ray...
The happy Nada Farmer, "stopping to smell the roses", but advising against tasting them, at least until my tongue recovers. Deer Crack, YUCKKKKKKKKYYYYY!
Keep coming back, page Thirty Seven follows......if I survive.
What a Month this has been!
I had to get up early to talk to the guy from Verizon. He was a nice fellow, and went about fixing the phone line, which was broken on the pole in the front yard, while we talked. I suspected a bad piece of wire because it was always an issue when it rained or the wind blew too hard. Copper, they almost spit when they say it anymore, it means the system that my phone runs over is 40 or more years old. And if you have any knowledge of the changes in technology in the past 40 years, you know what a quantum leap they have experienced. And I'm guessing you know about it, because you are reading this on a computer attached to the internet, Right? Well if you can download a movie and watch it you aren't on copper, at least not twisted pair, you are on a cable or better yet fiber optics. If you have power to your house, you are in good shape out here. We dealt with that the first two years while they replaced the local substation. Now I'm in the same situation on the telecommunication lines. They need to be upgraded, from copper to fiber, but there is no incentive to do it. The fiber cable to do my road would cost more than 4 years of service that could be sold over it. And that doesn't include the time and manpower to make the switch, then we are closer to ten years. There are only fourteen potential hook ups on Swan Rd. And at least four of them are seasonal, or unoccupied, and unlikely to connect. So I understand the economics of it in the short run, but these businesses are supposed to view the long term. Of course Verizon is selling my servicing, actually the entire system is being sold to Frontier Communications, which means nothing is going to happen for the next year anyway, as they switch everything over to their way of doing it, and decide what the future will be for the "out in the sticks" folks. So I doubt there will be any upgrades to make my life here just one step from perfect. Cause now I'm two steps. But that's another page.
Now about Carbon Credits, I can't believe this is even discussed let alone considered a reality, selling carbon credits? Some company builds a product, but has to buy the "non use" of my property to keep from getting billed by the government for carbon units. OK, I like people giving me money, but this is stupid. I am OK with a billionaire buying the rights to my property, to search for oil under it, and then buying the rights to drill, and then paying me for the oil they find. There is something changing hands there, and I get a lot of money. This of course won't happen, but I understand it. Now the first thing, the Carbon Credits, that makes zero sense. I do understand what a great idea it is for Ted Turner and other Mega Farmers, who already get the largest portion of government subsidies to get another giant handout from the government in the form of government required Carbon Credits. WAKE UP AMERICA, Al Gore? Remember flatulent cows causing the hole in the ozone layer to get bigger? Which was then discovered to be a natural phenomenon? I mean the Ozone hole changing size, but that didn't stop the morons in the government, we lost the best refrigerants, and now use much less efficient chemicals which cost more in energy, which throws more money to the energy companies. Which surprisingly are raising the fuel prices once again and still no electric cars.
. You want a good book? Read LIES MY TEACHERS TOLD ME, just the tip of the iceberg. And lobbyists? Influence peddlers, shoot them on sight! Wow, starting to develop into a rant isn't it? Back to the beauty of the farm.
The little deer are hanging around the house and making the hunter in all of us crazy. The "Accidental Farm Wife" is out in the yard taking pictures, by the hundreds, I'm trying to figure out how to capture it and raise it as a pet until it is big enough to eat, and The Real Hunter is trying to get it to lure it's daddy over to his tree stand. To that end, I built a little stand
to help with sharing treats with the local wildlife. We are also putting ear corn out in the areas we want them to frequent, (like at the bottom, where you see it in the grass) and somebody is definitely eating it. I've begun collecting the cleaned off ears so I can tell how much activity there is in the area, and I have found it burns great, in the stove in the garage. I mean really hot, almost instant deep red glow, and it has a pleasant smell. I'm thinking about checking into obtaining a few truck loads of corn cobs, as soon as I find out where they might be available from. Now back to the deer, I checked the fields from the top of the big motor home, which is up on the top of the hill, so when the gravel gets here, it (the motor home) won't get banged around by the dump truck or the bobcat, as I spread the gravel around. But as you can see we ended up with gravel behind it anyway, but at least it was just me and the Bobcat, and not the dump truck, working close anyway. And I drove the Santara back to the bottom before working up here, just trying to avoid more projects....
Anyway I had my old fireman flashlight and counted 12 eyes in the fields, dividing by 2, I came up with a head count of 6, for the deer in the field at dusk. And some people think I don't understand higher math and its application to real world situations. HA!
I have had a couple little projects this month for neighbors friends and relatives, so it has been pretty interesting. I also found things I was looking for previously but didn't find then, but have found them now, and forget why I was looking for them. Or something of that nature. Anyway, I have been bouncing around in the garage and machine building quite a bit and decided that I need to get organized. Well the chance of that happening is on an astronomical scale against, or simply put, not likely.
But I have been working my tail off to get the machine building cleared and arranged so that the motor home will fit in it. I'm going to chop the leisure lodge and make it a farm truck, and probably strip the camotruck down for a poor mans gator, So I have a ton of mechanical work to do and haven't got many cranes in place to help yet, so that is going to be a priority, plus the large crane tower needs to get out of the machine shed so I have room for all the tractors cars and motor homes to get in out of the winter weather until I can get them done and gone...
I'm trying to get the machine shed adjusted for the Santara to spend the winter out of the weather, obviously it was better treated it's first 15 years. Or maybe that's the expected life span of a rubber roof on a mobile unit. It has caused interior damage and as soon as I get it where I can control the environment, I intend to check the cost of repair and see if the insurance covers it. ( Yeah I checked and like all insurance it doesn't cover anything useful, now if Vandals had invaded from Gaul, and caused the damage maybe I would get paid, in Ruppies I'm sure.) So it's on me, another project I didn't need, instead of the ones I want to do.
The tracks in the mud you see under the motor home are where it was stuck, because the clay around here is simply the next thing to ice, if it gets wet, which you can see it did. So Chris pulled it away from the garage, and the mud, with the pickup truck. I needed to widen the drive, even further back than in this shot, because the Santara had to be straight before it started into the Machine Shed. Or it wouldn't fit, of course it had a lot of extra space, as you can see in the next pictures.
The Santara slid right into the bay I prepared for it and with at least an eighth of an inch to spare, of course it might have been tight if I hadn't allowed for the weight causing the floor to collapse (note the deep tracks) as I drove it in.
The tough part now, is going to be if it sinks unevenly, though there is no reason it should. As I didn't dig it deeper and fill it, as I did the garage, I just scraped the floor out and put the gravel in, with a layer of plastic over it, (and under the MH), to hold down the moisture, which is always the killer for parked vehicles. I would have liked to put it up on the levelers, but they would cause the plastic covers over the roof fan/vents to crush against the rafters at this point. I'm going to have to remove the CB antenna to back it out, it went in, but it leans back and will definitely cause damage if I back it out with it in place. So this is a note to me to remove it. Hope I remember....
This is a part of the view, out my west facing window. And the following are some recent Sunsets...
This makes up for most of the little annoyances, like the howling coyotes, and occasional noisy owl, the recent Murder of crows that gave us a hitchcock moment, but wait, we actually enjoy those things too! In fact we love it out here! The night has so many stars, the milky way is clearly visible, and even the crazy bats are pretty predictable. These are things I can't get a reasonable picture of, to share. But even a drive this time of year makes you just want to stop and look, and sometimes its like, there's too much to see...
But you can't, not look...
Can those colors actually be real? They're just trees, and yet...
There is just so much to experience, speaking of which, (back to deer hunting for a moment), On the subject of DEER CANE, some call it DEER CRACK, it is suppossed to make deer keep coming back to a place and dig up the earth to keep eating it.
Well it looks like sugar, really! Look for yourself, doesn't that look like sugar?
And it's suppossed to be habit forming, so the deer come back and you can shoot them, and it really looked like sugar, you know how they make those big molasses blocks and salt licks? They are for deer, and they aren't bad tasting though they are a little strong, I'd guess they are trying to get the olfactory senses involved on the deer, as well as the taste sensations, they're really not so bad. Well, I tasted it! The sugary looking DEER CANE.
You know what really stinky deer pee smells like? YOU KNOW WHEN THEY ARE SPRAYING ALL OVER THE WOODS, WHEW WHAT A STENCH! Well DEER CANE tastes just like that, but it also burns the tongue, a lot, like an acid burn and the taste is just as much a drive to remove it quickly, so even though it looks like it might be sugary "IT'S NOT!" But it sure looks like it might be, nope it's not even close to a good taste or sensation or anything you want to do again. YEEECH! So little time, so much to experience... Oh well. On to better, or at least less icky, things!
Here are the two guys who are going to have to keep this place functional in the future, I'm trying to make it easy, but life keeps getting in the way. Right now, though, they don't care much about all that, they're trying to figure out how to score an extra cookie or two...
Man, are we happy out here!
