Down at the ranch

During the pregame shows, they’ve been showing Green Bay, where it is practically a blizzard. And 20 degrees (or so). Here, it’s been a lovely, if overcast, day, and it’s about 80 degrees with a bit of a breeze as we await a cool  – not cold – front to come in. That means it’s a perfect time to get a few chores done!

I ran the irrigation to the new row I built and filled last week, so it is ready to go.

Ready for action.
Filled and awaiting the irrigation lines.

Since the weather here is incredibly unpredictable, I put some test seed down:  about half a row of kale and at the near end, carrots. We are unlikely to see any freezes during the remainder of the month, based on the forecast, and hopefully they’ll germinate by the time we move into the heart of our winter, where we are likely to get at least a couple of freezing nights, and the question is: will they be able to stand it, and bunker down to ride it out? We’ll see.

Also on the list for this morning: hauling some sorghum stalks out to the chickens to let them scratch up and break down, and general cleanup duties – including repairing the kitchen faucet, which suddenly decided NO WATER FOR YOU!! and stopped working. Fortunately, it was just gunk from the aerator that needed to be cleaned from the screens in the bell, but that also added another chore to the list: figuring out a way to clean the aerator outside and repipe it. That’s going to be quite the job.

For the remainder of the day, it looks like I’ll be taking it easy and watching football, because the spasms in my side are keeping me from moving too much. That just means working on the redesign for the sites of the companies we’ve absorbed, and planning out the spring garden/planting/seeding schedule. Not a bad way to relax a little.

A good start

It’s another gorgeous day at the ranch. Perfect for pounding in t-posts to begin the redo of the rear garden fence.

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That’s seven today, which is indeed a good start, especially on this side of the garden where the fence was looking a bit ragged and beginning to lean terribly. The spasms I’m subject to started yammering at me toward the end, so I called it quits at that bunch for the time being so as not to set off anything really terrible that would sideline me for the rest of the day. A little later, I’ll test the waters again and see if I can get one or two more in the ground and the fence drawn to them from the existing poles.

Something else done today: a haircut for my hippie cover crops, which are enjoying the rather pleasant weather we’re having for “winter” here – they survived the couple of random freezes we’ve had as well, and some of the beans in the mix even began to flower.

Like this
Like this
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Get a haircut, hippie!

But I’m really not growing these for any harvest, so I got out the hand trimmers and started chopping off the tops of the crops in two rows as a test – mostly to see if they will grow back or if they will die back, at which point I can pull the irrigation lines out and use the stirrup hoe to chop everything down for mulch through the winter. I am finding the odd weed here and there, but pulling three or four that were likely left behind at the last mega weeding session is better than having to pull weeds everywhere out of a row.

Get a haircut, hippie!
Better!

 

 

Travel time

I went to the NOC today, and I-95 was jam packed with people on the move for the holidays. It wasn’t quite as bad as rush hour, more like that period juuuuust before rush hour when things start building until they slam to a complete and utter halt. What is interesting about being stuck in traffic, though – especially traveling I-95 through downtown Jax at the I-10 interchange during the morning rush hour, at the point where the lanes pincer down just across the Fuller Warren (and btw, Jax residents, I read somewhere that they’re looking to expand the Fuller Warren with more lanes by 2017, what a joy that process will be!) – is that sometimes you see the strangest damn things. No, I’m not talking about generic accidents. I’m talking about things like this, which I saw while waiting to move the next few feet. Why is it there? Who thought that would be a good place to hold it while they did whatever they were doing? Did someone just slam it through the panel out of rage or frustration? These questions will never be answered, I’m afraid.

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