farm life

Bathroom almost complete 99%

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It was getting cold outside but its not now. We are getting up to 50F during the day lately with rain. The entire farm is covered in green grass, even the dirt barn lot is green! We have not started feeding the cows or sheep yet. Every few days I go out and feed the rams and bull in Alcatraz. They are keeping the grass pretty low in that area but it is present and still growing. I was going to burn the weeds in Alcatraz but it rained again, poured actually. I would tell you how much came down but our electronic rain gauge was not working the entire day it rained. I just looked over at the weather station and the rain gauge is back! It says we got 3/4” of rain in the last two days, this is totally believable. I managed to go outside yesterday and dig dirt for a couple of hours. I am still trying to fill in behind the concrete bridge footings. The far footing had about two feet and now has about 18 inches left. It is not exactly fast going as you have to throw the dirt about eight feet and uphill over the footing. I did also manage to pile up more large rocks on the other side of the stream bed. There is no water, its dry this time of year. I will need some more big rocks from the upper hillside to finish the footing rock walls. Two hours of digging is fine, I don’t think I could dig all day any more. Just too much, it’s my concession to aging to only dig 2-3 hours at a time and move a few big rocks.

After the digging I went into the old house and worked on sanding the countertop for the upstairs bathroom. The thing is a solid two inch piece of black walnut that was air dried. This means the board had warped about a half an inch and I had to sand out the bow in the board. I have seen the DeWalt battery powered hand planers and keep wondering if they would make leveling these pieces easier? I keep thinking I want to try it but it’s a $200-300 trial and I don’t want to be wrong. So instead I just kept sanding it and using a two foot metal square to see where the high and low spots were so I could sand them out. I spent three more hours working out most of the high spots. The only thing left was to actually cut the piece to fit. Annmarie and I had a discussion on how best to get an accurate representation of the space. There was some disagreement and I ended up doing it the hard way with a few pieces of newspaper and a lot of clear tape. I then used this as a pattern and made several cuts with my skilsaw. I only had to make two more cuts and one sanding intervention before I managed to get it to fit. Three attempts is not bad considering the space is not a bunch of straight lines. There were a couple of rounded spots that had to be taken into account. Once I had it dry fit I went over the entire top again starting with 40 grit sand paper and ending with 220 grit. I finished the top and front with Tried and True finish. I really like the natural compounds and that is what we used on the walls in the bathroom. It fits great and now I just need to glue it down to the plywood underneath, that is next week’s project. Once that is done I will be 100% complete with my part on the upstairs bathroom!

I was in the craft room last night when I noticed the dreaded ceiling paint sags! The only thing that creates these are water accumulations from a leak. This sucks as I just fixed the ceiling a few years ago from a failed condensate pump in the second story closest. So we went up and started emptying the closet. It means cleaning off all of the shelves and then removing them. I was cutting the zip ties off to get the power cord loose so I could remove the condensate pump and accidentally sliced the discharge rubber hose in half. My pocket knife just got sharpened recently and it is sharp! I eventually got the condensate pump out and it was empty. This is bad as the water was on the closet floor. We opened up the heat pump and found some water inside. We just turned the heat pump off and I contacted the heating guy in the morning. I sent him a text and later today he messaged me from the top of some mountain. He was up with his father hunting elk and would contact me when he gets off the mountain. Once the repair is complete we will discuss how to fix this issue.

Predators 13/Farm 4

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Well it is finally happening, someones have managed to actually kill a coyote on the property. I was not sure it was going to ever happen as no one had been having any luck. Everyone could only catch glances and quick peeks of them. I used to work with several people who have perfected the art of coyote hunting so the Three Stooges came out last night at dark to hunt coyotes. Larry, Curly and Moe all came out with custom rifles and thermal scopes. After seeing how amazing the thermal optics are I told the wife I needed one, she says I won’t want to go out in the dark and sit or hunt coyotes in the dark (she is right, I would rather watch TV or do chores). So I will not be getting a fancy setup any time soon. My suppressed pistol for protecting the chickens at night is good enough for me. It also makes it easier to fall back asleep after chasing chicken killers off when your ears are not ringing loudly.

The Three Stooges managed to kill three coyotes in five hours and saw a total of 8-9. They think they have mapped out most of the travel routes and believe that the next couple of times they can thin out the coyotes fairly aggressively. They think there are 10-15 coyotes on our property. This would explain why we lost so many sheep this summer. The best part of this is that they are very happy to come out and provide this service. I would not have guessed that there were 15 coyotes but I sure knew there was more than three.

Next month we should start having lambs. The ewes are now coming in every night by themselves. We did more research and are thinking about putting three sets of bells on three sheep. It is supposed to help with the predators and should help alert us. It’s a fairly inexpensive thing to try.

The two rams are currently out in the barn lot with the horse. We will separate out the bull from the cows this next week, then the sheep and bull will go into Alcatraz to spend the winter. The rams will go back into the herd around January hopefully.

Freezers moved, winterizing begins

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This has been a very productive last couple of days. Mr Rainman and the Apprentice came out on Sunday. The Apprentice is coming down with something and slugged through the weekend but it wasn’t easy. She managed to get the dirt shoveled mostly into one end of the new bridge. We think that there was a blacksmith shop right outside the old house next to the creek. There would have been water in the creek then and we are finding layers of coal scraps and a whole lot of iron scraps and horseshoes. They were storing coal in the old woodshed on the right hand side. The space is about 11×4 feet and has a side door on one end so you could really toss in the coal. There is a high hole cut into the wall at the far end to allow you to unload coal into the storage area.

We emptied the big freezer into coolers, unplugged it and hooked up a heater to blow into it while we went out and worked on the coal side of the wood shed. I had “borrowed” the wife’s really good (expensive) hair dryer in case I needed to get the ice out of the freezer, but the heater was the bomb and had it all melted out in a few hours. We kept wringing out towels, finally used a plastic tray to catch the melting ice.

I sprayed foam insulation into the cracks of the walls in the woodshed. Unfortunately, the can top was leaking and spraying foam all over my hands. I refused to quit using it and ended coating both hands with foam. I have only ever done this one other time and it was years ago. Thirty minutes later I realized why I had only ever done it once, its miserable. The only way to get the stuff off your hands once its dry is to peel the skin off your hands. This does not work out well until day 2-3.

We unwrapped the old billboard vinyl sign I purchased and attempted to get it on the walls and floor of the space. We got it about 80% installed before we needed to go get the freezer moved and filled again. The vinyl is 6 mil and was not very expensive, a 14×44’ sign was only $125. The idea is to line the entire inside of the room with vinyl and with the new metal screen over the window opening I think we can get to a fairly bug free storage area for all of the bee hive extras. We are going to use the metal hanging shelve holders as a way to put our frames up on the wall and hanging free. I think Mr Rainman and I can finish the room in one more day and then we can fill it up with all of the supplies.

We were amazed at how easy it was to move the large freezer! It’s the only one we actually emptied prior to moving. We got to the freezer room entrance and could not get the handle portion of the front door through the opening. Nope, we could not just take off the door handle. We had to move it back out and take the entire door off the freezer and then put it back on once the freezer was through the doorway. Hamburger is in the small chest freezer, fruit and vegetables have a couple of shelves in the small upright along with lamb and the tall freezer has beef and a little pork. We have another pig coming soon. One can never have too much bacon as evidenced that there is no bacon left in the freezer.

Mr Rainman and I got the stock trailer hooked up to the pickup and backed right up to the corral. In the morning we needed to sort sheep and load them up so I could drop them off. Afterwards, I spent about an hour shoveling dirt into the low spot by the gate in front of the bridge. It won’t get filled in by itself.

Monday started at 0600 by attempting to chase the sheep into the barn. They were down in the barn lot area and went to the back of the barn easily, but we could not get them to go into the barn. Mr Rainman and I were not effective. I went and got the puppy, Chance , put her on a lead rope and she had them in the barn in about three minutes. She is doing great! Stays when I want, lays down on command. She broke once but went back down within three feet of the original spot. I really think that by next spring we will have the “off” command (down) drilled in well enough that we can stop her even when she cannot stop herself. She is almost there. Mouse pouted as he had to stay in the yard. Mr Rainman took one of the best pictures of a sunrise we have seen on the farm.

It was still dark outside so we did a light check in the barn, our first one when it was actually dark! The lights are amazing and are going to make things very easy this winter. We tried to just push all the sheep to one end of the barn then I wade in and snag all of the boys. I did this four times and we could not find the fifth boy. The stupid rams kept trying to mount the pregnant ewes so we decided to pull them off, it was time anyways. We have two rams and 40 pregnant ewes and four whethers, not five. The coyotes ate our lamb, we had the other four sold. I dropped off the lambs without any difficulties and Mr Rainman spent the day winterizing the watering system and trimmed the lavender.

Field #1 ready for animals, still not completed

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Monday was spent fencing some more in field #1. A new fence around seven acres is no small feat. Not to mention the new section is curved like a C so it makes it painful to stretch. I really wanted to get the fence up so we could let the animals in to eat grass. The road side and wheat field side have an old fence that needs repaired. Unfortunately, sometimes the repair is more painful than just stringing up new wire.

The Apprentice and I got the last 500’ of fence up and even got it all clipped onto the T posts with a single strand of smooth wire on top. I used a four foot piece of pipe as a cheater bar to really crank down on the fence tighteners until the fence started to sing when I ratcheted up the tightener a notch. I opted to not install the wooden stays yet. I wanted to get all of the fence up and without the stays the fence will hold the livestock. Mr Rainman and the Apprentice can get all of the wooden stays on three sides of the field installed on Wednesday while I am at the paying job.

So we went to the far end and worked on the ditch crossing and did battle with the downed black walnut tree. It landed right where we needed to install a railroad tie and put the ditch crossing in place. We managed to get it installed and the paneling cut and in place. The last thing was to install the gate and we had it done enough. Which was a good thing as both of us needed a day off and no fencing. The Apprentice has collected an astounding amount of bruises and scratches in the last two weeks.

Annmarie is inspecting our hives and deciding whether we are going to get any honey this year. The bees split and they have not managed to make as much honey as last year so far. So I don’t know if we are going to get to harvest any.

The quail are everywhere! It is amazing to see how many we have this year. They are really calm and just run around everywhere.

We did have one of the brown alpaca just keel over dead Sunday night. The nephews found it on Monday. It was one of the old ones and was mighty skinny. I had been giving it the side eye every time I saw it when I was headed down the driveway. We now have 10 alpaca. It’s plenty and at least five of them will just come right over to the cars for a treat. If you open the trunk on the wife’s car they will just push up to the hatch opening and expect something. They are so insistent at that point that they will even let you touch on them until they get said treat.

Freezer room closing in

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I had a plan on Sunday to get the freezer room almost done. I knew I would not be able to install the insulation in the ceiling as I need it purchase one more roll first. I figured if I could get the last section of the wall covered and then I could use something on the ceiling to hold the insulation up. I wasn’t sure what but I have two full sheets of wood paneling and 1/2 sheet of 3/16” plywood. I think it’s enough to cover the ceiling. After I got the siding up, four separate pieces of varying types and sizes of siding, I figured I could use the scraps of 1×4 boards I had used for trim in the office. I had just enough to cover the ceiling liberally and make it easy to install the paneling. Paneling is not designed to be hung upside down and it will need a lot of wide headed screws to hold it up. This took a lot longer than I had anticipated. Piecing things together may not cost much in materials but it does cause you to use a lot more screws and a lot more time.

I cut off a little piece of the thick bathroom future countertop, after sanding two edges I glued them together. I need to cut a triangle shape and was missing about two inches of the tip of one triangle to complete the top. I will leave it glued and clamped for a few days as I will not be able to work on it until then. I will need to put a new blade on my skill saw before I cut the triangle. I plan on sanding it all down first up to 80 grit, cut the proper shape and then finish sanding it. I was hoping I could crawl underneath the counter and screw up from the bottom to hold it in place, but I don’t believe I will be able to do that. I don’t really want to just use glue. I may have to drill four holes in it, about 1/2’ deep and then attach it directly from the top then fill it with a walnut dowel glued in and sanded down. I am going to have to use a polyurethane coating to seal the top. I need something that can get dusty and will be easy to wipe off when its cleaned. This is still an idea that is incubating, hopefully by the time its sanded down I will have finalize my attachment and finishing plans.

I have two very nice pieces of three foot by 20” chunks of two inch thick black walnut. I am unsure where I am going to use them. Once the freezer room is done and the freezers are moved I will start working on my office area. I have the inner door (old wooden exterior door), it just needs a new opening created that will hold it. My current door opening is not square and about an inch too short and too narrow. I will have to reframe the top and one side to make it fit correctly. I keep fluctuating on what I will setup in the man room. I believe I am going to setup the reloading equipment on one side and then start working on a jewelry bench on the other side. I will need to keep an eye out for a scrap kitchen hood to use as a soldering exhaust hood. Annmarie is so happy with her indoor “grow” super quiet vent fan that I think I will use that as the suction source for the ventilation.

This will get the room closed up but I will still need to buy a new back door and a new window. I need to fix the back porch as one corner is trying to fall apart. I will also need to line the entire inside of the room with boards. Needless to say it may take me a while to get this done!

Annmarie spotted our barn owl! Their used to be a pair of them but in the last few years we have only spotted one. Their was a mated pair on the farm for over 30 years. Maybe the pair is just hiding so well that we only ever spot one at a time?