Rheumatism

Honestly, it’s days like this that worry me. I woke up feeling fair to middling, did my morning chores feeding llamas and goats and even giving a shot to one of the llamas who has a swollen leg from some kind of injury he has given himself. Around noon I had finished up and my youngest daughter and I sat on the tractor bucket, and I told her some of the old stories of rounding up cows when I first came to visit Idaho, and how her oldest brother learned to ride from a champion barrel racer in Nevada.

Lunchtime came and I fixed up me some hotdogs and ate them. It was around that time I also started feeling quite poorly. It started like the old rheumatism in the hips and spread throughout my torso and arms. That finally got to the point I could no longer stay awake, so I went up to take a nap for more than an hour and a quarter on my bed. That is not right for me as I normally only nap for some twenty minutes or so. Now it is gone past seven in the evening an I am still feeling like Wile E. Coyote after the fall from the cliff and the huge boulder landing on me. With any luck, I will feel much better after tonight’s sleep and for all of tomorrow. I have an important errand I need to run as soon as I can.

The pain of it is debilitating and were I working a regular job that required reporting into some stuffy manager, I would have been in trouble for a day like today. That is not interesting to me. I don’t want to have to have my security and livelihood threatened over something beyond my control. I will try to report into myself in full health tomorrow.

I have just about finished a stand for Missus’ loom. She has an Ashford rigid heddle loom that is some 18 inches wide. She told me that a stand would cost us $175 or so, so I took some of the wood I milled and made her one for about $15 in parts. I *think* that saved us a few dollars. Perhaps you know the old meme that says “why buy it for $35 when I can make it myself with $97 in craft supplies?” I have spent well over that amount in supplies and tools and the mill and so on. Well, I have got to trim the tops of the legs and tighten a couple of bolts, then it is as done as can be. I more or less followed the specifications of the stand she does have, and replicated it as close as possible, except the type of wood and the thickness of my pieces. I think it came out pretty good, and I understand some of the things they did on their model to help it work better than the methods I might have chosen on my own. I also need only make one spare part, only longer, to make this stand fit a wider loom. Well, I am happy with it.

The ideal situation this year is to make anything like this that we can here on the farm. We’d like to give up on buying things as much as we can, buy quality when we do have to, and make quality when we don’t. I need to get the trailer fixed and start making trips down to get firewood and milling wood. The weather today was perfect for it. We have a bit more to come before it starts getting wet late this week or early next.

Off to an early night to bed tonight. I need to recover from this awful feeling. Best wishes reader.

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A Rough Spring Time Change

I am not sure we have sprung ahead:

I had a lovely birthday yesterday, despite the number associated with it. One of the boys made it over with his wife and son, so we had an excellent time visiting. They brought me a gift bag full of snacks that their son picked out based on colors. How funny. He made good choices! For my birthday I also got some files for the shop, and a time change to ruin any hope of feeling great for the next week. What a laugh!

To be fair, as tired as I am today, it is our oldest daughter that called me only minutes after she got to school to say she was feeling sick and wanted to know if I could give her a ride home. So guess what’s lying about on the sofa now, feeling as rough as a bear’s ass. Mrs. Bacon is resting too, just because of a bout of insomnia, and the early start this morning demanded of us all.

Falling behind on Chores:

I would love a rest this morning, but I have already had an unscheduled trip up to the school, some seven or eight miles away. I have to cover that huge new pile of hay with the tarp soon as it is meant to be precipitating tomorrow at this time. Within a couple of days after that, the temps are meant to start getting into the 50’s each day. That demands I get a few outsized projects done. There is no waiting around till hot weather for them!

It is time to get the yard cleaned up for the summer and ready it for some serious work. I do not like the messiness out there. It is also time to get some of the decorating done since I can mill all the wood I need to do it. It’s also time to get all the machinery started and oil changes and filter replacements done. Everything wants some attention or another, bar none. I need the place photogenic, at least, and especially after this winter when everything turned to mud, nothing outside in the yard looks good. It is also a good time to get the harrow out and look at attaching that to the tractor and pulling it around the pasture. I saw a neighbor doing it yesterday on his place. I’ll double check that this it the time to do it here, but hey, who am I to second guess farmers and country people?

Making a business out of the farm:

This year I have got to show a serious attempt at a profit motive and try to make some money on the farm. There is much to do! I want to finally sell eggs, and I want to make the llama fiber sellable. I also want to produce some wood products and make a bit of lumber. I’ll need to collect llama pooh, and other things like hay and the like that can be made into a decent fertilizer. That is a process that I can put into practice a year before selling, which should give me time to d our own garden beds first, and hopefully grow some plants that Missus can sell from her little shop.

I have been wanting to put up some videos on YouTube, too. I see a lot of people make a little extra money doing it. Many don’t make near enough to live on. That’s fair enough. We are lucky in that we don’t need lots. Trouble is, I don’t feel qualified to teach anyone. I feel fine about presenting what we are doing, and how things are going. But I am nervous about the idea of trying to teach much. Partly that is to do with how much time I have spent trying to figure things out on my own rather than learning from classes or books. Partly it is because I have always felt like there is more for me to learn. I have worked with guys that are of the ‘know-it-all ilk,’ who would take over my work and tell me all about how I was doing it wrong, that there is only one way to do it, and how they know it and everything else. Arrogant guys like that were always very painful to deal with, and I soon learned that not only is there likely many ways to skin any cat, but that I do not know them all, leaving me feeling undereducated where I am already uneducated.


The weather is changing for the worse outside. I think we are going to get a splash before long. I need to go get that hay tarped.

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Weird Winter Weather

The winter has been shockingly warm compared to the past winters we have had here in our part of Idaho. I took a photo last week while warming the truck up to take the girls to school that I thought demonstrated just that. It was of the rain on the windshield. It was just after seven in the morning on February 15th. We were only a week or so past the dead middle of winter and it was raining early in the morning! I could not believe it! Any normal winter and we would have had snow instead! But not this year. It snowed this morning though, as a storm blew through! I fed the animals and shot two photos of what it looked like as I did. Those looked far more typical of what Idaho should look like this time of year.

To be honest, the snowfall seems minimal, but it is usually spring when it falls the most, as the weather warms, and the seasons ready for a change. It has fallen a fair amount for the year, but with the warmth and the rain, it has melted more quickly than usual. That is probably a fair assessment and explains the water forming what looks like a lake in the field behind our house. The moisture is there, but it is just not there in its normal fashion.

Rainfall at a little past even in the morning reminds me more of English or even Californian winter weather!

Perhaps we will pick up a lot more snow in the spring this year. and perhaps it will also come in unusual form instead of snow. So long as it is snow when it hits the mountain tops! And that brings up the next concern. It needs to be snow on the mountains so it can last till early July or so. Then it can melt in the summer heat and come down to the river to be pumped into the irrigation canals and eventually onto crops.

This winter has been unsettlingly warm, and I do wonder what the summer temperatures and weather will be like. Will it be much warmer than we are used to in summer too? Warm weather encourages thunderstorms, and thunderstorms encourage wind. What are we in for?

The horse is looking forward to the feed in the tractor bucket as I drive it along and shoot her photo. Hard to believe the field was clear of snow just yesterday. I expect it will be again soon!

All we can do is ride it out. But if it is exceptionally hot, I will still need to create firewood for the following winter, despite that. I will also need to work in the workshop despite it. That may mean nightshifts. So be it. I am not sure how to deal with the mill, but I will work something out. Maybe it requires building a shed with a roof over it for shade? Maybe it requires moving it? That is probably in the cards anyhow.

No matter the case, I need to work through it. My arthritis does not hurt like it has been the past I don’t know how many years. It is feeling much better thanks to some tablets I have been taking to reduce it. But even with them, I am limited. Before the tablets I would wake up sore and hurt all day. I would limp while walking. I would not be able to move much for long. Now I wake up feeling much better. I can work a while. What I cannot do it keep at it for long without it feeling a dull awful feeling that requires me to stop and rest off the pain, to the point of even having a short nap to recover. This year promised to be better, though with these limitations. But I will do what I can. I know for a fact I have passed this on to one child. It may have gone to even more. Time will tell. I just hope not, but if so, there is not much I can do apart from advise them of it and help them to work and will through it.

Looking down the road beyond where I turn to feed the llamas on the back pasture over the road from ours. Visibility was just shy of a mile. It’s not bad, but it landed as a surprise to me, full stop.

It’s not the summer I look forward to. It is the intermediary season of spring. Those in-betweens here are wonderful. I was told many years ago that the summers were nice here. They were not too warm. Even in 2010 the high temperatures for July and August were an occasional 93F with more falling in the 80’s than 90’s. By 2019 we saw the high reach 97F with several more days falling into the mid 90’s. Tree rings I have seen around here suggested to me that the 1980’s and before saw more rainfall, taking into account early wood growing years of a tree, as it does.

In other news, we are living with three cats in the house now. All of them are “fixed” and their attitudes towards each other and everything shows it. They wrestle together. The older one tolerates the younger ones better. He was fixed a while back, but he seems to have improved on the two young ones for them not producing so many hormones. I’d like to see them all shitting outside rather than in the litterbox in the house, and especially just in the house. I found three parcels under my desk upstairs, and they were just starting to go to town under Missus’s big loom in the library. We have a spray that is meant to stop them doing it where we spray, which is where they have gone. I am waiting with bated breath. We’ll see how they do! I have sprayed the entire upstairs carpet for good measure!

Wood is loaded into the fire for the evening. I am tempted to go up to bed early and watch some YouTube videos. There is no school tomorrow, so I can cancel the alarm and just enjoy the evening and the morning. Such rare opportunities should be taken. My wife is good at knowing that. I have been so ingrained with “you should be busy” that it is hard for me to remember it is okay to do such things, even when I am limited by my health. It is likely to snow again tomorrow, and a little bit likely the two days that follow it. High temperatures will hover around 40F throughout the next ten days, according to the forecast. Before long it will be real spring and the temps will begin to rise. It will be time to work hard and get done all the things that need to be around here. I have a long list.

There is much more I could talk about. Everything from politics to why I am not photographing as I should be. But a relaxing evening is calling to me, and I do wish to go and enjoy it thoroughly.

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January Update

It’s a Sunday morning and the house is still quiet. I have been up and put a fire in the stove and ate an orange. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side is playing softly on the tablet next to me, the light is still dim because of the fog outside. It seems a good time to make an update to the blog to say that mostly due to health conditions, not much has been going on here.

I got a message from the farmer down the road the other day to let me know that his wife had seen one of our llamas out of the field. We were in the city when the message came and hurried home as fast as we could, even though we had to stop at the vet’s office to pick up a cat that had gotten spayed. By the time we got home we could not find any animals out of where they were meant to be, and I fed them and looked all about for footprints out of the fence and found nothing. There was no hint that anyone had been out.

Yesterday I was out to feed them again and the obnoxious young male llama was out in front of the gate next to the road just across from where I was at the front of the house! Solution! I walked over and pressed him a bit till he walked through a damaged spot on the fence and back in. He had been out on the grass right in front of that gate, and never left any footprints in snow. So, I spent some time fixing fence. I mentioned to Missus that come spring, I really need to do some repairs on the fencing.

We have not been completely immobilized lately. Missus has done some cleaning around the place, and I got to do some plumbing repairs. Our kitchen sink drainpipe goes under the house in the old root cellar and then back into a sheltered space. That is one cold room in winter and any grease or the like cools in that area. I know this because I have been down there and taken it apart before. I have found that so long as the drain will flow slowly and the level of the water in the sink goes down within the hour or so, I can let it do so, and then hit the thing with boiling water. That breaks up the grease and it will go a bit. It may take a couple of large pans of boiling water, but eventually it will flow through well. The grease floats, so it traps at the top of the pipe, then any food going down at the bottom will get caught in the now smaller passage under the grease and everything blocks up kind of suddenly. Hot water will break through and let it flow again and I will fill the sink with the hottest water the hot water heater can produce (run some hot water in another room and then let the heater refresh the temperature in the tank to get it to its hottest before filling the kitchen sink.) Maybe add a pan of boiling water to the top of the hot sink water, then pull the plug(s) and it will drain goofy then flow evenly and fast. The pipe is pretty clear now. This is what works for us and keeps the money in the bank under our name and not the plumber’s.

Of course, having to do this means there is too much grease going down the drain. We turned up the temperature of our hot water heater and found ourselves doing it less often, especially over summer, but now it is winter, things changed. It got cold enough to stop up that grease in the pipe again.

So those kinds of things have kept up going when we have not felt like it at all. Our trip to town was brought on by the need to deliver the cat to the vet, and get groceries and just out of the house, generally. The days are slow, and we are just plodding along at the moment.

Our firewood is holding up. I would expect it to be threateningly low at the moment usually, but with this winter being as warm as it is, I am not too concerned. I have sawlogs to split if I need to, so that is no worry. But I don’t think I will be splitting them. That’s good so I can make boars from them in the early spring. It looks like despite the snow here, we are still in an apparent drought.

Time to get up and get the day going. Everyday there are animals to feed and life to sustain.

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First Day of Winter 2023

Winter is officially started, and we are so close to Christmas now. The kids have finished their schooling for 2023. We went to the elementary school program yesterday afternoon and watched our youngest and our grandson singing carols. Our eldest daughter did a make-up test for the day she went in to get her eyes looked at. Things are good for her. There is a slight difference in her prescription, and we will be getting her some new glasses in January, or maybe even between Christmas and the New Year.

We have not replaced the car yet. I have not found a good deal on one I want.

I spent yesterday afternoon changing the oil on the tractor, and the fuel filter. The school program cut me short on doing any more there. I need to change the hydraulic fluid today. I also need to look at changing the front axle oil. It has leaked, but I put in some replacement oil when that happened, and it has not leaked again since. Could it have been to do with the viscosity of the oil from the factory? Or should I see about getting it serviced under warranty? We’ll see. There is time to see how things go. Maybe in the spring, and especially if it leaks again. I did a little cleaning inside and want to finish the glass today. I’d feel a lot better about driving around the property with the glass clean. We have kids. They know to stay back, but still. Safety. I should never have let the glass get dirty in the first place.

It is 5AM right now. It is 26 degrees outside. This autumn has been so warm! It has also been dry. I wonder if the drought is back on. If the year continues like this, the summer may be pretty bad wildfire-wise. We are expecting it to hit 40F today, the first full day of winter. It reminds me of Denver when I was a kid. That is just not how it is here in Cache Valley, though. Well, the last time it was similar to this in 2017, it turned out to be a very wet spring, so we will see.

Time to try to get back to sleep now. There is plenty to do today. I’d sure like to see that fluid get changed on the tractor for its own good. It’ll be my first time doing this change, and it would be great to see how easy it really is so I am not intimidated by it in the future. The tractor needs to be fit and ready for wood this spring. I cannot mess about. I will need to get loads of firewood and loads of sawmill wood. No messing about. No worrying about having enough or worrying about it not being dry enough. Reminds me, I also need to clean the chimney today. Would be great to have that done before Christmas so we can get a good fire going for the holiday. We don’t want the kids complaining that is cold when they come to visit.

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F*cked Over Rebuilt Dodge

I went up to town and picked up the car on the trailer today. That cost me $89 to confirm what the service desk manager suspected. The engine was built faulty, and overheats because of the problem with the block. I am not sure of the specifics, but what it results in is Ford recommending that the owner do a long block engine replacement, which is to say the engine block and heads. Amazingly the cost is estimated at $9,000.00. They say the new block is corrected, but come on, the engine was meant to be right when it was new. How am I to know that another new engine is right this time? I think not. I am not buying Ford again after this crap. The car has fewer than 140,000 miles on it. It was okay till the engine started overheating on us when we took that drive to Wyoming. It has been giving us troubles since. Yeah, I am done with Ford.

As whatever car we get after this is going to be driven by my daughter, I am thinking something like a Subaru. I like the 4×4 or AWD that every Subaru has. Looking through the used ones they seem to run for a few hundred-thousand miles. We want economical too. I would like to have something we can do a little travelling with. It’d be nice to get out and see some of the country with the kids.

Anyway, I brought the car home, and we will clean out the personal belongings then send it off to the salvage yard. I think I would like to put a note in it saying what is wrong with it. It would not be good for someone to come along and pick the engine when it is so badly built. I hope we can get it turned in by Monday.

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Today Was Meant to Be…

Today was meant to be a nice day to go get some firewood home to split and ready up for burning, but it was not meant to be. Today was also meant to be a day to get the car loaded on the trailer to get a diagnostic done to see what kind of repair is required to get it to stop leaking water into the cylinders and causing it to overheat repeatedly. But alas, that was not meant to be. Last night I got a message that one of the boys was having trouble with the back wheel of his car making a grinding sound and it not driving well. So today was meant to be a day to go help him instead. Then the water heater at our house went on the frtiz. That would have to wait. I started off taking our grandson to school with his dad since their car was out of service. Then we got parts and tools and then some penetrating oil and some more tools and got at the job of changing his back brakes, pads, rotors, and all.

That would be a fairly easy task, but his car has wheels on it that don not quite fit right, and they will not let go properly when the lug nuts are undone. Getting the wheels to come off is a hell of a chore. But we got it in the end, and the brake rotor and pad changes were dead easy.

We ran to get the kids in the afternoon and then he took them to my house while I went and got an element for the water heater. I came back and sat down feeling so tired by this point that I wanted to give up, so I got up and got at it instead. I got a hose and drained and flushed the water tank, then changed the element and went out with our son to tighten his lugs again after he has driven it for a while. I came back in to realize I should have shut the pressure release valve on top of the water heater to stop it overfilling and flooding the pantry. Oh well. But since it was full, I cleaned up and put on the power and the water heater is working again just fine! So, happy days.

On top of it all, I was very tired today as I could not sleep last night. I was watching a lot of videos of a singer that YouTube rudely stuffed under my nose about a week ago. I finally gave it and watched a video, and it was plain to see she was an amazing opera singer. Her name was Patricia Janeckova, from the Check Republic. I say was because five weeks ago she got married, and four weeks ago she died of breast cancer. I’ll say this: she was a truly gifted and amazing singer! Sadly, she was only 25 when she died. All death is horrible, especially when someone is so young.

I could have gotten into opera to hear her some more. Instead, I’ll leave it for now. It wasn’t meant to be.

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Mars on the Horizon

I was up to answer nature’s call this morning about 4AM, and to stoke the fire to keep the chill off the house. I also heard the alarm going off on the weather station to announce that it was 20F outside, the temperature that risks our pipes under the house freezing if we don’t have water running. So, I put the kitchen sink on super low and said goodnight to Missus, who asked me last night to wake her when I am up any time after 4AM. She was up when I found her and is going to bed instead of waking up.

As I came up to my room and looked out the window as I walked in, I could see that Mars was just above the horizon on its rise. Like the Moon when it is just on the horizon, Mars looked bigger. It was an amazing sight to see! It is just a planet rising, which is does daily. But the title of the post sure is ominous! Mars, the God of War is on the horizon, rising to rule the sky.

On a personal note, I have some DVD-ROMs that my step-dad gave me before he died. I ended up with two sets of them in an effort to read the files, but never could. I managed to get a couple of minutes out of the first of each disc, then it would not play anymore. I never did figure it out. But I found a DVD-ROM while cleaning up the house yesterday and plugged it into my computer in a couple of fashions till I was no longer overloading the USB controller and got it to open in software that has been allowing me to rip the discs into playable files on my computer. My daughter sat with me and for me it was like she was looking through a window into my childhood and seeing people I have told her about, and seeing a world that no longer exists.

The first Christmas recorded was 1983. It was the greatest year I had ever experienced for presents on Christmas morning. I remember it as a time the living room was brimming with joy for all of us kids. Then, watching the video, I came out into the space to see what I had got, which was highly embarrassing because I had sneaked out during the night, and was not surprised that morning and was lying through my teeth. Incidentally, that was the last time I ever peaked ahead. It ruined it for me. Anyway, looking at the video, the room was not near as full as I remembered thinking it was. Our gifts were lovely, but few, and the space far more spartan that I remembered it being. But things are relative. I remember a good childhood growing up. Was it less than I remember in material things? Must be. But we always had enough. Have things changed today?

Mars on the Horizon. Venus is sinking.

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A Day in the Life

Morning

That first cup is a cappuccino, vanilla. It is not a drink that comes with a sensational aroma like coffee. But it is not packed with acid that upsets my tummy, and it does not go right through me, exiting as soon as I pour it in, like coffee. What is the difference? I don’t know. One is from a bean. One is a powder, like a big glass of Nestle Quick. But the hot Quick stays put a minute, and it washes down the vitamin and Glucosamine tablets I take each morning. I enjoy a slow go of waking up, and let the kids do their thing to get ready for their day while I do. Missus and I talk about the current events in the family, and eventually I take the girls to the bus stop where they take off for school each day Mondays through Thursdays.

Today is a typical day. There is a conversation about the size of our youngest child’s shoes in order for me to report that back to our oldest so he can get her a present for her birthday coming up in about two weeks. He’s good that way and puts in the effort. What more could a parent want than to know that if said parent were to disappear off the surface of the Earth, their kids would take care of each other, or at least be able to take care of themselves?

Our second child will be by today to help split firewood again. I moved the log splitter and the big pile of wood yesterday so we can load the bunk as we go. He did not like the trailer loading out back and then having to unload it into the bunk beside the house. I don’t blame him. It all stemmed from the mess I had going out there in the Service Yard last year when the new tractor arrived. I cleaned it all up and had decided that the whole setup would not fit well in there with the tractor in as well trying to do the lifting. Well, we will try it anyhow, and I have tried to set up with the space for it. Splitting wood is the big chore I have to look forward to today. But if we get the pile done that it out there, we will undoubtedly have most of the wood ready for winter, and I can breathe a lot easier knowing that the wood is drying a little before we burn it, and that I can relax and work more wood with an eye to having it ready for next year. Yes, that’s right. We will finish this mad dash through firewood just to keep doing it still, only at a more relaxed pace. I need to get this into my daily schedule.

All this is to say where my mind is in a typical morning like this one. Not that I am working any of this in the morning. That will al come after the cappuccino and taking the kids to school. If our second arrives at his usual time, it will be within twenty minutes or so after I get back from the bus run, and we will get started soon after that. I think these thoughts through so I can eventually get to the point where I remind myself that I need to get tarps to cover the wood this weekend before the rain comes next week. Best keep it dry now, rather than bringing in rain-soaked wood to try to light in the fire as it gets colder with the changes in the weather, and especially with that rainfall.

Time to leave soon. I did not have my usual second cup. There is only so much a man can stand of the stuff each day. Some habits cannot remain consistent, even in habit form.

Lunchtime

We took a break at noon and son left. Then I went back at the wood splitter for a bit before I called it off just after 2:00PM. I ate some ravioli, then caught up on the news. I watched an episode of CSI: NY while eating.

Evening

For me, the evening starts when I go to get the kids from the bus stop. I get a few minutes there to catch up on the news a little more, then after they arrived, the girls and I went to town and got some rabbit food, and some whole corn. We went to the thrift store and picked up a couple of puzzles for our ninth grader’s art class, and we grabbed Subway sandwiches for supper when we got home.

I thought about going out and doing more log splitting, but after all that for a day, I decided not to. So here I am sat down for a spell and enjoying the quiet evening without running myself into the ground.

I want to add too that it is another good day. No bones pain. I am muscle sore, but that does not hurt like bone sore, so I am pretty happy this evening. I just want to rest it all off because I can. There will be plenty to do tomorrow.

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Milling Wood for a Rabbit Hutch

The morning was busy helping Missus out with arranging some things in the house. When she was done with me, I went out to the tractor and took it around to the mill and parked it. There was a log already on it that I had put up there a couple of weeks ago. It was a short log that has some limited uses, but it was dry and a bit experimental for me. Most of the wood I have cut on the mill so far has been green wood. The one on it yesterday was effectively seasoned. So, I tightened the blade on the mill and started it up. A warmup run cleared the oxidization off the blade and confirmed it was running true.

There was a large crotch in the log, and I started it off by cutting the remaining branch stump off. Then I turned it and flattened it on two more sides, leaving one lived edge, which I could have cut off too, but decided to worry about that at the table saw instead. That allows me to maximize the size of any boards cut from the middle of the remaining log rather than forcing all of them to a single standard from a square cant. I then cut each live edged board to one inch thick. All of my scraps and boards went into the tractor bucket ready to take around to the house and shop. The scraps will be used as firewood in the house.

I cut a straight edge on the boards, then cut the size 1/32nd over five inches in order to allow for a little bit of edge jointing on my final width. At last I ran all through the planer and surfaced the faces. Then I did the same on the posts I made a few weeks back, on all four sides. The final step on the boards was to cut one straight end, ready for their final measurements. The final step on the posts was to do the same, then but a 3/16ths-ish bevel on that end in order to serve as the bottoms of the legs for the hutches I intend to build out of all this wood. Now each board and post is sized in every dimension except for final length which will be finalized when I put them in their places and cut them to fit.

I need to mill a longer log or find some one-inch-thick boards already done to make the longest pieces for the hutches. The pieces I am describing will run the span of the hutch. The hutch is going to be made from wire cages suspended in a wooden frame. The idea is to prevent access to any of the wood by the rabbits, so they cannot chew it. But there is also another important feature. No wood bracing can be allowed under the wire cages, so they cannot pile up droppings anywhere. If it can fall through, the chickens in the run in which the hutches will be kept can pick through the droppings and effectively clean it up. Lastly, I will be building a roof on top to keep the rabbits dry and give them a bit of shade. Walls can be added to a couple of the sides in order to give them a wind break, too.

It’s a challenge. It’s interesting and enjoyable. Taking the boards from a tree in the manner I am able to now is absolutely wonderful! There is something that feels very self-reliant about taking a log from a tree and cutting it to the dimensions required for a specific task.

I could be suing the lumber rough, but I decided on planing it all smooth because it will be in the weather, and I want it to expose a smooth surface that will not trap water in any way other than its normal adhesion to help reduce rot. Another step I will take it to stand the final hutches on cinder blocks to get them off the earth and reduce the time water can stand at the base of the posts. No post can be sealed at the bottom unless its top is capped or sheltered to prevent water running down the wood grain and trapping in the sealed bottom, causing it to rot. I don’t know of you have ever seen a fence whose posts have had some sort of metal nailed to the top, old timers would sometimes use the disk from a bean can, but that actually does serve a purpose. And my intent is to build this hutch to last! Well, I should say these hutches. When I finish the big one, there will be at least one little one and maybe two left to do.

Anyway, as for suspending the cages into the wood frames, I am fixing to build a set of wire brackets that can be screwed to the boards that span the posts, and then hold the wire in a way that does not create any flat surface under the cages. That will require some 1/2-inch-wide metal strips and the vice and hammer for shaping, and a drill for screw holes. Any braces under the cages to help hold up the weight of the rabbits will be fashioned out of the same kind of wire the gages are made of, creating a deep beam but again, no flat surfaces to catch mess on. There is also an interior wall that provides a door that can be close to split the big cage up into apartments when needed, but also will provide a strong support at the center to suspend the floor at that location. Missus’ idea to put that wall in! That was a stroke of brilliance!

I imagine after putting all this explainer in, when I get the hutch set up in situ, I will shoot a photo and post it. Watch this space.

Dylan has promised to come over today and begin a regimen of helping to sort out the final mass of firewood for this winter. We have pieces to cut and split, and if need be we can go get a lot more where we source it from. I really appreciate his help with it. There is a lot left to do!

Time for me to get moving and get ready to take the girls to the bis stop for school. Then there is a long day of work ahead after that!

Posted in Journal Entry, Regular Update, The Farm, Woodshop | Comments Off on Milling Wood for a Rabbit Hutch