I had originally been thinking of working in a different area today, to remove more dead and damaged trees in the West yard. That pile of apple branches, however, was bothering me.
So I started breaking that down, instead. Here are the before and after pictures.
This is as far as I got, before it started to rain.
I’ve been breaking it down to firepit sized pieces, to make it easier later on. I have to admit, as I cut some of the larger pieces, I find myself thinking that … some of them look pretty good … maybe I could salvage some of them… It seems like such a waste to burn this beautiful apple wood! I wouldn’t even want to use it for a cookout, since I don’t know how the fungal disease would affect the smoke. But gosh, apple is a beautiful wood!
I made very good use of the new long handled pruners I got not long ago. It was going through nice thick branches like nothing! I used to have to use a saw for a lot of these. I noticed, however, there was a rattling noise that seemed to increase. And was that anvil supposed to rotate with the cutting blade like that?
Nope.
At some point, we lost a bolt. There is no nut at the other side. It looks like a proprietary shape, too. Or at least not something I have seen when perusing the section at the hardware store.
It has a lifetime warranty, though, so I looked up the website and sent an email with the above photo and another of the bar code (because, of course I don’t have the receipt anymore… LOL) as proof of purchase. We’ll see how that goes. I might just zip tie it in place for now.
Hmmm… It looks like the rain has already passed. I might be able to finish breaking down the pile today, after all. :-)
While putting away the push mower yesterday, I was going to take the time to start up the riding mower and see what I could see. I always push the mower out of the garage before starting it, but I never got it all the way out. I could hear a different sound, like something was dragging underneath. I pushed it forward again, and it was still there.
I did not notice the sound when I pushed the mower to the garage, but there were plenty of other noises that would have drowned it out.
So I let it be for now.
This morning, I found an email from my brother. He had emailed me an electronic copy of the user’s manual. Having looked over it first, he wrote that – based on my description of what happened – he figured the drive chain either broke or fell off, then asked if I could get photos from above and below.
As soon as I read “drive chain”, I knew that was what I was hearing.
When I finished my rounds, I went in to try and get some photos. There’s nothing to see from above, and from below, it was a matter of sticking my phone under, and various angles, and using voice commands to take pictures. I’m not able bodied enough to get onto the ground to see. After the first few pictures, though, I could figure out where I needed to concentrate on.
Yup. There it was.
The manual had information about how the chain can become loose over time, and how to tighten it.
Which we have no way of doing.
I mean, theoretically, someone could get down on the ground and do it by feel, but if I’m going to do something like that, I want to be able to see. Not just the chain, but to know if there are other potential problems under there.
One of the things we’re going to need to build is a platform we can roll the mower up onto, so we can get under to work on it. We could certainly use various things we have to lift it, but there’s safety to take into account, too. Whatever we use has to be able to hold the weight and keep things from rolling around. We do have jack stands that could be used, but… well, my late brother was killed when the car he was working under, fell on him after a jack stand failed. So, I’m a little more paranoid about such things these days. :-/
I’ve already told my brother he’s not allowed to come fix it. LOL He’s got so much going on, I don’t want to be another burden for him.
So it will wait until we can take it in to the shop as I was already planning to do, later in the month.
At least the chain does not look broken, and it seems like it will be a relatively easy fix.
Wouldn’t you know it, since I was planning on heading out early, I ended up not being able to sleep at all last night.
Which is why I was awake when the edges of the predicted storms passed us by. At about 5am, the winds picked up like crazy, there was some rain and quite a light show, but that was it. We did lose internet a few times, too.
In the end, I managed about an hour of sleep before I quickly did my morning rounds. No time for kitty pictures. Sorry!
The first thing I saw when I stepped outside was this…
One of the dead branches from an elm finally came down.
Aside from the usual small, mostly willow, branches scattered about the yard, there was only one other larger branch that came down.
This is such a huge improvement from our first summer out here!
My mothers flowers seemed to really like the rain. The patch of lilies is starting to open up now. :-)
Such a cheerful colour!
After I rushed through the morning routine, I headed out to a small city, somewhat closer than the city we usually go to, for our monthly shopping. After doing some searching online of the several hardware stores we could go to, including the local ones, I ended up settling on Canadian Tire. Thanks to Father’s Day sales and the incredible generosity of a friend (you know who you are! You’re the best!!), I was able to afford a higher end machine that we otherwise would have.
I made a point of getting a photo of my screen, so I could show an employee exactly what I was after, if needed. It was needed! There was no display model I was after, so the employee went to their storage area to bring it out for me on a flat cart.
When I bought our electric snow blower, I got their last one in stock, and just wheeled it out of the store. Somehow, I expected to do that same today, but nope! It was in a rather large box. :-D
While checking out, the cashier said she would call someone to help me load it into the van. She ended up paging someone several times. The box wasn’t really that heavy, so I was considering just letting her know I’d do it myself, when a guy showed up. As he was loading it into the van, he asked if I had oil.
I did, but I asked if there was a specific kind of oil I should have.
It turns out, I don’t have it. So I was really glad I ended up with this guy helping out. He also just happened to be a mechanic, and was soon telling me about which oils I could use, and which was the one he used and recommended himself. All my other machines, including the van, use 5W30, which he said would be a bit thin. For this machine, he recommended 30. Which I didn’t even realize was a thing. I ended up going back into the store after him and he found some for me. Once again, I was glad, because 1) it was at the opposite end of the store from the lawnmower sections and 2) I’m short. He was able to reach it more me. :-D
Once at home, it was assembly time!
Here are all the parts and pieces. :-D
All done, and filled with oil and fuel!
Among the things I discovered as I went through the owners manual before starting it, was that it has no prime pump, which is awesome. When I was ready to test it out, I discovered it is also raised and lowered by a lever at one wheel, instead of a lever at each wheel. So much easier!
The mower started with the first pull, and I barely even had to strain! With the heat (it’s currently 30C/89F, feeling like 36C/96F) right now, I did just a quick couple of passes.
It runs like a dream!!! I am so happy!
Then I put it away, because while it’s already 30C right now, we haven’t reached the high of the day, yet!
We have more thunderstorms predicted tonight, but I’m hoping to have a cooler break this evening, where I can put the new mower through it’s paces.
When things cooled down enough, I took advantage of the temperatures to break out the riding mower and try and get at least the lawn around the house done, before the predicted rains. Thanks to my brother, it was running fine.
And then it wasn’t.
This time, it happened while I was in the middle of mowing. I’d gotten the South yards done, and was working on the West yard, when it simply coasted to a stop. The engine was running fine, like before. I checked, and the tire pins were fine. I could see nothing to cause this to happen again.
It had already started to rain a bit while I was out there, so I quickly pushed it into the garage and brought out the push mower.
Now, the push mower has issues, too. The control for the governor seized up, so my brother rigged up a manual control directly to the governor. It has one speed only. The prime pump doesn’t work, so in order to start it, I have to open the filter cover on the side and splash a bit of fuel directly into the opening under the filter. Once it has been started, as long as I refill the gas tank before actually running out of fuel, I don’t have to do this again. It’s also difficult to start in general. If it’s been used for a long time, it eventually just won’t restart at all for several minutes. But it does the job.
Until now.
Yeah. The push mower, too.
Did I mentioned there’s only one speed? That is supposed to be “high”. Today, it seemed rather sluggish, though.
Then it stalled, at almost the exact same spot the riding mower stopped moving.
Thankfully, I was able to get it going, and keep it going. until the West yard was finished. I was just starting to work on the North side when it stalled again.
This time, it wouldn’t start again. I was not about to re-injure my wrist trying, either.
So that got put away, too.
I gave the riding mower another once over while I was in the garage, and noticed the one tire that turned out to be the cause of the problem last time, seemed low on air. I tried to see if there was something on the tire to tell me what the max pressure was, and found nothing – but the tire looks like it’s starting to crack on the sides. I pumped it up a bit, anyhow, then checked the other tire, which didn’t seem to need any air, and also didn’t have the cracks the first one did, though it does have the beginnings of them.
So while I was already planning to take it in for basic maintenance and to get the blades sharpened, it might need a new back tire, too.
And if it needs that, what else will they find when they check it out? While I’ve tried to be careful of the mower, there were still times when I hit hidden rough spots, and let’s face it; I’ve really worked that thing over the past two years! It may have been completely refurbished, but it’s still older, and a lot more delicate than newer lawn tractors.
Since I also need to make another deposit at the garage to get my mother’s car fixed, there isn’t a lot of room in the budget for much more. I didn’t try it again after pumping the tire, though, with the weather starting to turn.
I’m just tired.
Tired.
Drained.
Wasted.
I’m tired of having to make do with old and breaking equipment. I’m tired of even the good stuff breaking down so weirdly like this. I’m tired of finally being able to set some funds aside to go towards replacing the roof, only to have to dip into it because something else has broken down. I’m tired of having to pick and choose what we can fix, what we can replace, and what we have to make do with. It just doesn’t seem to end, and in the back of my mind, there’s always that touch of resentment.
It didn’t need to be this way.
My parents had a fully equipped and operational farm. They had tools. They had all sorts of supplies and parts and so many other things. Things that would have been very useful in maintaining the place. Things that were in good shape and working, only to either grow legs and walk away while this place was empty, or get broken through misuse.
Usually, I have no problem letting go of this. I tend to be the sort that recognizes that things like this happen, but I don’t waste my time or energy fussing over them. I don’t have the spoons to waste on that sort of thing. It isn’t worth it.
But every now and then, things like this happen, and it just feels so frustrating and tiring. It’s hard not to feel defeated.
I know I’ll be feeling better after a while. My daughters are making supper, and a good meal followed by a shower and good night’s sleep are just what the doctor ordered.
But for now, I’m just so tired.
Tomorrow, I am going to dip into our contingency fund and buy a new push mower.
Until then, I’m going to borrow my husband’s bath chair and shower off the layer of bug spray that kept me from being eaten alive while I was mowing! :-D
While doing my rounds this morning, I got to enjoy some lovely wildflowers.
I’m counting the cranberries as wild, since they are self-sown. ;-)
There is a path of flowers running along the south fence that my mother sowed many years ago and have been taking care of themselves, ever since. They’re doing much better, now that we’ve cleared that fence line as much as we have. The white flower in the first photo is the first of these to bloom; there are several more of them budding, and lots of buds on another type with purple flowers that look like they will be blooming, soon.
I don’t know what that tiny purple flower growing in the moss is. The flower looks like a miniature bearded iris!
The wild roses are blooming nicely, but on one of them – just one – I found this.
I’m used to seeing caterpillars eating the plants. Not beetles!
My daughters reminded me to check out the patch of nettles growing near the barn door into the hay yard, to see some caterpillars they found.
A few of the nettles are covered with these caterpillars. They’re not the canker worms I expected, and am more used to seeing around here, like these ones. I’ve just been looking them up and my memory was correct; cankerworms have a preference for trees, like maple and elm. They can also be incredibly destructive. About every 10 years or so, their populations explode and cause a lot of problems. In between those explosions, we don’t see them all that much at all.
These guys, from what I can find, may be the caterpillars for any of three different butterflies. None of the photos I’ve been able to find are helping much to identify them properly, but they could be Red Admiral, Tortoiseshell or Peacock butterfly caterpillars.
So… these are good things to have.
I hope!
Also, it’s not a good idea to walk through a nettle patch while wearing shorts. Especially after getting clawed up by kittens.
We are, however, supposed to get really hot today. As I write this, we’ve already reached 28C, with a “real feel” of 33C. (82F/91F). Thunderstorms are on the way, though from the weather radar, it looks like they’ll miss us. The system seems to be getting pushed up from the south a lot more than I usually see, and it looks like the storms are going to hit to the north of us. Other provinces have already been hit with severe storms, with golf ball sized hail and flash flooding. It’s been really crazy to see videos people have posted online. I don’t expect to be getting any of that here, though the high winds did bring down another, somewhat larger dead branch this morning. Nothing near any buildings, thankfully.
Basically, I’d managed to clear around an old tree stump, and not much else, before being driven indoors by the heat.
This time, I brought out the reciprocating saw to take down some of the larger things, including cutting the stumps of what I’d cleared before, to ground level.
One of the issues we have with using the outside plug is, even the weight of the cord itself tends to pulled it out enough to kill the power.
Today, I tried a solution that worked out just fine.
This pole used to have a bird feeder on it. I took the feeder off to repair it, but with the lilac growing over it, I don’t see use putting it back in this location again. At some point, we’ll pull it out, but for now, it’s coming in handy! :-D
Here is how the area I worked on looks now.
The branches in front, on top of a stump, are for the chipping/burn pile. I cleared as far back as the next stump.
This turned out to be a very finicky job. I kept having to pull things out by hand, like crab grass and small saplings growing out the roots of things I’d cut away last year, then raking out debris, just to get at the larger things I needed to cut down.
In the process, I uncovered a bunch of flowers. I don’t know what they’re called, but I’m finding them kind of all over the place.
I also uncovered these.
There are quite a lot of these very delicate little wildflowers! I tried not to pull any up as I cleared debris from around them.
Further in is where more cherry trees are. None of which have bloomed, that I ever saw. You can see on the right of this photo, the cherry trees that were killed off last spring, when we had a sudden drop in temperatures after they started blooming. They got fresh growth from their bases. I think I have identified one or two in this area that look like they are strong and healthy enough to keep. The rest will be taken out.
Meanwhile, covering the left half of the photo, berries are starting to form on what I believe are chokecherries!
These are pieces of cherry wood that I will be keeping for future projects.
This is the pile of debris I cleared away from that small area!
We’ve started a pile behind the old outhouse, of what is turning out to be a tree debris compost pile. Stuff that we don’t want to add to the chipping/burning piles, but that don’t belong in the compost pile, either.
When we get to the point where we will be building accessible raised bed gardens, debris like this will be used on the bottoms of the beds to help fill them.
It’s remarkable how much stuff came out of such a small area!
When next I work on this area, I want to start on the other side of where we want to put the cordwood outhouse, clearing more towards the junk/wood pile. There’s at least one old tree stump in there, plus fallen trees that need to be cleared out.
Those might end up being part of the walls of the outhouse! :-)
I’d like to be able to access the junk pile better, so we can go through it and see what wood in there can be salvaged, what needs to be added to the debris pile, and what needs to go into the junk pile that will be hauled to the dump.
There are two Saskatoons and an elm growing on that side. We’ll have to decide which, if any or all, of these will be kept.
There’s also a mound of… soil? beside it. I’d like to get rid of it, but it’s got a layer of grasses growing on it right now, so I can’t tell what it’s actually made up of. The other mystery pile out by the barn turned out to be a pile of insulation. I’m kind hoping this one is something like gravel, or even just dirt.
The goal at this point, though, it just to clear access to the junk pile, then get back to clearing the space the outhouse will be built on, and start clearing out the sod.
I’m happy to have gotten at least a little bit or progress in there today!
My daughters and I headed out towards the barn last night, and noticed the dogwood growing at the shed with the roof my brother and I patched is now blooming very enthusiastically!
It is such a strong, healthy bush! I’m hoping I can get away with leaving it alone, even though it’s growing right up against the shed. Unlike the maples growing along the side, I don’t think dogwood will grow in a way that will actively damage the shed.
While doing my rounds this morning, I noticed the Saskatoon bushes by the south fence have once again become infested. :-(
This is some sort of insect damage, and almost all the Saskatoon bushes along this area show some signs of it. Last year, there were very few Saskatoon berries, partly because the bushes were just not very healthy, and I believe this infestation is the reason. It doesn’t seem to be on any other type of tree around there, so whatever insect is doing this, they seem to have a preference for Saskatoons.
For the first time since noticing that something has been killing off sunflower seedlings, I found one where the leaves were still there. All the others, there was just a stub of a stem sticking out, and the leaflets were completely gone.
With a few other areas, I don’t expect any seedlings to break ground. The spots they were planted in appear to have been dug into by some critter. It may even have been skunks digging in the only soft soil in the area, looking for grubs, though the holes don’t look like the divots they usually leave in the yard.
My mother’s white lilacs, meanwhile, are at the peak of their blooming period!
Meanwhile, we had covered the squashes and cantaloupes last night, as the temperatures were expected to drop close to freezing. There was no frost warning, but it would still have been cold enough to hurt the squash and cantaloupes. They all looked just fine, when I uncovered them this morning. I’m glad we covered them. It got cold enough last night, that the furnace actually turned on!
After this, we aren’t expected to have temperatures that low again as far as the long range forecasts go. Hopefully, that will be the end of that!
Of course, I looked around at anything I could see to try and figure out why it stopped. The only thing I couldn’t do is look under it, because we can’t see under there without lifting it or removing things, and it’s too heavy to lift more than a corner. It’s not something we can just pick up at one end/side and tilt, either, due to the design.
So I pushed it into the garage and left it. The plan for mowing still involves using the push mower to get into areas the riding mower can’t, so I saw no issue with letting it wait until the end of the month, when we were already planning to take it in for some general TLC.
Then I got an email from my brother. He had needed to pick up a ball hitch, so he’d bought an extra one for out riding mower. This way, we can use it to pull the trailer, when that’s all fixed up.
In my response, I mentioned what happened with the riding mower.
Well, my brother – being the awesome person that he is – decided to pop over today. They were already on the way when my SIL phoned us to let us know they’d be going straight to the garage, and not going to the house (practicing physical distancing for my husband’s health), to install the ball hitch and check out the riding mower.
By the time I realized they were here and joined my brother at the garage, he was already done installing the ball hitch. He had also given the mower a once over, and couldn’t see anything wrong. Since I was there, he asked me to give it a try, while he watched. So I pushed it out of the garage, first, then tried starting it.
It wouldn’t start.
Then my brother noticed I forgot to turn the shut off valve on the fuel line. :-D He turned it for me.
Which is when he saw it.
The wheel was almost off the axle!!!
The back wheels are held in place by a bolt that runs through the axle, like a pin. We had to look at the other side to even remember what it was supposed to look like.
We propped the corner of the mower up on whatever we could find to support the weight, and my brother managed to hammer the wheel back on. Then he tried to make sure that the holes were still lined up.
They were, but the narrow screw he was using to check, couldn’t go through.
This was the culprit.
This was still stuck inside.
So, somewhere in our lawn, is the head of a bolt, and a nut, still on the other end of the bolt.
After much scrounging in the garage by all of us, my brother found another nut and bolt the right size, and got it on.
Once that was all fixed, he got me to test it out again.
The mower runs fine now.
Basically, once the wheel got loose, the mower acted as if it were in neutral, regardless of what gear it was in. When I stopped the mower to talk to my daughter, my getting on and off of it must have loosened the wheel just enough to trigger this.
Which is awesome, because if it didn’t have that fail safe, I would have kept on going right up until the wheel fell off, never realizing there was a problem. Just pushing it to the garage is probably why it was as far off the axle as it was. If my brother hadn’t picked up a hitch and decided to come over to install it, we likely would not have discovered it, until it fell off as we moved it around to load it into the van at the end of the month.
Neither of us had even thought to check the wheels as a reason the mower stopped moving. The only reason my brother spotted it at all, was because I’d forgotten about the shut off valve on the fuel line, and he turned it for me. That’s when he could see the bright, shiny, silver part of the axle that no longer had wheel over it. It I had turned it from my seated position, I wouldn’t have seen it. If it had been the other wheel, neither of us would have seen it.
Sometimes, it amazes me when so many tiny things line up like that.
The awesome thing is, my brother has once again saved the day! :-D The riding mower moves again.
I also got to see my SIL for the first time in way too long. She is allergic to cats, so we were planning to visit their place for a change, when the pandemic lockdowns started and all such plans went poof. So it was really, really great to be able to see them both. I just wish it could have been for longer!
And for just a visit, and not to fix yet another thing. :-D
My plans to continue mowing and, hopefully, reclaiming more overgrown areas nice and early got delayed a bit. We had an unusually heavy dew this morning, and cooler temperatures kept it from evaporating until well into the afternoon.
However, progress was made!
Remember this area?
I hiked up the lawnmower, and was able to clear the area all the way to the storage building around behind the pump shack that’s in the photo.
Eventually, I will continue on beyond this, making access to the back gate, but for today, I focused on the area around the maples.
The last time any of this area was NOT overgrown was when the renter’s cows discovered his electric fence wasn’t working, and broke through.
Two years ago.
By the time they finished grazing, the entire outer yard looked awesome! :-D
When I was a kid, the fence to the inner yard at this location was on the other side of the maple trees. There was a small gate near the pump shack, for when we went to get water for the house, or took baths with water heated on a wood burning cookstove that used to be in there. When the chain link fence was installed, it was done in a straight line, rather than turning a corner to include the trees.
I miss having a gate there!
I had to be really careful working through here. I’ve tried to keep up on removing any fallen branches over the past couple of years, but knew there had to be more, hidden in the tall grass. Plus, who knows what else would show up.
Like the lone brick I found, half buried in the dirt.
Thankfully, raising the lawnmower meant I didn’t hit many of the larger buried branches, like the one in the photo above, that I pulled out of the thatch.
It’s only a start. We’ll have to go through the area to clear out any other branches and whatnot that is still buried in there, prune back the trees (there is now lilac growing in the space we used to walk through to get to the pump shack), and get in there with a weed trimmer. Some of the trees have fence wire around them, though one of them is just a stump that has some suckers growing out of it. Since we don’t have to protect the trees from cows, I want to clear away the wire, and salvage it for something else.
I’ve been wanting to get into this area for the last two summers! It feels so good to finally start cleaning it up. :-)
The Re-Farmer 