Wooden feeder - finished

Tuesday I finished the rebuild of the wooden feeder.  It took most of the day - but I got it done.  I paid for it by evening as my sore muscles were even more sore and stiff.

I added a small divider in the middle.  Otherwise I find that multiple blocks of salt get pushed to one end.

Notice that this time I added "feet" to help keep it more stable and less susceptible to the cattle tipping it over.

Wooden feeder

The cattle have taken to abusing the hayfield's wooden feeder holding the bloat blocks.  Before I was injured I had patched it where it was coming apart at one end.  Since my injury the cattle have really abused it.  The patch was about the only thing that held - all else started coming apart.

Here is how the feeder looked after the cattle abused it:

I am still feeling really sore but I'm trying to do a little at a time.  While I could have taken apart and rebuilt this feeder in a matter of hours, Monday night it was all I could do to take the feeder apart to salvage the few boards I could reuse.

Now to see how long it takes for me to rebuild the feeder.

Storage Wars - Kalispell

On Friday Tammy and I attended a couple of storage auctions.   We enjoy the TV show "Storage Wars" and thought we'd attended a storage unit auction here in Kalispell.

 J.W., a vendor at one of Tammy's Antique & Flea Market shows, has attended these auctions.  He said now that the TV show has become popular more people are attending and the prices paid for storage units are going up.  But he noticed that people with winning bids not showing up for later auctions.  He thinks they paid too much and lost money, found out lots of the stuff is worthless and it costs to haul it to the landfill, and found out most units don't have hidden treasures like on the TV show.

At the 2 pm auction there were four units sold.  The first unit was sold before we arrived.  The second unit was half filled with what looked to be tanning equipment and duct work.  The unit sold for $200.  The third unit was quite full of household stuff and sold for $800.  Man, stuff is selling high.  The last unit was a half sized unit at 5' by 10' with junky household stuff.   That unit sold for $225.  All told, the 2 pm auction was over in 35 minutes.

When we arrived at the 6 pm auction people were still in the viewing mode for the first unit.  The way the auctions work is they cut the lock and we have five minutes to file by and look at the unit from the outside. We can't go inside the unit.  Some people had flashlights but on this bright sunny day they weren't really needed.  People murmured to their friends about items they saw or what could be in some boxes.  Toys, tools, mirrors, cabinets, furniture, vacuum cleaners, etc.   Tammy seemed to think any older unusual furniture could be antique.  I don't think so.

Mattresses, couches and vacuum cleaners were common.  Many units looked to be an entire household's contents.  One could tell the difference between family and single men units based on the stuff inside.  Some units had stuff stacked and arranged nicely; other units were a jumble of stuff tossed in there willy-nilly.

First unit viewing at the 6 pm auction

Would you pay $300 to $400 for this storage unit?

I was surprised this unit sold for only $500.

This unit sold for $50.  It had a look that the unit's renter had gone through the stuff and took the good stuff and left the crap.

One unit hardly had anything in it and the auctioneer closed it up right after opening it as it wasn't worth selling.

The 6 pm auction of eight units lasted 50 minutes.  Most unit went for lots of money.  The highest priced unit went for $1100.  The unit had a lot of stuff in it but it looked like household stuff.  Was it worth $1100?  Not to my eyes.

Just like the TV show all the winning bidders paid cash for the unit.  In this case immediately after winning the bid.

Kicked by a horse

This morning I found the horses got into mischief in the fruit tree area.  I had fenced off the raspberry bed but I found the fence half down and the bed eaten down.

Before and after:

While there are fences around the young trees the horses leaned over the top of the fences and bent them down to reach the trees and eat the leaves.  What's up with that?  I have had horses before and they left the trees alone.  I had fenced the young fruit trees to protect them from the cattle but the horses being taller leaned over the fences where the cattle couldn't.

The apricot tree used to have leaves all the way down.

I bent the fences back up and went about doing some fence work in the NE pasture.  Once the horses tired of checking me out while I worked on the fences, Stud, Lily and Firefeather went into the fruit tree area.  Stud and Lily ate grass but after a bit I saw Firefeather eating the leaves off a cherry tree.

The cherry tree.

Firefeather - the culprit - near an eaten plum tree.

I got upset and ran over to chase her away.  She didn't want to leave the tree so I yelled at her and ran closer to chase her away.  She turned and ran off but kicked back as she did striking me in the chest.

Ouch!  The impact knocked me to the ground but I got up.   I could breathe so I called out for Tammy but she was in the house and did not hear me.  I staggered to the house and a few minutes later I regained consciousness staring at the grass in the fruit tree area.

Here is where I was struck.

I am really sore.  Tammy wanted me to go to the hospital but in the past I have had fractured ribs and a fractured shoulder so I have some experience with this type of injury.  I may have a fractured rib cage or I may have a very bad bruise.  I'll see in a few days at how it feels and how quickly it starts to heal.

Right now lifting stuff is not an option.  I can take deep breaths so this is not as bad as when I fractured a lower rib.  My back muscles are starting to feel sore but that happens when a body takes a sudden sharp impact - other body muscles get sore.  Right now moving from position to position, sitting to standing, hurts.

I guess I'm going to be taking it easy for a while.

Ants eating

In the previous post about the leaning tree I forgot to add this video of ants.   The past few months I could easily hear them chew on the tree's innards.   When I cut the bottom of the tree earlier this week a large number of large back ants swarmed out and near the chainsaw chain as I cut.  The ants got very close to the chain but always turned back from the spinning chain.

The video of ants eating  is 32 seconds long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y7GC1cxauc&feature=youtu.be

Cutting a leaning tree

One of the trees I cut on Tuesday was a tree leaning into another tree.  Earlier I had trimmed off the branches I could reach from the ground.  Now it was time to cut the tree down.

The tree wasn't completely snapped off from the stump so first I cut the remainder of the trunk from the stump.  Then it was on to cutting the tree down to size.  The video is only 29 seconds long as the mosquitoes were driving Tammy crazy.  She wasn't thrilled in the first place in taking the video as she thought it was boring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQdbXgY4M3c&feature=youtu.be
 
Here is an 11 second video finishing the cut.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nETu4a7T6wU&feature=youtu.be


Then it was repeat to bring more of the tree down until I could pull the rest of the leaning tree from the live tree.

Even with all the mosquitoes I cut up the tree into lengths where I can split the logs later.


I found these feathers nearby.  While I find a number of shed feathers in the pasture these feathers looked like they came from an injury.

Got hay

Since I have the cattle currently eating the hayfield I bought some of the hay that Wyatt's recently cut and baled.  Wyatt delivered the hay Tuesday.  I shouldn't have used the chainsaw to cut some of the fallen trees as my arms were already tired by the time Wyatt delivered the hay.

Wyatt has a machine to pick the bales from the field.  He dropped a stack of 55 bales outside my barn.  If only my barn was bigger then I wouldn't have had to move the bales into the barn by hand.

The stack was seven bales high.  The bales are stacked on their sides so that made the stack higher.  I had to use a ladder to get the bales from levels 6 and 7.

Here are the bales safely stored in the barn.

Turkeys in the yard

I have a flock of turkeys living on the ranch.  They tend to range about the pastures.  Sometimes - usually early mornings - they pass through the yard.  One morning I was up early and got photos of the Tom and his harem.

Here is a 2:15 video of the turkeys:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCS3H2bH1Yw&feature=youtu.be

Into the hayfield

Sunday evening, July 22, I let the cattle into the hayfield.   I wasn't sure I was going to do this as the two bloat blocks on the east side of the pasture had minimal licking on them.  All but two of the cattle surrounded me as I checked the bloat blocks.

I went to check the bloat block on the west side of the pasture.  This block showed signs of cattle licking it.  I decided to let the cattle into the hayfield.

The cattle decided to follow me to the west bloat block.  They then turned around and followed me to the hayfield gate.  I always like the cattle see me open the gate so their following me made the task easier.

The alfalfa has flowered so it was a better time to let the cattle into the hayfield.  Maybe the alfalfa wouldn't be so "hot" and potentially cause bloating in cattle.

The grass was tall.

The horses didn't seem too pleased to see the cattle in the hayfield.  Perhaps they felt the field was theirs.

The neighbor across the road still has five cows and one bull.  My cattle and the neighbor's cattle like to be near each other.  I often see them taking their siestas along the fences in their respective fields.

Now to cure the cattle of their tendency to bellow outside my bedroom window at 7 am.

Grass growing in beds

Last year I made an effort to weed out all of the grass growing in my strawberry bed.  This year you'd never know the work I did last year.

This year the strawberry bed is hidden in the grass. The posts mark the bed's boundaries.  In the second photo you can see the rhubarb is fighting the grass.

I cleared the grass from around the two surviving rhubarb plants and from a few strawberry plants.  I fenced off the cleared area to keep the horses from it and for now will let the horses eat the grass down over the rest of the strawberry bed.  Then I will fence that area to protect the strawberry plants that are surviving.

Even my raspberry plants were getting taken over my grass, and I haven't had much grass problems in that bed before.  Partially cleared... and fully cleared.

I fenced off the raspberry bed, and also fenced off some other bushes in the fruit tree and garden area, then opened the gate this evening to let the horses in.  "The Bitch" immediately came over when she saw I was working to open the gate.  She and the other horses immediately started chomping on the grass.  You'd think they were starving by how the eagerly they ate the grass.  They reminded me of how cattle act when they get into a new pasture.

Marion auction

Saturday, while Tammy was holding her women's expo, I drove up the road to Marion for an auction.  The auction was advertised as a two-day auction with lots of tools, antiques and general stuff.

They had five 10 ft Powder River heavy duty gates.  The paint was mostly worn off the gates but otherwise no dents.  The gates sold for $55 each - a good deal.  However I already have a number of gates to install and I am not sure I need more 10 ft gates.  Also I had driven my car and not the pickup.

The crowd was not large.  While I heard about a large anvil being sold for $300 before I arrived, I noticed the prices for other stuff ranged from reasonable to cheap.

There was a nice horse buggy at the auction.  It didn't sell when I was there so I don't know what it sold for.

The dark circle on the back (trunk) was water.  The large spring is what the box unit sits on.  The buggy seems to be a simply made vehicle.

I was interested in these wooden snowshoes but the auctioneer skipped this area to get into the building and tools.  Who knows when the auction would get back to these snowshoes - today or tomorrow?

I left the auction empty handed. But not frustrated as there was nothing I really wanted.

July Women's Expo

 A rock and gem show was in the grandstand building at the Flathead Fairgrounds and a gun show was suppose to be held in the expo building.  With the activities going on Tammy decided to hold another one of her Women's Expo today at another building at the fairgrounds.

But then the gun show decided to move their event to next weekend.  Also the Valley was chock full of activities this weekend.  Several vendors at Tammy's expo were from Great Falls and came up for the weekend.  They said they had trouble finding hotel rooms last night as everything was booked.

The people must have been elsewhere today as attendance at Tammy's expo and the rock and gem show was light.  A lot of work, little reward.

Digging another tree stump

I started digging on this tree stump last Fall and got it half dug.  A few days ago I finished digging around the stump.  I think I dug almost 4 feet down.   I needed a new stump to burn.

About the time I was done digging the cattle ended their siesta and once they came close enough in the pasture to notice me in the hole they all came over to check the situation out.

Here is a 1:48 second video of the cattle checking out the dirt and stump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmLTciM5hzk&feature=youtu.be