farm life

Bathroom day 36

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Spring is coming! I need to be done with the bathroom! There are a lot of things to do outside now that spring is here. Instead on Friday a little mastic was mixed up and the three tiles were set. We then went out to the old chicken coop and brought in all of the blue pine tongue and groove siding. We measured it and I did the math, we should have an extra 6 sq feet. The air compressor and nailers were drug out and we determined that we don’t have any 16 gage finish nails short enough. Some will have to be purchased. The 18 g nailer will only take 1.25” nails and I want at least 1.5”. Those are now purchased and ready to go.

Since we now had to wait for the bathroom to dry out for a day before patching the grout we went outside and started to drag the gravel road in an attempt to work out the potholes. We spent a couple of hours dragging the driveway with the box blade and the arena groomer. It turned out pretty good and there are currently no pot holes in the driveway.

We have been having so many lambs that Mr Rainman and I ended up rearranging the barn. We made the momma/baby area bigger.

Saturday a batch of epoxy grout was mixed up. All I had to do was patch the bad areas and then clean every hour. I did this and two hours later found three little pin holes. A fresh batch of grout had to be mixed up so I could swipe a single time in a single spot. It was some serious overkill but totally necessary. We have one batch of grout left if needed.

I unpacked the inset vanity that goes over the toilet. I thought I was going to have to set it first before putting up the tongue and groove wall board. It was going to require a lot of specialize cuts. I traced out the cupboard pattern onto the plywood so I could start getting a feel for how I was going to cut this board. Annmarie came in, looked at it and said that I could just set the insert over the wall boards! This will make it so much easier. I plan on getting the wallboards installed next weekend. Mr Rainman will be gone and it is something I can do without any help.

Annmarie and I are so confident of the shower that we ordered the shower curtain rod and soap holders. I will be finishing the plumbing install next weekend also. I was informed that the rest of the bathroom can be a work in progress as long as the shower works.

Bathroom day 34

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well, we managed to get three more days onto the bathroom project. I spent most of Friday cleaning the tile so we were ready to put the grout down. I had to scrape and vacuum the tile clean. I was a lot messy when I started installing the tile. I became much neater as I continued the install. It took me all day to scrape everything clean and vacuum it all up.

On Saturday, Mr Rainman came out and touched up a couple of spots then we decided we were ready to go. He mixed up the first batch of epoxy grout and I tried to get it into the cracks. I had this big plan on using grout bags and squeezing it into the cracks. That took forever and I wasted about 15 minutes before giving up. As each batch of grout only has a 80 minute work time I just could not mess around with the bag method. We ended up getting three batches onto the walls Saturday. For the third batch I had to wear leather gloves then put my thick disposable nitrile gloves over them. I had already managed to get a large blister on both palms and I was hoping the leather would help. It did help but I had already torn open the blister. I spent 80 minutes brushing on grout and Mr Rainman spent about an hour cleaning it all up. We just kept alternating roles until we had three batches installed. I did the last wash on Saturday so he could go home. We managed to cover a lot of the bathroom so we were certain that we could finish on Sunday.

It was a good thing we only had to mix two batches on Sunday as my blisters could not handle a third batch. The leather gloves helped for batch four but I had to use some moleskin on my hand and the leather gloves for batch five. I was right in front of the door when I pulled up three tiles. The mastic was drying up when I installed the tiles near the door and it was obvious that it did not stick down all the tiles. We will have to dig out the mastic and reapply those three tiles. This is going to slow down the cure time on the grout as we won’t be able to repair the floor until Wednesday and then when we regrout we will need to wait another seven days. A minor setback, but one that can be corrected. We can work on the door and getting all of the wall supplies down to the old house. I need the walls installed before I can install the ceiling. The crown molding cannot go up until the walls are completed.

Lambing has begun!

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We knew the sheep were due to have lambs very soon so we started to lock them up at night four days ago. This morning we had our first set of twins! The Gingerman and daughter went out to check on the sheep and discovered the pair. They went into a jug and were fed and watered. Sarah asked me about feed for the momma. We usually supplement their hay with some grain or sheep feed to increase the number of calories the nursing mommas are getting. I didn’t have any out in the barn. So I added it to my list of items to get accomplished today. The Gingerman had brought down another six bags of garbanzo beans so I decided to grind up a few bags to feed to the mothers. I brought the tractor around with a few old protein lick tubs and proceeded to mix feed as it went into the grinder.

I only had one stoppage while grinding this time. I think one of the wires is loose in the on/off switch but I managed to get it going again without tearing it apart. I ground about 200# of feed for the sheep. I have two full metal trash cans of feed already ground for the chickens and at this point I need to get some more metal 55 gallon drums to store feed in the chicken coop. I will need to start moving the cracked seed out into the barn into the large metal feed container. It will hold over 1000#. At this point I am still pretty focused on the bathroom so I will only be cracking grain when I need it for the sheep. I am hopeful this cracked batch will get us to the weekend. The grain containers don’t have covers but I am hoping the raccoon will leave it alone. We will see.

I went into the barn and set up the momma/baby area. Put out feed, opened up the side fence so they can get to water. I put a brand new protein lick tubs outside and pulled a panel over the gate so that no one can get out. We are now ready for the mommas/babies when they are bumped out of the jugs and into their own area.

The sheep snuck by the tractor when I was grinding grain so I had to battle them most of the time. I finally ended up opening up the gates so they could go up onto the back hillside. The grass is a couple of inches tall so they can get some fresh green grass into their diet. We are still filling all of the feeders in the barn also. We won’t stop that for a while. I am hopeful lambing season will go quickly. There were three rams in the pasture for breeding so we are hopeful they all tried to outcompete each other!

Bathroom day 31

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Well, only counting days I am actually working on the bathroom is making my timeline look better than it is. I had to spend most of Friday doing the farm taxes. Actually, I don’t do the taxes. I do the receipts. I have to sort through a year’s worth of receipts and categorize them into about twenty different categories. I then have to go through and see how much money we made off of the various farm income streams. We usually spend more money than we make but every year we make a little more than the previous year. This task is fairly onerous but I pretty much refuse all efforts to get me to do it on a monthly basis. I just pile the receipts into a drawer and know that it will take me eight hours to total and itemize receipts for an annual accounting.

Saturday Mr Rainman came out and we finished up the installing the last of the tile. All of the tile is officially laid/installed on the walls/floors. Now we will need to ensure all of the grout lines are clear and ready for grout. We will wash the tiles a few times to get any residue of mud off of them. The grout is 100% epoxy based and only has a work time of 80 minutes. We are going to start on the tile walls in the main part of the bathroom. The walls were the cabinet and vanity will be installed. These are great locations to practice technique. I will need to watch some videos on using this specific brand of grout to see if there any pearls of wisdom needed to make the job easier.

On Sunday, we cleaned out the bathroom and took all of the tools out to the old house. We also cleaned up the hallway! You can actually walk down the hallway and not get attacked by the construction mess.

It was raining quite a bit so we opted to go get the barn ready for lambs. Working inside the barn it doesn’t matter what the weather is like outside. We expect the sheep to start having lambs in the next two weeks. So we took the time to set up all of the jugs. We were able to set up eight areas for momma/lamb jugs. Once we start using them we will drop down to seven jugs. The eighth one will be where the bonded momma/lamb combos will go. As the herd of new mothers keeps growing we will slowly start to divide the barn and give them more and more room until there is a small area for the soon to be moms and the rest of the barn is for the mommas/lambs. We did not wash out all of the buckets. As we start to carry water the initial trip to the spring will include cleaning the bucket out before it is filled with fresh water. If we cleaned them out and it takes two weeks for babies we would have to clean them out again so this way we only do it once. We are going to have to start locking the sheep up every night. This makes finding lambs much easier in the morning.

Bathroom day 29

Steve Hardin1 Comment

I have started to change how I am counting days on the bathroom remodel. I am now only counting the days when I work on the bathroom. Otherwise, the days I worked at the paying job would count against me. Now mind you, the project is going so well that I had to set up a portable shower in the mud room on Saturday night and on Sunday morning I had to make some modifications so it would drain correctly. Annmarie will now be able to take a shower whenever she wants which’s is typically at 0430. This is especially important since she is super busy during Lent. I was told that if I had started the project in January I would have gotten an extra month! I was not ready for it in January. At this point, I am not sure I really was ready for it at all.

Mr Rainman and I have been plugging away at it when I can get away from work. I was able to get home early one day last week but I had to go in at 0400 two other days to ensure I got all of my work completed. We have discovered that precutting most of the tile before we mix the All-set is the best way to get tiling done in a timely manner. I had measured and started to cut 76 tiles for the niche narrow walls but when we went to insert the niche it was discovered that I had not accounted for the metal trim and we needed to cut off another 1/4” of tile for them to fit. Mr Rainman cut tiles as fast as he could while I tried to get the shelf installed correctly. We managed to get one niche installed today. There are times the two of us bicker like old ladies. We cannot tell what the other one wants. Usually he cannot tell what I am saying. We get it figured out eventually.

Unfortunately, it is not all tile work. Mr Rainman went up and shut the gates to field 2 and fed the sheep this morning while I fixed the portable shower. He also took bodies to the boneyard. He did say that every rose bush all the way up to the triangle had a small covey of quail in it. They are starting to separate and find breeding partners. We have a lot of pheasants left over from the winter. If spring cooperates with the laying cycles then we will have a lot of game birds this fall. We also have isolated the sheep to the barn lot, ram pasture and area around the old chicken coop. They should start having lambs in the next 2-3 weeks and we want to be able to find them. Once they start birthing we will be locking them up in the barn at night. It makes it a whole lot easier to find and deal with the babies when they are all in the barn. We may need to make jugs next week in the barn so we are ready for the lambs.

Annmarie and I did a thing this week. We bought the other half of the farm from her aunt, Beverly on Thursday. It will take us about ten years to pay it off. We did the math and it will never make enough to pay itself off in our lifetime, it would take 30+ years to pay itself off. We bought it so the farm could eventually be put back together. This is something we have wanted to do for a long time and are fortunate to be able to afford it. Our only real focus on it will be to eradicate some star thistle. Eventually, we will need to repair some fencing.

The baby chickens keep trying to die. I have been having to go out every night and toss the chickens in the door. They keep getting locked out of the coop. I have had to toss in as many as 20 chickens a night. The last few nights the numbers have been steadily decreasing and they are mostly the babies. Tonight when I went out there were none outside! They had all made it inside before the auto chicken door closed. There is hope for them yet. I just need to see how many are hens and how many are roosters now. I should be able to tell in the next 1-2 months. I am going to keep one of the roosters.