The progeny’s wedding is in 14 days. This realization has been thrust onto my priority list. I painted the wall in our hallway where the old bathroom door used to be the week before and now I have corralled into a wood craft project related to table decorations. Gingerman and I spent over two hours sanding and assembling table decorations. He did most of the sanding and I just did some touch up on the edges and the assembly. Milo wanted to help and the cat kept trying to get in the way. We managed to get 21 done which is more than are needed.
I spent the rest of the day using a Green Machine to clean the living room furniture. I also decided that the large circular light in the stairwell needed cleaned as it had been a couple of years. I have to take the stained glass in the upper bathroom down and then you can get up onto the wooden shelf and reach out and touch the light. I pat myself on the back every time I do this and don’t have to break out a ladder to get up to the light that is 16 feet in the air. There is a small two piece glass skirt that keeps most of the dust off of the light bulbs. This can be removed, washed and put back on. When it is removed it is easier to vacuum the light all the way down to the middle. It also lets you brush the light bulbs with a rag to remove the dust. I recommend NOT using a wet paper towel to do this as I got a solid 120V jolt to my left hand that was holding the light from turning as I used the right hand to wipe the dust off the light bulb and holder. It has been quite a while since I have shocked myself. I kept scrubbing the light and turning it until all of the dust was gone. The light looks so much better now. I stood directly below the light when I took that photo.
Last week we did actually get some needed items checked off the winter list. Mr Rainman came out and tackled the orchard. He trimmed all of the fruit trees. Not only did he trim them, he cut them way back so they can gain some limb strength. This was a much needed thing as the limbs were having a hard time carrying a full load of fruit. He also tackled the ancient apple trees and raised the limbs enough that we can drive the tractor underneath the tree!
Mr Rainman is also building up a second pile of limbs near the irrigation ditch for the quail. The quail use the limb piles as cover to protect themselves from predators. This will be the fifth pile we have created on the farm for them. We have two coveys this winter of about 80 birds each. They are healthy and fly around the houses at least once a day. Even if I cannot see them they can be heard as they are quite noisy. This took both days to get completed. The raspberries and blackberries are the last thing that needs to get trimmed this winter.
Gingerman and I went out first thing in the morning last Saturday to sort the cows. We needed to get the bull into Alcatraz and the three weanling calves off the female cows they are 6-7 months old now. It was fairly cold and I could see steam coming off the pile of manure from two years ago.
I drove the tractor and the Gingerman cycled gates. The cows associate the tractor with food so they always come running when they hear it. I opened a gate into the pasture around the old chicken coop and the cows proceeded to rush the fence into the ram pasture. This led them to spot the open gate onto the hillside so they ran up the hillside looking for a way out. I had to get down off the tractor and the Gingerman and I herded them back into the ram pasture and back out towards the gate over by Alcatraz. The horse was locked into the old lamb barn and we had both gates down to the spring closed so it was a straight shot toward the corral. The new gate/fence in the barn lot worked incredibly well and we got the cows into the front barn lot without much hassle. Once we got them into the lot it was not very hard to push them into the corral area. We managed to sort off three heifers and then the bull got stuck out by himself so we pushed him back into the horse area to wait. He needed to go to Alcatraz but with the heifers already getting sorted we need to move them first. The calves all bunched up in the area near the barn and the Gingerman was walking up behind them to get them moving when the pretty brown calf smashed his hind leg backwards to state his displeasure at being handled. The problem with this is the Gingerman was too close and caught the hoof in the left testicle. He did not hit the ground himself but it was a close call. He ended up leaning on the gate while I casually sorted the rest of the cows.
We ran the calves through the yard into the orchard. The heifers just got pushed out into field #4 to continue eating and growing their pregnant bellies.
The bull just sauntered over towards the fence to get to the heifers. The fence and the Gingerman were in his way. He kept trying to get around the Gingerman and he would just wave his head and push forward against the Gingerman. We finally got him turned, then just chased him into Alcatraz so he did not have time to think about what he was doing.
I ended up sanding all of the pine pieces for the inside trim of the bathroom. I would have rather spent the day outside. It was a sunny and clear day, absolutely beautiful. But the bathroom must progress.
I have been informed that there are a mere 24 days left until company arrives for the wedding! This does sorta put things in perspective. It is only day 51 of the remodel, even though it is week 45. At this rate I will be able to stay ahead of the weeks passed by the number of days worked on the project! Not a great accomplishment but it is something. I have been working on the dreaded Sheetrock. Again, there are just a few things that I don’t care for and Sheetrock work is one of them. I tried something different this time. I was super careful to scrape really well with the next size up drywall scraper/knife. When I was close to finishing I did a wet sand. I had never tried it before, it did leave some slight grooves from softening things up too much it was super easy to repair once it all dried up.
I shot texture on the wall this morning and the main section looks good. It will be ready for primer tomorrow. I will have to dig around in the closets to see if we have any leftover paint. I still need to put some more texture on the wall opposite the closet. I ran out of texture in the can.
I have been working on getting the inside trim dialed in this weekend. I had to tear custom width oak for the top and bottom of the cabinet. I spent almost 90 minutes just sanding those pieces then dry fitting them. This required multiple trips to the saw to get the length right. I installed the top two and the bottom side one. The front needs a nail gun but I only have the air finish nailers and I want to wait to set that up until I have all of the trim pieces cut and dry fitted.
I put a couple of 2×2 at the top of the door to work as spacers so I can nail the trim to them. The trim needed to be lower to cover the hanger hardware. My goal is to hide everything. I am working in pine on the inside of the door as that is what I used on the walls. The outside will be done in the same trim as all the rest of the interior. I was at the hardware store for over 30 minutes just digging through pine boards to find some I could use as trim, too many knots, cracks, chips on edges on a large portion of the boards. I needed one board 8” wide and 7’ tall. I ended up buying a 12 foot section of 1×10” and cut the middle out of it to get a clean piece. Gingerman kept going out in the morning with me to help me tear them down then he went off to do his own chores. It is hard to tear a board down by yourself and make it straight. If I owned some expensive stuff I could do that but my $100 table saw requires two people to carry it into the yard and two to guide the board through the saw.
I have all of the boards ripped and now they need sanded. But I spent about four hours this weekend sanding and wanted to make some progress on the oak cabinet trim before working on the door opening. I have three more oak cross pieces to sand, cut, fit and install. Once that is done then we can talk about how large and how many doors I will need to cut.
I spent almost two hours today trying to find the striker plate for the sliding door. I even went so far as to clean up the old house, cleaned up the mud room and even took all the tools and junk piled up in the laundry room but I did not find that striker plate! I am sure I put it somewhere “safe” I just cannot remember where. Hopefully, I can find it in the next week. It can wait as it only means the bathroom door cannot be locked. On a plus side I did find all the cabinet hinges, knobs and magnetic closures! I would have had to hunt those down eventually. I kept finding needed stuff, I even found the instructions for installing the striker plate, one would think I would have found the actual item.
Blame Gingerman, he sent me a link to a local farm auction out of Hermiston and I needed a lot of stuff they had. It turns out that I did not need it as bad as other local people because I went from spending almost $6500 to only $1500 in the last thirty minutes of the auction! He had told me that everyone waits until the last minute to bid and he was not wrong. I really had my heart set on a mini-excavator! It was brand new with only 0.3 hours on it. Knew it would cost about $6k, I quit bidding after $3k and it sold for $3.5k. If I had kept bidding I suspect the price would have kept increasing.
I ended up with two, eight foot tall orchard ladders, two old round water troughs that cannot hold water, one new small tall water trough, a couple of hundred feet of brand new lay flat hose with irrigation fittings already on them and two self contained gates. The hose was the most expensive thing in the pile. We are going to cut the bottom out of the two large round troughs and use them in the garden area. The larger one is going to be solely for the growing of asparagus! We want the bottom cut out so the plants can dig down into the ground if they want. I am not sure what we are putting in the other one. The small one will go in with our backyard garden collection. It will get something edible planted in it. The two gates were necessary to get the barn lot set up correctly. The cows and sheep always go down to the spring area and hole up and refuse to come out. It is painful to get them through the gate. We have talked about a fence across the mouth of that area for years. So I installed two gates, both six feet on either end of the opening and made a large removable wire gate. So the entire middle of the fence can be moved for vehicle access. We can also just put the horse over there when we are sorting and she won’t be able to “help”. I spent Saturday morning getting the fence installed and the gates adjusted. The Gingerman helped me put a temporary repair on the back hillside gate so that it is a solid fence. This way the alpaca cannot get out and the sheep can wander around on the lower part of the hill and not sneak out. They would have found the hole, guaranteed.
We then had to drive over to Hermiston and take down the temporary fence we have to install on the decorative fence so the sheep will actually stay in the pasture. It’s Redbrand woven four foot fencing and a full roll weighs about 220#. It is hard to load safely in the back of the pickup alone, at least for me. It took us about 20 minutes and we will save the two precut sections for next year again. We attach it with zip ties so they can just be cut to remove it.
I had to feed the sheep as they had eaten everything in the barn and they are still a little jumpy. So I spent about 20 minutes sitting on a bale of hay talking to them. We always talk to them when we are out in the barn. It helps get them accustomed to humans and more specifically to us. In a month they will only associate us with food and all will be right. They get so pushy that we have to push them out of the barn, shut the door, feed then open the door so they can rush in and beat their neighbor to the good stuff. By Christmas we will be locking them up every night which means someone has to go out first thing in the morning and check for lambs and let them out of the barn.
We ate our Sunchokes for the first time this weekend. It is easy to see why they are a potato substitute. I added them to a stew with meat, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, yellow potatoes and sunchokes. It tasted very good. We will try a different version next time we eat them.
I did get the hand towel and wash cloth hooks hung in the bathroom. I had plans to go pickup sheetrock on Saturday but it was raining. I did try to get oak boards on Friday but they did not have any and the store I would have normally gone to was closed on Friday for the holiday.
Honestly, this is a stupid problem to have. After breakfast, I was relaxing in the living room, our daughter was feeding the baby and next thing I know the Gingerman is scrambling for the door. He grabs the 30-30 on the way out the front door and runs to the end of the front porch and shoots once out into the ram pasture next to the house. I am looking out the window but I cannot see a coyote. He leaps over the railing and then scrambles around in the snow. He gets one more shot off in the yard then almost falls trying to get through the gate into the ram pasture. I see him line up for a third shot and pull the trigger, click no boom! There were only two cartridges loaded in the rifle. I had not checked it recently. He had ran out into the snow in only his socks in an attempt to kill the coyote. He did not kill it and it had another chicken in its mouth! I am going to count chickens again tomorrow after work but at this rate I was already going to give the neighbor four chickens, I may have to to give him 12 and some chicken food just so we get some eggs through the winter. At this rate I won’t last two more weeks before they have killed every chicken. This is a stupid problem.
Sunday the Gingerman helped me pull down all of the Christmas decorations. We pulled it all down so the wife can sort and organize her village setup. Half of the boxes are for the village setup. But while we were in the attic the Gingerman points out that the side window would make a great sniper location for offing the coyotes. So we have removed the screen from the window and laid out a rifle. So now instead of bursting outside and the coyote seeing you coming we can just run to the attic, pop open the window and bingo, next chicken killer is out of commission. The real problem is that the Gingerman took a walk up to the CRP while the fresh snow was still present. The entire fence line looked like a coyote highway. He thinks there are multiple coyotes living up in the CRP. So it is not going to be a one and done kind of endeavor.
I had purchased some cedar oil a few months ago and had plans for rubbing it on our walk in closet walls and ceiling. That plan did not materialize and the full container has been sitting on a shelf in said closet for a few months. Annmarie went to grab a skirt and noticed some moth damage! Needless to say, I spent most of Sunday cleaning the closet, polishing the shelves and putting oil on the walls and ceiling. We also threw out the trash, junk and clothes that do not fit. By the time we were done there was quite a bit of closet rod visible. The instructions said to use the stuff sparingly and it is not a very big container. I probably only used about 20% of the small can, a little truly does go a long ways. We are keeping the door shut for a while so the smell does not overwhelm the bedroom. It smells like it did when I installed the cedar 20 years ago.
Annmarie made some bee food and I took it out today. I listened at the box and could not hear any bees, I also could not see any bees. I popped the feeder lid off, we have an extra box on top that houses two 1/2 gallon feeders that they can come up into from inside the hive. I had to pop the lid off and there were no bees. In their defense there was no food either, they had emptied both feeders. I did knock on the box once also. By the time I got done changing out both feeders I could see the bees around the outside entrance. They were kinda milling around without any real purpose. I even saw one fly for a couple of feet before going back to the hive.
I waited until Monday to finish the post. Annmarie had a great idea today, she said we should move the two angry brown alpacas to the field with the chickens! The alpaca do not like dogs and will cause a ruckus and try and chase them away. So now we have the two meanest alpaca we own in the same pasture as the chickens. I even put out a couple of bales in the middle of the ram pasture so the alpaca would spot any coyotes coming. I also counted hens once it got dark and there are still 17 hens and three roosters alive and well in the chicken coop. So I am still going to let the chickens free range for a while. I will need to lose a couple more before I lock them up. They will consume more food and they will need water that is not solid. This means more work for me and I am not willing to do more unless it is really necessary.
Stewart Creek Somethings 