Mid Week Update - What's in your pocket?

I am attempting once again to do more informational or single topic posts about sustainable living rather than the standard "what I did today" posts. The two often go hand in hand like my observations about sheep shearing or what have you, but not always. This time of year it is all too easy to fall into the listing of the minor stuff I did posts and time constraints sometimes make those posts mandatory or nothing at all get's written. Yet for what it's worth I am going to try and just make two update posts a week for a while on Wednesday and Saturday nights.

Mundane stuff I did this week ran the gambit from switching the 861 tractor over from the hay spike to the post hole auger. I know pretty boring stuff except it took damned near an act of God to get it done. The post hole attachment was actually in a small pen I made for it supported from the barn roof and I needed to remove the yearlings from their paddock and run them out into the hay field to get her hooked up. The pen I had inclosing it was actually a dog pen that I then had to remove from the barn because the sheep will always find a way to hurt themselves on something like that. Usually it involves them sticking their head through some opening that should be impossible but they manage to bend the space time continuum and then run around like an idiot knocking all their friends unconscious trying to get whatever it is off.

Never fails. It's best to just remove all Items from their reach in my opinion.

I have also had a couple of emails asking about the little kitten I found on the gravel road. He is growing up fast now and has taken to sitting on my computer at night and watching me. At least when he isn't off terrorizing the other cats. He also steals bugles and eats them from the bag I keep on the desk. I have never seen a cat actually eat bugles before so it kinda freaked me out the first time he did it.

As you can see he is finally growing into those ears. I also had to find a new spot to put all the little weird items one often puts on their computer cases. My little model of an M-109 SP gun, a toy blunderbuss and a few other things had to be moved so he could have his own spot at the command center.

Today I had a list of things about as long as my arm to do. It started with unloading the firewood from the truck and into the racks and ended somewhere with collapsing into bed. However as I walked out the door to feed the sheep my Mother reminded me that today was the day to remove all critters from the hay field for the growing season. So I put on my mud boots and headed down into the slop at the gate between the hay field and the pasture to close the gate. I got the gate closed and only had to hold my boots on once as the mud tried to remove them for me when I noticed a strand of smooth wire hanging into one of the ram paddocks.

%$#*@ smooth wire. I hate it. I have pulled so much damned smooth wire off the rotting fences around this place I could have had it smelted down and made into combine by now if I had saved it all. It's useless stuff that my Mother ran all over the place trying to keep the horses fenced in because in her opinion barbed wire is dangerous. Well what it does is nothing except get torn out and then becomes dangerous itself because it finds it's way everywhere. I know because like I said I been cleaning it up for years and removing it from tangled sheep legs and tires and mower blades and....

You get the idea.


Now how this strand evaded my many journeys finding others like it I don't know, but it did.


Once I started pulling on this strand I noticed it went along the fence between the horse pasture and the ram paddock, then back out buried in the ground in the pasture. As I was reeling it in I noticed the fence had been pulled out from it's staple on a couple of posts and one thing lead to another and next thing I know I had spent the entire morning fixing fences and rolling up junk wire. On the way back up I had to stop and fix a couple of loose boards on the barn siding, etc. etc. etc.

I didn't even start on my list of chores until afternoon.

This time of year I always end the day by emptying out my pockets and seeing what "spares" I have accumulated for the day. These never seem to make it back into their proper boxes or jars and always get collected in a dish on my desk until I finally remember to take em to the shop and put them in the big miscellaneous screw, nail and bolt jar where I will scavenged them out when I run low on something. The battery was a gift from the battery fairy that I assume came out of my wife's mouse since she has figured out how to get them out of the storage container but can't manage to put the dead ones on the charger yet. After all it's only been like five years since we switched to all rechargeables around here.

At this rate I am never going to get back to the fencing project but at least I got the tractor all ready.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!