gazebo

Too much fruit

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Labor Day weekend was spent getting ready for the next thing whatever it is. Annmarie wants me to get the Dodge pickup cleaned out and the Ford diesel up and going. I bought two new batteries for the Ford and the Gingerman got them in and the pickup started. He has spent a few days tinkering with it and it is running pretty smooth. It just needs a couple of quarts of power steering fluid. Plus, he found a brand new tire weight on the ground so it will need to go back in and have the tires rebalanced. I was able to unload the sand out of the Dodge. I needed space to fit a piece of plywood and there wasn’t any with the sand still riding around in the truck bed. I needed to get the replacement throttle cable ordered for the compactor so that we can spread the sand out and pound it in place. I left the sand in the bags so that the cats would not use the gazebo as a personal toilet.

I was able to snag some shelves at a reasonable price and got them installed on the shop wall. I am going to move all my various anchor bolts into one section so I know what I have and can find it when needed. The left side is plumbing and air line brass parts they came with the organizer. Slowly but surely we are getting organized. It is much easier to find things when they are in their place.

I spent one single day doing nothing but picking fruit. I picked 24 cups of tame blackberries then about 8# of plums and then nectarines. The bad part about picking the fruit is when you pick that much you have to do something with it. Our large upright freezer is stuffed full of frozen fruit. I truly believe we have enough to get through the next year. Irregardless of that the fruit trees just keep producing. I have taken boxes of plums and nectarines to work for the produce table in an effort to give it away. So far it disappears fast enough that it doesn’t go bad. I kept track of how many blackberries I have picked in the last six weeks, 21.5 gallons! That is a personal best. Annmarie has made jam and syrup that we have canned. So we have canning supplies all over the house as we process fruit. Making your own food does take time.

Catch up weekend

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We keep trying to get ahead but it seems like the chores are winning. I am sure they are piling up faster than we can get them completed. My helper is busy and I have been doing a lot more general keep up so I have not made any movement on any project. We have been processing fruit nonstop. The tall upright freezer is full of six types of fruit. Annmarie has canned plum syrup and jam. We want to make apricot butter and maybe some pear butter also. We are still having to pick tame blackberries every four days and are getting at least 20 cups every time. I am waiting till the season is over to tally up the amount of blackberries that were harvested this year, it is a lot! We are still seeing a lot of bunny rabbits!

We are going to be moving our sheep back over to Hermiston the first week of October. They will be able to hang out for two months eating green grass and then come back just in time to start having lambs. We will take the lambs and cull ewes to sale as soon as they come off the green grass. They will have the most weight and best conditioning then. I have no idea what the sale price will be. I heard this week that feeder calves (500-600#) sold at the LaGrande auction for $4.25/# live weight! That is a crazy high price. We already have all seven of our yearlings sold for $4.25/# hanging weight and are going to stick with that price. Beef prices are going to leap up in the next 3-4 months.

We have started to process our nectarines. I did not think there were very many on the tree. There is probably 100#. I have been selectively picking them half a box at a time. Taking just the ripe ones off the tree. The golden plums are starting to come on and there is a solid 100-200# on the tree and the Italian plums have at least 100#. We have started to just pick fruit and take it into the hospital. There is a communal produce table where you can donate garden produce to other staff, free shopping. It is quite nice and most stuff disappears in 1-2 days so it does not go to waste.

I spent a day weed eating the yard and garden. The Gingerman helped me string wire up into the top gap in the side gate so the Border Collie could not jump through it. It seems to be working so we will be letting the sheep onto the front hillside to knock it down. It is starting to get out of control.

We did manage to get a single piece of oak plywood down on the saw horses and the saw rest assembled. I need to get a new blade for the skilsaw before I cut the cabinet pieces. I need to get that cabinet done.

I did take a couple of hours and cut all of the dead branches out of the nectarine tree. I will be cutting all of the fruit trees this winter. They need shortened, thinned and shaped. It cannot wait any longer.

I really need to get the sand and bricks installed in the gazebo but I have to repair the throttle cable on the compactor again. The thing vibrates and cuts the sheath. Once that is done the greenhouse is next. It is all a work in progress. The parts came this week to fix the little John Deere tractor so that will need to be done this weekend so I can dig out the barn.

On top of all of that and our daughter just had her first baby today and we are now grandparents. So we have been moving things around and setting up an area for the baby as the kids come down and see us almost every weekend. Both the baby and mother are doing well.

Within the next month I will need to hay again! I will be cutting a neighbor’s field that he was been watering since the first cutting. It is going to be a loaded fall season.

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.

Still no snow

Steve Hardin1 Comment

The plague has struck again! Both of us were sick this week and are finally getting back to normal. The kids came down this weekend and we were able to tear down the old bed frame and clean up the other spare room. We then moved the box Murphy bed into that room for company, usually the kids and proceeded to clean out the other room. It used to be Sarah’s bedroom eons ago. We had purchased a sewing table for Annmarie and I needed to get it assembled and set up an area for her to sew. Clothing is going up in price and the quality is not as good so she is going to start sewing her own work clothes. I have two vests that need done and now that I have gained some girth it is a perfect time. My two other ones started to get too small ten pounds ago. I will need to cut a plywood top to go over the top of the two dressers. She was able to find a cutting mat that is 36×48” so I will put that size sheet of plywood over the two dressers and the mat will fit right on top of that. We have a sewing light and I was able to find a lamp for the room but we need another overhead light over the cutting table. I have ordered another draping stained glass light and will put in a new hook for it when it comes. The stained glass lights just do not put out a ton of light. I have started to overcome this by just putting in more lights. I am pretty sure I will be adding a second light to our master bedroom. But I will need to go up into the attic to do it which will mean pulling up some of the floor in the attic. It won’t be as simple as when I did it before the attic floor.

This would have been simple if I had not just used every scrap of plywood I had on the farm inside of the fencing shed! I have to go to Hermiston and order tiles for the bathroom this week so I will get a piece of plywood to cut for her cutting surface. I need to get the tiles ordered and start working on our bathroom vanity and towel storage cabinet. There was a shopping event on Saturday where you could visit six different sites and go shopping for various Knick knacks. Annmarie was able to find a new potential bathroom vanity. This one is a lot longer, a whole whopping 10.5” longer. But honestly, that is a lot of counter space! The old one we were going to use was 33” wide and this one is 43.5” wide. This one is also taller. I like the higher one and think it will make it much easier to use the sink. The new one needs more work than the other one. I need new drawer pulls and all the drawers need new bottoms. I will need to hollow out two of the drawers on the new cabinet. It is doable but I will need to start on it ASAP.

Mr Rainman came out today and we were able to get a few little things knocked off the list. We installed the new Gazebo lights so thy are now remote controlled. We also took the light strand from the Gazebo and mounted it alongside the old house to light up the walkway and cat feeding area. Now when I think there is a raccoon out back I can just flip the light on, via my phone, and I will be able to see the entire area behind the old house. No more hiding for the raccoons. I was able to program the light via my phone so it can be turned on remotely. I just need to get it programmed to come on for an hour every night around the time we feed the cats.

We put the trellis back together next to the house. I will need to train the trumpet vine in the spring to follow the new trellis. The fencing shed anchor bolts came but I could only get four of them to drive in the entire length. I kept hitting something so old and tough that my impact driver would not move the anchor, no matter what I did. So there are now four anchors and more supplies inside the shed holding it down. I am not too worried about it going any whereas it did nothing in the 70 MPH wind.

My windmill got ripped out and tossed on the ground and our old chicken coop door got torn up by the wind. The windmill lost a blade and we put it back up but had to hammer it into the piece of wood so now it won’t spin. So I will need to get another one and this time I need to make sure it has bearings and some way to make sure it does not blow away. The latch on the old chicken coop got torn off. It needs some screws and may need to be rebuilt. It will depend on how rotten the wood is and attempting to repair it will let us know that. At this rate we may be able to get the drying lumber pieces moved out to the old middle granary. It is all cleaned out and ready for wood. Some of the wood has about two more years to dry out. We will be putting all of the maple and black walnut out there.

Mr Rainman has been organizing the machine shed and tossing out all of the accumulated trash. He has been doing a great job on getting things organized again. It is an annual process as I do not do as you go throughout the year. Once we get the old chicken coop lumber moved out then we can move all of the tools from the old house out into the coop. This will then create a single room we can use as project space.

New fencing storage area

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Mr Rainman came out today to help me with projects. For some unknown reason there is a very polite Oregon State Police Officer who is now patrolling our region. I have been pulled over twice and gotten warnings but was told next time is a ticket. Mr Rainman found him this morning on his way to the farm. I have actually started to stop at all stop signs, even four corners as he comes out of nowhere all the times I have been caught. We both had checked the County website to see if today was a burn day but it was not. We need to burn three separate piles and have been saving up all of our cardboard for the last three weeks. I also installed an off/on remote for the lights in the Gazebo. We hooked up the trailer and drove the Kubota over to a friend’s house. She had a power pole she wanted gone. We were able to get three ten foot posts out of the pole and we took all her scrap she had piled up. It was not very much and she was having a hard time getting someone to pick it up. We just tossed it onto our metal scrap pile. Eventually, I will get a bin delivered and will load up all the scrap metal.

I went to town to pick up our beef, #34 is ready to eat! We got five boxes of beef from a 370# carcass. Mr Rainman and I emptied the entire small deep freezer and managed to get all of the beef into it. This way we can concentrate on eating the beef from the two standup freezers before we start digging into the new beef. There is enough room to fit the lamb we have coming in January. Annmarie is going to can spaghetti sauce tomorrow so I was able to remove a lot of frozen tomatoes and get them thawing for tomorrow. This way the peels just come right off and you don’t have to blanch them. I also discovered some more frozen fruit for breakfast smoothies that had gotten buried.

The old lamb shed/chicken coop needed to get moved so I can start storing all of the fencing tools and all of the scrap metal that is still usable for projects and repairs. The building is 12’x12’. It’s old and the bottom boards are rotted out in places so Mr Rainman was skeptical that we could do it without tearing it up. We bet a coffee on it before getting started. The plan was to use the Kubota to lift up one side and insert round chunks of fence posts under the building and use them as rollers. We had checked and the Kubota could lift one side of the building up off the ground about six inches. This was all untested and after looking at the travel path we decided that we were going to have to go up a four foot hill and make a ninety degree turn with the entire building before going up the hill. It was slow going but we were able to get the building moved in under a couple of hours. Mr Rainman had spent the time leveling the future spot next to the machine shop while I was getting lucky #34 from the butcher. We did not break anything and once in place we were able to get three railroad ties under the building edges. The fourth one is at the other end of the alley and will get installed tomorrow. I will be getting a free cup of coffee!

Mr Rainman says there are four teenager kittens living in the hay side of the machine shop. I have not seen any of them yet. The ties are ten feet long so we are ending up with a one foot gap that allows access under the old building so tomorrow we will be filling the gap so that no animal other than mice can get under it. We found a lot of cat poop and a dead flat cat under the building when we were moving it. Once it is resided I think I will screw ground anchors around the building and chain it to down to the ground from an eyelet in the railroad tie. This building has been blown over and around several times. I can anchor the building to the railroad ties via anchors through the floor. Maybe we can just get enough scrap metal in the building so it cannot be blown over. I will get the floor anchors coming and then work on getting the building ready for storage. Somewhere in here I realized that the gas cap was missing from the tractor and after searching neither of us can find it. A replacement was ordered and it should be here by Tuesday.

Now that I had the building moved I had to hold up the other end of the bargain and get the Little Dinky tractor moved to my mother-in-law’s house. The tractor is buried in the ground from never moving. We tried to pull it out with the Kubota but the front tires were trying to bend. We lifted the front of the tractor up and used old roofing panels under the front tires to keep them from sinking and letting them slide on something. We centered the pulling chain on the center of the tractor and tried to pull as straight as we could. We had already had to unbury the sickle bar mower and chain it in the upright position. Surprisingly, once we did all of that the tractor came out! It was fairly slow going as all four tires were flat and had flat spots on top of that. Mr Rainman rode the tractor and steered as I pulled it to its final destination. It looks good and in the spring it can get a good cleaning and it will look even better.