Front fence done!

The weather was perfect today.  No rain and not too hot.  I went out and spent 4.5 hours and finished staining the front fence.  I would do one side, switch sides and then go back to the other side.  It needed two coats of stain. 
It was only 1600 so I decided to go to the back yard and finish digging dirt.  I thought it would only take thirty minutes.  An hour later I was still shoveling dirt.  I finally broke down and drug the soil back into the ditch and drove the tractor over it back and forth to compact it.  I found another marble!  I have found six very old marbles digging in the back yard.  Most in pretty good shape, the one today was a great color but it had some cracks in the glass.  I am all ready for gravel.  We were going to lay down 3/4 minus gravel and fill the last two inches with pea gravel.  I talked Annmarie into letting me just use the 3/4 minus.  It will save about $400.  I will still use paver sand over the deck area to make a rigid surface.  Plus, I will be compacting the gravel as I fill it in.  I have a little block left over so I think I will lay it on the lawn edge.

Front fence done!

Last night, at bedtime, the alpaca started throwing a fit and yelling and fighting with each other.  I heard it and tried to go to sleep.  Annmarie asked me if I wanted to check it out.  I did not.  So she went and checked, which meant I had to get out of bed anyways.  The temporary fence keeping the other alpaca away from the designated scapegoat had fallen down.  The other alpaca were in there beating up on the little black alpaca.  Annmarie hollered at them and he came running to her at the gate.  He knows she will protect him.  She let him into the yard and now I need to build a better fence.  So tomorrow I will be building a new fence for the odd man out.  It will need to cross the front ditch so he has access to water year round.  I am still waiting on the shears to come back from Premier.  They shipped them on Friday so they should be here soon.  I will finish the alpaca once the shears arrive. 

Back garden and deck all ready for gravel.

We are going to put down gravel so there is no mud on the way to the root cellar.

It RAINED finally!  The weather person said it had a 15% chance but the clouds said higher when I looked up into the sky so I held off on painting the front fence.  Two hours later when the rain was pouring down I was mighty glad I had not done any painting.  So I went upstairs and spent that time cleaning the trash out of Sarah’s room.  I am up to eight or nine garbage bags so far.  I told Annmarie she would have to go through the clothes.  Sarah wanted some reading material mailed to her so all the classic books I had purchased over the years were stashed on her bookshelf.  I sent her a book of short stories by Jack London, Catcher in the rye, The Pearl, Tom Sawyer, The Help, All creatures great and small, All things bright and beautiful, and some other award winning books. She is trapped so I suspect they will all get read.
Late that afternoon I did get outside and shoveled dirt away from the cellar area.  It doesn’t look like it rained but it really did.  I moved as much dirt as I could over next to the house.  The water running off the roof for the last 80 years has caused the dirt level to drop within three feet of the house.  I want to fill all that in and raise the level up near the house.  I got an hour of digging in before dinner.  Between cleaning up Sarah’s room and the digging I made some good progress. 

Garden area ready for gravel

It occurred to me this morning after rereading my blog entry from last night that I was not very eloquent.  One may say I was downright dry and factual.  That is what happens after only three hours of sleep in 36 hours.  I usually upload the pictures to the blog on the same day I do the work, but most of the time wait a day or two to write the discourse.  This bites me in the proverbial butt when I am busy and working around the farm on a daily basis.  I don’t like to get too far behind hence my dry diatribe last evening.  I will forthwith correct my lackluster litany. 

Friday, I went to the dreaded Home Depot with Annmarie.  I needed some boards for the heat pump enclosure and Heath was out back digging up the garden area.  So progress was being made while I went shopping.  We picked up the cedar boards for the enclosure and two sets of risers for the stairs, a two and three stepper.  They are not cheap, but I did not want to cut them!!  I also picked up some pressure treated 2×12 for the actual steps.  I am still not sure how I am going to attach them to the concrete yet.  There area multitude of ways, and I have not settled on the easiest way yet.  I will probably just assemble the steps and see how they fit then decide how to attach them.  Annmarie wanted to go look at closet kits.  I will be putting in a real closet kit in our walk in closet soon.  It is coming.  We got a smattering of rain yesterday, not enough to do anything but hopefully the mountains that are burning up will get some precipitation.  I had big plans on going out and painting the front fence but it is starting to look like rain again.  Since the stain is water soluble, I don’t think that will be a good idea.  I will check the weather forecast.  I may have to finish cleaning up the garden area by the back gate.  There is a pile of dirt there that needs to be moved then the dirt on the backside of the fence needs to be raked out and flattened. 

Back deck heat pump view

I had the nephew out again this week for three days.  I had him finish digging the front ditch.  We do still have a little bit of water, it isn’t much but it is still present.  I have decided to make the back deck a priority.  We finished digging it out and I installed the new rock wall.  Unfortunately, I was being a cheapskate and did not purchase the blocks that you can stack vertically and have a ceramic pin holding them all together in a single vertical wall.  They were $9/each and I could not spend it.  Instead I bought the $1.79 blocks and had to overlap them.  This necessitated some gravel behind the blocks to hold them in place.  I had the entire rock wall done, stood back and looked at my handiwork and realized that the heat pump was going to be an eye sore.  There is no easy way to move the heat pump so that means hiding it in such a way that air can still flow around the heat pump.  I had to tear the wall out again and then move it out of the way to dig some post holes for the decorative wall.  I dug and set the posts and then reinstalled the rock wall.  I did not have any boards for the louvers so that will be a trip to Home Depot.  Heath filled in behind the blocks with gravel.  I built a channel to protect the power and coolant lines. 

Brick wall up, now just need to add gravel and compact.

Buried concrete for clothes line.

We struggled with getting the clothes line out of the ground.  I had to use the tractor to bend the steel angle iron back and forth long enough it caved in and broke.  I knew there was some concrete buried.  I had no idea it was over three feet long and 18 inches thick.  It took quite a while to get out and it was the maximum the tractor could lift.  I accidently cut the fence trying to put it on the other side.  Now I will have to patch the hole.  I had to shorten the water box so it would stick lower than anything else.  That way we don’t stub our toes on it when walking across the pea gravel floor.  I am going to use paver sand with epoxy to pour over the pea gravel to make it a solid surface.  I purchased the two sets of stair risers so I would not have to cut them myself.  I would be happy if I could get it all done this week except the for the pea gravel. 

Stuck again.

I spent the morning getting my alpaca shears sent back to the company.  I wanted to save time on the repair job so two weeks ago I ordered the new shear head and comb screws.  They came late last week and yesterday afternoon I finally attempted to install them.  I got all my needed tools, could not find the owners manual so my ipad and the internet came to the rescue and I camped out on the old house porch.  Five minutes into tearing it apart and cleaning it I realized there was a reason that Premier said these need to be sent back to the company for repair.  The shear head has a bearing seated in it.  I did not know this and did not order a spare bearing.  I called this morning and got directions on how to send it back and where to send it.  Hopefully, I will get it in a couple of weeks.  I left a note detailing what was broken and how 3.5 of my 8 alpaca were sheared.  I am hoping my sad story will expedite the repair. 

I was thinking about staining the fence but it was too hot.  I washed the fence off yesterday and Annmarie is supposed to be getting me another gallon of stain today.  It needs to be five degrees cooler.  Instead I fired up the mistress and went out into the orchard to flatten out the mud and dirt piles from the backhoe.  On the North side of the large tree I had great success, the South side had multiple large piles of mud.  These were not dry and the tractor kept getting stuck.  I managed to  spread it out in a semblance of flat.  This will let it dry out faster and allow me to work it flat in the next week.  I went near the house were the bowl shaped earth was and filled it in.  It filled in nicely and was just going to make one pass right along the ditch bank.  The ditch bank was not firm, not at all.  Both my front and rear tire dropped down into the ditch and I could not get the tractor out.  I will have to wait until Thursday when I can pull the pickup around and then have someone pull while I drive the tractor.  There is always something. 
We have opened up all our pastures for the cows, sheep and horses to go wherever they want.  The feed is very dry so we wanted them to find the best feed available.  The horses seem to be hanging with the sheep.  The cows stay to themselves.   

Almost flat enough.



Needs to dry out some more so I can make a second pass