Author: Steve Hardin

Bathroom closing in on the finish line

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A life altering event occurred this week, our plumber came! We have the best plumber in the county and I asked him, when I came home to help get the toilet upstairs, when he was going to retire? He said this was his last year. I hope it is for him, its time to rest and get some things done around the house. He spent a couple of days plumbing our bathroom. We got an all inclusive toilet, it is cast as one piece and is smooth on the outside so its easy to clean! He sweats all the copper fittings so I will never be able to repair it, it am just not a very good plumber but in 13 years he has only ever had one thing leak. We even have a main house water shutoff inside the house so you don’t even have to go outside to shut off the water main. I asked for and got a water faucet on the side of the bathroom vanity. I will be attaching a water hose for my inside plants, no more filling one gallon containers to water my plants. I use 4-5 gallons of water a week. I have a lot of plants on the breeze porch. The only thing he did not get done was the drain for our sink, he had to order a matching part to go with our faucet. It will hopefully be here in the next 1-2 weeks. We are waiting to use the bathroom until I get it finished.

Our new stained glass windows came this week also. We had purchased one on the Oregon coast and I liked it so much I talked Annmarie into a second one for the old opening I had already had framed into the wall. It was very well packaged and went in very easily. Both windows were hung for a trial run and taken down so I could paint the inside of the window well white. This will help these holes blend into the wall and reflect more light into the stained glass window. Whenever the hall light is on or its daytime there will always be light in the bathroom now. Sitting in the center of the house it had no natural light.

Yesterday I figured I better get the shelves and closet door up. I managed to glue the first shelf together, as it was already in place and I had to pound it in place just to get it close. It took some glue and quite a bit more pounding to get it together. I need to tear a four inch wide piece to go on the front of the shelf and then cut the remaining three pieces for the bottom shelf. I decided to move onto the closet door and finished putting the screws in, drilled the holes for the rollers then promptly installed the rollers on backwards. After moving the rollers to the correct direction I realized that I am about 1/16” long on the factory bolts. I need a couple of washers to fill in the gap. The real problem with this is I need to get the door up on the wall so I can see if I have the clearance for the washers. So I brought the door in and tried to hang it, yep, its about an inch too tall. I need to cut some off of the bottom of the door. My plan is to just cut off two inches by going between the screws. I was able to make 2.25 of the 3 cuts needed before both batteries died. I will be finishing that job tomorrow. It is starting to shape up. Annmarie bought more baskets for the shelves yesterday. I finally had to move them all out so they didn’t get dirty as I finish it up. It is fairly obvious who will be using the bathroom mirror. She states the mirror is much higher quality, larger and I put in an amazing amount of light so its easy to apply makeup. I am not sure those were my criteria when I was building it…

Outside theme continued

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We spent the weekend working outside to get ready for spring. Mr Professional brought out his Progeny and we continued the theme from Friday. We planted all of the trees and I finished trimming all of the trees not done Friday. I picked up all of the branches in the orchard and the Progeny picked up sticks and branches in the orchard pasture, the lavender patch and the front yard. We have now adopted two separate names when talking about the orchard area. We have the “Orchard” which is where the fruit trees are located and then there is the “Orchard Pasture” which is the surrounding pasture. The orchard has its own fence so the animals cannot get to the trees. I took a hard look at the old apple tree after cutting out a bunch of low dead branches. I think if I cut out the dead stuff out of the top of the tree the tree might regrow. The entire upper half of the tree is dead.

We found a bunch of box elder bugs in huge clusters on the sunny side of the larger trees. So I mixed up some bug spray and hosed them down. We also sprayed the machine shed and the mother-in-law’s house. I am hopeful that if we can kill large amounts now we won’t have as bad an infestation. Already we have none around our house and I am only finding about ten bugs inside the house after spraying.

We went over to grandma’s old house and found three Italian plum trees, a black walnut tree and a five gallon bucket full of Iris. We planted the plums in the orchard, two are really tiny and need some growing before we can separate them. I planted the walnut tree out in the ram pasture and we put the Iris out in the watered barn flower area. The chickens got into the area last fall and killed most of the flowers I had in there. The chickens are rough on this area. We installed some more chicken wire to block off the six feet of access they had. Unfortunately all they have to do now is just fly in over the fence. I made a new spot for the Iris and hopefully we can get them established.

On Sunday we drilled a 1/2” hole in my tractor bucket and installed the T-post driver I purchased from Bucke-Tee LLC in Texas! This turned out to be the best $200 I have spent this year. We put 200# of tractor weights in the bucket and then you insert a T post into the driver and then use the bucket to push the post into the ground. Obviously the ground has to be kind of soft. But honestly, if I had 500-600# of weight in the bucket and you add in the hydraulics on the tractor I think the ground could be a little hard. We were able to put 30 T-posts in the ground in under an hour. I think I could do the entire new fence line I want in a single day! I used to only be able to do 30-40 posts by hand. I just got worn out pounding them in. We then installed low wire around all of the new trees.

One of the things that had not happened yet was installing the guide wires for the raspberries and blackberries. So we pounded in 8 poles and strung wire and anchors so the berries can grow on a trellis.

I am able to work outside again after Covid 19. I still cannot do a lot of long distance walking but short muscular activity is way better than aerobic anything. Unfortunately I have done nothing for over 90 days so this manual labor is very hard on my body. I ache all over and flop around like a fish out of water at night. When I hurt this much I have to sleep in the spare room so I don’t keep Annmarie up. I try not to overdo it this much usually but after Covid I need to keep pushing so I can get my strength and stamina back.

Orchard Work

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On Friday I had Mr Professional out, he and I went over to the Metal fabricators and picked up my five heavy duty 12 foot welded gates. The bull will not be able to tear these up at all, no matter how much he tries. We got them all loaded up on the trailer and unloaded into the machine shed. I need to spray paint them before I hang them up. I will be doing that very soon. Annmarie and I had already talked about fruit trees as they had just come into our local feed store last week. I like to plant them about 45 days from now but by the time I am ready to plant the selections left at the store are pretty slim and I don’t get all the kinds I want. So we bit the bullet and just went into town and bought some fruit trees. The plan was to buy six trees, we ended up with eight trees, Mt Royal Plum, Honey Crisp Apple, Tilson Apricot, Royal Gala Apple, Golden Spice Pear, Summercrisp Pear, Rainier Cherry and Black Tartan Cherry. Mr Professional and I went around the orchard and dropped off all the trees where we wanted them to be planted.

We removed the top half of the cages around the old trees and I started to trim all of the fruit trees from the ground. Mr Professional took the tractor and changed out the box blade for the post hole auger. We drilled out 9 holes as Annmarie wanted me to go to her grandmother’s old house and try and salvage a Italian plum tree. Once the holes were drilled we used the tractor as a more efficient ladder so that I could trim the upper branches on the trees. This is far easier than dragging a ladder around. I had not really shaped the trees in the last three years and spent a lot of time choosing branches and thinning the middle out of the trees. I am going to have to start spraying for bugs next year to keep the fruit bug free. The hardest part about this is you have to spray every two weeks during the summer.

Lambing season is done, we think

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Well, we think we are done having lambs. It was pretty drawn out this year and our plan to stop this is to turn the ram loose with the sheep in a confined space. When he has to run all over the farm and try and catch all the ewes to breed he starts taking his time and we need a faster approach. We will be putting the ram in with the ewes in 1-2 weeks so he can start the process all over again and we will have lambs again in five months!

  • Lamb finalized
  • 49 lambs born alive
  • 32 ewes delivered
  • 0 pregnant ewes (we think….)
  • 15 single lambs
  • 17 twin lambs
  • 3 bummer lambs, all survived
  • 29 lambs on the farm
  • 150% birthing rate
  • 144% production rate (goal >150%)
  • 96% survival rate at birth
  • 98% survival rate at 2 weeks

Annmarie has already sold 20-25 lambs to a person nearby who wants to start their own herd of hair sheep! The truly amazing part is this same person wants to run them in with his Dexter cows!! We got a good laugh out of that as we thought we were the only ones in the area who had done this. He wants the sheep to eat what the cows will not which is exactly what they will do. He has not yet discovered the joy of eating a hair sheep and the fact that they are milder and sweeter tasting.

Farm Work was happening

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I started out the Sunday by tagging and banding the last two little lambs we had in the barn, a little boy and girl. I then mixed all the sheep together so we don’t have to manage two separate herds. I came in and started working on the bathroom shelves and while outside cutting lumber heard some squawking. I looked around the edge of the house and there was our pretty rooster in the front yard desperately trying to get through the metal fence to get away from the dogs. Unfortunately for him, he is too big to fit between the gaps. I was able to call the Border Collies off but our little ankle biter Brussels Griffin, Gizmo, did not want to leave the chicken and had to be hollered at. I tried to open the gate but that just confused the chicken and ended up just having to reach down and grab him and toss him over the fence. He got lucky and only lost about 30 feathers. I have no idea what he was doing in the yard, the chickens know it is not safe.

I went out to pickup the carcasses and once I got into the barn lot I decided I had better do a couple of things before just getting the carcasses. Annmarie and I had noticed the culvert that did not get repaired was undercutting the bank and drive over path. She was afraid if the horses got out they would try and cross this and fall through potentially braking a leg. So I dug out the old culvert, it took a few tries to get it above ground. I finally had to go clear all the dirt off of the culvert before I could lift it out of the water. I moved that culvert over to the other culvert and will work on getting it set so it takes the water coming out of the crossing and allows it to run down through the culvert and not eat out the bank edges. I will mess with that after the water level goes down some or I won’t mind getting wet.

While I was messing with the culvert I spotted something in the back runoff creek. I wasn’t sure what it was but it looked like an animal carcass. My only thought was I hope it isn’t and if it is then please don’t let it be so decomposed that I cannot just drag it out of the water. I was able to just slide a chain around its neck and pull it out of the water. It had been dead for a few days only so it was still intact mostly. I took it up to the boneyard and then came back for the stillborn lambs, dead lamb and dead alpaca. It smelled bad but managed to stay in one piece while moving it with the tractor. I was eternally grateful that the carcass only smelled a little bit.

While I was dropping off the carcasses I noticed water running in an ancient ditch that has never been there before since we moved back in 2007. I will need to dig out the ditch again and make it a little deeper and give it some consistent shape. I will just have to add it to my list for the year. I am starting to feel better after my run in with Covid19. It has been eight weeks and this was the first weekend I did not notice any chest pain. My hope is that my aerobic ability will improve quickly now.