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FCL :: Day in the Life :: Tuesday 09/11/18 (Hurricane Florence Prep, Day 2)

Long day … long video. Sorry.

Decided to move the badonkadonks back into the barn pasture to provide them with more shelter during the upcoming hurricane. Had to clean up the barn pasture, fix a section of fence that I crushed with a felled tree earlier in the summer, and move the winter hay bales into a different pasture.

After all that work making room for a 18-wheeler to deliver a shipment, the truck driver chickened out, so I had to meet him down on the paved road and tractor the pallet myself. Same driver that delivered a shipment about 9 months ago … and he pussed out then too. I should have known when he called me from an I-40 offramp about 10 miles away and said … “I need you to give me directions to your place.” I replied, “don’t you have a GPS?” No. “Do you have a map book?” No. “Think maybe you should have researched your route before you left the warehouse?” Lemme call my dispatcher, maybe he has a GPS.

Then I get a second call from him … “I’m looking at a dirt road.” Me: “Yup, I told your dispatcher I live on a rural farm, dirt roads, long gravel driveway, tight turn or two.” Him: uuuummmmm…

Whatever. No harm, no foul. Got the shipment (new Caravaggi stump grinder for the BCS 853 walk-behind tractor). Good sized thunderstorm moved in late in the PM. Got a few good shots with the Mavic Pro drone. Heavy late PM rain showers, but not Florence. Not yet. 😉

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: Sunday 09/09/18

Woke up to overcast skies, ground fog and cool temps. HOT DAMN. Got the animals up, out and on their way, then fired up the tractor and got back to work plowing the field. First plow furrow, half-way down, I hit a 50-60 pound rock and sheared the plow blade off! AAAHHHGG!

Spent the next few hours running around getting parts and a few new tractor implements (e.g. 5 foot landscaping rake, post hole auger).

Took the opportunity to salvage about 10-12 telephone poles from the neighbor’s property, then got back to work plowing the field.

Got about half of the field plowed, one 18 inch wide furrow at a time. Exhausting work, even just riding on the tractor (for that many hours). If I didn’t have hemorrhoids before, I very well might now.

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: Saturday 09/08/18

Another long day working outside.

We mowed the ‘park’ next door, then I decided that with Hurricane Florence forecast to dump about 50″ of rain on us later in the week, it might be a good idea to plow the field under to allow it to absorb more water and shed less water into our neighborhood drainage ditches, which tend to flood my neighbor’s property.

Bought Hooey a whole roasted chicken for being such a good ‘helper’ while I was running the tractor. She’s good about chasing the chickens away from in front of the tractor, cuz those dummies are prone to letting the front wheels get about 3 inches away from them before flittering way. I guess you could say they like to ‘play chicken’ with the tractor.

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: Thursday 09/06/18

The recently free-ranged rabbits seem to be doing pretty well. I found evidence of at least one of the getting culled from the colony by a predator (99% sure it was the coyote, as I found coyote scat in the field the next day that was full of white fur).

Bianca Houdini (nesting duck) hasn’t hatched any eggs yet. Any time now, assuming they are indeed viable.

Hooey and I spend a lot of time on the look out for that damn coyote. Used the DJI Mavic Pro (drone) to provide hi-def video surveillance from above. Saw the coyote a few times, but ‘no joy.’

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: Wednesday 09/05/18

A day or two after releasing 12 rabbits into the wild, and I’m seeing them all over the property. They’re not staying in or near the rabbit hugel I built for them in the woods, but I’m guessing some of them will eventually figure out it is in their best interested to have an underground place to hide.

Hurricane Florence is forecast to park itself overhead for up to five days later in the week, and drop upwards of 50″ of rain, so those rabbits better find some high ground, or learn very quickly how to do the back stroke. 😉

We setup on that #$% coyote that keeps stealing our chickens like clockwork. He showed up right on que … but never presented a good, safe, profile shot. So, the ‘game’ continues.

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: Sunday 09/02/2018

After getting all the animals fed, watered, etc., I hitched up the new County Line Middle Buster plow and went out to test it in what we call the big pasture. The test went so well, I just kept on plowing … all day … and got the whole pasture done.

\I got the new PTO-driven, 3-point hitch mounted tiller assembled, but stumbled on the last step, cutting the PTO drive shaft down to the right length. The instructions SUCK. Later in the evening, I found an awesome instructional video from the fine folks at Everything Attachments (NC), so now (Monday, Labor Day) I know what to do.

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: 1 September 2018

We tried to lift 225 gallons of water in an IBC tote with the Mahindra 1526 tractor … but NO JOY. Too heavy! I’ll have to develop a strategy for filling and transporting half-filled totes, or some such.

Picked up a new CZ Scorpion Evo 3 S1 9mm carbine and zero’d it with a Holosun 503 red dot. VERY happy with the Scorpion. Great little shooter.

Also picked up a new County Line 4′ 3-point hitch, PTO-powered tiller. We’re going to start renovating the “big pasture” tomorrow, if the weather holds, and the tiller will enable me to get the work done quicker than if I relied solely on the 30″ BCS walk-behind tiller.

So here’s the trailer story I alluded to in the video. At the local (Burlington NC) Tractor Supply Company store, I came out of the store and found two guys standing next to my trailer, obviously looking at and talking about it. I walked up and said “I’ve only had it for a day, but what questions can I answer for you?” One guy replied: “what color red is that?” I said: “dunno, but it matches my tractor perfectly, so I’ll call it Mahindra red.” He laughed, and said “well, it’s a PJ trailer, so I know it’s a great trailer.” THAT made my day, because anybody that knows me knows I don’t buy anything without doing a LOT of research first. But, in this rare case, I bought the PJ trailer spur of the moment, without any research, on intuition only. Whew.

When I pulled the trailer around the back of the story to the loading dock, three employees came out to load the tiller. An older guy said: “new trailer huh? like a day old?” Now how the hell did he know that? Then, he said “I’m not going to be able to drive the forklift up onto the tractor ramps (to load the tiller). Against policy, and I’m not going to be the guy that puts the first scratch on that baby.”

We used the forklift to get the tiller up on the ‘tail’ of the trailer, then used a pallet jack to drag it the rest of the way. Before I left, the old timer said: “next time, don’t bring such a nice trailer.” To me, it’s just a trailer, but it was funny to have the damn thing draw so much attention. ONLY IN THE COUNTRY. 😉

We’ve got some nasty thunderstorm cells building up overhead, with NWS alerts going up for severe local weather. Love it. Just PLEEEEEESE to blow up my cable modem again! We when about 4+ days without internet access that last time (few weeks ago), and that just SUCKS.

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: 31 Aug 2018

Hooey and I drove down to Selma NC (about 150 miles and 3 hrs round trip) to pickup 8 250 gallon IBC totes and 6 45 gallon food grade barrels (that contained pepperoncini peppers from Greece!) to get our Nile Tilapia fishery and aquaponic garden kicked off in a month or so.

Not captured on video. Late in evening, that prick coyote attacked again. I was ready. 30-30 rifle outside primed to go (locked and loaded, at ambient temp to the optics weren’t hazed). The coyote was apparently confused by the donkeys being in the garden pasture (with the chickens) and stopped for just a second … 50 yards out. I squeezed the trigger, but no BOOM. WTF??? The safety had only partially disengaged! By the time I got the safety fully disengaged, the coyote was on the run. I took a 75 yard shot, but apparently missed, because I took the shot just as the ‘dog’ was transitioning from pasture to woods. Lucky prick! Next time …

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: 26-30 Aug 2018 (New Tractor Trailer)

Just a quick video to catch folks up. No big projects … too damn hot!

Bought a new 7′ x 16′ trailer today, so I can go pickup about 10 new 275 gallon IBC totes in Selma NC tomorrow. Now THAT’s going to be a new project — aquaponic gardening in conjunction with a Tilapia fishery. Stay tuned.

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: 26 Aug 2018 (Woodlot Thinning Tools/Techniques)

Spent some ‘quality time’ with my woodlot thinning tools today (e.g. hookaroon, chainsaw, choker, skid tongs, boom pole hoist) working to bring down and haul away a bunch of trees, so I took the opportunity to share some of those experiences via GoPro to … perhaps … give others some ideas re: wood lot thinning.

Ended up getting some sort of nasty allergic response to something I was exposed to, and since I was more or less offline all last week with a head to toe ‘contact dermatitis’ outbreak, I called it a day early and spent the rest of the afternoon in a Benadryl haze, watching Season 1 X-File episodes on Hulu.

I left the badonkadonks in the garden pasture overnight, so let’s see what sort of damage they did when the sun comes back up.

Enjoy.