The young chickens are doing very well, venturing further away from their coop every day, mamma hen always right in the middle of them … head up high and “on a swivel” looking for threats. Cute. Fun to watch.
Set about 21 eggs in the incubator, timed to hatch about a day or so after my niece McKenna (future animal scientist) arrives from CA. This will be McKenna’s sub-flock … special birds indeed.
Decided to intervene on the 5/4 broody hens (5 hens, 4 nest boxes, go figure!) and, sure enough, none of the nests were viable. They were complete messes, rotten eggs, disgusting.
The hens had the best of intentions, but their execution must have been flawed. With the predominant weather conditions here/now (hot + humid), I can only surmise the eggs were too hot, or too humid, thus preventing their hatching. Also, those nest
Our Zodiac Futura Mk IIIÂ boat has seen better days. It has been ‘dry docked’ on a trailer next to our workshop for about 2 years, because its Shark Skin cover failed awhile back, causing all sorts of weather related damage.
Over the last three days, I’ve pulled the boat out, removed the motor, built a trolley-cart for the motor, and spent about 3 hours this AM trying to get the motor on the stand … in an upright position. Had to arm-wrestle the motor and fight against physics and gravity, and try all sorts of different techniques to get it done. Grueling work.
Finally got the motor on the stand and rolling around in the garage. Now I need to strip down the infrastructure inside the boat so I can troubleshoot the problems that need to be fixed.
Can’t wait to get the boat back into working order, because it is a ton-o-fun when operational.
Granted, I did quite a bit of shooting on the ol’ “shooting range” over the last day or so, and shared a few segments on this channel.
However, today was also a day of absolutely beautiful weather … at least to look upon and marvel at. Still hot and humid as hell (almost literally!), but at least the sky was blue, the clouds where billowy, and at times scary dark.
I’ve got three rifles to strip down and deep clean tomorrow … so I hope it rains all day.
I don’t shoot as often as I’d like. Why? Because I have too many other chores / tasks / priorities to take care of on this here farm and, therefore, don’t have the time or energy required to be cleaning guns all damn day. 😉
That said, I’ve now zero’d three *new* rifles in three days. I think I’ve gotten the shooting bug out of my system now. I can go back to building rabbit cages and garden fences.
I sort of rushed through this shooting session with the RPR, largely due to the heat and humidity, which just sucks the fun out of everything.
The RPR is a very interesting shooting platform. Long, heavy barrel. AR-15 inspired pistol grip and safety. Two-stage match competition trigger (light, crisp), and exceedingly smooth bolt action.
Two of the three rifles I’ve zero’d in the last three days had Vortex Viper PST (Precision Tactical) scopes, which I’m really starting to like a lot. I need to build up a higher level of expertise with their EBR MRAD reticle system, but even without 100’s of hours behind the scopes, I find them to be easy to step into and ‘just use’ out of the box. I’m sure once I get out to 500 meters or more, the finer details and idiosyncrasies of the reticle system will become much more important.
First impressions? I find the RPR to be extremely accurate out of the box, easy to shoot, and an absolute ‘tack driver’ from the shooting bench.
Also, I’ve become quite the 6.5 Creedmoor fan over the last few days. I’ll never give up on my .308 go-to platform, but may need to invest a bit more in the 6.5C alternative.
Decided to put the first 30 rounds or so through a Springfield Armory M1A (.308) that I’ve been sitting on for a few years. It has a REALLY nice custom stock (J. Allen Engineering, JAE-100 G3) favored by U.S. military ‘specialists’ … and I mounted a Millett 4-16×50 Illuminated Tactical Riflescope on it this morning (for now, not permanent).
Got the rifle zero’d at 100 yards with about 15 rounds, then ran a quick-fire drill on a steel silhouette to see if I could replicate (or even beat) the 1″ sub-MOA group I shot on the same target with a 6.5 Creedmoor M1A the other day.
Very happy with the .308’s performance, but I think the 6.5C out shot it, perhaps because the newer 6.5C has a National Match (NM) barrel and trigger.
Obviously, both are more than effective at this relatively short range (100 yards).
I’m working on a new, longer range shooting lane on the property, which I hope to have completed in the Fall … out to about 300 meters. Then, we’ll see which of the two M1A’s really shines.
We all know about the “weak link” metaphor often used in business, which was well demonstrated in my second shooting drill. I hit a 6″ AR-500 rated steel plate right in the middle, and one of the two chains holding it in place failed (snapped) from the energy transferred from the bullet, to the plate, to the chain. Bullet disintegrated, plate absorbed and transferred the energy, and the chain failed.
The M1A is considered by some shooters to be an “old school” design, basically a civilian version of the venerable military M-14 that dates back to the end of WWII. I beg to differ. I’ll take an M1A over an AR-15 (or similar) any day. I own both, and I carried an M-16 in the military for 8+ years.
Overall, I’m happy with this rifles performance. I’ll probably switch over to a Vortex Viper PST scope at some point, but for now it is demonstrably G2G (good-to-go!).
We had a pretty powerful thunderstorm pass through late last night, so Hunter didn’t get much sleep, and neither did I (because of her). When I rolled into the kitchen to make some coffee, she was on the couch with ‘that look’ on her face … she knew she was barking, pacing and panting too much last night because of the weather. BUT, at least she was cute about it. 😉
I ran around the perimeter trail to check on things, and found 3 or 4 trees down in one spot, likely because of recent weather. Nothing like starting one’s day with a little chainsawexercise.
A bit longer video today … I got a little chatty during the garden irrigation project today. I’m still a little flummoxed regarding the PVC water line pressure variation observation (high, low,, high). I bet I can solve it with 30 minutes (or less) of web research, but I just haven’t found the time (yet).
Got the new Springfield M1A (6.5 Creedmoor) rifle demonstrably zero’d at 100 yards with only 10 rounds. I looked a bit closer at the yellow target later on and noted three of four center-of-mass rounds in a sub-MOA (less than 1″) group on target. Sweeeeeet rifle. Will probably end up re-zeroing it at 200 meters next.
Took about 10 days of patient (mostly) waiting to get my Mahindra 1526 tractor back from the dealer’s service department, who did a 200-hour “scheduled maintenance” on it, e.g. changing all fluids (engine oil, transmission/hydraulic oil, front axle grease, etc.) and filters.
I ask a lot from that tractor, probably more than it was designed for, so I take good care of it. For example, I’m using the front loader to dig a pretty good sized farm pond, down to about 8+ feet in depth, and should probably be using a backhoe implement, because the loader isn’t really designed for digging like that. Puts a lot of stress on the loader, thus on the hydraulic subsystem.
The swarm of bees I caught and hived a few days ago have already consumed the 8 quarts of bee syrup I put in the top feeder the other day! Damn … those are some hungry bees. But, they are still very docile and seemingly busy busy busy building out the comb infrastructure, so feeding them is the lease I can do. They will pay me back in honey later, trust me. 😉
Chickens, ducks and rabbits are all doing well.
Discovered … quite surprisingly … a tremendous amount of veggie seed growth in the soil block mini-greenhouse. There’s a school of thought that you should water new soil block seeds for the first three days to allow them to get established … then water them aggressively every day. So, today was day three and when I opened the greenhouse I was shocked to see a LOT of green. The cucumbers in particular ‘went nuts’ and sprouted up about 3 inches in 3 days! Yikes, I’m going to have to brave the heat this week and get the first few seed beds prepared in the raised bed plot.
We had a severe thunderstorm watch in effect this PM, but didn’t get any rain overhead. Beautiful evening clouds nonetheless.
Got the first couple of raised bed rows covered (tarps) in the garden plot to kill the remaining cover crop in preparation for transplanting the seeds I sowed in the soil block mini-greenhouse the other day in about 4 to 6 weeks.
Got too hot … so I spent some time in the workshop getting a Vortex Viper PST 2.5-10×44 scope with EBR-1 reticle (MRAD) mounted on the new Springfield Armory M1A rifle, after installing a SADLAK M14/M1A Airborne Scope Mount and lapping a set of Burris Extreme Tactical 30mm rings. Wow, that’s a mouthful.
Finally caught one of the two rabbit does nursing the baby kits, so now I know which one is the mother, and which one is … NEXT … (as my buck rabbit is prone to saying!).
