Mr Rainman

Fencing progress

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Mr Rainman has been coming out to work on finishing up the fencing. We need to get the gate installed up at field #1. That way we can drive up alongside the wheat field and directly into the field. Otherwise, we have to drive through field three across the width, into field #2 and drive the entire length and width to get to the only access into field #1.

It took him a couple of days to get the railroad ties set, H braces installed and the gate hung. It takes the tractor with forks on it to hang the gate. You have to get the height at the exact spot before you can drill the holes and attach the gate. We will need to attach a cow panel to the gate so the sheep cannot crawl through the gate. Only the lambs are small enough but they don’t need to get out into the wheat field.

I found a spring steel T clip for attaching wire to metal T-posts that requires no tools online. I ordered a 1000 and will be testing them out. If they work then this will be a huge time saver as installing 8 clips on every T post does take time, especially if you are trying to get the bottom one on tight. Between the new clips, tractor post hole auger, the electric fence stapler and the T-post tractor bucket driver we have managed to really cut down on the time to install new fencing. Now if there was a way to get a robot to build it all that was not super expensive.

The puppy and I went to town and bought some more smooth wire high tensile strength tighteners. We then went down to the four corners field and started working on digging holes. We need to get the railroad ties installed and 3-5 round wooden posts. The T-posts will fill in the rest of the fence. I had forgotten that a lot of the holes had been drilled last year. I managed to clean out two, start in on a third and dig a ledge into a 16’ section of hillside to create a flat spot for the fence. We have to hang a panel over the ditch for water runoff. Once we get that fence installed then the animals will be able to clean up that corner and keep it knocked down.

We had 1.68” of rain last weekend so nothing got done outside. It is now almost 80 F this weekend so all of the greenery is shooting up again. Luckily, Mr Rainman had most of the spraying done except some backpack work alongside the ditch. So our fields are looking great and this year we hit most of the fence lines with RoundUp and that is helping our weed management. In another month we will have to start spraying the hillside for yellow star thistle. It has not emerged yet, it has not been hot enough.

We are also going to set up a gate that can be closed across the driveway when we are working cows. No more stray cows barreling down the driveway and jumping across the cattle guard. The gate will just stay open all of the time until we are working the animals. That is the majority of the fencing that needs to be done this year. We are going to have to start haying in about six weeks.

Alpaca disappointment

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Today Mr Rainman and I went over to a neighbor’s house to pickup some old bags of mortar mix and some calcium field conditioner. It went well and he is always a pleasure to visit. Once those were unloaded it was time to decide which section of fence to work on, the driveway, four corners or the upper gate? We opted to work on the driveway. I wanted to get the wild rose bushes protected from the alpaca during their growing seasons. The alpaca will not let them grow through the fence. They will nibble off every single little green spot they can reach. The Roundup that was sprayed on the driveway is starting to kick in and you can see it working. The game birds and rabbits love to hide in the rose bushes. We lifted the woven wire up off the ground four inches so the little animals can still crawl under the fence. This took us about five hours to install posts and 300’ of woven fence.

The Gingerman came over to help us get the “little dumper” truck onto the flat bed so I could get the brakes worked on. I failed to take into account that the truck was the length of the trailer and all weight is only on the tires. The trailer looked like an upside down U. The Gingerman had to drive it off the trailer and park it in front of the house. He will buy a master cylinder for the brakes and see if he can get the brakes working because my trailer is not going to work. When it starts to warm up consistently I will need to get back to working on replacing all of the rubber window sills.

We finally got some rain! It has rained almost 1/2” over the last five days. We had gone almost three weeks without any rain. The grass needed the moisture. Now I hope it will rain every week for a month.

A lot of little things

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Saturday was a full day for us and farm work was not going to happen. Mr Rainman came out and spent the day catching up a lot of little things. I had purchased 20 bags of sand, 15 stepping stones and 12 bags of pea gravel the day before for the projects. He started by working in 18 bags of sand into our future asparagus/strawberry elevated bed out in the lavender area. Our two year asparagus crowns had just arrived on Wednesday and they needed to be planted. He had two bags left over and I used those when I planted the 24 crowns that evening. We don’t get to do anything but hope they survive this year and maybe next year we will get to harvest some asparagus as it will be three years old by then. The Gingerman is bringing us some strawberry starts next month and we will put those right on top. The Lavender only gets watered twice a week so we are going to put the asparagus on the same circuit as them.

Annmarie has been wanting to be able to feed the cats barefoot but now that we have to walk across eight feet of rough gravel she has been requesting stepping stones. He got a channel dug and then the concrete steps set. Once he got the gravel around everything he watered it really well and then reapplied gravel. The extra gravel went outside the fence on the yard side. We are going to make a small gravel area by the gate so the extra gravel went there. It turned out very nice. The only thing left is to extend the cat rain roof so their food gets better protection when it rains. I need to extend the sides down and put a front on so the snow cannot blow in as easily.

The next project is purely a Mr Rainman idea. We had been talking about various ways to fill in the old flower beds in the mud room. He had suggested filling them up with pea gravel. This was a wonderful idea so I picked up 12 bags. The only real problem is even though it was bagged it was still pretty dirty. So he brought the cement mixer over and washed the pea gravel in it. When it was clean he dumped it out on the ground and scooped it up for the mud room. It looks great! I decided it needed a little help drying before we moved the cabinet and shoes back in place. So I started up a small electric heater and cracked open the window. It’s been 24 hours and I think it will take 3-4 days to get the pea gravel all dried out! Once it is then all of the stuff can be put back in place. Mouse is grumpy because his food area is cluttered and he does not like it.

The last thing he did for the day was gets all of the garden beds cleaned out and an old wooden barrel cleaned out and tossed onto the burn pile. It was too far gone and had a large hole in it. We are still holding off on planting the garden due to the freezing temperatures

The contractor came out and installed two of the three windows but they were not double hung. He had ordered double hung but was not given them. New ones are on order. Our new siding should be delivered May 13, 2024. They will start on the sides away from where the windows need replaced.

Our cows started having calves 2 days ago! We now have two calves on the ground and healthy. There are 7-9 to go, I am unclear on how many cows are pregnant.

Getting caught up

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I spent most of the day just puttering around doing little things. Sometimes it seems like I don’t do much on those days but it all needs to be done eventually. I watered our three new fruit trees, two apricots and a peach tree. They are still in buckets and I will get them in the ground next week. They are all blooming so I will have to pick off the fruit as soon as it shows up. I don’t want them to produce fruit this first year, I want them to grow and spread their roots.

We had already moved our chive plant up to the front porch entrance pots. I split it in half so we could have some in each pot. So today I split our edible creeping thyme into two bunches and put it around the base of the chives. We would like the thyme to grow over the side of the pots. The thyme was in an old half wine barrel in the back garden area. When we moved the barrel the entire back is rotted out so it needs to go away. We will use the soil in the other garden planters then I can burn the rotten barrel. Both planters got a good soaking with water to start them on their way.

I dug thistles on the front hillside. Since we are trying to establish clover we cannot use any type of herbicide on the hillside. So all thistles are dug with a shovel. This took quite a while to get done. As soon as I finished that I went and cut ends for our tomato enclosures. Annmarie wanted panels on the end to keep the cats out so she could plant basil plants between the tomato plants. I almost found enough clips to hold them in place correctly. I need four more small clips. Now that I think about it there may be four out in the old house. I will have to check sometime.

I have been slowly working on the Bell! I run the wire brush over it to clean up the rust then hit it with some Rustoleum spray paint. I have been doing this for over a year. Today I decided to just hit it and make some solid progress. Mr Rainman and I had lifted the bell off its stand a couple of weeks ago so I had a lot better access to the bell. I got both uprights sanded and painted. I ran out of dark blue spray paint so now it is a bright blue. I went over to the old house and found eight more cans of spray paint so I figured the bell was getting whatever color I had on hand. I was able to break loose the bolts holding the ringer gear onto the bell. I cleaned the bolts up and ran the threads over their entire length to make sure I could tighten them on the reassembly. I then worked on the ringer gear and got it all cleaned up. I am not going to paint the bolts until I get them on the bell. I think another two hours and I will have the entire bell body cleaned up and painted. Once that is done I will need to make a new wooden base for the bell. Then I need to buy four 2x8x20’ boards and I can mount the bell in the upper portion of the hay side of the machine shed. This will keep it totally out of the weather.

Since the Gingerman got the Little Dumper running yesterday I figured I had better do my part. I went over to look at the door rubber seals. I ended up having to grind down some rusted screws holding a metal plate to the bottom of the door. It was just one solid horizontal piece of rust. I was able to grind the tops off and pry the metal piece off. I then had to grind down the screws until they were flush and smooth before installing the new rubber seal. I managed to get the seal on and only had to cut about one inch out of the bottom middle and use seal glue to put the gasket back together. I tried to take the screws out of the door so I can gain access to the window but there was one screw I could not budge. I will need to spray some penetrating oil on it and hope I can budge it next week.

I have all of the door seals and the front and back window seals. The front window seal needs to replaced ASAP. It is torn and has multiple holes in it. The rear window seal looks great but since I have a new one I might as well replace the old. I did try and latch the passenger door but it would not seal tightly. One more thing to adjust and repair on the old truck. I suspect the rotating mechanism is not rotating! I know, it took a pure genius to figure that out. When I get the panel off to get at the window I will be able to get at the door lock/handle mechanism at the same time.

Mud room 99% done

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We are now using it officially. There are two little things left to complete the entire job and honestly they are going to wait. I need to trim out the window and I need to add another outlet on the other side of the door. Both of those things are not a rush and the power thing requires me to kill power to the entire house/old house out at the pole in the front yard. So no one can be home when I do that. Mr Rainman got the shelf wood supports installed and the short side shelves installed. We had to wait for the metal brackets to arrive before the shelves over the doors could be placed. Luckily, the brackets came with both long and short screws so I did not have to make a special trip to town to get short black screws that go directly into the shelf. I bought too much cedar closet lining. I was thinking it would go on both walls but after installing it on one side the smell was pretty overpowering so I decided one side was good enough. I am ordering a little UV light bug trap also and will give that a try and see if we cannot keep the bugs under control. We built a custom shelf for the new food dryer from leftover wood scraps. I had to adjust the lumen output on the overhead light from 3400 lumen to 5200. The shelves cut down on the light but using a 1×2’ LED light has made all the difference. The room is not dark. Yesterday, I got all of the metal supports and last two shelves installed.

I spent today finishing emptying out the laundry room and moving all of the raw alpaca fiber bins out to the mud room. There are still a couple of pair of boots but the laundry room is fairly empty now. It is quite nice and now needs a deep clean! I ordered a couple of rubber shoe mats and a foot stool so you can sit down if you need to put your shoes on. Not necessary for rubbers but if we have to break out the snow boots you definitely need a place to sit down to lace them up. I ordered an extension cord today for the dryer also, the cord was too short to get to the outlet.

Mr Rainman had a good idea, he said to buy bagged pea gravel to fill in the old planter spots. It’s washed and we probably only need 6-8 bags. It will be easy to move and easy to install. As soon as the local stores start selling their spring yard stuff I will get some. I also need to get some stepping stones so that Annmarie can get to the cat shelf in her socks. Now you have to cross six feet of sharp gravel to feed the cats. We used to just toss it on the back porch! It is the one downfall to the mud room, you cannot just open the door and feed the outside cats. It is a small price to pay for the mud room. I love it!