Mr Rainman

Staycation day 8 Final 10% completed

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My goal this time off was to actually check items off my list. I love the first 90% of a project but that last 10% is always painful! The last 10% of a project can take 25% of your time and by the time it gets to the true detail work I am tired of it and ready to move onto the next project. So what you are going to see are a lot of completions of little things that I have ignored for years!

Last winter I had the outside chicken door freeze open and/or shut. In a bad ice storm it is going to freeze. There is no way to really effectively block that without applying some type of heating system. I just want to stop the water from running down to it and then freezing in the night. To stop that I took an old metal wring from a whiskey barrel and cut and bent tabs then attached it over the door. I caulked it top and underneath to ensure that the water cannot run down the back of the door. This should work 98% of the time, we will see how it does this winter.

I spent a day cleaning the wife’s office. I had not been in there in a few months and I was applying for school last week and noticed that the office needed a good once over. I ended up vacuuming and dusting and removing all spiderwebs. I oiled down the window sills and cleaned the windows. After I did all of that I realized that I had never touched the Murphy bed we bought at auction. I have to repair it but I had not even cleaned and oiled it. So I spent a couple of hours and rubbed orange oil/beeswax combo into the wood. It looked amazing once I was done so I was determined to get it repaired. I ended up finding some furniture barrel nuts and a bronze sleeve bearing. The wood is torn up around the place they had the old screw attachment located. So I decided I could drill an oversized hole, insert and glue in place the bronze sleeve and then use locktite to keep the barrel nut at the right location. I ended up having to drill out the support straps a little to get the barrel bolt through it. I opted to let the super glue dry for a day or two before I did any assembly.

Yesterday, Mr Rainman came out and we really worked on knocking out a lot of little projects. I cut the last piece of oak kickerboard to go under the oven cabinet and we nailed/screwed all three pieces in place. This way the dog’s play toys cannot go to purgatory. I only had to fish out two toys before installing the boards. You can see from the pictures what a difference it made. The picture on the left is before I completed it and the one on the right is after they are all installed.

We have some of the very first cooking stones that Pampered Chef ever made and one of them is a large round pizza stone. It occasionally just rolls out of the open fronted storage area. Annmarie wanted me to install a wooden stop to prevent this potential tragedy. The stone has survived several rolls out onto the tile floor undamaged. I sanded down the front of the cabinet and glued then pin nailed and clamped the little 1/4” stops in place. I will rub a food grade finish on them tomorrow so they will be off the list. The slot on the left holds the stones but I wanted both sides to match and if someone accidentally puts the stone on the wrong side it still will not roll out. The stones are very well seasoned and cookies just slide off of them after all the years we have had them.

The back door trim got reinstalled for the third time. The mud room outside door keeps shifting with the weather. I think I have gotten it figured out this time. I ended up doing some latch work and should have it perfected. If I have to remove it a couple more times I will need to recut a new piece due to all of the nail holes.

We had to bring the table saw around to the front of the old house so that the window trim in the mud room could be finished. I needed to cut a custom width on the inside of the window. Luckily, we were able to find four pieces of scrap that were wide enough to work. I trimmed off the joint sides and kept the middle. I had to shim the window trim quite a bit to get it to fit correctly. The outside trim was just an intact 1×4 that we cut to size and sanded down. I will rub finish into all of this trim tomorrow when I get the trim in the kitchen. The pneumatic nailer and compressor had to be brought over. I am missing my 18g midsize nailer. We have looked everywhere for it but I do not really want to buy a DeWalt trim nailer to replace it, those things are expensive. So we made do with a larger finish nail.

The mud room does have an attic enclosure. I was up there when we first moved into the house as I had to run wire for house power through it. We sealed up the gaps and then installed the old trim back up. Due to adding a wall we ended up having to leave off the back board. I painted it all today after the caulk had time to dry. I am not sure we got the right white paint can correct. When it was wet the paint looked a little off. I won’t know until it dries and if it is really noticeable there is enough leftover paint to repaint the entire ceiling so it will all match.

Friday the last of the oversized roofing screws came in. So on Saturday I got back onto the machine shed roof to finish screwing in the roof ridge. It only took about five minutes to complete but before I could get down I wanted to remove the antenna pole that had been on top of the machine shed. Another thing I should have used the boom truck for along with the ridge line installation. So instead I just crawled up onto the hay room roof ridge and scooted over to the pole. I was able to unscrew five of the six anchors. I had used one off brand type with a weird star shaped pattern. I stayed on the roof and Mr Rainman went to get bits and then put it in a leather glove finger held in place with a rock jammed into the finger. He then tossed it up onto the roof at me. I could not move at all so the throw practically had to hit me for me to catch it. There was much cajoling and when that did not encourage him to throw harder some name calling may have been utilized. He could not find the correct head type so he had to throw me up two 1/2” open end wrenches so I could unbolt the pole from that half of the roof anchor. We ended up having to move the ladder, cut the grounding wire holding it up then move the ladder again and unhook one of the anchors. It came down finally. All the usable parts were removed and salvaged for later potential use and the rest tossed onto the metal scrap heap. That has been up on the machine shed roof since 2017!

After four attempts at welding and a couple of days to spray paint the house number was ready to be installed on our fence. I argued pretty vehemently against its current placement location. After I installed it I was unsure why I thought this location would not work. It turned out pretty nice, the paint covers some of my juvenile welding but it should hold together. I think the wire fed welder would work better for this kind of job than the stick. But I have not yet setup my wire feed side of the welder. I will need to do that next year.

Mr Rainman stayed very busy today. He mowed our entire lawn and tossed it all over the fence for the sheep and chickens. This should help remove some of the foxtails from our yard. The yard is pretty rough and not very easy to mow. He repaired the drip line in the lavender patch and put all the spare repair parts into Annmarie’s shed. Some weed whacking was done on the front hillside to knock down the rest of the thistles.

We don’t have any bees currently but Annmarie wanted us to expand the bee area so that she could easily walk around the hives and set stuff down without it always disappearing into the grass. He installed approximately another 50 blocks and the area is definitely large enough for 2-3 hives now.

Lastly after much discussion it was decided to dig the electrical ditch so I can run a single outlet to the gazebo. This way we can have the pellet grill out there and a string of lights. Unfortunately, where the ground is not getting hosed down by the sprinkler it is incredibly hard. So Mr Rainman started digging and then put water on in a couple of locations to soften the ground for tomorrow. I was able to go in and dig out another ten feet of the ditch and then start it all the way to the Gazebo. I took the hose and made water run down into the ditch from the gazebo side. I did this three times so hopefully in the morning we will not have any trouble getting down far enough for the ditch. I will need to buy conduit on Monday after work so I can wire it all up this next week. Mr Rainman is only going to be able to help three day in the next couple of weeks. So I will be flying solo most of my staycation. I am very happy with the progress we are making on the list.

Gazebo up!

Steve Hardin1 Comment

This was the weekend to finish up the gazebo! The rental equipment came on Friday at 0900, a scissor lift and 45’ boom lift. I got the requisite five minutes of training and I was in control of my own fate. I knew that I needed to get the boom setup first as it was needed to hold the roof up so I could tear down the platform. But I needed to get the scissor lift onto the front hillside first as I was going to park the boom in the corral and all access would be blocked. Luckily, there was a hook hanging from the bottom of the forks so I was able to just use the hook on the boom. I thought the 45’ boom was a little overkill but it just barely reached out far enough! I ended up with the boom fully extended and had to drive the boom forward a few inches to get the needed distance.

I was able to put up a chain attached to two points of the center ring and over the boom hook. When I took tension off the platform I was ready to tear it all down. During the dismantling of the platform I discovered that one side was only held up by a single screw, the other two had failed. The pallet I had built the platform on fell apart into three pieces. I was pretty impressed that it all held together long enough to get the rental equipment out to the house. The best part is they rented it for one day (8 hours run time) and did not pick it up until Monday. So I was able to use it over the entire weekend.

Once the platform was off the Kubota, I drove it out of the middle of the gazebo. I then tried to drive the 4×4 scissor lift with big tires into the gazebo, after having to drop all the protective rails to make it go under the opening, it was four inches too tall. Nope, one wheel kept spinning and it would not go more than three feet. I called the rental company and they sent out the mechanic. I worked on the baler as the new parts came on Thursday. I put the gear on backwards and had to pull it and was attempting to get it on correctly when the mechanic arrived. It turns out that this machine had been having some issues and he did not know about it. It turns out to mostly be poor design. It uses hydraulic pressure to drive all four wheels and once a wheel starts to spin all the pressure goes to that tire! We got the lift into the gazebo by nudging it a couple of times with the tractor forks. I was able to get four more roof panels on by myself for a total of 8/24 that were attached on top ring and bottom to the wall.

Mr Rainman came out Saturday morning at 0700 and we dove right in! It turns out we had four roof pieces that had the upper eight inches cut off! So you cannot bolt them to the upper ring. It was pure happenstance that I installed one on Friday and then Mr Rainman found three more. Once we knew how many we had we spread them out every fifth panel evenly around the roof. The scissor lift had to have a little push/pull help with the Kubota to get it turned inside the gazebo so we could finish getting the roof panels up. We made really great progress but it was starting to get late and we had three panels left. I was tired and wanted to quit, but we were almost there so we stayed and finished the last three. The entire roof was up, all the panels that could be bolted to the center ring were but we were having trouble with six panels not lining up at the bottom of the roof. The roof was too high, it needed to drop about one to two inches on just those panels. We decided to let gravity do its job overnight and come back in the morning and all would be perfect. Especially since we had already bent one anchor by me extending the boom when I should have been retracting it.

It was not perfect the next morning, absolutely no part of the roof had shifted. Now on one hand this is great news, but it still left us with the conundrum of how to lower the roof. Especially, since the wind was blowing 10-15 MPH, I was so glad we finished putting up the roof on Saturday! We talked about going up in the scissor lift and trying to just hang and throw our body weight around to get the roof to slide down. Instead we moved the boom truck around to the back of the gazebo and used the boom to “push” down on that side of the roof. We got all but two holes lined up and ended up drilling new holes for those last couple of holes.

I had this brilliant idea to cover the center top ring with the panel I had cut in half earlier in the assembly process. I wanted to just use one piece of the panel but it was not wide enough. So my awesome idea was to just stack them like a cross at 90 degrees, drill a hole and put an eyelet on top then drill four more holes and put the eyelets in the opposite direction so I could then anchor the new “free” lid to the center ring. The wife was away at church and I was sure this was going to work. The big issue was neither myself or Mr Rainman knew how to tie quick release knot. The second knot I tried was called an exploding clove-hitch knot and it held 60# of metal and let us raise it 45’ into the air with the wind blowing! I wanted to release the hitch as soon as it hit the roof but Mr Rainman wanted to wait until we knew it would work.

We went up in the scissor lift and started working on getting it attached. As we were getting ready to attach it he asks me if we should go down in the lift, walk out and look up to see how it appeared from the sidewalk. I naysayed this suggestion immediately! I was tired and wanted to be done. We got it all tightened down when the wife pulled up and promptly walked over and started saying “no” repeatedly. It was all Mr Rainman could do to not fall over laughing. So we dropped the lift and I went and looked. It did not look the greatest but I did not want to spend a $600 plus for a new cap if I could even find one so I got her to agree to let me use the cap idea as long as I cut the cross into a circle. Of course I thought I had a lot of metal cutting wheels and ended up only having two new ones and two used ones. I got it cut with my big DeWalt 60v grinder. I had half a disc left and only exploded one disc.

The amazing exploding clove-hitch was again used. It was easier to tie the second time and it did work as we tried it out after we brought down the cross. We got the round one up, we dropped the scissor lift, looked at it and then tried to anchor it down. This necessitated a trip to the hardware store to get shorter tighteners. We got six tighteners on it and it is not going anywhere. The knot gave way when it was pulled from the ground, we used 100’ rope and tied the knot in the middle of the rope.

All the equipment was moved out so it could be picked up on Monday. Again the scissor lift required some pulling to get it out of the gazebo but it was a down hill trip to the driveway so I was able to get it out without any more assistance. So it only cost about $1100 to rent equipment and I only had 2.5 hours of run time on the scissor lift and 2 hours of run time on the boom truck. Yes, I do know that I probably should have done that 3-4 weeks earlier. So learn from my hesitancy/cheapness and just rent the equipment early. It is a dang sight safer that is for sure.

Predators 10, Farm 8

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well it could not last, the predators are ahead again. At least this year it took them until September to get ahead. We are losing chickens daily now. They have killed eight chickens so I am down to 15 hens now. I will need another two dozen hens at this rate by the spring. This could really screw up my egg production next year. Bottom line as long as we make about one dozen eggs a week we can personally eat fresh eggs. No one else will get them but they don’t have chickens. Our plan is to move up creating a better Fort Knox for the chickens. We will finish the wire roof over the entire chicken run. Since there is an auto door going into the run now and it stays open 30 minutes after the sun goes down the chickens will all have time to at least get into the yard before that gate shuts down. This way any late chickens will be protected. They may be tormented by the predators trying to get into the chicken run but as long as a raccoon cannot get through the wire we should be good.

The other two deaths are newborn lambs. I counted them last week and there were only 13, there should have been 14. I walked the entire barn lot and could not find a corpse. I chalked it up to a miscount on my part. This is a common occurrence so it was an easy assumption. I was counting lambs today when we tag and banded them and there were only 12 lambs! Again, no corpse anywhere in the barn lot.

We talked about moving the lambs and mommas into the ram pasture and putting the other sheep out into the barn lot. But on further reflection we just decided to utilize the barn. It is ready, dug out, clean and has fresh bedding. We will just start doing the nighttime feed in there so the sheep will come automatically every evening. I locked everyone into the barn tonight. Mr Rainman will let everyone out in the morning when he comes to clean up.

We worked on the gazebo today until I pulled the not safe card. We then went and tagged and banded an even dozen lambs. We had someone reach out and ask us to save an intact ram boy. We saved a pure white one, the biggest of the lambs. He got a tag in the left ear and was not banded. This time around it is an even split between boys and girl lambs.

We then cleaned up the root cellar, put away tools and cleaned off the old house porch. Tomorrow, Mr Rainman will walk all the stream beds and pick up trash/limbs/lumber from them. We want to get all of this cleaned up before the spring ,when water starts running again. There are some boards that need to go into the burn pile and a second burn pile has been started up in field four, he will get all the loose material up there and toss it into the pile. We will have to wait until late fall after the rain starts to burn.

We are working on a list of things that need to be done in October when I take off on vacation, more like a staycation and farm catch up.

Danger gazebo project halted

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The platform was all ready and my only goal was to finish the roof over the weekend. We got a ladder tied into the center so that I could manipulate the center ring and bolt the wedges to the ring. It took us over two hours to get the first piece bolted in place. We had to keep jockeying the platform up, forward and back. Nothing seemed to be working so we started to lift the platform even higher, then higher. I had forgotten what it was like to stand on a ladder for hours at a time. You are constantly trying to balance yourself. Well maybe not a normal ladder but one suspended on a shaky platform anchored at the bottom and top so the ladder doesn’t fall off or lean backwards is a little different. On a side note the hydraulics have a very slight leak that is letting the forks drop a couple of inches over 15 minutes. This doesn’t seem like a bunch but when you are trying to line up four 1/4” bolt holes that is a lot of movement. It’s also very hard to move the bucket 1/4”!

So instead of moving the tractor bucket all of the time I started using a three foot span of 2×4 as a lever to move the ring enough to get the holes lined up. Then I started adding shims to hold it into its new spot. This went on for six hours and I only managed to get four panels totally bolted in place and three more up onto the ring. My legs and arms were cramping and the metal pieces were starting to get hot in the sun. It was time to call it a day. We cut four 2×4 and put them under the tractor forks so the platform could not sink overnight.

Today was the day, there are 24 roof wedges and we only had four bolted in and three more up so almost 25%. But we now knew what we were doing and the rest should be easy. Not even. It was discovered that the far end of the ring is sagging a lot. I needed to lift the center ring up another ten inches. I ended up putting ten inches of shimming under the two far sides. Since we had managed to get seven panels up onto the center ring it is incredibly hard to move with all that weight on it. I had Mr Rainman crawl up a ladder on the outside of the gazebo to reach out with a tape measure we need 108” for a roof panel, we were at 94”. I was hollering at him to take it easy crawling up the side of the gazebo as it was causing the entire platform to shimmy and shake in the air. There was no way I was going to be able to shim another foot. Not without causing the platform and all that metal crushing down on me. It was officially not Steve safe. OSHA and I have pretty drastic differences when it comes to safety but I do have some standards. I do own two roof harnesses. But no way am I going to finish this project this way.

I need a crane and a scissor lift to get the roof on safely. Using those two pieces of equipment I think we can get it done in 16 hours. So a two day rental should be enough to get it done. Now I have to find a crane and scissor lift and get them delivered to the farm. We will use the crane to grab the center ring, lift up 10 inches and then tear down the entire platform. Once the platform is torn down we will be able to drive the tractor out of the center of the gazebo and drive in the scissor lift. This will mean the tractor will be trapped in the front yard until we are done. Not really a big deal as the tractor is currently stuck holding up the platform now.

Unfortunately, this is going to add to the total price of the gazebo. But that cannot be helped. Those six weeks doing nothing with a broken foot did not do my fitness level any good. Plus, I am just starting to be able to get back into some hard manual labor without petering out in a couple of hours. I do not want to fall or have something fall on me and take me out for months or a year. I will call a couple of rental agencies on Tuesday.

Stuck. Need more equipment

Predators 6, Farm 8

Steve Hardin1 Comment

The sheep are still giving birth one at a time on the occasional day. The one a day trickle is very annoying. We are only two weeks into this birthing process. The rams only had eight weeks with the herd so we should only have about 8 weeks left as we should take into account any late births.

Newborn about two hours old

I lost more chickens again to the raccoons. The weird part is they did not kill them at night. They came up the dry creek bottom and killed them in the morning, three chickens gone. Mr Rainman managed to shoot at one as they were running away. They have not returned but since there was no body we don’t get to count them on the predator dispatch count. Otherwise, it would be artificially inflated! The predators are coming in closer to the barn and house. I had two lamb corpses to go up to the boneyard that I had placed over the fence. Mr Rainman went to take them up to the boneyard the next day and the coyotes had come down to the gate and taken them. There were no bodies. We use woven fence to keep the sheep in but it also helps keep the coyotes out. They usually have to dig under the fence to get past it. This is why it is recommended that you run a single strand of barb wire at the ground level on a sheep pasture fence. I don’t do this but it is the recommendation. I usually just fill in the hole but after losing so many sheep last year I put a snare in the crossing now.

Last night when the progeny was returning home after dark she spotted a possum leaving the mother-in-law’s back yard. The Gingerman jumped out and dispatched the possum. I had been noticing a steady decline in eggs recently and figured there was a possum around. They will sneak into the coop during the day and eat the eggs. They rarely kill the chickens but they love the eggs! They are super hard to get rid of because we are gone during the day usually or out and about on the farm.

It is dove season now so we are starting to thin out the doves. There are over a 100 now on the place and they are competing with the quail. We like the quail over all other birds and have worked for the last 20 years to protect and grow them. There are several coveys on the farm but we won’t know how many are on the place until it starts getting cold and they all come down to the houses to winter over. They know where the easy food is located. Hopefully, the population is over a 200. It waxes and wanes pretty significantly. We have had as few as 30 and over 200 over the years. The last few years we have managed to keep over 100 at any time on the place. But this is the most doves we have ever had on the place. Only about 25% of them are the ring neck version. These are invasive and quite a bit larger than the native doves.

We are now seeing bunny rabbits on a regular basis but still only seeing one at a time and only in a couple of places on the farm. They are the dwarf bunnies native to Oregon. I think the owls and hawks love rabbit and they just cannot reproduce fast enough to get ahead of the depredation. They are maintaining a small population.