farm life

I was gonna tag and band

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The plan for Saturday morning was to tag and band the calves. The Gingerman was going to help me but Mother Nature interceded by dropping 4/10” of rain. I did not want to wrestle the calves in the mud, that sounded like a disaster in the making. Instead I made pancakes for breakfast, fresh blackberry compote and leftover prime rib bites for breakfast. I have been able to get two new lockable pistol storage areas setup. Annmarie is determined that I have all the firearms secure by the time the grand baby is born.

Instead of working the animals I went into the old house and worked on my man cave room! Two of the walls already have insulation and outlets installed. The outside wall and the separating wall to the front room need to be insulated. I think I have some extra insulation up in the attic area that can be brought down to go into the walls. I am trying to keep the costs way down for this room. I am going to use a tarp to cover the entire ceiling. This will keep the dust from falling through the boards and down onto whomever is below. I will caulk the outside cracks to limit the amount of water that gets into the wall. I was able to get about 80% of the boards ripped off the wall. I wanted them off before going under the house and jacking up the middle of the house. The outside door sags by almost an inch and the inside door needs to be widened but it also has a heck of a slant. I want to get that slant out by jacking up the house instead of just squaring the door frame in a crooked opening.

I have an entire unit of 8”x 8’ one inch boards. I will be using them on the walls. I want to do the uncovered walls first and hopefully I can do all four walls so they match. Otherwise, I will just leave the other two walls with the old shiplap. I may even use a cloth tarp for the walls. I did find the light I wanted, it has a built in fan so I can hopefully keep it cool in the summer. I already ordered a metal cabinet for my reloading supplies. I need to find all of them and get them into one location. My plan is to setup one wall/corner as a reloading area and to set up the opposite corner as a jewelry working station. I will put in a small torch and an exhaust fan plus a brick area to do some soldering. I will keep the reloading supplies inside a metal cabinet so the small open flame will not be an issue.

I just need a new/used outside door and internal air tight door. I am going to try and salvage the old window. I will need to make a couple of work benches but I have quite a bit of leftover plywood scraps and some bent/warped cheap 2×4 that once cut down they will be straight enough. I think I want to install the worktops as free floating so there are no legs on them. This will make it easier to set up the presses without worrying if a stool will fit underneath it. I like to work on the corner of the bench. I will have to put some overhead shelves up also. I will just put clear plastic lidded bins up on those. That way I can easily see what is in them. I figure I can create a brass section, shotgun casings, wads, and abrasive types sections on the shelves. I am still trying to figure out where I stashed the reloader. I think it’s in the attic but it may take me a week of tearing apart every storage area to find it. I had not reloaded anything in decades and I had forgotten that a pound of powder only gets you about 100-200 rifle rounds depending on the caliber.

The only bad part about demolition is you have to get all of the demo out of the area and get the area all cleaned up before you can begin to build it back up. That is my least favorite part of any project.

Back at the Gazebo

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We have been processing fruit nonstop for a few weeks now. Annmarie was able to pick up 25# of #2 peaches on Friday for $22. We have been cutting them and freezing them in one cup portions for her to use in her smoothies. We almost have enough fruit to make it the entire year, the upright freezer is 2/3 full of frozen fruit. We are still getting half a flat of tame blackberries every four days. Annmarie made plum jam today and we are done with the plums. Luckily, I was able to give a large portion of them away. The sheep gobble them up as soon as I toss them over the fence.

We have a few Italian plums still ripening on the two trees and some nectarines. The nectarines have about 1-2 weeks before they are ready. I will need to keep checking them every four days to make sure they do not get away from us or else the yellow jackets will be the only ones eating nectarines. Mr Rainman had told me that they propped up their fronds from the asparagus plants. He said that the plants shot right up once they no longer had to worry about stabilizing themselves. Who knows, we propped them up with bamboo stakes and tied them onto the stakes. So time will tell if he is right. The new parts to our trumpet vine are finally taking off and we may be able to get it to grow on our new trellis around the living room window. I have been trying to get the bush to spread out that way with very little success but this may have been the year for expansion.

I went to town and got 45 bags of sand for the floor in the Gazebo. I had to empty out the gazebo first then clean up all of the organic matter and then to make sure the floor is flat. I was hoping I could just toss the sand down and spread it out then slap down the tile but I am told that I need to spread the sand out, hit it with the compactor and then work on getting it all smoothed out. This is going to necessitate repairing the drive cord on the compactor first. So I guess the best way to get started is to unload all 45 bags and spread them out on the floor. But I do not want to do this until the compactor is functional. Otherwise the cats will use the sand like a kitty litter box. I don’t really want to be chucking cat turds out of the sand as I am trying to lay bricks down. After the Gazebo floor is done the greenhouse needs to go up next. Unfortunately, I need to install a small fence to go around the greenhouse first. I don’t want the sheep or cows rubbing on the greenhouse.

Bathroom remodel day 46

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I was able to leap forward this weekend on the bathroom. I managed to get the new mirror hung, the towel racks hung and I was able to shorten the one side of the middle drawer. My cutout measurements were accurate but I needed to shorten the middle right side drawer. It needed to be shrunk by 50% to accommodate the new drain pipe. My guesses for the other drawers worked out and it was fairly simple to make the alteration. I have even started to put some of my belongings down in the bathroom. Annmarie has the upstairs bathroom so I use the one downstairs and I plan on thinning out all of the items before I bring them back into the bathroom.

The only thing I can do now is to cut the three corner trim pieces. I have not done it yet as the Gingerman has my finish nailer so he can finish the baby nursery. I will need to at least get them cut, stained and fit tested so they are ready to be installed. It looks like I really need to work on getting the custom cabinet built. I plan on storing all of my electronics in one compartment, cleaning supplies on the bottom section and towels near the top. By the time I get the towels, hand towels and wash cloths in the cabinet it will fill the entire thing. I think I can get the cabinet built in a weekend but it will take both days to get it done. I realize that this sounds optimistic but I still think it can be done. But honestly that might just be the body of the cabinet and the front face and cabinet doors may take another day all by themselves. They seem like they should take no time at all but I realize that is never the case. I have the plans all drawn up with measurements for all pieces and a sketch to use to assemble them. I was even able to find the plans two weeks ago. They were buried in between some tile boxes in the old house.

I did dig around today looking for some rifle brass and a die set. I found one box in our closet, four boxes in the attic and two boxes in the old chicken coop. I am still missing two boxes at least. I am pretty sure they are in the attic but we did a huge clean on the attic this year and I think I moved them into a different stack up there. I will need to move every single box in 2/3 of the attic. Gingerman and I moved all of the boxes in one corner today without finding those missing boxes. I know they are missing because I could not find the die sets that I know are there. This is just a case for me to get the old house “man room” completed so I can set all of this stuff up and get a better handle on what I have available. I want to get a jewelry table set up also. I am going to take one corner of the room for this, I want a lot of light and an overhead exhaust fan installed so I can use a small torch.

Bathroom day 45

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It has only been 45 days on the bathroom project over the course of 26 weeks now. Mind you I told the wife it would only take four weeks. I may have been a little off on my estimate. Normally, you can take my estimate and multiply by three and be spot on. That is not the case this time.

I only needed to install the sink plumbing and I would be done with all water in the bathroom. To do this I needed to change out the wall supply valves so they were 3/8” outlets. I figured this was going to be fairly easy as the nut and crush washer were going to stay on the copper pipe and I just needed to change out the valve body.

I should know better by now. I am cursed when it comes to plumbing. I changed out the first valve without incident. I then did the second valve, again fairly easy. I figured that I should check both valves before I hooked up the sink in case I had a slow leak around my swap. I went back to the main water shut off in the laundry room and opened it up. I got distracted by something and was in the kitchen when I thought I heard a weird noise coming from the bathroom. I went into the bathroom to a fountain. I had both valves pointed to the ceiling and the second valve I had not closed. I was spraying water all over the wall, the light and ceiling. Luckily, the floor slants towards the toilet so the water was just pooling on the floor. I had about 1/2” of water on the floor. It took me another hour to get the bathroom cleaned up and dried. I did not get electrocuted when I cleaned all of the water off of the light. Neither valve leaked once I actually shut the valve.

I hooked up the sink without any further incident. I even cut the Pex pipe and used the parts Delta sent me to get a seal on the Pex. I wanted to run the water but the drain was not yet installed. So I tried to install the drain from the parts I had on hand. Nope, it was not going to happen. Sixty dollars later and two trips to the local store and I had purchased enough parts to be able to plum the drain. I then did turn the water on and it did indeed work and drain perfectly. This entire endeavor took me a whole day. I just do not get along with plumbing, we are enemies.

Cleanup day

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Sunday we focused on getting the Rambler set up to grind grain. I walked him through it for about 20 minutes then cut him loose. We had two 55 gallon drums set by the grinder and we set it up next to the chicken coop so he could just carry the buckets into the back of the coop and dump them into drums. There is no way to move the full drums into the back of the coop so this has to be done a bucket at a time. He did pretty good but as soon as he was close to getting finished we brought over two more drums full of grain. He thought he was done and Mr Rainman and I told him there was more after this and he just needed to keep going. We ended up loading four more 55 gallon drums into the back of the chicken coop and we still need to fill 2.5 drums. I am sure once they are all full we will be able to go eight months.

I have an old grain bin that can be mounted outside the coop and a feed hole can be cut into the side of the building. It should hold about 800# and can be loaded from the outside. It needs a new bottom welded on it. I am thinking a piece of 3/32” sheet metal. I am sure the grain gate will need to be altered so it can be manipulated from inside the building. I may even move the gate to the bottom of a long chute so it can be placed inside the coop. I won’t really know until we have the bin moved over to the machine shed and we can take some measurements.

Once the Rambler was set we went to clean up the old house. Annmarie wants the porch cleared so we neatened it and removed the scrap wood. The inside still had tools and materials scattered about from the bathroom project. So we created a huge trash pile and started to put tools away. Tools went into the old house, the old chicken coop, the machine shed and the fencing shed. The Gingerman brought out some more concrete chunks and we dumped them next to the culvert in an attempt to harden the one edge from the flooding water. Hopefully, we will not see any more flooding! But since the weatherman has a hard time predicting the weather, who really knows if it will flood.

There is a little frog living in the root cellar! It is bouncing between the top three stairs. If it likes spiders then there is a lot of food down there. I had to clean out all of the cobwebs before I could go down the stairs. The entire stair area was full of cobwebs. It had been a while since I had been down there. I store all of the construction materials that are unique and we may need to repair in the future. I put some bathroom tiles and metal trim down in the root cellar.

The sheep have been hollering like they are dying. No one likes to get weaned. We had a hard time driving the tractor through the barn lot as the sheep on both sides kept trying to bum rush the gate every time it was opened. The babies had managed to crawl under the creek crossing so we went out and lowered the panels so they cannot get out.

After that we went out and cleaned up amount 75% of the machine shed. We had filled the trash can up already so there is a large pile in the machine shed. I will keep throwing some in every week until I make it vanish. There were parts bins and tools all over from when I was repairing all of the haying equipment. I also replaced the outlet on the wall. I had been too aggressive with a screwdriver the day before trying to reset the GFI trip, it does work again.

We then trimmed the trumpet vine away from the roof and the house siding. I am trying to get a runner onto the new section of trellis around our living room window. It is looking promising. I would like to get a few branches trained then I can kill all the other suckers coming out of the ground. We tossed all the cuttings over the fence for the sheep. They love to eat most plans and trumpet vine is no exception.

I spent the last half an hour with the Rambler. He had stopped grinding to think about a more efficient way to grind grain. So we were so efficient with my system that he could hardly keep up with the grinder unloading and loading and moving the ground material into the chicken coop. He was covered in flour and looked like a ghost. He had it out with the sheep early on as they kept sneaking up on him to stick their nose in and get some grain. Before he knew it he had 20 sheep pushing in and trying to get a mouthful of grain. By the time I came over in the afternoon there were no sheep around. They decided it was easier to find a meal elsewhere. We did end up dumping out one bag of grain that had too many rocks in it. The sheep do not care and will eat it in any fashion offered. I may take the sheep in to the auction. We know someone who took little ones in and got $120-140/each. I would gladly take that price. I need to look at my work calendar to decide when it will be feasible to take a Tuesday off to drive them over to the auction.

I did find out that the dead raccoon was on the fence and had not been moved out to the bone pile. So I had to use a shovel to scoop it up and toss it in the tractor bucket for its eternal resting trip.

Our plan in two weeks is to work the cows to tag and band the calves. There are still only three calves from our six cows. One of the cows was fairly young so it is not surprising she does not have a calf. We did have one of the cows slough a baby, it looked malformed and incomplete, so there is really only one slacker.