Chapter 115...Wow...The Cows Got Into A Fight & Outside Work

Off Grid...Chapter 115 7-1 Mike and I went to his daughter's house to cut a tree down. She put up a hammock on a dead tree and Mike told her we had to fix that so no one got hurt. It worked out well. We got more wood and she got a safe place to hang the hammock. 7-2 We took a day of and went to the Christmas In July festival. It was a long windy trip there and back. 7-4 Hay has been cut, kicked and rolled or baled by our local farmer's. The whole crew was here to today with hay for the barn to keep the cows happy for the winter Now farmer's a hard working bunch. That is a tough job to do especially in this heat. Later on it poured so no fireworks but it did cool things down. 7-5 The heat is on. What a crazy summer. My garden is slowly growing. And looking like a jungle. I think I planted too much I went to check on some of our wild blackberries. Soon to be blackberries I would love to tame them a little so I did some research. After a lot of confusing information I think I got it. If I am wrong in anyway please share Blackberries grow in 2 year cycles and not every cane will have fruit on it. One year some canes will have fruit and then they die. They only get fruit one time on their life. After the summer season you can cut those canes to the ground. The ones that were green this year will bear fruit next year and they can be trimmed back. Anything dead should be cleared out.....ouch!!! Now to apply that to my mess will be quite difficult since I can't get to the ground. I may have to chop down half the jumble of briers this year to start fresh and then chop the other half down next year. This was I will have some blackberries next year. Mike says I should forget about the bushes and start over with transplants...but it's free so I will try. Mike and I picked up a load of dirt from our pile to add the the side of the house where it has settled. Then we shovel the dirt into 5 gallon buckets so we can carry them across the grass. Mike dumps the dirt on the low side. And spreads it out. Now we just need some seed and straw. 7-6 We went to town and picked up a treadmill. You would think I get enough exercise around here...not 7-7 I swear Mike is obsessed with rocks It was bad enough we had the pile of rocks to add to the ditch lines...and we got that done. Now Mike wants to pick up rocks from around the property. We will add any rocks we find to the pond wall. Here is is again....throwing rocks down the hill so we can put them in the tractor bucket. Our new rock spot. Very quickly we get a full bucket. Now it's off to the pond. Mike placing rocks on the pond wall. And a big one we found. Off to another job. While we were getting rocks we saw another downed tree that is easy to get to. Another big tree to be cut up. This will give us a lot of wood. While Mike is getting ready to cut it up I get a view from a new spot. Mike is trying to cut but the chainsaw won't stay running. They just don;t make tools like they used to. Oh well....we are going to have to come back to this tree another day. We drive back down to the pond to check on the fish. Mike is by the drain pipe and I am by the tractor. There is one cow in between us. Next thing I know another cow walks past me and gets close to the other cow...and then the fight began literally. Mike got the heck out of there. The 2 cows were really fighting and pushing each other pretty hard. One cow got thrown all the way into the pond. I got the heck out of there and Mike says "get on the tractor" yeah right, they are strong enough to knock the tractor over Meanwhile every other cow came down to the pond to watch the show. They were all standing around watching the fight mooing away. They reminded me of sports fans, lol. Mike got the tractor out of the way and eventually the fighting cows moved to the barn area and stopped fighting. Wow I have never seen the cows fight. Two bulls yeas but not 2 of the girls. The heat must be getting to them. The cows fighting. 7-8 Mike and I went to the Farm Supply to pick up Quikrete for our next project. Since we added the awning to the front of the house we have no use for our front garden so we are going to fill it in and make the patio area bigger. We got back home and Niki is hiding under the chair....strange little dog. We must be rubbing off on her, lol. We get the 12 bags of quikrete down to the house. Then we get the rest of the material to do the job. We get the black mixing bucket which we've had for years, the hoe, shovel, trap, and spatula and wood to spread it. Now we are ready. I open up one bag at a time and mix it up with water. Then Mike pours it into the garden and starts to spread it. We go right over the rocks because we can't use them anywhere else. Mike working on the fill in. That was work. Not terrible but I have never mixed that much quikrete at one time. Oh my back, lol. Mike is almost done spreading it out. We are done. Now we have to wait for it to cure and then we will stain/paint the patio. That's all for now. Lisa

Chapter 83...New Awning And Drain Pipe

Off Grid...Chapter 83 What a wet time we are having in TN. Where is the sun, lol? It's hard to get motivated to work with all of this rain. Ok time for the next installment. 7-26 It looks like rain for the rest of the week. We lost our chance for finishing the painting on the front of the house. Mike and I don't like the way the trim around the doors look on the front of the house. Yesterday Mike got a chance to scrape down the side trim on the front doors. That night it poured. 7-27 It is threatening to rain again so today Mike and I concentrate on some other matters that have to be taken care of. 7-28 Woo hoo. It looks like we might get a break in the weather today. Our 2nd paving man shows up to give us an estimate. He seems like a very nice man. Hopefully he can give us good references and he will come in with a better estimate. After he leaves Mike and I get the painting equipment back out. We start painting the second coat on the front of the house. Mike is being very careful on the ladder. Great now we both don't like the ladders right now. Here I am painting. And Mike is still painting the top part. Uh oh, we are just about done and it looks like rain again. I hope the paint dries before it rains. On a good note we got a delivery. Our 2 awnings came. They came in 2 boxes and Mike says to me "they must have the metal in one box and the fabric in the other box." No, they should be exactly the same. Sure enough we open up the 2 boxes and one is completely empty. I don't know if it is just us but it seems like everything we touch lately something goes wrong. Anyway, one of the empty box had already been opened and taped. It looks like the awning was taken. I called the company and they said ":this has happened before". Well don't you think you should fix the problem? They will send out a replacement awning. Later that night it pours. Hopefully the paint is dry enough. 7-29 and 7-30 It rained both days. We met Jim(our concrete man) and his wife Kelly at our other property to show. It's funny how small the world is. They saw our ad, didn't know it was us, and called about the property. 7-31 It rained all day. The sun finally came out about 5:30. We saw a couple of small bubbles on the house. We will keep an eye on them. 8-1 Finally, it isn't raining this morning. It is very humid out which means nothing is drying out so we can't fix the bubbles yet. Thankfully there isn't many bubbles. We also can't install the gutters until everything dries more. We picked the perfect time to have the gutters off the house, lol. Since we took the gutters off the house it has rained every day. Mike and I added another extension pipe to the drains on the front of the house. We started out with 2 10 foot drains on each side of the house then we added another 10 foot section to each one. Now we are adding one more 10 foot section. This will make our drain pipes run 30 feet away from the house and down the front hill. We start out by getting the buckets so we can shovel the dirt into them. This will keep the job clean. We have to dig out 2 trenches to fit the pipes in, cover them up and then seed. Mike is digging the trench. The pipe is in the ground. Covering it up and then seeding it. Mike moves on to the second trench while I go up top and mow the lawn. 8-2 We got the front lawn mowed and then it rained. 8-3 This morning I had a Doctor's appointment and when I got home the new paver called. They are going to bring over some of their equipment this week. Woo hoo. Time to get this place clean. I can't wait. We are only doing a partial job this year. We will have them pave along side of our house, the back parking area, and down the steepest part of our driveway. They will also be adding curbs for us to keep the water on the road and not wash out the sides. Later on we went to the other property. While I mowed Mike called the towing company to pull him out of the grass. Remember when he got stuck in the wet grass? They got the motor home back up on the pad. It will stay there until this land dries out. Here is the mess Mike made with the motor home. We got back home and Mike started to work on our "one" awning. First we figure out exactly where it will go and Mike puts the clips on the house. Next we slide the awning onto the bar and attach the bar to the clips. Then Mike screws in the side brackets. The awning is up. The wrinkles will work themselves out. Now we are just waiting for the company to send out the second awning. 8-3 We tried to go over to the other property to mow but we got rained out. 8-5 This afternoon Mike and I are meeting his daughter at a house she wants to see. It looked nice from the outside but it is a major disaster. The house is only about 5 years old and it has foundation problems, warped floors, cut structural beams, beams coming through the floors, and so many more really major problems. It isn't even safe to live in. It makes me feel so much safer in our house. I don't think a bank will ever approve a mortgage for that house with so many problems. After that Nicole came over for dinner. We had a really nice and "quiet" time with her. It's nice to see her without the kids sometimes. Then we can have real conversations, lol. 8-6 The paving company brought over some of their equipment. He pulled off the side of the road into a field to unload. Sure enough he got stuck. Mike called Jimmy for him but he isn't working locally. The man ended up calling someone he knew to get him out. Mike left him at the road after being down there with him for about an hour. They are supposed to start paving on Monday. 8-7 We finally got over to the other property to do a knock down mow. It is just so wet that there isn't much we can do. That is all for this installment. Sorry about all of the rain comments but it has been a really rough summer. Next week if all goes well we should get a lot done. Lisa