farm life

Weekend update

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Mr Rainman came out on Saturday so we could pour some more concrete. I ran into town and got another pallet (56) bags of Sackcrete and three bags of sand only Sackcrete so I could do the brick power enclosure near the front bridge if there was time. Mr Rainman got the mixer in place and the last two supports on each side of the form installed. We carried around 30 bags over to our work area then started mixing and pouring. It was a lot easier, there was more room to work and we were higher than the mixer so you did not have to try and muscle the bag up while dumping it out. This time I managed to mix almost half the bags before trading spots. We only needed 40 bags to get the other bridge footing poured. Once it was poured we covered it all up with a tarp. It is getting down into the 40F range at night so I wanted to try and trap some of the heat into the form and concrete.

We then went to the other bridge and I installed a 36 brick rectangle with a power outlet built into the side of it. I am not a very good brick layer. It took some trial and error. Time will tell if I did it right. I have a hollow rectangle now. I am going to find a concrete block that I can just use as a topper. That way I can have access to the inside for wiring in the outdoor kitchen light power (after its built!).

I was pretty stoked to get all of that done in a single day. So the next day we were going to get the tractor mower going and Mr Rainman would mow the rest of the fields and I would work on wiring the lights in the barn. I hate playing at being a mechanic. When Mr Rainman went to hook up the new PTO shaft he noticed that the gear box on the mower was loose. You could shake it and move it around about 1/8” in either direction. He showed me so I said lets just tighten it up as I have done nothing in ten years to ensure its tight. I want it to last another ten years. So we lift it up with the rear three point hitch and he crawls under it. After much swearing and two four foot lengths of pipe (cheater bars) I manage to break a large crescent wrench. We tip the mower up on its side and chain it to the other mower bucket for safety. Then we proceeded to try and take it apart. I hate cotter pins. I hate tight spaces. Who has a 1.5” open end wrench laying around? I did find the wrench after I went and raided the last of my father’s machinist tools. I have never needed anything that large before and I am pretty sure the bolt was metric. No go, we could not get it apart. So Mr Rainman went home to get a 1/2” DeWalt impact driver for just this type of problem and I tried to get more parts and a torch.

We tried the impact driver and got no where! Nope, Nada, Nothing, it was not going to budge. I get impatient and just said cut bolt head off. After taking off all of the guards on the grinder and putting on a cutting wheel we were able to hack off the bolt heads. The threads had been worn off due to the rattling and looseness, there was no way it was coming apart or getting any tighter. It took us four hours to do nothing. I finally just gave up, had him grind off the bolts while I went and wired lights. He hooked up the spreader and went and over-seeded field #1 and the triangle. I got all of the light strings wired but one. That last strand I had one light that would not work and the last light on the string that did. I have one more sixteen feet in the air to still wire in. I think the first one has a wiring issue. My splice piece did not want to go on easily and I think it failed. Needless to say the last run is the one that lights up the hay rooms! So there is no light when you are getting hay until I fix it. I did discover that we can only run two strands of light at any one time. The voltage drops too far if you try and run three strands at the same time. Two is just fine and will work perfectly.

Mr Rainman is going to come out the next couple of days to work on the fields.

Bridge footings progressing

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I was drinking coffee this morning and looking out the front window around 0830 and noticed that most of the sheep were down in the ram pasture and there was a small group of about eight that were all bunched up near the driveway. I started over towards the door and the side window to look out when I saw Mouse (older Border Collie) lunge toward the back fence and start barking aggressively. I grabbed the rifle and ran out into the front yard. I looked on the back hillside and did not see anything. Suddenly, there was a huge coyote low on the hillside hiding behind the leaves of the Maple tree. It started to run away but I was slow and only got off one shot. I missed. Smart predators are so annoying. We are usually gone at this time but I am home on a vacation day. Obviously, the coyote did not know I was on vacation, it does probably know our work schedule! The sheep are going to have lambs in a month. This is a really stupid problem.

This is our last chance to pour concrete until next year. I am running out of weather and time. Everyone wants to go to school or go hunting so my helpers are few and far between now. I was able to tear apart some of the the wooden support from the now dry poured concrete form we did two weeks ago. I wanted to reuse all of the boards from the first form but that was not going to be as simple as I had envisioned. After I took all of the screws and support boards off I was only able to pry off the front boards. A lot of dirt and concrete had leaked out the back when we poured concrete the first time. I had to add three emergency boards as there were some gaps. This meant that the concrete leaked around the edges of the boards.

I was going to have to dig out the dirt, rocks and concrete for at least six inches on the entire back side of the concrete. I weighed the time it would take against just using a different piece of scrap wood to make the new form for the other side of the bridge. I went with just piecing the new form together from scraps. So this new wooden forms is even more cobbled together than the last one! All of these were built using wood from an old concrete form to make a ramp. So I don’t feel too bad about recycling them two more times since their original intention. We pour concrete on Sunday when Mr Rainman comes back. I will go in and buy another pallet of concrete on Saturday so we are ready.

Bounty shelves

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Sunday I was going to go out to the barn and finish the three strings of lights that have wire ran to them. I still need to wait for the fourth roll of wire I had to order to arrive. I am not sure why I thought three rolls would be sufficient. I used the pending arrival of said wire roll as the reason to not go to the barn and instead decided to work on the new shelves in the laundry room. Our counters are getting crowded with all of the containers of dried herbs, vegetables and plums so I figured it was time to get on the shelves. The supports had come in a couple of weeks ago and The Apprentice and I had brought down the wood so it was just a matter of sanding it down and cutting it to shape.

Yeah, all I had to do was sand down a black walnut slab that was only one inch thick and had been drying for four years. Needless to say it was not flat. Even with 40 grit sandpaper and an 18” belt sander it still took me almost four hours to sand down those two shelves! I really needed a hand planer. I have never really used one before but this is the perfect use for one. I may have to learn how to use it as there are a whole bunch of black walnut boards out in the old chicken coop.

I sanded both sides with belt sander and after I got to 80 grit with the belt sander I switched to an orbital sander and started with 50 grit again. Of course about three hours into the sanding it started to rain and I had to move everything into the old house and wear an N95 for the After four hours I figured it was just time to cut the board and go with what I had. I cut the shelves, added the supports and then mounted them on the walls. I, of course, had to make two trips out to the old house to get screws that did not come with the supports.

All in all it turned out pretty good and the wife was happy. We now have a space to store the bounty of our garden harvest. I still have to wire the barn but I can do that in the rain.

Let there be light

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It is really happening. The weather turned bad, started to rain solid for two days so I decided to get to work on the barn lights. I had torn apart the DeWalt charger, cut slots into it and torn out the guts with a pair of pliers but had not finished unsoldering the pin connectors and soldering on new power supply wires. I turned the Apprentice loose in the barn getting tools together and cutting some boards while I went back into the house and finished converting a DeWalt charger into a DeWalt battery power supply station for a 12V light system I am installing in the barn. I have a five switch box and am hooking the power supply up to it. When the battery dies just plug in a fully charged battery and the lights are back up!

I was able to actually test it out and got power! The regulator I bought will maintain a 6V to 20V output you just have to set it. I was going to set it at 12V but figured with wire resistance I was going to loose voltage the further away from the power source it got. The LED lights will work on a 12-20V range so I just set the output to 20V and hope the battery lasts. Until we start using the system we won’t know how much power a battery will supply. Each light only consumes 10W and each string of lights is only four sets of three lights and one set of four.

The Apprentice and I started running wire to get the five sets done but we ran out of wire. I had only bought 300 feet and really needed about 350 feet. So we did not wire the momma/baby area/tack room as the lights are only about eight feet off the ground. Some of the lights are 16 feet in the air and require some acrobatics to get to let alone run wire along beams and walls. I bought two strand red/black wire so it would be easy to run. I also bought these clamp on connectors that just go directly over the wire. They looked like they would work but I thought they might be an internet scam. I bought them anyways as they looked perfect for what I needed. They worked!! I was thrilled and relieved that I was not going to have to fix everything I had already done. I was able to get one run completed with the lights all wired in and give it a test to see if it would work and it did! I was super stoked as I had just read about the charger hack online and did not know anyone personally that has done it. I had plans for finishing up the barn this weekend but ended up doing some fall cleanup.

The trash guy forgot to pick up our trash this week, by the time I got a hold of him at the end of the week to ask why we got skipped he was very nice and apologized. He brought out an extra can and told me he would pickup any extra trash I had next to the cans on my pickup day. So I spent all of Saturday cleaning house and generating trash. I have two piles of boxes and paperwork and two trash bags full of garbage and one can is so full the lid won’t close. Now we are both happy.

The Apprentice is off to farrier school. I may see her on the occasional weekend while she is at school. She told me she is only two hours away and wants to work. We will see if she can break free or not. I should be able to get the barn lights up and running next week. My wire should be here by Thursday.

Catch all before starting Barn lighting

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The Apprentice came out on Tuesday for her final before school push and we did some work. Well, she did a lot of heavy lifting and I did some other stuff! She worked on moving 120 blocks over to our bridge foundation area. After we get the foundations poured we are going to lay the bricks from the foundation over to the gate and woodshed. But before we can lay those blocks someone has to move each block, weighing 33# each! She got it done!

I was able to get an email reply from the livestock auction house near Hermiston and we pushed our little bull into the trailer. I drove right over, dropped him off and was gone in ten minutes. The check will be in the mail, he needed to go so we could make room for our bull and two rams to go into Alcatraz soon. Once we do that I can make one herd of cows as the young heifers will not get impregnated. They are for eating next year.

I stopped and got some supplies to store more pipe in the overhead of the machine shed. Eventually I will be installing this drain pipe in the barn lot on either side of the barn. I have added some drain pipe already but this should really help with keeping the mud under control in the fall and spring especially. I even remembered to cover up the pipe openings before hoisting it into the air so the birds don’t nest in the pipes. Thank you Mr Rainman for that suggestion.

I dug out the light post near our front bridge, the sheep had knocked it over and honestly we don’t need a light there. I poured a concrete footing and will build a bricked outlet box. I also dug and inserted a piece of conduit so eventually (hopefully next year) I can get the 16’ grain bin outdoor kitchen area installed and we can have some outdoor lighting. Hence, the reason for having power available.

We also managed to find two dried black walnut boards from the old chicken coop to use inside the house. One is for the new dried spice shelves I want to add in the laundry room and the other is for the upstairs bathroom. There is one spot next to the toilet that is still plywood and needs a covering. Unfortunately, I need a 21.5” x 26” triangle and my wood piece is only 20” wide. So I am going to cut a 3” square piece and glue it on one side so I can sand it all down at the same time and cut my triangle from this fabulous piece of two inch thick black walnut.

I of course set all this wonderful wood out on a stand in the yard to sand and it started to rain the next day as soon as I got home from work. I had to run out and move the wood in out of the rain. One would think I pay attention to the weather but I don’t, only during hay season.

As it was pouring down rain today The Apprentice and I worked on getting the 12V lighting system installed. We managed to actually draw out a plan and get all of the lights mounted. I started to run wire but there was a disaster at work and I had to go in. So we will hopefully get all of the wire runs completed tomorrow and maybe even get the lights to work! It’s a pretty ambitious goal.