All sorts of news

Do you hear the presses running?
What a wild week I had.

Okay, it wasn't really wild, but it was a very productive week.
The rains have kept coming but on Thursday I did get out after 3/4 of an inch of rain and I found so many Morels.

Bonus!

We saw a Pulmonary Therapist on Friday. Rich hadn't wanted to go but we thought we'd follow through and see what he had to say.

The results of the Pulmonary Test that Rich had on Monday were available to the Therapist. He asked a lot of questions and then pulled up the test results. He asked Rich if he wanted to know his numbers. Rich sort of just looked at him.

Jim [the therapist] made a quick mental note and then said, "Do you really want to know? Hmm, maybe not."
Rich responded. "Look, I am dying anyway. I just want to be more comfortable. Numbers don't mean a thing."

Jim nodded. "Fair enough."
Next came some testing of physical abilities. Rich had to walk towards a wall and back. Then it was a two minute walk while carrying his pulse travel oxygen.
When he got back, he dropped into a chair and Jim took his 02 levels.

I'm going to skip the technical stuff and skip to the discussion that Jim had with Rich. He told Rich he was remarkably strong for 'his' condition and he thought that some Pulmonary Therapy would not only help his moods but help him to be able to get outside.
He was going to suggest a continuous airflow and not the pulse air for when/if he felt like going outside. He was straight forward. Rich was never going to get 'off' oxygen, but there might be things to make him feel a bit more alive.

Would he be open to Community based Pulmonary Therapy? It would help bring back his leg strength and help him feel more confident. Rich said he would but he didn't see where he'd be out ...doing things like he used to.

Jim chuckled and said he knew guys that had their continuous air flows 02 mounted on their Harley motorcycles.
His script for airflow may have to be upped.

So the good news is Rich will do PT locally if it gets approved. He will try it. I say it is helpful for him to get out of the house anyway. AND if he can enjoy anything at all outside that would be a bonus.

His good mood carried over through the weekend with our Kenosha Gang visitors. I took them to hunt Morels and we spent a good part of the day in the woods with our dogs. I loved the shouts of joy when they found those little beauties.

The rain held off early in the morning and then quit just about the time we were ready to hit the woods.

My last note.
I really don't know how to thank my good friends for all of their help with my 'to do' list.
The orange panels are moved. A pen was put up. The A/C is set for the season. The Jeep was aired up and started.
Old stakes were pulled up. Old Dog houses moved, log chunks were moved...the 4 Wheeler got an oil change....

These were all things I could have done myself over a period of time, however it was nice to have the extra hands.

Charlie however was totally wiped out from all the running around.
After all, supervising is such hard work...

Master of invention or?

...am I just strange?

The day started out beautifully.

A wonderful Sunrise shared with Charlie on the ridge.

It was warm and muggy at dawn so the day promised to be ... hot.

Charlie enjoyed his new car seat.

See?
I guess he can see where we are going!

He was subdued but didn't act sick at all.
Slow and steady improvement!

On to getting the hot stuff out of the way right after chores.
Blanching carrots, corn, and green beans.

I gave away a bucket of green beans to the neighbor just because.

Mid morning found me putting up fence posts and wire to make an electric lane to move our Bull named Bart from one area to another. He is getting shipped on Monday to become our winter meat and hamburger. My good neighbor Jeff the dozer man will take him for us.

Justin came down and worked on the ash trees to cut them up for his winter wood.

I worked on the 'electric lane'. The challenge is to walk a bull from his paddock to another paddock that has a paneled 'catch pen' and a gate in it. He will be loaded from the catch pen into a trailer this evening and Jeff will take him to the processor. I guess process is the politically correct term.
I look at it this way. Bart has done his job and now it is time for him to complete his task and feed us through the next year. I cannot go back to grocery store burger for the life of me.

Anway, I ran into a problem. I have to run the lane across a portion of the driveway and door yard. It has a hardpack gravel and sandstone base and unless you have a drill, there is no way a post will go into it.

Remember the glider I took apart? Well, I haven't gotten to the dump yet, and I pulled a heavy piece of 'something' out of the weeds and used that also.

The frame of the old slider acts as a post, I added those brown insulators to run the fence through.
As of Monday morning, one less Dexter to feed.

I am leaning towards shipping the rest too. I'm not sure how the hay situation will be if Rich isn't able to drive to get round bales. I'm having an internal discussion as to whether the cost of the cattles' feed all winter justifies keeping them just for whatever break on taxes we get.

After the fencing job was done and tested, I moved on to mowing.
Over the years I've had a pony who is very good at doing trimming in some of the areas of our farm. The problem is, he poops and unless I rake it out, it just sits there and eventually dries out. However if I rake it, it dries out quickly and fertilizes.

So I came up with a plan.
I found a chunk of cattle fence in the junk pile.
I used a rope to tie it to the back of the 4 wheeler and then I put a weight on the fence and used the 4 wheeler to drag over the areas of manure. It did a fair job, but the weight kept rolling off.

I've gone back to the drawing board on this and I think I can use a bit more rope to keep the weights on.
I told my neighbor what I was doing and he kindly smiled and mentioned that they 'made' drags for just that purpose.
I smiled back and said I was having fun by doing it with materials I could find.

A chainlink fence chunk would work even better than what I am using now.

However, it worked pretty well!

I don't know if I am inventive or just odd.

But I think I am on to something. Now to get at the poo piles in the meadow.
Hey, at least I am having fun on the 4 wheeler. I'm am making it into a useful tool for my farm work!

Just work

I burned through half a tank of fuel in the weed wacker yesterday morning before I quit. It was getting warm and I was plastered with chunks of wet grass and weeds. 

So I changed into a pair of shorts and a lighter top and proceeded to start picking green beans until that got too warm too. I picked only a portion of what I should have picked but still ended up with nearly 3 ice cream buckets of beans.

I washed them and then set them on the porch to be snapped.

After lunch, Charlie supervised on 'his' rug while I snapped the beans.

He is such a good supervisor!

I blanched the beans and then set them in a strainer in the fridge to be vacuum sealed later.

I actually took an hour to myself and read a book until I fell asleep with Charlie on my feet on the couch. I figured it was a wise thing to do during the hottest part of the day.

I went out to do stock tanks and fell in love with the sky which was rapidly changing.

According the the NOAA weather, isolated storms were moving across the region.

I grabbed my Olympus camera and set up some Infrared Shots while I was waiting for the mule stock tank to fill with water.

I use a filter for the IR shots. The best photos in IR are from those cameras that have been set up just for that purpose.

I don't have cameras to spare just for that so I get along with a filter.

It does give the bright greens a different look and I left the pinkish hue in these shots on purpose.

Shooting IR is not easy and processing them properly is just as hard.

Most of my IR shots get tossed. I feel I am still experimenting.

This is the porch view of the sky yesterday afternoon when the isolated storm decided to move in. There was a lot of thunder but no rain. Sunday afternoon we had 1/2 of rain from one of the squalls.

Today we have an appointment for Rich to be evaluated for driving. He rarely drives any more and I will encourage the OT department to take into consideration the level of depression at this time too.
Perhaps they can evaluate him and then do a second eval in the spring.

I would hope that he be allowed to drive locally if he begins to feel better. The long drives are too tiring and even I am tired of them.

Big decision time. I have decided to go ahead and enter some photographs in the fair!

I'll let you preview them here. You can give me some feedback if you wish. I want honesty if you can!

Anyway, have a great day.