Author: Steve Hardin

Mud room 99% done

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We are now using it officially. There are two little things left to complete the entire job and honestly they are going to wait. I need to trim out the window and I need to add another outlet on the other side of the door. Both of those things are not a rush and the power thing requires me to kill power to the entire house/old house out at the pole in the front yard. So no one can be home when I do that. Mr Rainman got the shelf wood supports installed and the short side shelves installed. We had to wait for the metal brackets to arrive before the shelves over the doors could be placed. Luckily, the brackets came with both long and short screws so I did not have to make a special trip to town to get short black screws that go directly into the shelf. I bought too much cedar closet lining. I was thinking it would go on both walls but after installing it on one side the smell was pretty overpowering so I decided one side was good enough. I am ordering a little UV light bug trap also and will give that a try and see if we cannot keep the bugs under control. We built a custom shelf for the new food dryer from leftover wood scraps. I had to adjust the lumen output on the overhead light from 3400 lumen to 5200. The shelves cut down on the light but using a 1×2’ LED light has made all the difference. The room is not dark. Yesterday, I got all of the metal supports and last two shelves installed.

I spent today finishing emptying out the laundry room and moving all of the raw alpaca fiber bins out to the mud room. There are still a couple of pair of boots but the laundry room is fairly empty now. It is quite nice and now needs a deep clean! I ordered a couple of rubber shoe mats and a foot stool so you can sit down if you need to put your shoes on. Not necessary for rubbers but if we have to break out the snow boots you definitely need a place to sit down to lace them up. I ordered an extension cord today for the dryer also, the cord was too short to get to the outlet.

Mr Rainman had a good idea, he said to buy bagged pea gravel to fill in the old planter spots. It’s washed and we probably only need 6-8 bags. It will be easy to move and easy to install. As soon as the local stores start selling their spring yard stuff I will get some. I also need to get some stepping stones so that Annmarie can get to the cat shelf in her socks. Now you have to cross six feet of sharp gravel to feed the cats. We used to just toss it on the back porch! It is the one downfall to the mud room, you cannot just open the door and feed the outside cats. It is a small price to pay for the mud room. I love it!

Old truck, new project

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I had been talking to Annmarie for years about getting the old truck running. Six flat tires and not having run in over 30 years was a pretty strong deterrent that kept me from moving forward. Well the daughter’s boyfriend likes to mechanic and likes old Chevy trucks. He offered to come over and work on it this weekend. This meant that I had to offer a measly amount of assistance. On the plus side he was able to move the fan on the motor initially with no issues. So after three trips to the parts store, an online order and a solid day we have managed to discover a few things about the truck.

It is old and dirty. The Gingerman hauled the trash can over to the truck and just scooped out trash and stuff from the cab into the can. He then took the leaf blower and fired it up and blew out the cab and motor compartment. At one point he had to go get a metal rake to rake the weeds and leaves around the truck so he could crawl under to jack it up. It was sitting so low, due to flat tires, that he could not remove the oil filter or get to the oil pan plug. I spent about three hours just wiping mud and dirt out of the cab. This time allowed me to compose a list of needed items:

  • 6-new tires (all flat, and front are different size than rear)
  • Windshield gasket (it’s cracked and disintegrating, piles of bugs near the holes)
  • Side door window seals (they are nonexistent and the windows are just rattling around in the door)
  • Door seals (cracked and falling apart, letting weather into the cab)
  • Interior light bulb
  • Side mirrors
  • Sun visor
  • Horn is missing from steering column
  • Brake pedal cover (for anyone who has had a wet shoe and tried to hit the brakes they will know this is essential)
  • Floor mats (I want cheap and so far I am not seeing it, more research)
  • Door window/handle gaskets
  • Boot gaskets for the shifter/E brake/dump bed handle
  • Choke needs a new handle
  • None of the vents move, they have metal cable and its rusted together but I can live without heat
  • Seat covers (seat is cracked and pinpoint pressure causes a tear)
  • Engine belts need replaced also, I think there are two maybe three.
  • Brake lines need purged and filled, master cylinder may need a new gasket.
  • Fuel tank will need flushed and checked for leaks.

The truck is a 1957 Chevy 1 ton, dual rear wheel, 2 WD, with a flat hydraulic lift bed. It has a V8 engine 256 HP which I am told is unusual and it has the same type of engine they put in Corvettes which explains some of the weird hanging hardware for the spark plug wires. It has an oil based air filter that uses 50W oil. This means the entire engine is coated with about 1/8” of caked on dirt and oil. Cleaning that off is going to have to wait until we have gotten the thing running. They put 8 inch 19.5” tires on the front and 7 inch 18” tires on the rear. We could not figure out why.

A few things are a must, door window seals, windshield seal, seat covers and floor mats. There is no question that those need to happen. Oh and the side mirrors, I may want those if I am trying to get around a tight spot.

The engine had no oil in it. So we are uncertain if its due to a bad gasket or it got drained out. Once we get the correct oil filter then we will fill it up and see if the oil leaks out. At most hopefully, it only needs an oil pan gasket. On the plus side the left blinker works and the starter engaged for a split second so the ignition switch works and the starter works! We also installed a dead man switch for the battery under the hood. I had one laying around for an old tractor we sold. This way I can just isolate the battery when we are not going to use the truck.

We really want the truck running so I can efficiently move dirt, rocks, gravel and compost around. Doing it one tractor bucket at a time does not work when you have to go any distance. We have now started down this path so the plan is to continue until we have a working vehicle. I will order tires this week and get that out of the way. It will be the largest single purchase. The goal is to put less than $4000 into it, so far we have spent $592.50.

All things need a name. I am going to call it the “Little Dumper”.

Week 12 lambing update

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Yes, we are in week 12, or in human terms three months and we have still not had the sheep give birth to all of the lambs. We have some lambs that are already three months old. Annmarie and I have discussed this, in the next two weeks we are going to sort off the culled sheep from the main herd with their babies. Those sheep will go in with the ewes that have not had their babies. We are going to dump the rams in with the rest of the heard for two months only! Then the rams will come off and go back in Alcatraz with the bull. We cannot continue to lamb for months on end. It is crazy and very inconvenient.

  • Date of update- Feb 6 2024
  • # of Lambs born – 46
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 31
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 6
  • # of single lamb births – 17
  • # of twin lamb births – 13
  • # of triplet lamb births – 1
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-33
  • # tagged female lambs-9
  • # unknown lambs – 3
  • # of bummer lambs – 4
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 5
  • Total # of lambs on farm -37
  • % birthing rate- 148%
  • % production rate -119%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 80%

Ouch, these are not the best statistics. We may have to consider bringing in a different breed of ram in the next two years. We had a lot better survival rate when we switched up the ram breed every so often. We have been doing Katahdin for quite a while now. One more thing to think about.

Our young border collie, Chance is one her second cone of shame. I have used 2/3 of a full roll of duct tape in an attempt to keep them in one piece. The vet tech felt sorry for the dog on Friday, by Saturday she had it cracked and by Sunday it had already torn in half. It has been six days and she already has two full length tears in it. I am just going to keep using duct tape on it. I have a second full roll ready to go so I think it can survive until we get the paw wound healed up. It looks so much better now than it did when we started. She hates it but has really learned to use it as a scoop, weapon and digging tool.

Mud room guy finished 90%

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Well, Mr Rainman and I managed to knock out most of the mud room in the last two weekends. We are at the stage that I dread the most, the last ten percent. It will take an entire weekend just to get that last 10% finished. It cost about $45/sqft in materials to get the three walls, insulation, exterior door, one small window, and three types of interior lining basically just over $4k for a mud room that I installed with help. I cannot imagine building a house in this day and age from the ground up. My suggestion would be to find a house with good bones and do the work yourself.

I decided to go with smooth plywood on the short sides of the room and we just used some scrap tongue and groove to finish off the top. The back wall has all blue pine tongue and groove. I really do like the stuff but at $10/ea for a 1×6”x8’ board it doesn’t take long to add up when covering a wall. I went through about 80% of the wood pile to find 29 pieces that were worth the ten bucks. Unfortunately, the store won’t bring out more material until someone buys all the crud. I had to go to another store and ended up with white pine in two different patterns. Of course we did not realize that the pattern had changed until we were 60% done and there was only 90 minutes left of work. I just told Mr Rainman that we would be the only ones that noticed it because we had uses different patterns on all the walls so no one would be able to tell that we did not deliberately do it that way.

He talked me into doing a white wash treatment on the wood to protect it, transmit the light and let the wood grain show through. I have never done this before so I am interested to see how it turns out. I also have 60 sqft of cedar closet lining. So once I get the walls all whitewashed I am going to install cedar lining on the two plywood walls. This should help us cut down on bugs and moths. The room is on hold this week as I will need to get outside and work on pruning our fruit trees. The weather is screwy and it keeps changing, 20F-60F in Jan-Feb, it’s not normal. So I need to get fruit trees because it might be 70F in March.

We found a contractor to tear off our vinyl siding, replace three windows and install Diamond Kote siding. The siding should outlive us and the weather should not affect it as much as our vinyl siding. The siding does not have to be painted. It’s a crazy amount of money to do that, more than we paid for our first ever house 30 years ago, just for siding. The job is just too big for me to do in a summer while I am holding down a full time job and trying to work on the farm. It is not possible to do all things, some things have to be farmed out.

We are going to have to get another 16’ of ice breaker stops installed on the front roof of the house. We had a fairly large chunk of ice fall and smash into our new porch railing. It shattered one side of the TREX railing. So that is on the list to replace this summer. It’s always something, the gutters have made a huge impact across the front of the house. The ice breakers worked amazing on the side of the house this winter. Even the black plastic moisture barrier we installed under the house is making a huge difference. We have used about 50% less propane to heat the house this winter. At this rate paying for insulation to install under the floors, our investment might be realized in just one winter. If we continue to use this little propane then I want to add insulating under the house to the summer projects list along with installing the gazebo and getting the man cave closed in. Just a few things to knock out this summer along with hay and weeds and mowing.

I have to say that anyone can really learn to do most things by watching YouTube! I had a couple of install questions on the door and window with the house wrap and I was able to find the answers fairly easily. Watch one, do one, teach one!

We are going to leave the concrete floor for a while. I would like to tile it eventually but it is a mud room and we need it for that reason so the concrete is appropriate.

Mud room progressing

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Mr Rainman stopped at the lumber store on his way out this morning so we would have enough lumber to finish up the walls. We had to frame in the door opening to the rough dimensions on the door receipt. I kept the receipt as it did have the needed dimensions and so that I could argue with Home Depot in six weeks when my door is not in yet.

We had to finish the door opening and the frame above the door. The door is 34” so that caused some problems framing the door, we got it worked out. The hard part was the corners. Each corner is an old iron pipe with 6” square 1/4” thick ends and then bolted to the concrete and the porch. The real problem is the pipe is welded in different spots on each end and neither pipe is identical. We had to try and frame around the pipes to get the corners stiffened. This was not easy and we kind of had to piece things together where the wood would actually fit.

When we went out to the barn this morning I tagged and banded the last pair in a jug. It was a little boy and he had pasty butt! The new momma was not keeping him cleaned up and it had frozen to his hair. It was a mess, I got it cleaned enough for him to poop. But it needs to get above freezing so I can get it out of his hair. We may have to bring him inside and get it all cleaned up. I will keep an eye on him. I had to do the same thing again this evening.

It did rain off and on throughout the day and we are under an ice advisory. You can see how the snow is turning into one big ice sheet with water on top. I finally had to start locking the dogs into the laundry room. The puppy’s injured foot was getting scraped up on the ice edges when her foot broke though the ice covered snow and she was leaving blood on the ice. She did not like not being outside while I was outside. It’s supposed to warm up so flooding may be a thing before the week is out.

Mr Rainman and I then worked on getting the plywood sheeting up onto the frame. As things started to get closed in I was able to really see how big the room was going to be and start thinking about what needed to happen on the inside. I think another $1k by the time I buy insulation, sealant and 12 more sheets of plywood with one smooth side. That doesn’t include sealing the plywood or building the countertop, bench stool and two open fronted shelving units. I think we will be into it about $4500 by the time we are all done with it.