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FCL :: Day in the Life :: Aug 11, 2019 (Big Pasture Seed Prep, Caterpillar Tunnels Coming)

Spent some time this week tilling, grading, raking and drag harrowing the big pasture, readying it for seeding in a few weeks.

Second bucket gardening pallet is coming along well. Seedlings in the soil blocks are also doing well, especially the Okra.

Deuce get’s a lot of face time, as usual.

Received and tested our first (of many) Premier 1 electric poultry fence. Works like a charm. Poor Deuce got volunteered to test the fences ability to repel an aggressive predator, and the fence turned his ass around VERY effectively. Thanks Deuce … for taking one for the team.

Caught DJ (male duck) trying to mount the chicken hens again. He damn near drowned one hen. In his defense … I suppose … if you’ve ever seen ducks mate, they often do so floating in a pond, where the drake (male) holds the duck (female) mostly underwater while doing his business. What DJ doesn’t realize is hens are less prone to float. Oh, and that HE’S A DAMN DUCK NOT A CHICKEN!!!

I’ve decided to procure two or three 100′ x 14′ caterpillar tunnels between now and the end of the year. One of them will be used for aquaponic gardening (e.g. eight tilapia fish tanks an twenty-four veggie grow beds). The other tunnels will be used as greenhouses to grow crops year around.

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: 1-9 July, 2019 (Bucket Gardening; Duckling Release; CO Hazard)

4th of July week started off with a bit of a fiasco. As explained in this video, I put a beef brisket in the wood pellet smoker at 11P, and at 2A I was awakened by alarms blaring all over the house. Apparently, the winds were such that carbon monoxide from the smoker (on the porch) flowed into the house and accumulated to hazardous levels, which triggered the “whole house” alarm system to detect and announce the hazard. So, the dogs and I slept (or, at least tried to) outside on the patio.

Spend the 4th with my neighbors. We hung out in their pool … even as a thunderstorm (lightening & thunder) passed overhead. Mother Nature had her own firework show. Pretty cool.

Migrated the 15 ducklings out of the bard stall and into a fenced in duck habitat around the smaller of our two ponds. They seem REALLY happy to be outside. Eating like little piggies, getting big, just now starting to feather up.

Tilled the ‘park’ to flatten out all the plow furrows and get it ready for seeding next month. Broke the PTO shaft on the tractor the first day and had to replace it. Paid a bit more attention to how “cut down” the length of the shaft to make it about 2 o 3 inches longer than the previous shaft. Works like a charm.

Decided to build a new garden infrastructure to allow for 40 to 50 5-gallon buckets to be distributed in rows of ten buckets, 4 feet between each bucket, with a 3 foot path between each row.

Overall, a pretty productive week … given my general aversion to heat and humidity. Had to take a few days “off” to recover from too much heat exposure, but it all worked out.

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FCL :: Day in the Life :: Monday 09/03/18 (Pasture Tilling)

Welp, took me awhile but I finally got the PTO drive shaft on the new County Line 4′ 3-point tiller cut down (5.5″ reduction for a Mahindra 1526 tractor) and installed. Perhaps, because this was my absolute first experience with a PTO-driven tractor implement, I struggled more than I should have with the PTO shaft configuration and installation. BUT, now I know what I’m doing, and I still have 10 fingers, so wah-HOO!

Got the ‘big pasture’ tilled under today. Probably need to run the drag harrow over it a few times to smooth it out and filter out a bunch of crab grass clumps, rocks, bricks, etc.

We’ll haver ‘er ready for a fall hay seeding!

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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.