Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Are you leaving him enough homework time?

 

Yup, that be me. Letting them go due to egg laying startup and dealing with the winter cold would have been less mean. I lost two that way this spring when the boss was doing the daily checks. I took that duty back in April. We decided that when they really slowed down in the egg laying and the garden was mostly gone by I would put them down.

 

Took out the window AC units today. Will be humid until tonight and that looks like the end of it. Tomorrow night will be a cold one, they are predicting 35 so we may see 30 or possibly high 20s here. Other than that, it's all 40s and 50s night time temps as far out as the forecast goes. Like this time of year when it starts to get chilly.

 

I'm still moving 50 lb dry bags of wet composted cow crap so a little cool is better than warm.

 

Just not super cold

 

2 days in Saco for girls soccer playoffs meant 2 days away from home on great days to get work done that needed be done. Made it back around 5 and got in an hour and a half till it got too dark.

They win their games this weekend so it goes on next weekend too.

 

Thanks!

Its great for the girls (and parents too) but killer on the parents schedules........next week is 3rd weekend in a row of games every day-last weekend was 3 days in a row with the holiday.
If they win next weekend it keeps going- YAY, I think.

Yeah, its Yay

 

Sorry it came to that. But "it is what it is" . Another reason my wife tells me "NO" any time I start to bring up the having chicken thing. My dogs and cats really do keep my occupied just taking care of their needs. Some creatures will visit your pile and have a free meal.

 

Those creatures might include a bobcat. There is one on the other side of the road and about a half mile towards town from here.

Woman snaps photo of bobcat in Standish

 

Someone caught on what is supposed to be 50 lbs is closer to 100 I can handle 50 lbs of feed and scratch but that compost is not 50 lbs at all. I can drag it on a plastic sled and somewhat dump it out but it is hard and slow slugging for me.

 

Frost warnings here for tonight.

 

We have them right on my property which is only a house lot. Those and fisher cats, coyotes, coons, etc. We have deer, owls and a lot of other animals that visit.

 

Heating season is here and I just got word that the Hazelnut crop was small this year and sooooooooooo we are going to have to get all our shells in early and in a short time.

Sooooooooooooo..

Had to scare up more barrels to store them in.
Thought we had plenty... Arrrrrrrrrrgh.

A local jelly mfg co gets products in the 55 gallon clamp top barrels and gives them away when they are empty (Free is good)

We went out the other day and picked up 16 barrels to help fill the need.
Our main large storage area was a mess after the kids stored a bunch of stuff while their new house was being built last summer (2016) and yesterday we swamped out the barn and set about getting things in order.

We also keep hay for the horses in that building too, and a large portion of the wooden hay deck ( wide spaced 2 x 6 over 4 x4 on gravel) has been unused for many years as the boarding operation is smaller now.

This fact left us a good sized area to store more barrels full of shells.

The large spacing of the 2 x 6 was going to make getting the barrels moved across about 12 feet of decking tough.

The deck would not take the stress of the tractor wheels on it so a way had to be found to move the barrels from the tractor bucket across the decking.

Decided to do a McGyver

Took some fiddling about, some machining and some imagineering.

Ended up with two 4 inch aluminum channels 12 feet long and then got the grand idea to use a car tire dolly (fits under the tires on a car to allow easy of moving in a tight shop area)

Bought a set from Harbor freight.

Had the idea that the casters would roll right down the channel.

Noooooooooooooooooo.

Worked about as good as a sled in the mud

Back to the drawing board....

Decided to flip the channel over, modify the dolly platters and add two pipe rollers fitted out with small bearings on each end.

Added spacers between the channels to keep them aligned and we were off to the races.

Full barrels (about 400 pounds) can easily be slid into the tractor bucket and secured with a winch strap, then moved to the deck area and easily rolled across the deck and placed in rows.

The pictures do not show it but under the tractors bucket is a large duplex truck wheel that was damaged and now has a job holding up the end of the channel rails when we need to pull them out to locate barrels at the outer end of the deck.

When we are done we will have 36 or more barrels on that deck.

We haul the shells in a 3 yard dumpster and 9 barrels will hold a fell dumpster load.

Still have a bit of work to get done today, but we will be ready to go come November when the plant starts cracking shells.

The past few years have seen us make many changes in our shell handling equipment and modus operandi, but for the better me thinks....

Last year it was the addition of an extra large shop vac to suck the shells from the dumpster and into the barrels.

This tool really eased the physical work load on us and hastened the unload time a bunch.

Over the past 3 seasons we have changed to using all 55 gallon steel barrels from the cardboard ones we used in the past years (Cardboard will not stand the suction from the vacuum)

And a good time was had by all

 

a couple of pics of grandson Landon and what I think is his first ice cream cone last weekend





unfortunately, he wasn't feeling good all last weekend. Friday night he decorated me with the entire contents of his stomach, and Saturday he ate little, 1/2 banana, some milk and this ice cream. he later spouted again in the RV. Seems everyone in his family had the bug, and gave it to Kathryn, but I missed it!