Gophers, insulation, walnut tree

Now that my girls are gone I am able to set my pocket gopher traps back in the hayfield. And it needs to be done as there are lots of fresh dirt mounds! You would have never thought I had cleared the north part of the hayfield of gophers several months ago. I set six traps this afternoon and by evening caught four pocket gophers. That makes 266 pocket gophers caught this year.

I also finished insulating my well's shed. It looks nicer than before. I threw out the thin very old insulation that was in the shed and added new insulation with an R value of 13 in the walls and a higher R value in the ceiling. I made a ceiling as previously it was just the roof. To be fair one couldn't have a ceiling before as the tank sat on the well covering, and also was taller than my new tank. The old tank almost reached the roof.

For the walls I took the odds & ends of pressed board I have collected the past years and cut pieces to make interior walls. The shed is now sealed good. In the past, when I heated the shed with a light bulb, there was a good sized difference in the interior temperature between the calm days and the windy days.

I haven't talked to my neighbor Daryl in over week. I see that the breach in the beaver dam is still open. I did see that between this dam and Daryl's trailer home the beavers built a new dam and the creek is rising and flooding again.

Sunday I used my wood stove for the first time this season. Good thing I cleaned the chimney the previous week! The cool and wet weekend cooled the house off. To avoid shivering it was time to burn some wood for heat.

Missing my girls has lessened today as I found that one or more got her head through the corral fence and ate most of the leaves off my nearby small English Walnut tree. Maybe it was Dan's cattle. Ya, that's it. My girls very good. It had to be one of Dan's cattle that did this.

Of the two walnut trees I planted last year, this was the only one that came back after winter. I have babied this tree along this year and it was doing great. Now only a few leaves are left. I hope it comes back next year. I cut a small section from an unused field fence and nailed it to the corral fence by the tree. If the tree comes back next year this should prevent the cattle from reaching it. Of course, it would have been better if I had thought of doing this earlier.