I've got a pretty nice deal here, I mean, other than funding my appetite for food and exploring the regions attractions, I don't have much in the way of expenses. So when my Grandfather comes to my door and asks whether I've had enough sleep yet I feel pretty obligated to say yes to his question and all the subsequent effort that it represents.
Today I started off exploring one of the farmstead buildings I had never been in before. It was the old hog house, abandoned as far as I can remember. Man was this place a sty! (couldn't resist) Lots of implements of farming, specifically pig raising, were still stored inside, as well as piles of lumber and also old hay bales in the loft. Unfortunately I have a minor allergy to hay and tend to handle it as little as I can manage on the ranch. Fortunately I had a dust mask to help a little, and I'm all dosed up on my over-the-counter. This made the morning just bearable. Did I mention it was 46 degrees in the sunshine? Yeah the early cold is passing through but they promise the warm will return. Still, hard labor made things heat up quickly. The idea was to remove an inner wall from a feed room.
If you saw on Facebook, this was effort that required aggressive persuasion by use of sledgehammer. I actually loved it, I'd do it all day on a warmer day with less musty hay lying around.
I did find some really cool relics, which is pretty commonplace among my uncles' farms. Like this old heater stove which my Grandpa explained he would use to warm baskets of cold piglets while the sows ate their dinner so the piglets would be lively instead of stiff from the winter cold. (he'd set the wooden baskets on top of the heater) How small they must have been!
I'm considering researching restoration techniques to remove the rust and maybe re-coat what metal remains. It may even be functional. Then I'd have to decide whether to keep it or sell it, as keeping it would require shipping. However, this is exactly the kind of souvenir from this adventure (the whole adventure) I'd like to find.
I also learned why adult pigs are fitted with nose-rings. It keeps them from rooting. Rooting is when a pig or boar goes digging in the undergrowth with it's about or tusks, looking for food. It's just a natural behavior but in a domesticated environment it usually just means they spill their food trough all over. So they get a ring that pokes them when they stick their snout in something. I wonder if "punks" with pierced noses know that it's a reflection of being put "under control". I doubt it for most. Also, this little bottle was on a shelf, I crushed another one like it as I walked through the straw that had fallen in from above. The bottle likely contained "pig liniment" because "that's what the old vet would give ya to give to the pigs."
I often wonder what exactly the active chemical ingredients are. My grandparents still use "green salve" on any healing open wounds. It's probably sixty years old but I've tried it and a cut or scrape heals about twice as fast as with an antibiotic cream and a bandaid.
Anyway, we got the boards, I wish I had taken a better picture of the hog house interior.
Picture an all wood long low barn about 30' wide and 100' long with the main entrance in the middle of the 30' end. The inside corridor has side stalls and a ladder goes up to a loft running through the center rafters. In this case, the roof has holes or is completely gone in some areas but the majority is still covered and the glass is still in most of the dusty windows. It's neat. And sad. "My dad had this built just before I took over farming, so probably about 1922. I use to have gates in the middle so each sow would get to the right pen but then I got better at it and tired of stepping over all those gates and eventually I was done with pigs, just too much work." Stories like these are just priceless and make all the effort effortless.
The boards were for a completely different project but if I got ambitious there are about seven of those old storage buildings that are in various state of collapse that I could sledgehammer and crowbar to my heart's content.
It's pretty customary out here to just burn all your garbage that doesn't recycle and the burn barrel and surrounding open slat fence (allows windflow through the fire to pull the smoke up and away) needed attention. Unfortunately redoing the fence first required us to gather some lumber (check) (but there are piles of lumber all over...) and also to remove about 3 square yards of landscaping rock that had been stored around the burn bin and now there was a use for around the house. So we tore down the old fence and dug up the fence posts and shoveled the rocks and spread them around the new plastic weed barrier we laid. Afterward we stopped for a beer but we'll get to the construction on another day.
I also had promised to change the oil in the loaner F-150 I've been using and I figured I was overdue on my promise. I had purchased the oil and filter about a week ago and just needed a nice day and some time to do it. Well let me just say, on the record, that I can change the oil on my '97 Ford without spilling a drop anywhere and in about 20 minutes. I don't even need a jack, I fit right under it comfortably. It's very rewarding.
Well changing the oil on this 2000 F150 is rewarding like baby-sitting your ex's angry chihuahua might be rewarding. I don't know why in the world they would move the oil filter forum conveniently right behind the bumper in the drive front wheelwell in one model to way up under the shock bar of the front axel at the engine. The end result is, once I squeeze under (I refused to use the hydraulic jack on principle) this slightly lower to the ground pickup, I had to scrape and bang my knuckles all up to get the filter wrench around the filter and then it had to leak all over this drip pan over the support bar (this is the intentional design now, before spilling out about four inches away on the other side nowhere near where I have the catchpan. Plus, the old filter of course has (super thick, black as night, when the heck did you last change this anyway) used oil in it and is sideways so it's now spilling out all over said scraped knuckles and nearly onto my face while I scrape my hand again rushing to adjust the pan. Then the filter, which I've titled up to gain some assistance from gravity (upside-down on my back) WILL NOT FIT out of the engine block and frame without being turned sideways again. It may be safer up there in an accident or whatever dumb excuse Ford might have for moving the filter but I think if you aren't going to be getting into accidents anyway it's much nicer to be able to reach in from the side of the car and calmly and carefully unscrew and replace the part, especially for one's knuckles.
And yeah, I managed to use my phone to take some pictures for you all without getting oil all over it (because this was still the oil pan draining, not the nightmare filter).
But even though it was a very cold day, it was beautiful today and because there is a freeze tonight I took some time to take some pictures of the flowers that were still in bloom up until tomorrow.
The potted ones my Grandma had me bring inside the breezeway so they'd stay warmer.
And I picked a few of my favorites for the table, because they might as well die prettily.
Today I Harvested: Lumber, Motor Oil, Landscape Rock, Stories, and Flowers.
And Petted 0 cats, for which I have no excuse as it was my "day off" after all!
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