MUD?

Yep, that's the next season around here. Mud season. And due to the fine work I did last summer, with the backhoe in the back yard, there are only a couple areas that need a little finesse. The problem didn't go away completely, but it is way better than it was, the house didn't heave this winter like it did last winter, the doors still work pretty well, I actually think I can make efforts to align them, and have some success. But right at the back door there is a mud hole that is a bit of a problem and, as it is my intention to build a deck, I don't want to go too far out of my way to mess with it. So that is a back burner issue this week. Also having the water work out as well as it has. Leads me to believe I might actually have a chance of getting something done this year that isn't going to revolve around being able to wash clothes or drink a little coffee. I might even be able to wash cars again for a change. WHOOPPEEE!

The big issue now is the garden, Chris has the flowers and I have the veggies, or that's how it is supposed to be, last year the flowers were great and we ate the year before's veggies. I was fighting the water all summer. This year we are considering getting serious about plants. The goat (Oscar) is going to be set out in different areas to eat unwanted vegetation. Also time to try a little more aggressive arborist techniques to the fruit trees. And of course the berries I have been planting, need to be trained. So I am going to be really busy pretty soon. I would like to have a green house to start the plants in but the cost is a problem. I have an idea, and I expect the sheriff will be around when I get things running well. Because it is going to look like a MaryJane operation from any direction you'd care to view it.. The basement of the little house is a concrete floored stream. At least in the Spring and Fall. I hesitate to add to the moisture content, but I'm pretty sure there are not many issues that haven't already developed down there, with the neglect and insurmountability of the problems as the structure currently stands. When I get the new room arranged like I plan, the problems should be handled. Everything depends on something else, around here, interrelated, totally interrelated and integrated... and aggravated. GGGRRRRR!

Meanwhile in one of those interrelated issues, the monitor for my mac, a beautiful 20" Cinema (plastic case) display is failing yet again. Back in October I bought a new power board and disassembled the monitor and fixed it for only $100.00 I had purchased this particular monitor with Chris's new mac, The dual processor dual mirrored door unit that she still uses. Though it is unable to be upgraded any further and is beginning to be a problem as the new software she needs will not run on such an old operating system. And to further complicate issues, they are already advertising the next OS upgrade for this summer. "LION" And her's will only run Tiger , she has not added Leopard or Snow Leopard, they won't run on the machine.. So she is officially out of date.. BOO HOO.. As always, with computers, everything she has is still working but the new stuff is better and it won't run on it. Mostly due to the chipset issues, but it's getting deep here so we will go back to the monitor issues. The Cinema display cost $1000.00 new and had a $200.00 warrantee and 2 dead pixels, which drove her nuts so I traded her for mine which was roughly the same but I bought it as a display display and got it for less $900.00 and had an in store warrantee (that actually worked) and I used it to get a new aluminum cased 20" display that I gave her as it had no dead pixels and 2 dead pixels mean nothing to me... whereas the purple area on my old (display model display) was an annoyance. Well, the problem I fixed in October is back so I inquired about the warrantee on the replacement board I installed and it is only for 30 days, obviously out of date. So when Chris was in Columbus last weekend I suggested she check at Micro Center to see what a new display might cost, before I invested another $100.00 in the cinema display, that I already have about $1300.00 dollars in. Turns out for $150.00, I got a bigger brighter new monitor, with better almost everything. WOW technology has increased in performance and dropped in price. We'll have to see if it lasts for 12 years.

Now I only bring this up because I have been recently really considering the lack of a reasonable battery powered car issue, as the gas prices are going to get stupid again. And every time some group of Sand Dwellers gets a shooting party started, the oil companies see it as an excuse to gouge us again. I'm not stupid, I'm tired of it! And being as the oil companies somehow (talk about a conflict of interest) own all the patents and plans that relate to making a better battery. I just don't see it getting any better in the near future. Unless some nutcase can slip the plans onto the internet and manage to keep from getting them suppressed or reacquired by the people who would "really not like" to have a reliable battery developed and released for use in vehicles, think about it. A nuclear reactor for power generation and distribution, in the center of each state, all networked, making a completely redundant grid of energy and batteries at every corner there used to be a gas station, slide in, drop $2.00 in a slot, pull out your old pack, slip in a new (recharged one), stick your discharged unit back into the charging slot for the next guy to get in a couple hours. And you're on your way. Trucks and busses could use larger packs or multiples of the regular packs. NO pollution, minimal noise, readily available power. It could even be taken out at home, where you would have another charger, and used to power things around the yard, the lawn tractor, the hedge clippers, chain saw, power tools. And if there were a power outage, due to trees and wires down, the pack could plug into, and power, vital systems in the home for a limited time... A universal power pack, no fumes no corrosive or explosive concerns.

 

 

Anyhow, Life on NadaFarm would seem to be uneventful, as long as I stay in the house, but what fun is that? If I wanted to stay in the house, I wouldn't have needed NadaFarm, SO I really try to get out for a while everyday. Because, in addition to making it worth being here, things seem to happen when I don't keep a close eye on them. Like last week when I went out to feed the critters, I looked at the red barn, and nothing really stood out, but it should have. You see there is a large gap in the center of this alignment. Fuel tank on the ground on the left (cause I can't lift it with the bobcat being stupid right now) and the Case tractor on the right. Something is missing, OH yeah, the Ford tractor! Now, where did I leave that little rascal? I'm sure it was parked right there, in that open area I already identified. So I swing around and...

What the hell?

 

 

Yep, There it is, down at the fence. About 200 hundred feet from where I parked it, in gear, in the fall. Even took the battery out of it so it wouldn't freeze. I had left it in gear at the beginning of the winter, and at one point during the frozen times I tried to shift it neutral so I could start it to use it in the mid winter, but it was frozen in gear, reverse to be exact, and it won't start when it is in gear. So a few weeks ago, on a thaw day, I found I could shift it, so I did, just in case I wanted to try to start it again I'd have more of a chance. I thought that it was in deep enough ruts to stay where it had been all winter. If you remember, back when it tried to run me over and drug it's self down to the creek in this same field, it has no brake pawls. Which at that point I didn't know about. Well I said I would have to look into getting or making some so it could be left parked and running rather than leaving it engine stopped and in gear. Well, I guess I still have to do that.

 

 

Turns out the ground must 'a thawed and the tractor rolled down the hill, and the remains of a ditch I didn't get completely filled before the snows, last fall, saved the fence. Of course it wasn't too good for the tractor, but it wan't too bad either. Here you can see that the pintle hitch, which you can't see by the way, is completely buried in the side of the trench, but when I looked it didn't appear to have damaged the arms or bosses that support them, so it took the hit without damage. YEAHHHH!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what the pintle hitch looks like, when not skewered into the side of a ditch. Also barely visible is the newly installed parking brake, (LARGE ROCK) behind the left rear tire.

The rusty rack the pintle is installed in, is a hitch off a truck I no longer have, that I re-engineered into a three point attachment. I hadn't thought about it being a bumper, but it seems to have worked quite well. The tractor drove right out of the ditch without a problem , of course I had to go get a battery and install it and start it up, but that was way easier than I had expected. And it just walked right out of that ditch like it was plowing it... Only good Ford I have...

 

 

 

Now I know I said getting out was a good thing, and it is for the web pages anyway. But sometimes it is aggravating, like right now. I bought a pair of boots a while back. Now my brother, and my son, both say these are the best boots you can get. Well they are expensive enough, 4 times the price of Walmart boots. But, I thought why not?(4 times as expensive as Walmart boots, dummy, that's why not!) Okay, I know, "nobody was ever sorry he bought the best," right? I resisted, I'm cheap and usually broke, so it wasn't that tough to resist. But then they came out with this wide "toebox" style steel toe boot. Now I'm tired of putting pictures of my nails growing back from various escapades around here, though I know you all love them, so I decided I was always having steel toed boots, and they are never wide enough. Always hurt my feet. Have even thought of clipping off the little toes, just so the steel toes would fit right. And in practice I have come pretty close a couple times, but I digress. So I bought a pair of these "superboots" and wore them all summer. I dug up every waterline around the place, with a shovel mostly, I spent days with my feet totally immersed in ditches full of mud and crud and wandered in the muddy creeks and loamy woods and only around Christmas this year did they start to leak, and that was due to the leather cracking and the bottoms splitting nearly in two. If these had been a different style I would have had them re-soled but they are a glued together shoe, formed in a press and the bottoms cannot be repaired. Too bad! So I checked, and they had lasted 18 months, about $10.00 a month, not bad. So I ordered another pair. I figure I'll order a second pair in another month, and if I can allow them to dry in between wearing them, they will last even longer, and they can be better oiled, to avoid the cracking the first pair experienced. All well and good huh? You know better!

There was a tree down in an area in the center of two ravines, and it was a bugger to get to, but I wanted to cut it up and clear it out, I originally thought it had come down this spring, but I think it has been down a couple seasons. Anyway I needed to get to it and get the chainsaw there as well, and ultimately get the wood out, so I could use it for heat in the winter. This meant I needed to do a little brush clearing, as everything around here is choked with briars, and multi flora rose. So I got the stone out and shined up the blade on my machete, and got the clippers out, and the chain saw, and an axe and a splitting maul. And headed off into the woods on the little Cub Cadet lawn tractor and it's red white and blue trailer. Chris had also wanted the area cleared out so the little babbling brook that runs into Rusty Ravine can be "enjoyed". So OK, I started in, chopping a path through the over hanging briars and vines. Flailing like a mad man at the vines that stick to you and coalesce into a cluster of "stick you and stab you" until you are very unhappy. And as you, oops I mean I, you see I did this, as I swatted at yet another stupid root system of evil, I made a slight miscalculation. And those new waterproof boots that I had , little more than a month. Well crap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And as if that weren't enough of a pain in the ass. I cut my pretty good socks , couldn't have been an old worn out pair , NOOOOOOO it had to be a relatively new pair. Oh, and I did cut my foot a little tiny bit, but it will heal. So I have been waiting for Chris to get home with some Super Glue to repair the boots I hope. But she is checking every route to the north of us for flooding and finding it , as Wills creek is an EPIC FAIL in the Army Corp of Engineers attempt to control it. Literally every route north of NadaFarm is flooded to impassable from this little crap stream. It was once part of the Erie Canal System and when that stopped being controlled, it turned into a nightmare of flooded roadways.. At least my houses are above the need of any dependence on those folks. But it does point out how far out we are, we are so far out they don't even care that we are surrounded by flooding. And it finally took her nearly 4 hours to get home, for an hour and a half tour, (gilligan's island theme music) an hour and a half tour..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway back to the disaster that is NADA FARM. Another tree fell, this time with a noticeable effect. Well wait, let me do this other one first.

 

OKay a tree fell and nobody was there, but I'll bet it made a sound. And I was able to get to it and cut it and nothing weird happened, except I caught the chain saw, in it a couple times and had to pull it out. Which loosened the chain and it whipped out of the saw and was caught on all the safety devices so nothing bad happened. Except the saw chain was bent and mangled and I had to take it into the garage and hammer the teeth back straight and re sharpen it and make sure it ran properly in the saw bar. I was looked at askance when I explained I had to do this by my twin who seemed to think the chain blade should have been discarded. But I think I mentioned about my cheapstreak didn't I? And the fact it's reinforced with a dearth of money setting around, right? So as soon as the glue dries on my macheted boots, and I can drag everything back out there, I am going to start cutting up this tree.

 

 

 

 

Another surprise was this tree, which fell in the best direction possible for a falling tree, as it didn't destroy the tree stand next to it, or the fence behind it. The worst part of it's failure is the fact that it pretty well exposed the tree stand, and makes it rather obvious. And taking as much foliage as it did with it, will probably necessitate moving the tree stand to another location. OH Well!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course here is another view, a day later, after all the snow melted, no really the next freakin day! It looked like this, I am going crazy with the weather, that's why I tried to chop my foot off the weather made me crazy! And actually if the blade hadn't caught in my boot it would have likely removed my right kneecap and I kind of like my kneecaps, they keep my legs bending as far as i can figure and they kept me out of NAM, but that's another story...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Man, are we happy out here!

 

The Chores, Fresh Air, Green Acres is for ME.