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Sooo, with several of you mentioning a shortage of hay at this time, is a shortage normal for spring time? I see 18 wheeler flatbeds rolling down the highway several times a day (very popular business around here) heading south to deliver hay, although I suppose they could be hauling bails that were stacked and stored for the winter.
Or, has the shortage been a problem for a few years? If so I guess we should find a way to store more for just such an emergency.

Low supplies for sale are normal befor the first cutting. The first cutting being so late is NOT normal. I'm picking up my milk cow with her last calf next week and that will give us 5 to feed. Until our processing room is set up.
 
I dont want to hear that, hope it is just out west and not here....we are in the process of selling our hay field. It just seems easier to buy nice hay than trying to get someone to cut a hay field for you and get nice square bales. I don't like having to take apart round bales which is what we have to do if we get round. WIshed we could send you all our 15 round bales we still have from last year. It's sort of crappy ( got rained on ) but good enough for cows, and the goats and sheep will eat it if that's all there is

Overdid it yesterday planting the garden some now my back hurts...planted potatoes , onions, carrots ( seeds), radish, cucumbers, squash and zuccini which included moving some composted manure to the garden and spreading it around with a shovel and rake. We went instantly from snow to summer in a few days. It was close to 80 degrees here yesterday.

I'd love to have a hay field, someday...
 
I use to work for builders cleaning houses of course construction is different type but still cleaning.In the 70s and early 80s too many sky lights got tired of climing on roofs scaffles and ladders. Back then it was great money.WC insurence was high.Do you have to have work comp?

I've hired a lot of folks for construction cleaning over the years that had no clue what they were getting into. That is HARD work!
 
I've hired a lot of folks for construction cleaning over the years that had no clue what they were getting into. That is HARD work!

One roof was just too steep for me and it was over a high hill,I got stuck on it sliding down and almost fell off,told my friend call fire dept I;m not moving,hanging out cleaning windows you cannot take out over several story cliffs wasn't fun either.I sub cleaned for about 7 years,hard to find help too. GM Auto Assembly got me ready for anything,lol.I was very strong and healthy.
 
More crap at work today. More issues with the clean up area. I'm thinking that job will never end.
Wife called about 2pm to tell me the washing machine quit. :mad: :mad: :mad:

Got home and she was wheezing like crazy, don't sound as good as she did last night.

Does the wife have asma? Hope she gets is bettter soon an not anything serious.Hubby and I went to doc today to get BP meds bloodwork and a lung Xray.I went for bp meds and he said since I smoke do zray. It always scares me what they will find.Hubby gets one tomorrow.
 
Watched one granddaughters (8th grader) inducted into National Junior Honor Society tonight. Her sister (junior) is in NHS as well. One of granddaughters will graduate from Tarleton in a couple of weeks. Ag business I think. 3 hour drive and she only gets 8 tickets but she asked us to come. First ever college graduate in her dads family. 4th generation in my family. My mom and dad, husband and me, daughter and her husband, and her. And uh, all teachers. She is not yet, but thinking about certification in SPED. Special Education. Proud Nanna here
 
Oof....work was fun today....but another day above ground so cant complain lol! Got a headache so just sitting in my chair having fun going through the threads here. Need to work on my motorcycle but waiting on parts, same with my new pc I'm building.
 
@hashbrown keeps sending his crappy weather over to me .
Yep , we got a ton of rain in a short time.
Light showers most of afternoon, then the sky opened up and ...monsoon , gulley washer, sow phoon.

But I got my little car home today. They put new gas tank new fuel pump, new sending unit, new brake master cylinder, cleaned all fuel lines, bled brakes,
Cost me $458.

So now I got a car that looks good , runs good , drives good...just a few other minor things to fix.

May get to tinker in garage tomorrow.

Jim
 
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Ok, enough already.
It rained most of the night.
Still raining.
Do you see the 95% humidity?

OMG... I can't even stick my head out the door , it comes back all sweaty.

So , I don't know if I'll be tinkering in the garage today.

And, oh yeah, I can see the grass growing ,2" an hour.

Guess what that means....MOWING again.

Hope y'all stay dry , but not high.

Jim
 
4 1/2" of rain since yesterday. Still coming down heavy.

The spillway for the pond is getting a workout.

Tinkered in the garage for a while , had to change shirts ...soaked.

This is too much rain on my tomatoes.

@Amish Heart , we have the central a/c on, it keeps inside humidity at 48%. I have a big dehumidifier in my gun vault.

Haven't been anywhere today , but I'm betting there's flooding everywhere.

Jim
 
4 1/2" of rain since yesterday. Still coming down heavy.

The spillway for the pond is getting a workout.

Tinkered in the garage for a while , had to change shirts ...soaked.

This is too much rain on my tomatoes.

@Amish Heart , we have the central a/c on, it keeps inside humidity at 48%. I have a big dehumidifier in my gun vault.

Haven't been anywhere today , but I'm betting there's flooding everywhere.

Jim
Go ahead and send it on over here Jim. We are dry and have been watering since the beginning of the month.
Just helpin' ya out ;)
 
That's a lot of rain, Jim!

Walked first this morning.
Went to thrift store.
Dollar Tree for cauliflower rice--much cheaper than even Walmart.
Then Walmart for monthly trip. Prices are going up!
I did finally get a little cook stove and some propane bottles.
Got every thing put away and may start paperwork to be personal representative for little brother's safe deposit box. That's another whole thing to go through.
I think I may take the rest of the day off!
 
To explain what I've done today, I must first explain that the one chore my brother has in the house is picking up & taking out trash. But he doesn't do the picking up part and most of the time he doesn't take the trash out. I'm unable to lift stuff well so I can't always take it out. He kept refusing to take out trash in the living room so my mom started throwing all of her empty water bottles, mail, and other trash across the room. I was even in the room reaching for something to go put in a trash can in the kitchen but she threw it in the opposite direction. I've cleaned up her trash pile by myself twice before, but when my back was hurting more & I wasn't feeling well I stopped picking it up. The pile built up over my waist in height & my brother was supposed to pick it up. He promised he'd clear it in exchange for my mother buying him something. He never did it. But today I managed to get his help. I asked him to hold bags for me while I picked up trash. Ended up getting a large dust pan with handle- like this:
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Filled 7 contractor bags with trash. On bag #5 my brother was saying the hardest part was moving the bags out of the room. I gave him a little side-eye over that as I was the one bending, scooping, dumping, bending, picking stuff up by hand, etc while he was holding the bag. Now, he did crush the stuff down and tie the bags and put them in the kitchen. We were on the 7th bag when Mom came in and started criticizing everything we were doing so we decided to take a break. I was overheating anyway. Got them hauled outside (it's too hot out there for me) and I'm taking a break to cool off. I'll wait for Mom to leave before I resume bc I don't need to be nagged while I'm trying to clean. I should have taken a picture of the pile before I started. We got a lot of it, but probably can fill three or four more bags. Maybe I'll even find the trash can in there somewhere... I should have picked it up sooner, but I got so tired of having to clean up after everyone else & being the only one who actually did chores/cleaning. I'm also a procrastinator and a wuss. LOL.

One funny thing is that Mom was saying "Make sure you check to see if it's trash before you throw it away!" She knows me. She knows i will meticulously dig through stuff to salvage things. I drive my friends crazy with wanting to keep stuff that can be salvaged. LOL.
 
Yesterday I was feeling funky so I took it easy. Today I'm better so it may have been the bad tooth that had me down and the antibiotic is working.

Took my buddy over to the remodeling project so that he can inspect. He was pleased. I grabbed the impact driver for him to borrow to work on the crate engine he put in his Camaro. Then I spent the afternoon re-working the kitchen design to match what we had agreed may be good. I hope I am getting close. There are quite a few changes but the biggest is getting rid of everything along the left wall to allow room for a decent sized kitchen table.

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The Princess approved of all of the cabinets for storage. My biggest disappointment is having to reduce the size of the window. But the bigger the window the less storage cabinets.

Tomorrow I will most likely being doing sheet metal work to build the manifold needed for the air return project that has been waiting for my attention.

Ben
 
I finally made the wood stand for the 55 gallon compost tea barrel. The spigot on the side sits high enough off the ground to fill a watering can. Inside the barrel is a plastic milk crate with 2 layers of 1/4" hardware cloth on top to support the burlap bag that contains the horse manure. I filled the barrel to about 6" from the top with manure and then filled with water to a couple inches over the manure. It's been a couple hours and some of the water was soaked up but the water is still level with the top of the manure.
I plan to use the tea to water trees and flowers and bushes around the yard, the soil here has very little nitrogen or potassium so the tea will do well to supplement those plants. Everything will still get regular drip irrigation and the native soil drains very fast. I wont use it on the onions or garlic, so far I am not growing any other root veggies.
From what I read 2 days of soaking is good, but if I am using a few gallons a day I will be adding more water as needed. I don't have a bubbler or water pump to move the water so osmosis and gravity will have to do their parts. As the water starts to lose it's color I will scoop out some poop and start using it in areas for new raised flower beds., or scattering it in other areas around the yard.
It will be a learn as i go effort, but it shouldn't take too long to figure out the best system. Maybe one day I will get a solar powered bubbler to get some water movement in the barrel.
Also, the horse is being fed sprout pellets so there are no long blades of grass passing through, so it should be easy for the apples to turn to mush and break down easily in the water. I am looking forward to the free fertilizer and composted dirt to build the new flower beds.
1619737616331.png

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I finally made the wood stand for the 55 gallon compost tea barrel. The spigot on the side sits high enough off the ground to fill a watering can. Inside the barrel is a plastic milk crate with 2 layers of 1/4" hardware cloth on top to support the burlap bag that contains the horse manure. I filled the barrel to about 6" from the top with manure and then filled with water to a couple inches over the manure. It's been a couple hours and some of the water was soaked up but the water is still level with the top of the manure.
I plan to use the tea to water trees and flowers and bushes around the yard, the soil here has very little nitrogen or potassium so the tea will do well to supplement those plants. Everything will still get regular drip irrigation and the native soil drains very fast. I wont use it on the onions or garlic, so far I am not growing any other root veggies.
From what I read 2 days of soaking is good, but if I am using a few gallons a day I will be adding more water as needed. I don't have a bubbler or water pump to move the water so osmosis and gravity will have to do their parts. As the water starts to lose it's color I will scoop out some poop and start using it in areas for new raised flower beds., or scattering it in other areas around the yard.
It will be a learn as i go effort, but it shouldn't take too long to figure out the best system. Maybe one day I will get a solar powered bubbler to get some water movement in the barrel.
Also, the horse is being fed sprout pellets so there are no long blades of grass passing through, so it should be easy for the apples to turn to mush and break down easily in the water. I am looking forward to the free fertilizer and composted dirt to build the new flower beds.
View attachment 64952
View attachment 64953
I put the little like icon then thought I need a laughy face because I just pressed like on a picture of poop 😂
 
Wife may be a little better today, but not a lot. And yes Meer she does have asthma. Always takes a toll on her. Thought I may be starting to get it Tuesday evening, so within an hour of starting a sore throat I started using Zicam, 2 Vit C's with Zinc, and some decongestants. Doing that every day since. I'm a little snotty but otherwise doing ok.
Found out a work today that a question I asked monday morning, why isnt there a crew that does this clean up work with Beryllium, Lead, and Rad waste, is actually a group at the lab. Instead of turning our clean up over to people that knows what they are doing, they stuck our group with it that never has done that type work. I could have spent most of the last month doing what I needed to be doing. And oh BTW I get to finish what I started. UGHHHHHH. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

On my way home stopped and purchased a new washer, to be delivered Wednesday.
 
Wife may be a little better today, but not a lot. And yes Meer she does have asthma. Always takes a toll on her. Thought I may be starting to get it Tuesday evening, so within an hour of starting a sore throat I started using Zicam, 2 Vit C's with Zinc, and some decongestants. Doing that every day since. I'm a little snotty but otherwise doing ok.
Found out a work today that a question I asked monday morning, why isnt there a crew that does this clean up work with Beryllium, Lead, and Rad waste, is actually a group at the lab. Instead of turning our clean up over to people that knows what they are doing, they stuck our group with it that never has done that type work. I could have spent most of the last month doing what I needed to be doing. And oh BTW I get to finish what I started. UGHHHHHH. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

On my way home stopped and purchased a new washer, to be delivered Wednesday.


That asthma can be a bad thing, hope she is better real soon.Sorry your having so much trouble at work these past few weeks bacP. Times ae not good these daays we try to deal with it but itcan get hard at times.
We had lung function test yesterday at dr.s and didn't like breathing in the machine that everyone that came in that was breathing in.I sure hope it was sterile. You could hear her hollering breath,stop,breath, when we went in and the whole time we were there. Mostly old people in that offcie,so guess machine helps pay the bills.Then went for lung zraay,I didn't go for lungs neither did hubby,we went for BP med snd blood work. Hindsite is always 2020 or we wouldn't have taken the test during a pandemic.
 
Work has been rough since Covid hit. People in and out, and for some strange reason with half the lab working from home, there is more work than ever going on. It's been like a one legged man in a butt kickin contest at times. This too shall pass. I guess I just like to piss and moan to you folks. I need to stop that. Forgive me folks!!!

Wifes breathing hasn't been the same since she got covid. She actually is having a hard time over this than she did Covid.

On the good side Saturday we are heading to a nearby lake and a little cabin for a few days to try and de-stress and relax some. No wi-fi and not sure it'll even have cell service. Leaving work at 1 tomorrow to drop the dog off where we board her, then home to work in the garden a little.
 
So ran down to the river to check on the cottonwoods. Last year we were busy, and I missed the sticky pods. A couple weeks ago when I checked, there were pods but they weren't sticky, just dry - thinking maybe because it's been such a dry year. So I went down there today to check and see if I was just thinking incorrectly and maybe the pods were from the beginning of the flower (fluff) - nope. So if anyone has a plethora of sticky cottonwood pods, I would love them.
 

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