Gingerman

I found it!

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Last weekend I started mowing the fields on Sunday. When I cut for the hay season if there were a lot of weeds or cheat grass in spots I left them and did not cut them down. The cows and sheep have been working on eating those spots down but they are still don’t knock it down all of the way. I anticipated having to mow for a few hours and I would be done. Yeah, that is not going to happen. I spent all day Sunday mowing and I have 1-2 more days of mowing left.

I did hook up the old mower that the Gingerman and I fixed and gave it its first time out work up. It was a little rough for the first two hours. The new blades kept hitting something I had welded back in place. I figured that would eventually go away if they hit the same spot enough. I was correct, the second half of the day was much quieter than the first. I even got the mower back in next to the dry creek bed in field one. I don’t believe I had been in there for around three years. The weeds were 6-8 feet high! I ran into the missing disc set when I was mowing around the broken walnut tree! I took the time to pull the disc set out of the weeds and into the field. I will get it down to the house eventually. We have been looking for that thing for the last two years. I knew it was on the property I just could not remember where I left it last.

I mowed those tall weeds and then went along the second bank to clear out the weeds between the two banks. This was incredibly thick and I ended up overheating the tractor even though the outside temperature was only 50 F. We weed seeds get caught on the radiator and prevent air movement. I had to clean out the radiator and then wait for the fan to cool down the engine. The bees that the Gingerman put up there have a hive full of honey and are doing well. We cannot move them down to the house as it is not 2-3 miles away and the bees will get confused. No one wants that. I am also running low on farm diesel and am dreading getting the tank filled but I am going to have no choice but to call for a refill and just pay the price whatever it may be.

I have had a couple of people come out to hunt pheasants and I am encouraging them to shoot the pigeons and ring neck doves (invasive species). So far it does not look like everyone is making much of a dent in either population. I am going to have to start going out and blasting away on a more regular basis. We cannot go into spring with 100 pigeons. We will have 500 pigeons by next fall if we do. The Ring neck doves drive off the mourning doves (native species) from the food supply.

The wife wants me to defrost the freezer and fix the rubber seal. It is probably time to address the leaky seal.

Haying and yes it’s October

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Well I finally took another staycation and my list that I put together is probably about three weeks worth of work and I only have one week. On top of that I am still haying! It is a little late to be haying in our area but it was raining last month and I was busy. I have had to turn it twice already and I think I will need to turn it two more times for it to get dry. When the temperature is only getting up to 65F it takes a lot longer to dry out.

I am cutting the Naked Gardener’s fields and I had to take a couple of hours today and work on the access point to the lower field. There is a rock bluff that kept getting more exposed and I just about could not get down with the tractor. I took the land plane over and spent a couple of hours adding a bunch of dirt in the hopes to even out the area. It turned out pretty good. I need it to not wash out now due to rain. Since we don’t get much rain in this area anyways my chances are pretty good. It is even enough now I think I will be able to pull a trailer down to load up hay. I just need it to not rain until Thursday. I will be done haying on Tuesday but Mr Golfpro is coming out on Wednesday so we can work on the garden and get the berries cut and the sunchokes harvested.

I wanted to get a picture of the weight box before I started to do anything with it. It needs a new frame welded to it so the 3-point hitch parts quit bending and tearing away. I noticed that the sheet metal was only tack welded in places so I use the wire feed welder to weld all of the sheet metal joints first. Once that was done I cut my four corners and tried to weld one corner on with the wire welder. I need more rod and need to use the rod welder for this step. I had to ask the son-in-law, Gingerman, for some help and I am glad I did. I thought I was going to have to remove the wire welder hook up, nope, turns out you just have to plug in the rod welder and ground into the appropriate spots and the wire feeder welder portion can stay attached! I would have spent 30 minutes swearing and removing the wire feed portion. The Gingerman was looking at me sideways when I asked for help converting it. I don’t think he realized I had never done it before and prior to taking the welding class at the local college a few years ago I had never welded. I can do a lot of things but that is a fairly new endeavor. I don’t really want to say skill as I am not very skillful but stuff does stick together when I weld it!

I made my death pepper this weekend. I ground up the hot peppers that have been drying on the breeze porch for the last year and grind them into a dust. This is always painful. This year I did take a damp tea towel and place it over the grinder. This worked great until I had to check on the spicy concoction. It had two or three types of hot peppers and I managed to not puke. It was so hot I had a couple of nasty coughing jags from inhaling it. Annmarie left early for her trip after coming into the kitchen. She did not want to be in the house. Every time I do this she reminds me I should actually wear a protective mask. I think about it, but my sinuses were really clear after I was done!

New toy!

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It’s time to start preparing for getting older. Moving the 200# rocks is not as easy as it used to be so I am now compensating for my infirm condition by buying a mechanical aid. Hence the purchase of a brand new mini excavator! It can only pick up a 500# rock but I figured that was enough. It will also dig the new water line trenches I had planned on installing. I might even try to get a new power line 50A, 240V line installed to the machine shed. It will definitely help with the new rock wall I want to install on the front hillside. I had to drive over to Idaho mid week to pick it up. It rode just fine once we figured out how to lower the boom to the trailer deck so that we could strap the boom in place and stop all movement. The new and improved farm diesel pickup got almost 15 MPG, which is a big improvement over the old pickup which only got 10 MPG.

I have been reading up on common problems with the mini excavators and I need to go through and check all hydraulic connections, all fluid levels, every bolt needs to be tightened and it needs to be greased up. Once all of that is done then I should be ready to make it do some work. That is going to be my next week’s project.

I had to repair a wooden block toy that used to be Sarah’s when she was a baby. The box was coming apart so I ended up removing one side, sanding it down and then gluing it back together. I got a little clamp happy but I truly believe that there can never be enough clamps on a project. We use the box to pick up all the wooden blocks scattered all over the living room, so it is needed. We put together a wooden toy chest last week so when the grandson is gone all of the toys can be easily corralled and controlled.

The Gingerman scored a “Glimakra standard countermarch 10 pedal floor loom” from Facebook marketplace for free. I just know it is big! We had to move the table and chair and clear out a whole corner of Annmarie’s office so the loom can be assembled. The kid’s brought down half of it this weekend. We have some pictures of it when it was assembled so it will be fun to get it together. It is 90 years old! The paperwork came with it. It looks like a few pieces had to be recreated as they broke/wore out. We won’t really know if it is all there until we try and assemble it. We are hoping we at least have one of the two pieces so we can just mirror a missing piece and cut it out ourselves. It will be a long weekend to get it assembled correctly. Annmarie is super excited! It is designed to speed up production and we are starting to get a lot of alpaca fiber so she could make rugs for the house fairly quickly. I am told there may be something else I have to make that will make it easier to put the thread onto the loom. She had a name for it but I forgot what it was.

Gazebo hillside stabilized

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I was finally able to get some farm work done this week. I have been feeding the horse and getting eggs only up until today. It is Pendleton RoundUp week and I am super busy at work and everyone else in the household is doing something at the event. Annmarie and the Gingerman are riding and playing in the mounted band. Gingerman is playing in Happy Canyon band also. My contribution to RoundUp is to keep the local ER up and running despite any obstacles.

I have been watching the semiannual equipment auction this last week, it has two days left and I am positioned to bring home a mini excavator! I have started to actually bid on one today. There are twelve for sale this time, not just one like last time. I was one of the two final bidders last time but refused to pay more than $4500. This time my bid is under $1k currently. This is a brand new machine. The only downfall is it is a three hour drive one way but for that price it is well worth it!

I spent today moving more rocks! I have the Gazebo downhill pad all supported and rocked in. We talked about creating one long wall from the walkway to the future gravel area so I can level off all of that upper area. This way we will have a nice level area to sit and access the Gazebo. This project is morphing into a much bigger thing than I had first anticipated but as our family grows and expands the ability to have outside gatherings is a bonus. Boy, having that mini excavator would sure be a nice thing to make this happen easily!

I was out scoping the rock wall pathway and how to integrate it with the yard art that is already present. I think I can make one curved wall that will do everything. I still want to put a water feature on the other side of the walkway. Lots of projects still to accomplish.

The little steer is looking great. He was giving me attitude every time I drove by him with a load of rocks. I finally switched and started to get the rocks from the edge of the wheat field. I can only go over there once the wheat is harvested as I have to drive alongside the edge of the field to reach it. It also has a lot of rounder rocks. I used them near where people might fall on the rocks. The sharp rocks are on the backside where no one will be.

Gazebo retaining wall

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Since war has been declared on the backyard predators not much killing has been happening. The Ring camera likes to alert on the cats and chickens but we are not having great luck with it sending us alerts for predators. So at night I turn on the camera on my phone and watch it live while we are watching television. This way I can spot it if something comes to the back porch. Well Annmarie spotted something and I have gone out a couple of times to only find a cat. Friday night we spotted a skunk! This is probably the skunk that sprayed our Border Collie in the front yard. Chance still smells like skunk even after three baths. The trouble with this is that the skunk was coming towards the back door and I really did not want to get sprayed directly in the face. Washing the dog was as close as I want to get to the offensive part of a skunk. So I grabbed the spotlight and 22 pistol, Gingerman grabbed a shotgun and his phone light. As soon as it was safe to go out I was headed towards the garden when a voice came over the Ring camera telling me that something had jumped the gate and was headed towards the chicken coop. I went that way, spotted two different cats but nothing else when the Gingerman hollered and said he saw a black and white streak headed into the garden.

I ran that way and we scoped out the entire lavender, garden are and orchard and did not spot a skunk. My bet was it was hiding in the raspberry/blackberry patch. But that is so overgrown you kinda have to push your way through. No way I was going in there looking for a skunk. I went back in and the Gingerman took light and looked some more without any luck. I found a second good flashlight and put it back by the back porch. The weather was rainy and windy last night so the skunk did not come around. I do not believe the skunk killed the kitten but it did spray the dog so it needs to go away. It will spray the dog again if given a chance. I still think there is a town raccoon out there somewhere and that is what killed the kitten.

We are starting to get some washout on the downhill side of the gazebo platform. I am sure it is from the rain coming off the roof. So I switched gears and am starting to support the hillside. Large, barely able to move, rocks on the flat level area and then rocks at least six inches in size above that on the hillside. Some of those large rocks weigh so much that only three can be carried in the bucket of my tractor. It won’t lift the bucket with a fourth one present. I am going to use about half the rocks out in the alley way. I may have enough rocks for the support wall maybe. It will be close. I can always go on the back hillside, there is an endless supply of rocks there.

I know I am getting old, the big rocks make my butt and sternum hurt after I move them around for a few hours. I muscle them into the bucket and then into place. I was able to leave all the rocks in the bucket and just dump the bucket where I wanted them. I could just sort them in place at that point.

Gingerman sent me the link to the biannual farm consignment auction yesterday. There was 30 pages of equipment and supplies for sale. I have managed to cut it down to two pages of watched items. It’s a three hour, one way drive to pick up the equipment in Idaho. Once I realized that it was pretty easy to knock the list down from four pages to two. The list is probably below one page but they have 10 of the mini excavators for sale! I could move rocks all day long with one of those. They also have a bunch of accessories and extra attachments so I have all of it flagged so I can watch them. They also have several mini skid steer loaders. I could get into every nook and cranny of the barn and not have to do any hand digging! This would be the bomb!