Good Morning! 2019

[Killerbunny]

So I ran out of storage potatoes and - gasp - bought a bag of what looked like nice potatoes. Now I remember why we grow our own. They looked great but had no flavour and seemed almost "watery". Not sure what they had done but I won't bother with them again. I haven't tasted commercial potatoes in some years and it will be a few more now!

[Blizblaz]

Enjoying their first day free of the run yesterday.
MJ doing his impression of a weathervane, while the others crowd around on the only spot free of snow so far!

[ross]

Lookin good

[baronrenfrew]

Winter's over right? not! the driveway is 5 inches of packed snow with banks on both sides so it turns to slush on warm days and I scrape it with the tractor. So we had a smidgen of snow Friday night. all around the house nothing fell as the wind pushed it on. but it drifted in a bit on the driveway.
So it was the day to attack the "honey do" list. I can do these jobs, but I ain't fast - and the mental effort to be handy is something I put off as much as possible. kitchen sink - new taps - if done early then fix bathroom taps, then replace hot water tank. the taps have been in a box on the shelf since last summer. So I tried to take the taps off in a "normal" manner - with tools and basically the way they went in. Given the sink is stainless steel and our kitchen sink and counter was a recycled nurse's station from a senior's home (talk about done on a budget) it is likely 50 years old. So the sink came out as a whole and I started looking for a hacksaw to simply cut them off (tools are spread around 5 different buildings here) and I found a Mikita sawsall (one of a truckload of tools inherited from a friend that passed) and it worked bloody good.

so a 1 hour estimate job still took 4 hours - and my parents came for a visit "home" (they've been a month in the Glebe; a trendy and wealthy neighbourhood of Ottawa- housesitting my cousin's place - a massive old brownstone - while she's in Florida) - and got stuck in the driveway - with his Subaru so they were really stuck.

I plug in the tractor - do a few other things - fire it up - sputtering- no fuel? So we are stuck at home (the driveway is blocked) and will be really stuck if the car stays too long and freezes into the slush. Look around - the glass bowl on the fuel filter broke dumping 10 gallons of diesel and it is now well past noon so the dealer is closed so parts will be accessible on Monday! bleepity bleep bleep

Then my dad chews me out that I didn't clean the driveway properly (don't push that button.....) Not to mention this is the third time I've pulled the bleepin filters apart this winter. (Diesel is not my favorite cologne - and you get a lot fiddling with the glass bowl and rubber rings behind the loader frame)

Back up the 4x4 truck - but I can't find the right chain - snap the chain I do find twice - start shovelling. 40 mins of shovelling we get the Subie backed out and down the driveway. And they run back to the city (they couldn't figure the alarm system for my cousin's place and were worried) and thinking they were almost trapped at the farm!

And Carla spent the last two days "cutting the lawn" (if I'm stuck pushing a lawnmower around my mind wanders to all the things that "tee me off" and anger is the fuel pushing the mower - so its "our" lingo) - er - cleaning the front of the house as my parents left it a frickin mess - why do they need 20 bottles of shampoo open? and we cleaned their fridge last week.

So my "jobs to do" list got bigger - freakin frackin!

[Killerbunny]

@Blizblaz Picture of the month entry!!!!

[kenya]

Oh Baron that sounds terrible, what a run of bad luck Hopefully it gets better.

[Jaye]

@baronrenfrew, I hear you about parents, but I wish my father was still here to irritate me. It's been almost ten years since he passed, and I still miss him terribly. And he was no picnic sometimes.

[ross]

10-4 Jaye

[WLLady]

good evening all! had to work yesterday so terribly behind this weekend. was busy so the puppy raided the composter while we werent looking so now we have a puppy with an upset stomach. sigh. and the one cat just threw up a worm so we shall be visiting the vet this week....got some pyrantel into them all to tide them over till then. but we did get the barn cleaned out. spring cleaning on the pens in the loft and swept out the main floor from the dust and dirt that comes in on the tractor. washed the horse water trough and installed the hose for the water to the loft....opened up the one coop outside and moved all the boys...a couple nice gold welbars in the group and a whole pile of rejects for the freezer. set up all the new breeding groups. have a few girls yet to move-my feather legged "ameraucanas" (culls from my project to increase the size on the lines) need to go yet....a few girls to the coop outside. need to figure out what to do with my barred rock hens. i dont have a fertile boy anymore....so maybe i can do some sex links of something. someday. anyways nice to have a clean barn again. next weekend the turkeys will get cleaned out...horses were also brushed today. the shedding has begun! small herd worth of hair. my mealworm colony is now 3 bins of beetles and more coming every day. just waiting on the first eggs to hatch to see if everything is going to go as hoped. if so then hopefully i will have a good colony by the summer!!!.
chicks are growing like mad fuzzy ugly dinosaur stage. not ready for outside yet though. need to process boys before they can go out. so busy busy day. just seeded some peppers and sweet grass and lemon grass and chives-the chives are from my grandpas garden north of montreal. have some rosehips and lilies from there too to try and sprout. fruit tree trimmings are in water in a vain hope that they may root in a few weeks....fingers crossed. hope everyone had a great weekend.

[Killerbunny]

Well its lovely morning here and I hope all around soooooo - get out and takes pics for the Photo of the Month people because it's nearly the end of March - yay.