Farmer Firebug

I’m sure I’ve mentioned in past posts that The Farmer is a bit of a firebug.

Well, remember the big tree limbs that fell on our house?  He had all that wood to burn that he cut up and moved down to the bottom pasture. 

This past Saturday there wasn’t much wind, so he decided it was time to set fire to it.  He gathered up a bunch more little twigs out of the front yard to add to his pile and help get the fire going.

That seemed fairly innocuous, so I left him to his devices and kept working inside.

Later, I decided I’d check on him and see what he was up to.  Well!  What he was up to was not only burning his pile of wood, but burning off part of the bottom pasture!

It seems he decided since that area’s all swampy, he’d just let the dried weeds burn off.  And there he was allowing a huge fire, and hadn’t even hollered at me so I could take pictures.  Bad Farmer!

He had quite a conflagration going there for a while.  The smoke was so dense at times, it made it look dark outside.

Our Farm Collie, Toby, helped keep watch to be sure the fire stayed within bounds.

I was amazed at how much racket the fire made.

I can’t imagine what it must be like in a really big fire, like a forest fire.  The noise must be absolutely deafening!

The Farmer used an old broom to beat out any fire going towards the woods or rest of the pasture.  It looked a little worse for wear by the time the fire was out.

It really didn’t take long for the fire to sweep through the swamp and burn off all the dead vegetation.

Fortunately, any little critters had time to make a run for it or bury themselves down in the mud.  There was no evidence of any crispy critters once the fire burnt out.

Just so ya know no creatures were harmed in the making of this post.

Removing The Tree Parts From The House

Last Friday, part of a tree fell on our house.  One of the neighbors called to tell me there was a tree on the house (I’d noticed), and he had a couple of chainsaws available to help remove it.  I thanked him and told him I’d pass along the information.

However, by the time The Farmer gets home from work, it’s a little late to start such a big project, so he opted to do it Saturday morning.  

Our youngest son, aka the Cave Geek, offered to help.  I offered to help.  The neighbor had offered to help.  But the first I knew he was even working on it, he’d already got a lot of the limbs away from the house.

Yes, Mr. Stubbornly Independent was well on his way to getting the job done, and though we once again offered to give him a hand, he declared it was really a one-person job.  After that, I just stood around and took pictures and wisely (I thought) refrained from offering advice.  

Fortunately, the only real damage done was to the gutter.

It got rather bent out of shape, and the edges of the roofing got a little crinkled, but otherwise, there didn’t seem to be any real harm done.

The Farmer got all the tree away from the side of the house, then started cutting it up into manageable pieces.

Fortunately, the biggest tree part that fell on the house was dead wood, so not as heavy as it might have been.  After he cut the tree in pieces, he threw those over the fence for later carting to his burning place in the bottom pasture.  (The Farmer is a noted Fire Bug.)

After the big stuff was out of the way, there were still a lot of small branches and twigs left on the roof, so Farmer climbed up there to get them off.

The easiest way to get the smaller stuff off the roof was to sweep it off.

Just look at that!  Who would have guessed the macho Farmer knows how to use a BROOM!

While he was on the roof, he decided to clean out the gutters.  They fill up as fast in the spring from fallen tree “fruit” stuff as they do in the fall from fallen leaves.  After crawling around on the roof, the Farmer took a break.

But he wasn’t done for the day.  Oh no!  I may have thought he was, but then I looked out and saw him up in a tree!

He’d decided to cut off some more of the dead wood to prevent it from falling on the house in the next windstorm.  However, this tree has power lines running through it.

Of course, those power lines were one of the reasons I wasn’t thrilled about him getting up in the tree, so he didn’t mention those plans to me.

But he got the more limbs down, so I guess he was pleased with that.

He certainly had a bunch of wood for burning when he was done! 

And I think he finally wore himself totally out, so he took a rest by the rose bed with his best buddy, Toby.

After he’d rested a while, he did manage to cart a few loads off and burn them, but there’s still a lot of wood left in that pile.

I’m thinking it will be a while before all that fallen wood is totally gone!

Flooded Creek

There seems to be a lot of rain falling all over the country.  We’ve had a bunch here lately, but at least we don’t have to worry about the record level flooding of the Red River like the folks in Fargo, North Dakota, and on into the Manitoba, Canada, area do.

Nevertheless, we still got a lot of rain a little too fast, and by yesterday morning the creek that runs along one side of our property was flooded. 

It backs up a lot when it gets to the culvert/bridge just down the road from us.  There’s just too much water and not enough space for it to run through!  The culvert also gets clogged with debris, and that constricts the water flow even more, and it has to go somewhere.

The Farmer decided to check out the flood waters before he left for work and walked down as close as he could get to the bridge, then headed back.

Thankfully, since the bridge is past our driveway, we don’t have to worry about flood waters over the road when we want to drive somewhere.

However, The Farmer was worried about the flood waters getting into his pond.  When it was built, they made a high bank on the side closest to the road, hoping to prevent that.  So far it had worked, but he decided to check it out.

It almost worked this time, but in a couple of spots there were trickles of water flowing into the pond.

There wasn’t enough water to worry about, but we’ll just have to see what happens next time we get a lot of heavy rains.

When the creek floods, the water also backs up into our bottom pasture and flows through the adjacent woods.

As you can see, the water runs over the fence line, which is why we have an electric fence there.  It’s easier to fix when the fast waters tear the wire away from the posts, or the debris just flat out breaks the wires.

The ground was so saturated with water, the earthworms were bailing out everywhere.  The grass was polluted with them, and I could barely walk down the driveway without stepping on one.

The guineas chose to stay high in the treetops, even though it rained on them all night. 

Of course, I wouldn’t accuse guineas of having an excess of intelligence.  They obviously don’t even know enough to come in out of the rain!

All this wet weather makes our Maremma LGD (livestock guardian dog) look pretty ragged since she’s all white.

She probably looks like a lot of folks in dangerously flooded areas feel – a little rough around the edges.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’re done with the rainy weather, so time to hunker down and wait it out!  I’m just thankful we got the basement water-proofed a couple of years ago, so I no longer have to spend hours and hours with a shop vac trying to drain the rising pool of water in the basement!

I guess there’s a silver lining in every cloud after all.

Pecans Past

Shortly after we moved here, we planted a couple of pecan trees in our orchard.  One was a Western Schley variety, and the other was a Colby pecan.

The goats got in the orchard a few times and girdled a few of the young trees. One of the pecans bit the dust due to those goatly depredations. The other one continued to grow, and a couple of years ago had a few pecans on it for the first time. The Farmer still has one of those pecans tucked away somewhere among his treasures.

However, one lonesome pecan tree isn’t going to produce as many pecans as The Farmer would like.  And we kept hearing reports of bumper pecan crops around here this year, so The Farmer was miffed because all he had on his tree were some dried up old leaves.

Or so he thought. 

One day after his new knees were working nicely, he decided to go up to the orchard and have a closer look.

Surprise, surprise! His tree had lots of pecans too!  What he thought from a distance were old leaves turned out to be pecans when he got up close.

Of course, he just had to harvest all those wonderful pecans, but the question was how to get them off the tree.

He could stand on the ground and knock the pecans off the lower branches, but the ones at the top of the tree were a little hard to reach.  Determined to reach his prizes, however, The Farmer used those new knees to climb up on the pallets around the tree and brace himself on the tree so he could whack at them with his walking stick.

This went on for some time and  he got lots of pecans knocked down onto the ground.  I will let you in on a little secret though . . . if you want to harvest nuts that have fallen to the ground, it’s really better if you keep the grasses mowed down around the tree.  It’s VERY difficult to see nuts nestled down in tufts of grass among tall weeds.

Especially when they sailed through the air like this . . .

And all too many of them did exactly that.  Those airborne torpedos sailed waaayyyyyy out there!  We searched in the grasses around the tree, going around and around and around and, well, finally gave it up.

We gathered up quite a few pecans, but I’m sure some were lost… well, like a ball in tall weeds.  Or maybe a needle in a haystack.  Whatever cliche you want to use, those pecans aren’t going to be found any time soon.

But at least The Farmer knows his pecan tree didn’t let him down.

A New Metal Roof On The Peafowl Pen

For a long time I wished for a better roof over the peafowl pen.  Every time it rained, the water poured through the boards and turned the pen into a muddy morass.  The peafowl’s food got wet, and then they wouldn’t eat it so it had to be thrown out.

Saturday The Farmer fixed the roof.  (Or at least we hope he did!)

He had some sheet metal panels to put over the old boards.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t find the washered roofing nails he usually uses for these kinds of projects, so had to use a different sort of nail.  Hopefully, there won’t be any leaks around the nails.

He’s really doing great with those new knees to be able to go up and down ladders and crawl around over roof tops!

At any rate, the new roof should be a vast improvement.  Even if it still has a few leaks, it won’t be anything like what was pouring through the warped boards now underneath the sheet metal!

The metal wasn’t long enough to cover the entire roof, but it’s over their two perching sites and the food bowl, so that’s the main thing.

I guess the next time it rains, we’ll find out just how big an improvement it is!