Category: Construction and Maintenance
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Brush Rake and Burning Brush
Larry brought up his brush rake to push the brush from our orchard into burn piles. You can’t see it from here, but the entire orchard is full of brush from pruning. Larry is on the tractor, and Ken and Daniel have the brush rake. This one is sturdy, yet flexible enough to float over… Continue reading
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Burning Brush
We’re late getting the brush out of the orchard. We burn the prunings when they pile up. We got one pile completely finished today! This is our view down the orchard. There still isn’t much grass! Continue reading
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Solar Sheep and More Fences
You can see one of our pregnant ewes here, catching a few rays. She’s giving me the evil sheep eye! Here’s a picture of Caren and me. She wanted scritches, but she was a bit concerned when I held out my arm with the camera and it made a funny clicking noise. Larry is back… Continue reading
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Getting Ready for Shearing
We got the shearing setup built yesterday. We rebuild the catch pen and shearing floor each year under the hay barn. As always, it looks like we’ll have snow and rain for shearing. I am, yet again, scrambling to see if I can keep all the sheep dry. We will shear 137 sheep this year… Continue reading
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Black Welsh Mountain Sheep in Snow
This is what the front yard looks like today. We finally had to extend the fences. This is one of the adult rams, contemplating trying to jump out. So far, only 1 ram lamb has escaped, but I bet more would’ve been out by tomorrow if we didn’t shore up the fence. Continue reading
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New Feeders
We got the new ram lamb feeders installed today. Here are the boys before we moved them back into their normal pen. The new feeder uses two pieces that connect to make one large feeder. Continue reading
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Winter Pruning
The west side of the orchard has been completely pruned this year, and a majority of the east side has also been pruned. For some of the trees, it’s been nearly two decades since they were last pruned so heavily. There’s a huge amount of brush and wood. We’re trading the wood for part of… Continue reading
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A Solar Update
It’s been almost a year since we installed the solar hot water system. It provides both domestic hot water and supplemental heat for our radiant floor system. We learned several usage tricks early on, and they have not changed over time. We need to plan on doing most laundry and major hot water usage in… Continue reading
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Roofing Is Finished!
The porch is nearly finished. Bill got the last of the roof pieces on today. The only task left is to caulk the various pieces and clean everything up. Continue reading
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New Metal Roof Featuring Fall Turkeys
Bill was back to finish the porch roof today. Here you can see him bending and cutting the metal to form various edges. Later this evening, we went to the neighbor’s house for dinner. One of the local turkey flocks came strolling by. A large group of chicks and several hens came, plus a tom.… Continue reading