfaces but the ceiling in the old house is too low to stand the cabinet upright. So I will be doing all of the visible sides then turning it over and doing the back. I want to seal all of the surfaces as it will be in the bathroom.

I did drive by and check on the sheep. They look good and are doing well, no issues.

Sheep moved, projects advancing

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I went over to Hermiston and took the pregnant ewes with me. I unloaded them into their temporary pasture and then worked on setting up the electric fence just inside the vinyl fence. The sheep have never been around an electric fence before. It has been years since we used one on our place. I just keep cross fencing the farm so I don’t have to move any chargers or electrical wire around. I had to do the part directly across from the neighboring field first. As soon as the ewes came out of the trailer the herd across the driveway came running over to see what was up. So both herds wanted to stand next to their respective fences. I was afraid the ewes would just hop through the vinyl fence. I got it up and then hooked up the charger and ground wire. I forgot to bring a tester and I really did not want to grab the wire, luckily several ewes tried to scoot closer to the vinyl fence and it was readily apparent that the electricity was on! Before I could get the next section up and energized I had one ewe try three times to get to the vinyl fence. Everyone else had caught on to the consequences and was avoiding the outer edge of the field. I think she got the message after the third shock as she just ambled into the field to be with everyone else and ignored the herd across the driveway.

Winter is coming so I planted a bin full of garlic and looked at tossing the green beans and tomatoes over the fence for the chickens but they are not frozen down yet and I may get one last picking off of each one. My beets I started in the fall are growing but they have some weird brown leaf thing that is stunting them. I am not sure what it is but it is not a bug. I am hopeful we can go another month without a hard lasting freeze so they will continue to grow. I will pick them once the leaves wilt down. I dug up half our potatoes and got almost 20#. We did way better this year by switching bins. Next year we are moving every single type of plant to a different bin. We win also be testing the soil and adding nutrients as needed in the spring. I will dig up the other potatoes in the next 2-4 weeks.

I did disconnect all of our yard and garden hoses. I blew out the lines going to all of our garden and to the lavender plants. By the time I was done we have several piles of hose with 15 hoses total being used. The tree orchard is slanted one direction so I just opened up the drain plugs at the end of each of the three lines.

The Gingerman and I removed the old dishwasher and installed and leveled the new one. I thought this would be a quick process. If you call a solid two hours to remove the old one, clean up the floor, change out the electric cord to the new dishwasher, install the new one, level it and then attach it to the underside of the countertop so it doesn’t rattle around fast then yeah it was quick.

We then set up the table saw and ran all of the bathroom cabinet pieces through it so I could hopefully take some of the wow out of the pieces. It helped. I won’t really know until I start the assembly but now I can actually start the assembly. I will be finding my Kreg tool that lets me drill pilot holes on an angle so I can glue and screw the pieces together.

I hav two main projects left, the gazebo floor and the greenhouse. It’s a race now to see what gets done.

I did finally capitulate and find a varmint rifle for the tractor. I needed something that could just be beat up. I ended up getting a single action break open 243, one shot with a Vortex scope and synthetic stock. I have a waterproof ammo carrier on the stock of the rifle. The entire setup was around $500. Now I just need to weld the holder onto the tractor and get it mounted. I bent one of the bucket support arms a couple of years ago and kept it thinking I may have a use for it in the future. I am going to cut it in 14” lengths, weld them straight up the arms of the bucket and put a piece of angle iron across the top. This way I can bolt the rifle holder directly to that angle iron. We will see how well it all rides soon.

Haying completed, for this year…

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Mr Rainman and I went over last weekend and finished getting the rest of the woven wire up in the field in Hermiston. The only thing left is to get a row of electric wire mounted near the vinyl fence on one side of the field and we can drop off the ewe sheep. It only took about four hours for the both of us but I am not even sure I could have done it alone without cutting the woven wire near each tree. I would not have been able to get it behind the tree alone intact. It of course ended up raining on Sunday afternoon.

Today I finally managed to get the last of the hay picked up and haying done for this calendar year. I had some help loading the trailer and the back of the pickup. Loading the back of the pickup allowed me to only have to make one trip! I had to toss some of the small bales from last week back into the machine shed before I had enough room to empty out the trailer. There is probably almost 5000# of hay in small round bales ready to be fed. We will feed out the small round bales before I use the large bales. There is probably 6-8 weeks worth of feed in just round bales and that is really dependent on when we get our final freeze or snow flies.

I have to say that loading and unloading two ton of hay by myself is not quite as easy as it used to be. I am definitely more tired than I would have been even five years ago. Again, working until 0300 at the paying job then haying the next day is not a normal schedule. I just need to get all of the hay equipment cleaned off and put away back into the machine shed for the winter.

My next project that I hope to get to this weekend is getting the bricks laid down for the gazebo. I just have to get the compactor running then spread out the sand and compact it down. Then it is merely laying out 1600 bricks in a pattern.

Haying more done

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In a self defense move, I rolled all of the completed bales to the outside of the upper field. I was pretty certain I was going to have to pick them up alone and I wanted to make it easier on myself. I also wanted to leave the upper field clean so after I moved all the completed bales I went through the entire field again and raked it up a second time into four long rows. I managed to get another 20 bales out of the leftover grass from the first baling.

I left the bottom for an around a week, the Gingerman went over and raked it up into rows so I could sleep after working the night shift. It rained a 1/4” of rain later that week so I let it sit for a few more days before turning it again. I then let it sit for another five days in the hopes that it would dry out.

When I went over to bale it I had loaded up on shear bolts so the toolbar was all ready for me to repair any issues. I broke almost 25 shear bolts just baling the small bottom area. I would get close then an entire section of wet damp grass would jump into the baler and break the shear bolt! There was a very large amount of swearing involved in getting that field all baled up. By the time I was done it was taking me about three minutes to replace the shear bolt and get the tractor up and going again.

I had Mr Rainman for two days last weekend and we concentrated on getting the lower bales picked up one day. We were able to load up 30 bales into the back of the pickup, strap down each of the three rows and then creep up the steep rocky road in 4wd low. We only lost part of one load when the strap popped loose. We put 30 bales into each cow feeder at the house. So we filled all three feeders, one for the female pregnant cows, one for the feeder cows below and then one in Alcatraz. Currently, the only animals in Alcatraz are our three rams. Eventually, we will have to sort off the bull and put him in there with the rams.

We took the wettest bales and dumped them out for feed to be immediately eaten. Unfortunately, despite the farm looking like a food desert the cows and sheep are ignoring the lush green grass available in the feeders. Obviously, they know something we do not.

2/3 sheep moved

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This last couple of weeks have been a blur. I am tying to get things wrapped up before Winter officially gets here and I simply don’t have enough time in the day to do everything. I am covering night shifts at work and they are random so it is taking its toll on me. I had to work last weekend so the the kids took our lamb/cull sheep herd to Hermiston for us. It took them two loads and there are 68 sheep over there now.

I still need to get over there and finish fencing in that new pasture so we can take the pregnant ewes over. Mr Rainman is going to help me next weekend and we will get the fence up and get the sheep over there at the same time. I have several random nights this week and a two day class to teach at work so my fence building days are limited.

My Jerusalem artichokes are doing very well! They finally formed flowers and the bees are loving them. We are still trying to decide where to put them permanently. A lot of it is going to stem height. I won’t really know how well they did until I dig them up. I am going to leave them alone as long as they have flowers on them. They are a great flower for the bees as it is incredibly late compared to everything else.

The pigeons have been taunting me. I have not had time to go out and work on thinning them out. We had five at the beginning of the year and there is probably over 40 now and I have only managed to kill eight. I came home and the entire roof of the barn peak was covered in pigeons. By the time I could take a picture, most of them had flown away. I have not forgotten about them! If I do nothing we could end up with a couple of hundred next year. They really are the rats of the sky.

Our flower bulbs came in the mail so I will need to get the right half of the front yard flower bed set up soon. The plan is to move the temporary fence, finish lining the inside of the area with small rocks and level off the area. I will dig and plant all of the bulbs on this one side then I am going to lay down a single layer of chicken wire directly onto the ground. This will keep our, digging to the earth core, border collie out of the flower bed. Hopefully, she will not see it as a challenge.