spring

Getting ready for spring

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Well it finally quit raining for a bit last week and I was able to get outside. Our bulbs we planted in the fall are finally starting to emerge. Now I just gotta work on keeping the grass down in the flower bed. We have not seen any honeybees out this spring so Annmarie has plans to open up the bee hive this weekend to see if they are still alive.

I was able to go out and fill the barn with food for the sheep and since I was out in the barn lot I decided to fix the new gate that the cows bent over. I ended up rolling the gate on one end about eight inches in an attempt to tighten it. The problem was once I did that I could not get the bottom of the gate to stretch into the bottom wire. So I ended up installing a second ratcheting tightener on the bottom also so that I can just tighten the bottom and top at the same time. I got the fence pretty tight but when I went to the middle and hit the top, like a cow, it bent over again. I ended up having to install some triangles to stiffen the fence. Now, the cows cannot just push it over and we can still open the gate if needed without too much difficulty.

I was able to use some Tried & True finish on the oak trim in the bathroom. I needed to finish the trim before I can install the rest of the crown molding that I had to take down to install the cabinet. I even found the correct crown molding, after my third attempt but then I could not find the correct white nails so I had to order some more. Hopefully, I can install the crown molding this weekend.

Annmarie has decided that since I have had pneumonia twice this last winter that I need to workout to stay in shape. My version of working out and hers are not identical. I want something productive to come out of physical exertion. So now as long as it is not raining I am changing clothes when I get home and going out to work on the rock wall. I need to redo about 60% of the completed and then finish the rest. For some reason I kept scooting the wall outward and did not keep it in a straight line. I started digging it back in the middle and once I got it deep enough I found the original base. I still don’t know why I did not do this the first time. It will take a while to get it done but I am starting to make some visible progress.

It has not frozen in two weeks and everything is stating to turn green. I am going to plant peas this next week in the garden and maybe even spinach. The beets we planted in the fall have all snapped back from winter and are starting to grow again. I am going to have to get the two used horse troughs out into the garden and start getting them filled with gravel and dirt. I really want to grow some blueberries but am unsure where to plant them in the garden. I am thinking I may plant them out in the orchard proper along the fence. I still think I want to grow them in elevated bins. This will really help with the deer, sheep and bunny rabbit issues that we have out here.

Spring activities continue

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Despite the need to finish the bathroom other work still has to happen on the farm. Mr Rainman came out on Monday evening to help me sort and load cows. We wanted to sell off our four largest Dexter cows, there were 11 for sale and we don’t have enough meat customers for that many animals. I happened to look into the stock trailer while Mr Rainman was hooking it up and spotted the kittens. I just tossed two pallets over a couple of horizontal telephone poles to make a cubby and then moved the kittens out into that hiding spot. It was only about eight feet from where they were originally. I figured out the momma would hear them and deal with it. She did, Annmarie spotted her moving the kittens an hour later.

We got the four cows separated from the other seven and loaded them into the trailer. Only one refused to go into the trailer. She had gotten turned around and would not back up. We just let her out of the chute and ran her around again. This time we did not let her slow down in the chute so she could not turn around . As always it was a five minute gig to just drop off the cows at the auction. We got the check on Saturday. We had one heifer and three steers. The heifer sold for $2/# and steers $1.75/#. They did very good. I was hoping for $1.50/#.

I was able to get another friend to hatch out a dozen straight run chicks for me. She will replace any roosters with new chicks when I can determine gender. I thought I had eliminated all but two of the roosters from the January batch but yesterday I saw two crow that were not on my list! I only want two roosters so I will be looking a lot closer to determine who is a rooster and who isn’t. I will have to thin out at least three more I think. One of the new chicks died by fratricide. Its fellow baby chicken sat on it after it got behind the feeder. So now there are 11 chicks.

Our asparagus did not die last year! We had four shoots pop up from the strawberries this week. We planted ten plants but it is just now starting to warm up at our house consistently and we think that is why we are behind our neighbors on growth rate. We still only have four shoots buy there is still some life and we thought we had killed it all. We want to get another container going for just asparagus.

We had a lamb that got sick and had to be put down. We have had two more sets of twin lambs and think we are all done lambing. We have put all of the sheep back together into one herd. We are only locking them up into the ram pasture now at night. They can go in and out of the barn freely as they want.

Annmarie is working on getting all of the garden, lavender, herb water going today but as always there is some part we are needing to get the job done. She has a shed full of drip line and 1/2” PVC connectors but there is always one thing. We will keep working on this until it is done.

Prepping for bathroom supplies and trying to finish old items

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I had Mr Rainman come out this week to try and finish up some projects we had already started. He was able to shove both burn piles back together so they are ready for a second burn. After that he worked on cleaning out the spring channel. We still had a lot of flood related branches and brambles clogging up the waterway even though it has been a few years. We have not been able to really find the time to do this cleanup but since we are burning we decided that adding to the burn pile was a necessity. There is still some cleanup to be done but it is a ton better than it was.

That same flood caused a tunnel to form under one of the culverts. It’s the only culvert we have over the spring. Mr Rainman is convinced that the ground around it is going to cave in any second. He brought in two loads of rocks and put them in the holes appearing around the culvert. He had to do it again the next day. I figure if he does it one or two times more he will have filled in the tunnel next to the culvert and we should be good. He is saving his “I told you so” for when the tractor falls in the hole. We have agreed to disagree and he has the “I told you so” ready.

He was able to finish moving the last of the black walnut from the old chicken coop to the grain bin. Once he did that he proceeded to clean up the old chicken coop. I was pretty surprised by how much dirt and debris he was able to get out of the coop. I cleaned it up a decade ago. The plan was to create space so we can move the tools and bins from the old house out to the old chicken coop.

He also ended up moving things around so we had a clear side. This will work great for the move out of the old house. We will tackle the move this weekend when there are two of us. Some of the cabinets are very heavy and I needed to go through all of the items.

Spring cleaned out finally

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Gingerman and the daughter came home for the weekend. I had plans on not doing anything outside as we needed to get the Christmas decorations finished. Annmarie had her village all set up but the rest of the house had nothing but a bare tree. Saturday morning it only took about an hour to get all of the rest of our Christmas stuff set up. The Gingerman had brought his large chainsaw with big bar and he wanted some directions on which trees to cut. This gave me a great reason to abandon the Christmas setup (we were on the last thing). So I put on a vest and went outside, the weather was amazing, it was almost 50 F. I grabbed a chain and fired up the Kubota and we drove out to field #4b.

Way before we moved back, 18 years ago, someone had felled a bunch of large trees and then they pushed them next to the existing trees instead of removing or burning them. There has not been running water down that part of the field for a long time before we moved back. We have had running water now for almost five years from the spring above. I have been wanting to cut those trees up and burn them forever but they are so massive they won’t come out with the tractor and I tried to burn a few and only got a partial burn.

The Gingerman was able to make a few cuts before his saw heated up and quit working. So this gave me time to move the pieces out and start stacking them up. We opted to just keep the piles on each side so I did not have to try and carry any wood across the spring. I was able to drive the tractor through the ditch and onto the other side without difficulty.

This worked pretty great as the Gingerman kept helping me and the saw kept cooling off. So about the time I had everything on the pile he was able to cut a few more pieces. There were a couple of casualties. I managed to poke out one of the headlights from a branch sticking out of the burn pile. I was trying to get closer to dump off wood on the center of the pile. Near the end I used the tractor forks to break up dead branches from the live trees and managed to bend the backstop on the forks some. It still works just fine, I just twisted a part near the top of the backstop.

I ended up feeding the cows a large bale then dropped off the forks and the weight bucket on the 3 point hitch. The tractor dealer is coming out this week to take it in for some annual maintenance. I have a list of items that need to be repaired also that I will tape to the steering wheel tomorrow.

I am hopeful that Mr Rainman can come out one day this next week and finish cleaning up the small branches near the spring and hopefully we will have a burn day soon. We want to burn both piles.

That only took a couple of hours and I decided to get started on creating our vanity for the bathroom remodel. So I started tearing apart the dresser and removing the bottoms from all of the drawers. Normally, I would not do that but this had been inhabited by a lot of mice. So I sanded the entire cabinet inside and out. I want the vanity to look aged so I half sanded the finish. I will clean it up then stain over it all and then seal it up. It should still look very old. We need to order new handles and drawer pulls. I still have one drawer to tear apart but someone at some point has already tried to repair the dresser. So I have been sanding glue and chipping drawer bottom out of the grooves. Originally, those bottoms would have been held in place by two nails at the back of the drawer. They should have been super easy to remove. Instead they had a lot of glue and extra nails. The last drawer has OSB glued to the bottom! This will be the drawer that I cut part out for the plumbing. I will have to do this to one of the top half size drawers also. They will be super narrow in the front, 6-8” at most.

I will draw out the holes on the top and then drill them out. This way I can just take the vanity to the stone countertop place and have them match the top shape and the holes.

Getting ready for contractor

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Last weekend I had to start getting things ready for the contractor. They were going to come out and start tearing the old vinyl siding off and get ready for the new LP Smartside siding. The trouble is I needed to get some things done. I had to remove everything away from the house so ladders, boards, some TREX decking I had left over were moved away from the house. I had to take down the temporary fence on the North side of the yard. I really just rolled it up most of the way. I had never set the posts yet or added a gate as we knew any contractor would have to get over on this side with equipment.

They wanted to bring in a 60’ cherry picker and that meant getting across or through the front spring. I had created a crossing for the septic pump truck but the driver did not want to chance it and was able to reach the tank from our driveway. I had dug out the large rocks I had used for the crossing. So I tore down the temporary crooked fence I had stopping the horse and sheep from getting out of the main barn lot. I filled the crossing with 2-3” rocks and packed it all down by driving over it with the tractor. Some of the water is flowing through the rocks but mostly it is crossing a wide spot with about 2” of water. I used part of the temporary horse corral panels we had blocking the narrow creek side of the barn lot. This can only be temporary as I need those panels to block off the spring access when we run cows through the barn lot. So I may have to insert a small fence. I am thinking about just making a wire gate. We will almost never use this crossing but it is nice to have the option. I am tired of buying new metal gates at $350/each. I need about another 10 gates and am now going to be selective in which ones get a metal gate. I did find three more metal gates while I was out and about on the farm. It took me a few hours to get all of this up and in place.

I salvaged what honey I could from the hive that died in early winter and was able to collect five half pints. We had them all sold in about ten minutes. We could easily sell 5-10 gallons of honey annually we just cannot produce anywhere near that! We are looking at getting another Nuc and starting a second hive this spring.

Every once in a while I find one of these salamanders when I pick up a plank that has been on the ground for way too long! I am pretty sure we have one living down in the main water shutoff access hole. They are pretty calm. I no longer disturb them and just let them wander off on their own. We are so looking forward to getting the siding completed.