Fall Home and Farm Projects

Fall is here, and it's beautiful! The first rain came early for this area, there is much less dust around this week. The weather is cool enough to work throughout the day again, and there are lots of things to get done around the place.

Here's a partial rundown of the fall happenings. I say partial because there are finished projects without pictures, ones not worth mentioning, that sort of thing.

I stuffed everything for the shed inside the shed last week before the rain storm. I threw temporary plywood walls on, not enough plywood to cover it all but it helps keep the weather out of the shed. The walls will have to come back off anyhow, the whole shed needs Tyvek before any siding or sheathing are put on.

Working on the 16' x16' pier foundation out behind the trailer. Getting the stash of concrete used up before the rain. Almost halfway done with the piers now.

Feeding out the meat turkeys, they are getting big! I also locked up the wandering breeding toms, and they get to live in a covered pen for the winter. I was sick of them chasing the dogs and pooping on everything and fighting with the roosters. When the meat turkeys are gone, the horde of breeding hens will go in that pen. They're running loose around the cow paddock at present.

I'm going to need the cow pen back soon, it's almost time to bring the heifer home for calving. I anticipate quite a bit of trouble moving her this time, those Highland horns of hers don't mesh so well with our ancient straight load horse trailer...

Trying to fix the one remaining leak in the trailer roof. Roof repair is an annual event with this stupid thing, but the situaton is vastly improved since I bought this thing.

Here's a skylight I made out of the hole in the roof where the old swamp cooler was torn out. No leaks anywhere near it after a year and a half, surprisingly!!

The back of the trailer where the wood stove is. The cement backer board and tiles have been here since the stove was put in, but they were unsecured for a couple of winters.

I replaced three broken tiles (but left the busted one directly under the stove in place) and put mortar (not grout) between all the spaces and around where the stove install is. I am not sure how well mortar will work out in place of grout, but anything is better than the previously unsecured tiles. I was sick of breaking tiles, and not being able to get the dirt out from under and around the tiles and backer board spaces. It was a dusty, gross mess so I tried to fix that problem.

There are still some more things to do, like finish fixing the ruts in the immediate driveway area and recovering the firewood hoop house with new tarp. The wind blew off the old covering, and I want to keep the firewood relatively dry.

Firewood has been getting split up slowly, and is getting stacked as I go. No shortage of firewood around here, that's for sure.