#stewartcreeksomethings

Haying getting started

Steve Hardin1 Comment

There has been a lot of change lately. On Friday, Annmarie went to pickup our new puppy, ”Chance” is her name and she is a Border Collie. The same people sold us a starter nuc with honeybee hive with six frames for $150. Annmarie put the new frames in a single deep box and the bees are kinda moving around. It has been cool and windy so they don’t want to stray far from the hive. We mixed up some sugar water and added them into another box on top of the brooder box so they could eat and not have to go out into the weather. The box is right outside our kitchen window so we can see them. Annmarie did not even get stung, she did wear the protective clothing we purchased also. The puppy is a full time job as it is only six weeks old, so the minute she wakes up you have to rush her outside so she can go potty. We will let her sleep with us until she is about 9 weeks old then we will kennel train her. She needs to be old enough to be able to hold her bladder throughout the night.

On Saturday when I got back home I had plans to cut hay but the weather looked horrible. I was sure it was going to rain. So I did not cut any hay. I played with the puppy all day as Annmarie had not gotten a lot of sleep the night before. I vowed to be on puppy duty all night but after getting up three times in the middle of the night to go potty with the puppy, I was very tired the next morning.

I ended up looking outside and suspecting rain again but by noon, just bit my lip and went out and cut the triangle and part of field #1 & 2. The triticale in the triangle looks pretty dang good. It is very tall and the kernels are at the milk stage. The grass is so tall in places that it started to hang up on sickle bar mower. The blade has to be raised and shaken to get all of the grass off of it.

Annmarie told me that we are expected to start having lambs next week! It seems like it all just keeps happening no matter what, funny how life seems to do that all the time. The cows have had three calves. We will be catching them at the beginning of July. The alpaca will need to be sheared at that same time. Once that is done we will start working on the bridge

I scored the big win on Sunday. I was able to purchase a bell! A very large bell, I drove the tractor an hour each way to pick up the bell as I did not know how heavy it was going to be. It has an amazing sound. Once I figure out how and where we are going to mount it everyone within 5 miles will know what an amazing sound it has.

Office window in one at a time

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We were able to pick up the windows this evening! I carried them into the old house and decided that I could install one tonight. I had purchased this adhesive tape that was supposed to go over the wood then window to seal it tight but I have never used the stuff before. I really did actually read the directions before I used it! I didn’t want to get it wrong but at the same time after reading the directions I was unhappy with the level of water tightness and bug proofing they suggested.

So instead I installed tape on the bottom sill then along both sides and a strip at the top of the window opening. This will allow the water to run down and not get under any seams. The window was a little tight getting in after taping up the opening. I got it installed and roped off from inside and then went outside to caulk and crew in the window. I was not looking where I was stepping and stepped right on top of a nail with my right muck boot. Unfortunately, this caused two problems, first problem was there was a large nail in the bottom of my foot and it hurt. Second problem is now I have a hole in my muck boots so they are not watertight anymore. This is the bigger issue for me. I pulled my foot off of the nail and board combo and continued on. I caulked the whole outer aspect of the window then screwed it in place. I then cut four inch strips and put them over the window and the seal. The stuff vulcanizes to itself so it sealed everything totally up! It is truly amazing, not only will the water shed off the window but no bugs will get inside the office via the window! This is even cooler than it sounds if you have never lived in the country you will not truly appreciate it. All that is needed now is installing the wooden trim on the outside of the window. I saved all three pieces from the original window.

I am hopeful that I can get the other window installed tomorrow after work but who knows what will come up. The wind has been blowing for almost two days and its starting to dry everything out. We may be able to cut hay in 2-3 days. I also will need to find that hole in my muck boots and try and seal it with silicone so I don’t have to buy new boots.

Finish work before we are finished

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The seamless gutters got installed around the front deck this week. They are amazing! I thought all the water on the front porch was from the wind, well it was the wind and the rain. Since adding the gutters our front porch is mostly dry all of the time now. Annmarie picked up some new outdoor furniture and she 3D printed a new plastic foot for a small side table we have. It’s metal and we don’t want it scratching up our new Trex decking.

Saturday it was time to start back in on the new office. I started out by cleaning some more while I waited for Mr Tex to show up. He apparently slept in. The place needed more cleaning anyways. When he showed up I had him hide all of the attic vent fan supplies and the laser cutter external fan pieces up into the attic. This was just to get everything out of the way as we won’t need these pieces until we are almost finished with everything else. We had about eight boxes worth of stuff.

Tex started installing more insulation in the west wall. While he was doing that I started working on the picture window frame. This was going to be a surprise for Annmarie but as soon as she saw it in the wall and she saw my order for a light from Amazon she correctly guessed that I was putting in a light box for a stained glass piece. The surprise will now be the stained glass piece as she has not seen it. It took me two tries to get the box correct. I needed a thicker piece up at the top to hide the electrical plugin but after I trimmed it for the glass I discovered I failed to take into account the cut down size. I had to redo the entire thing! Once I had it all cut I tried to insert the glass and unsurprisingly the glass piece is not perfectly square. So I had to trim a couple of pieces to account for the nonsquare window.

Once I had that glued and pin nailed in place Tex and I started in on the wall. He also managed to get some insulation into the attic while I was redoing the light box. We had to squirt in foam around the new door to seal it up before we could put up the siding. I was going to start from the ceiling and work down like I did on the other wall but Tex talked me into starting at the bottom. This was a bad idea that was not fully realized until we got above the door and realized we were going to have to work downwards on the other side. Which meant the entire piece had to be cut the whole length of the wall, with cutouts for the door and light box. I cut it and the door was off by 1/4”, so I just gave up! It was quitting time anyways and it’s never good to do wood work when you are frustrated. It tends to go wrong more often just to further frustrate you.

Mr Professional came out and dropped off six laying hens. We were leaving so I did not stick around. When I came back I had to go out and catch five chickens and feed the horse.

Sunday I opted for mowing the cheat grass! The stuff is taking off and growing everywhere. I had already cut around the machine shed and cars earlier so I did the entire barn lot, the ram pasture and all of field 4b. The field took quite a bit of time, when you are doing several acres a four foot wide swath takes a while to get anything done. I almost ran over a grey cat when I was clearing the road alongside the field. The cat crouched down and hid in the grass and I was within 12 inches of it when I went by. I was pretty impressed that the cat held still. I was super impressed with the new Kubota tractor. It is 29 hp and it would power down but it never overheated and if I slowed down the mower would just keep chewing though the tall wet grass. It was very impressive, it did burn a lot more diesel but now we have the big tank it is not near the hassle to fill up.

I did manage to get a look at the little triangle of triticale. It needs to get cut as soon as the rain stops and we can guarantee several days rain free so everything can dry out.

Cleanup day

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Well, I really wanted to just make more progress and keep working on the new office. The real problem with this is we had a hard time finishing the ceiling because there was so much stuff in the way. It was fairly untenable if we wanted to keep working on the walls and windows. So Friday was clean up day, these feel like you are going no where when you do them. No actual progress occurs on the room but without the cleanup day then no other work can progress either. So most of the room got swept up and about 60% of the stuff/trash got moved out of the room.

There was still all the wires hanging out in the room so I decided to put in pass throughs into the new electrical box and fed all of the wires into the box. I cut two boards that would let me sit in the stairway and start to tighten all of the wires and actually start wiring the box. I expect it to take me about another three hours to get the box wired. I had to run to town because there was no grounding bar with the new box. This seems crazy to me that it is not included since you have to have one! Once I had that installed I started to wire up the new breakers. I got three done before I dropped my flat headed screwdriver for a second time. Next time I start to wire I am going to take a couple of flat head screwdrivers so I can drop one and not get off of my perch.

No wall progress was made. But we are going to get our windows by Tuesday. I keep calling the place we ordered our windows from and their voicemail was full. Annmarie emailed the website and email address and had a response in a couple of hours. We are scheduled to pick up the windows on Tuesday after work. This is the last big holdup to getting the room completed.

I would love to be cutting hay but it is raining again. It is supposed to rain all weekend and we are predicted to get more flood warnings.

Ceiling done, finally!

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Sunday we had to catch one of the alpaca. It had managed to pick up about a four foot piece of old barb wire into its hair. They are just not quite tame enough to walk right up to and grab. So we opened the hay area on the machine shed and they all bum rushed it cause they knew we would chase them out soon. Instead we shut the gate and trapped in eight of them. The more there are the easier they are to catch, this also causes unexpected problems. We spent the whole five minutes hollering at them every time they acted like they were going to spit on each other we kept yelling at them to not spit on us. Luckily, they complied and we did not end up with spit on us. We had to cut the barb wire out of its hair and managed to pull out a dead branch stuck in another’s backside.

The farm diesel was delivered sometime last week. We filled the tractors!! This is so cool. It does take a lot of active hard pumping to get the manual pump primed but it was dang slick. I am super stoked to have it available on demand.

We did finally manage to get to the ceiling. We got the entire ceiling done!! All the knots, holes and cracked warped boards look great once installed, but not very fun to put up over your head. It made my pectoral and back muscles sore every time. I am still hopeful that we will get the windows this next week so they can be installed. There is a huge pile of scrap wood on the porch that needs to go to the burn pile, between the flaws that had to be cut out and my inability to get the angle correct on the first cut I have a very large pile of burnable material. It is supposed to rain again this next weekend so we will not be haying for at least another two weeks. The inability to hay is making me crazy. It looks like the office is going to get more progress and at this rate I may get it done by July.