my brother is the best!

Awesome!

/ Re-Farmer / 14 Comments

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

I have the best brother in the world! And the best sister-in-law!

We were looking over our options on how to get some of the supplies we needed. I even put feelers out to see if there was someone local who could give me a ride or something. No responses.

The grocery store in town had begun offering delivery service when the shut downs started. Was that still happening? And would they deliver here? I looked it up and discovered they do deliveries 3 days a week, including Fridays – today. Unfortunately, orders have to be called in before 11am, and it was past that when I found that the service was still available, so I didn’t bother to call to see if they’d deliver as far away as us.

After failing there, I headed outside and started up my mother’s car, hoping to be able to use it to make at least a short trip to the general store/post office. Even before I started it, when the key was turned part way and the console fan turned on, it immediately started making horrible noises! The car did start, with all sorts of nasty, frozen belt and fan noises, and the engine revved itself way too high.

I shut it off.

In my head, I know I probably should have just let it run for a while and warm up, but every time I thought of doing that, I’d remember an engine block cracked from the cold, and dying on the side of a highway, all those years ago. At these temperatures, it’s just too dangerous to risk a breakdown and not even know if I’d have cell phone reception to call for help.

After trying a few other options that didn’t pan out (made more challenging with our continued internet connectivity problems), I finally sent an email to my older brother and his wife. Long story short, I emailed them a shopping list and, after my brother got home from the office, they went back into the city to pick the stuff up, then drove to our place to drop it off, tonight!

They are so awesome!

Then, because my brother wasn’t done being awesome, he checked on my mothers car.

Of course, when he started it, it wasn’t making the noises or revving like mad for him, like it did for me! We popped the hood and he checked things out. It still ran rough, but he assured me everything was okay. He told me to leave it running for about half an hour, and it should be fine. Then they left, unable to stay for longer. By the time I went out again to shut the car off, it seemed to be running smoothly again.

So I guess I should make it a habit of starting both vehicles and just letting them run for a while, as I do my morning rounds. At least for the next few days.

*sigh*

While my brother and I were fussing with the car, the girls put away the groceries, so I didn’t see what they got until later. They did get everything on the list I sent them, but more of it! So we – and the cats – are going to be just fine for the next while. Plus, because they were able to go into the city to get it all, their getting more than I asked for, still cost less than if I’d made the trip into town. When I sent an e-transfer to pay them back, I made sure to add extra to cover the cost of gas, and we still have an ample budget left to buy locally, when we are finally able to emerge from our frozen cave and do things like refill our water jugs.

I am just to grateful that they were able to do this for us, and willing to do it so late in the day (waiting until tomorrow would have been just fine!), making the long drive and even taking the time to check on my mom’s car.

My brother and his wife are the best!!!

The Re-Farmer

ps: as an aside, as I write this, we’ve dropped to -37C (-35F), with a wind chill of -45C (-49F). All the forecasts telling us when things are supposed to start warming up seem to keep getting pushed further ahead, as this polar vortex stubbornly hangs around!

Pretty morning

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

We had a light snowfall all night, with almost no wind. This morning, the trees looked like they were covered in frost!

It’s enough to almost make the junk cars in the old hay yard look pretty.

Almost.

Fresh tracks at the feeding station, and around to the ornamental apply trees in the old kitchen garden, show we had quite a few deer visits in the night!

As promised, I got a picture of the wonderful gift from my brother and his wife.

Well. The box, at least! No point in opening the box until spring!

Being the incredibly thoughtful person he is, on noticing the spikes into the soil are not very long, my brother included a length of angle iron we can pound into the ground, and wired to tie the post to it, for extra support!

I find myself thinking… if we have a fire, that might thaw out the ground enough to install this, and we can have some winter cook outs! With the fire bans, we aren’t using the fire pit in the summer anywhere near as much as I had expected to.

It’s supposed to be pretty mild for the next while…

Yeah. I’m just looking for excuses to get this set up out there! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clearing snow before it snows, and I think they’ve figured it out!

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We had ourselves a very pleasant surprise today! Company!

Sort of…

I got an email from my older brother, asking if he could swing by this afternoon. Considering that it’s a 1 1/2 hour drive for him, this was a welcome surprise!

I got his message after doing my morning rounds, which included changing the batteries on the new camera with ones that weren’t frozen. The camera still couldn’t show a display on the screen inside, though; more than the batteries was frozen! So I had no way of knowing if it was even working or not. At least I was able to confirm how much easier it is to change the batteries on this thing. I did not have to take it down to do it!

Then, after things warmed up a bit more, we brought out Spewie, our little electric snow blower, and gave it a workout!

With a daughter helping by controlling the 200 ft of extension cord, so it wouldn’t keep getting hung up on the snow and unplugging itself, it was done much more quickly! We got the area needed to drive the van to the house, with turning space, widened the path to the compost heap, and even managed a path around the house, in case we need to reach the septic tank. I didn’t try to make a path to the fire pit or the barn this time, though.

Of course, it’s now snowing. We’re expected to only get a centimeter or so, so it should be fine. Even if it’s more, it’ll be easier to clear, later! It does seem funny to rush to clear away snow, before more snow arrives, though. :-D

The great thing is, when my brother got to our place, he was able to drive right up to the house, like he normally prefers to do. :-)

He didn’t come into the house, due to the restrictions still in place, but we were able to exchange our Christmas gifts. :-) We gave him and his wife the olive server and cutlery I’d carved, using maple I’d cut away from the pump shack so I could reach and fix the window.

I will have to get a picture later, of what they gave us: a fire pit cooking grill! One that is mounted on a post, and can be swung off and on the fire! We are so excited! It can be used above the set up we have now, or replace it completely. I can’t wait to try it out! The ground it too frozen to install it now, though, so it’ll have to wait until spring. *sigh* ;-)

While he was here, my brother took a look at my mother’s car. I had not hooked the trickle charger back up, because 1) the battery does not have + or – symbols on it, though I was pretty sure which was which, and 2) I could not figure out how the clamps would go on, while being flat enough for the cover to be put back in place.

While he was there, he ended up completely moving how the cords for the trickle charger, battery warmer, block heater and extension cord were set up. I had set it up as it was before, across the front, with zip ties holding things in place so nothing would drop onto the belts below (which had happened already, and I had to buy a new extension cord). This was not how he’d had it before, but how a mechanic had set it up, after some work was done. He’d had it set up tucked under the frame by the battery. He was able to get it to all fit into there again, and there are no moving parts they could fall onto in there!

While he was setting it up, and even double checking with a volt meter to ensure it was working, he searched and searched the battery for something to show with side was positive, which was negative. He did find the letters POS hidden under one of the clamps. I’ll have to take his word for it, because while I could see that something was under there, there was no way I could tell that it was letters!

So that is now done, and the trickle charger is finally hooked up. I try to use my mother’s car as much as possible, but over the winter, who knows how long that will be. We hardly use our own vehicle, this time of year!

Speaking of which…

After my brother left, I headed out to the post office – one of my husband’s Christmas gifts finally arrived! LOL – then into town to pick up a few last things before New Year’s. Normally, we would have done our monthly shop by now, but between the holidays and the weather, the end of December just doesn’t work out for that! With all the restrictions happening right now, we haven’t been able to stock up as well as usual, so we’re running out of things more than usual, too. Nothing essential, really, but I still prefer to stock up at least a little bit, just in case we can’t get into the city as planned. Last month, I didn’t even go to the city at all, but went to the Walmart of a smaller city, instead. It’s not as well stocked as the bigger stores in the bigger city, but at least I knew I wouldn’t be harassed for wearing a shield instead of a mask. As far as I know, 2 of the 3 stores we normally go to for our monthly stock up are safe for people with medical exemptions, and I’ve heard the one Costco location we usually go to is actually offering both masks and shields to people, and when people have gone in mask-less, they’ve only been warned if the mask nazi’s … er… inspectors where in the store. The inspectors are threatening stores with fines, even though the mandates expressly stipulate medical exemptions. But then, one store made the news for kicking a woman out for not wearing a mask, and she didn’t have hands to put one on. The exemptions clearly state that people who cannot put on or take off a mask themselves are exempt. It all seems so very arbitrary, which makes it difficult for people who can’t wear masks to know, from one day to the next, if they will be left alone, harassed, kicked out, fined or arrested.

I’m just thankful that we are isolated enough that it doesn’t affect us as much on a daily basis. Just in our own extended family, we’ve got people dealing with everything from trying to figure out how to get to work with the day-cares closed, to job losses, home losses, and dealing with severe depression as a result. I’ve always been grateful that my husband has such excellent private health insurance when he went on long term disability and, for all the challenges, happy that we left the city to live on and take care of the farm. Now, I am even more grateful for it. I honestly don’t know how we would have managed, if we were still living in the city we were in before. Our daughters could have stayed behind, too, but they chose to move out to help take care of the property, and their father, instead. They gave up a lot to do it, but it’s now turning out to have been worth it, for reasons we never imagined.

What a crazy world we live in, right now!

But I digress!

On a more fun note, after I got back from town, I was able to bring the van into the yard to unload it.

We were being watched.

Creamsicle Jr. was not alone at first. By the time I got my phone out to take a picture, Nostrildamus had come out to say hello. He had been sitting behind Creamsicle Jr.

Directly under the terrarium heater bulb.

In front of the light sensor on the timer.

I think they’ve figured it out.

If a cat is siting under the bulb, it is blocking the light sensor, which turns on the heat. While it’s unlikely that they made any sort of connection to the timer, it would be easy for them to figure out that if they sit in just the right spot during the day, that thing above their head starts getting warm again.

One thing about the yard cats; they do have to be smart, if they’re going to survive! :-D

I’m happy that the littlest ones are handling the cold as well as they are. Being born so late in the year, they were the ones most at risk from the cold. Not only are they doing all right, they’re downright playful in the snow! :-) They’re even regularly following me out to the gate when I check it, and switch out the memory cards. They still won’t come close to me, but they will follow me! :-D (I’m happy to say that, while showing the new trail cam to my brother, I found it had thawed out enough to start working again! I didn’t even have to reset the date and time. :-) )

For now, judging by how often I’ve seen the red bar across the top of my browser, warning me that auto save didn’t work because I’m offline, I’d say the weather system has hit us quite thoroughly, and it’s taking our internet out in the process. That, and my weather app will not reload! The temperatures are still relatively mild, but I can see the snow falling on the security camera’s live feed. It seems to be enough to mess with our satellite. That secondary dish may have started working again after we pruned more branches, but it still doesn’t have a good signal at the best of times. It doesn’t take much to make it worse!

At some point, I’ll be able to post this… ;-)

The Re-Farmer

A new Q!

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Have I mentioned that my brother is the best?

I just can’t say it enough.

My brother is the best!

I got a call from him, early this evening. He just finished loading up their big BBQ into his truck and was ready to bring it over!

This was something he had offered to us when I told him about what we’d done with the fire pit, for outdoor cooking. They got themselves a smaller BBQ, as their older one was too big for just the 2 of them, and it was just sitting there, unused. Today, he up and decided to deliver it!

There aren’t a lot of places we can put a BBQ right now. Basically, there’s the concrete and patio blocks in front of the sun room where it can stay for the winter.

So I quickly went out and moved the shelf I was planning to moved now that the sun room door is finished. It would be much harder to move it, with a BBQ in the way!

With the shelf moved away, you can really see how much the concrete under the rain barrel has sunk! This is likely from years of the rain barrel being allowed to overflow.

Which might have something to do with why the sun room has been shifting, and why I had such troubles with the door!

Ya think?

Since it’s that time of year, anyhow, I took advantage of the situation and emptied the rain barrel into the old kitchen garden.

After breaking through ice about an inch thick!

It will be much easier to go through here to the old kitchen garden, now that the shelf is moved. We had originally intended to put the shelf in storage, with most of the other stuff that belonged to my parents, and had put it aside until we could bring the van over to take it. It was so handy, we left it. :-)

Inside the shelf are the pieces of rigid insulation that had been used for the “cat condo” we made for the cats in the sun room last winter. We will likely use some of them for the kibble house, under the food containers. We also plan to leave the two bottom shelves empty, except for some pieces of insulation on the “floor”, for the cats to be able to tuck into it for shelter. We did that last winter, and they made full use of it.

There it is! Our new Q!

We’ve never had anything bigger than 3 burners before; this one has five. It’s so big, he had to take the lid off to fit it under his truck cap! My brother even fired it up to test it out, including the extra burner for pots and pans on the side. It even starts better than any BBQ we’ve had before. :-)

Chances are, we won’t be able to use it until spring, but at least now we have the option! We don’t have any BBQ tools, but with all the summer stuff on clearance right now, this is probably the best time of year to get more. :-) I really look forward to using it!

Sadly, they were not able to stay for long. I’m glad my SIL made it out; she hadn’t been able to for a while, as she recovered from surgery. We did get a chance to walk around the yard, and show them what we’ve been doing. Technically, my brother is my “landlord”, so it’s probably a good idea for him to know what’s going on. ;-) Unlike my mother, they are actually quite happy with how things are shaping up, and are not offended by us doing things like using mulch. :-D

Somehow, they found my glee, as I demonstrated opening and closing the sun room door repeatedly, very amusing. :-D

It’s probably a good thing they didn’t stay any longer. They’ve got a long drive back, and wanted to make a quick stop to visit our mother along the way. From what I’m seeing on the live feed for the security camera, there are strong winds and snow right now!

I’ve gotta get that kibble house done!

The Re-Farmer

The cute, the creepy and the awesome

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First, the cute!

Lately, when I open the doors to the sunroom to get the cat kibble during my morning rounds, I have had company.

Little Braveheart has been dashing in and out as I load up on kibble. Even Tabby has been coming closer, but not quite as close as Braveheart.

Right now, I’ve put several of the kibble bowls by the old dog house shelter, to encourage the cats to go into it, but I do still have one near the sunroom door. This morning, Little Braveheart was eating at that container – and I was able to gently pat her back! It took her a few moments to decide she didn’t like it after all, and moved away.

Awesome progress!!!

Then there was the creepy.

Part of my rounds includes switching out the memory card on the trail cam. Something weird started happening with our first one, where it the motion sensor would get triggered, but it wouldn’t stop. So I’d come by the next day to find the red light blinking, the batteries almost dead, and nothing on the memory card. So the newer camera is now set up near that same area. It has a wide angle lens, which is great, because it not only picks up the gate, but the fence on both sides, too. I did end up moving it to a fence post instead of the tree it was on, since the wide angle was blocked by other trees on one side.

Since it’s on the post, I don’t need to go through the trees to reach the camera, and can use the driveway. Since our vandal had glued our locks, before vandalizing the gate itself, over the months, I make a point of checking the lock to see if it’s glued, or for anything else that might be vandalized.

When I got to the gate this morning, the lock was on the wrong side of the gate. As I locked the gate behind me yesterday, the lock was left on the inside of the gate, and the excess chain was wrapped around the bars so as not to dangle. This morning, the chain was turned to the outside of the gate, and the extra length was dangling under the lock.

When I checked the files, sure enough, there was our vandal. In one video, he was just standing right at the gate on one side, looking down the driveway and from side to side. At a couple of points, he seemed to be looking at the camera. In the next video, he had moved to the middle of the gate and was moving the chain around so he could look at the lock. Then he let it go and walked away.

Creeper was creeping again.

Of course, it’s the weekend. As he has been repeatedly told to stay away by the police, I would normally call the non-emergency number to talk to someone about it. The RCMP offices are closed on the weekends, though, and I’m not about to call 911 for this, so it will have to wait until Monday.

*sigh*

I really don’t get why our vandal is so obsessed with this property.

I did make sure to pass on the files to my brother before we headed out to visit.

Which brings me to the awesome.

It was a fantastic visit! We were able to just relax and chat. When he comes here, it’s usually because there is something that needs to be fixed or, as most recently, for a family gathering, so we don’t really get much chance to just be with each other. It was just fantastic. He and his wife are some of my favourite people, and I don’t spend anywhere near as much time with them as I would like!

On top of that, my mother’s car handled the drive very well! No more alarming noises, coming from anywhere! :-D It’s amazing how quiet that car is, now that everything’s fixed! :-D Plus, it has working fans and air conditioning, too! Rather nice to not have to drive with the windows open. :-)

My brother has helped my mother with this car for many years, so before we left, he popped the hood to show me some things. I’m glad he did, because I was wondering about some of it. I knew he had a trickle charger as well as the block heater attached to an extension cord. It also has a battery warmer. He had the extension cord all neatly laid out so that it was tucked safely aside, all three could be plugged in, and the plug for the extension cord could be left hanging outside the hood to plug it in, in the winter. It seems that every time the car was worked on, even from when I’d taken it to the garage near my mother’s place, things got moved around. Only the trickle charger was still plugged in but, of course, the clips were no longer on the battery, since it had been pulled out to be charged, just a few days ago. I don’t know when the extension cord was first moved to where it is now, but when I popped the hood to take the end out so I could plug it in in the garage, prior to last winter, I found a loop of it was touching the serpentine belt, and was starting to get worn. It never got put back under the hood before I left it at the garage, several months ago, for the mechanic to check it as he was able. My brother had tucked it away, so I showed the worn out part to my brother. As we looked closely in the sunlight, we could see the layers had broken and we could see exposed wire. !! So I will have to replace that (along with a burnt out bulb in one headlight) before plugging in and tidying up all the cords again.

Changing that light bulb is going to be so much easier than our van. You can just reach in and pop it out. With our van, we have to unscrew and unfasten the entire headlamp unit, and pull it out completely.

I’m so glad to have my brother to turn to for advice and information! When we moved out here, we were just sort of plunked into the middle of things. We would be pretty lost, without him!

I have the best brother! <3

The Re-Farmer

A wonderful surprise!

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I know I’ve said this before. I’ll probably say it many more times.

I have the best brother!

He and his wife are just amazing. Yesterday, we had a wonderful surprise from them. I got a message from my SIL that my brother would be coming over with their old dog house, for us to use as a cat shelter!

They have always had large dogs. When their last one passed away, they decided not to get another dog. With a new grand child in another province, and prospects of retirement and selling the property in the future, it just wasn’t something they wanted to do.

This left them with a large dog house in their yard that wasn’t being used.

And they know we’ve been using the sun room to provide shelter for the cats over the winter, leaving the doors propped open slightly.

What they didn’t know is that we were looking into building a larger shelter with a roof that could be lifted up, for easy access and cleaning.

Their dog house not only has such a roof, but it’s wired for electricity!

My brother, saint that he is, ended up taking several hours not only to move the heavy shelter (using tools like a come-along, and good old physics!) onto their trailer – something my SIL could not help with at all, having had surgery not long ago – but to replace part of the roof and paint it, too!

Just look at this thing!

He even brought the pallets that were under it.

With three of us working together, we got it unloaded and set up in only a couple of hours. We had to set up a fence post, at an almost 45 degree angle, to have something to attach a chain for the come-along to. The shelter itself is on top of a skid. Once that reached the edge of the trailer, my brother and I levered up the ends of the skid to go over the lip and clear the board he’d put on the ramps. The ramps were designed for wheels, with recesses in the middle to prevent them from going sideways. The skid would have fallen right into those, but he had boards wide enough to fit right in there.

The chain for the come-along had to be adjusted a couple of times before the shelter was at the end of the ramps, but at that point, the fence post was now in the way. My brother unhitched the truck from the trailer and, while I removed the post, drove the truck around to the other side and used it to pull the shelter off the rest of the way. He then had to move the trailer out, back the truck up to where the trailer was, then haul the shelter to where we had decided it should go.

Which is pretty much where one of the old doghouses, now set up near the outhouse, used to be!

There were three possible places we could put the shelter, and have easy access to an outlet. There’s the outlet on the side of the house, but with the fancy lilacs and cherry trees right there, that wasn’t really an option. We could have put it near the back of the garage, but it gets very wet there when the snow melts. So that brought us to the spot in front of the sun room. We should be able to run a cord through, and still close the doors, in the winter.

Check it out!

You can see an outlet that the light it plugged into. The light has a pool-grade cover over it, so nothing it getting at that bulb. It’s a 100 watt bulb, so it will also provide a bit of warmth. There is a second outlet just on the other side of where the cord goes through the wall. They had had a pet safe warming blanket plugged into there. My brother tested them out before bringing it over, and it all works. We will be able to plug in the heated water bowl in there. It has a long enough cord to be plugged in and still be outside.

The main part of the doghouse turned out to be too small for when they had two dogs, so my brother added the “porch” at the end – which now has a fresh new roof. The flax inside was still clean, so they left that.

Though my brother brought the pallets it was on, I wanted it on bricks. I’ve cleaned up way too many rotten pallets to go with wood directly on the ground again! And we just happened to have a stack of bricks I’d cleaned up from various places that we could use.

We will continue to add bricks for both support, and to level the shelter more. You can see the patch of dirt where the previous doghouse had been sitting. We went further out, where the ground was more level, but it’s still not flat.

Do you see that beam sticking out, with the decorative cut at the end?

The roof of this is very heavy, and my brother had included this with the thought to add a counter weight, or maybe a spring – anything to make it easier to open the roof up. He never got around to adding anything, though. It’s something we might do. Or not. We’ll see.

With the skid under the main body of the doghouse, the “porch” just sort of floats above ground. The top is starting to pull away from the main section, though – despite the many deck screws holding it in place! – so I intend to add bricks to support that, too.

There are two layers of shredded carpet over the opening to keep the weather out, while still letting critters in.

The skid is starting to look kinda rotten, even though it had always been on top of pallets, not directly on the ground, and I find myself looking at it and thinking…

Is that about the same size as the long frames we made for the goat catcher? If I cut the ends at an angle, one of those would make a very strong replacement skid!

Switching those out would be a huge job, but it would be worth it.

Aside from little things like that, and some minor repairs to old wood, we are now set for a winter shelter for the yard cats! One with warmth and light.

I hope the cats enjoy it!

On a completely different note, while going around and deciding where best to put the shelter, I decided to dig out the hose attachments and fertilizer and give our garden beds a good feeding. I was moving the hose at the front of the house, so I could reach the carrots and beets, when I suddenly lost water.

The hose end snapped off, right at the tap!

I hadn’t even pulled on it. The hose was just moving. It’s designed to rotate freely, and you can see the piece that was there to keep it from bending.

I bought this hose last fall. It’s less than a year old, and has seen hardly any use!

The more inconvenient part, though, is that the tap at the front of the house needs a new seal. We can’t turn it off, because it just sprays at the tap. Which meant that, when I discovered what happened, there was water flowing at full pressure right at the house, and while shutting the tap off did slow it a bit, I still had to yell for a daughter to dash into the basement and shut the water off from there. Thankfully, the pipes to the outside taps do have their own shut off valves, unlike the pipes supplying water inside the house.

A couple more things to add to the fix-it list!

For now, however, it’s time to shut down the computer. I’m seeing thunderstorm warnings flashing on my task bar! I expect the storms to miss us again, but we’ll likely loose internet, and possibly get power flickers, too.

That, and my daughters are taking me into town to pick up Chinese food for my birthday. They are so sweet! :-)

The Re-Farmer

The Culprit

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that our riding mower had stopped.

It didn’t stop running. It stopped moving.

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

The Re-Farmer

What a job!

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My brother, being the wonderful person that he is, came over to remove the rusted out screws on the trailer frame with an angle grinder.

I told him about the box for an angle grinder I’d found in the garage. The one with human teeth in it. He figures that is probably the strangest thing we’ve found, since moving out here! Though I admit, there are some things that are still competing for that top spot.

I had to pop over to the house while he was working on the trailer frame, and he was done by the time I came back! I did find one that he’d missed, though, so I was able to get a picture of him working on it. :-D

He also removed the remains of old lights at the end, and cut the bolts of a piece in the corner that had been twisted completely around. That corner that you see? Where those squarish marks are? There used to be a sort of bumper there, with a piece on the frame below the bolt hole at the very end. The piece is still there. It’s just now on the inside, instead of the outside.

Some of the old screws he took off still had their heads on them. They were hex screws. Totally the wrong kind of screw for the job.

After he was done, he showed me how to use the self drilling screws I picked up, and we took measurements. Exactly 2 sheets of plywood will fit on there, but we will need to cut openings for the tires and make some sort of fenders.

It is now ready for cleaning and rust removal and, if all goes well, painting.

Then he surprised me.

He had ulterior motives for coming out. He didn’t drive all that way just to take off a few screws for me.

The shed next to the barn, where we found the table saw, has holes in it. I believe it was last year, or maybe our first year here, I’d helped him cover holes on one side, but we weren’t able to do more at the time.

It’s been bugging him, ever since.

We still have sheets of metal roofing in the barn, left over from when the barn itself, and other buildings, had them installed.

Note the piece of equipment with the board leaning on the tank. I’ll have more to say about that, later.

On the left is what we put on last year. We actually dragged them out from a pile outside the barn, and one of them had a piece cut out of it.

On the right, my brother has already covered one hole with a short piece. None of the pieces we had were long enough to cover the whole length, so he put short pieces along the bottom, first, so there would be an overlap.

The scary part was having to go to the peak of the roof and unscrew that top cap, so he could slide the panels under it. He screwed a scrap of plywood we found in the barn down first. There was no way he could have climbed to the top without it.

This was interesting.

There are three types of shingles on here, and so much of one type has blown away, we can see what are likely the original shingles.

What an interesting diamond shape! That roof must have looked great, when it was new!

Here is how the roof looked, at the end.

Bits and pieces, cobbled together, but who cares what it looks like? No more gaping holes!

My brother is just screwing down some pieces of metal we found in the barn that could be used as top caps. After that, he put in more screws as far as he could reach from the ladder, so the winds won’t catch and blow them off.

It was very, very dangerous up there. That ladder on the right was the best place to get up there, but there were tree branches in the way, making it even more dangerous. Once he was safely at the top, I went and grabbed a saw and cut away almost half the tree (one tree at the base, two trunks up the sides).

I’m keeping that wood for future carving!

My brother is really, really awesome. We spent hours out there, working on it, and I couldn’t do much more than pass him things, and hold the ladder for him.

Remember that piece of equipment by the building?

Thanks to ladder holding, I was looking at it from angles I hadn’t, before. I asked my brother if he knew was it was. It belonged to our late brother, and has been sitting there for at least 10 years.

After looking it over, we figured it out.

It’s a boiler system for steam cleaning.

The boiler itself is pretty amazing.

There should be a cover on that round opening.

Just look on the date on that thing!

It had to have been salvaged from somewhere. I wonder if my late brother built it? He certainly had the skills to do it.

The fuel tank is actually part of the trailer frame! On the left, you can see the fender over one of the tires.

Both tires are flat, which is why this end is resting on the ground.

The white tank in front would have held the water. It was most likely used to steam clean culverts or something like that.

That boiler isn’t the only old object of interest we talked about.

As we were putting everything away and getting ready to leave the barn, my brother pointed at a metal object on the floor and told me to make sure to keep that. I had no idea what it was.

It turned to be part of an antique hand pump for a well. A wooden handle would have been attached to it. I was told there was another one, but my mother had sold it to a scrap dealer, years ago.

*sigh*

After all this, my brother couldn’t even stay for lunch. Our mother was expecting him, and by the time we were done, he barely had time to come into the house and say hello to the rest of the family!

Have I mentioned my brother is amazing?

I don’t know what we would do without him! No one living knows this place better than he does! And certainly no one else in the family has the tools, skills and knowledge – not to mention physical ability – to do stuff like this. It’s been many years, since I was physically able to go up on a roof like that! Of course, being a woman of ample proportions, I would have gone straight through a roof in that condition, with or without a sheet of plywood to climb on!

So that was a whole lot of hours in the sun, but the job is done. My brother figures, this probably added about 10 years to the life of the building.

Well. On this side, maybe. The other side probably won’t last that long, and I think we’re out of metal roofing material to do that side, anyhow! It doesn’t get the brunt of the weather, though, the way the side we covered did.

What a job!

While I may not need to do it this year, I should cut the rest of that tree down. It would be a shame to work so hard to preserve the shed from the top, only to have it wrecked from the bottom. The tree is growing right out from under a wall!

Little by little, we’ll get this place fixed up.

The Re-Farmer

My brother is awesome. Also, wtf?

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It’s been warming up for the past few days, which means I had plenty of company while doing my rounds this morning. Butterscotch, as usual, wanted to be carried, while three others followed along.

Then Keith caught up to me. :-D

This is how he asks to be picked up.

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Fixing the garage door

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The last couple of days have been very, very wet! :-D First, we had a series of thunderstorms that lasted all day Friday and on through the night. On Saturday, we were no longer getting thunderstorm warnings, but we were still getting weather warnings for heavy rain.

As usual, the weather systems were more to the north and south of us, but we did still get quite the light show, and a lot of rain.

Oh, and our internet cut out.

Repeatedly.

So I have some catching up to do!

The rain and damp did not stop my amazing, fantastic, wonderful brother from coming out to fix our garage door!

I honestly thought it wasn’t going to happen, and we’d need to get a new one – something we certainly cannot afford – but he found a way!

Have I mentioned my brother is amazing?

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