Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Rain, wires, heifers

I want it to rain, but I don't want it to rain.... right now.  That is because Wyatt cut his field Sunday night and then plans to bale it on Thursday.  So his hay is laying on the ground drying.   That is, until a rain shower came over Tuesday afternoon.  Not in the forecast, not suppose to happen in NW Montana right now - but it did.  *sigh*

The rain also threw another wrench into my plans.   Monday I put the new roof on the pump house for the well.  I didn't use the former tongue in groove boards.  They were old, they were very dry.  Instead I used two sheets of plywood.

The old roof

The new roof

My plan was to shingle it today.   Earlier in the day I had gone to Home Depot and Lowes to buy shingles and the metal edging you see in the above photo.  I already had felt.

It rained before I could put the felt on the roof.  Now I have to wait till tomorrow to work on the roof as I am waiting for it to completely dry.


I prepared the barn for the Thursday's new hay.  A few weeks ago to make room for the electrician to work I cleared the stuff out of the barn's tack room and into the barn itself.  Now I needed to move the stuff out of the barn.  Since the electrician finished the electrical work (other than the last bit of wiring once the new pump arrives), I removed the old wire from the barn.  Once I fill the barn with new hay I wouldn't be able to access the old wiring.

It appears the electrician removed the connections to the old wiring except for the wire that comes out of the garage.  This wire also goes to the tool shed and barn.  Those wire ends had been cut and taped off in those buildings.  When I worked on removing the old wire in the barn I saw a spark.  That is when I then traced back and found the one spot the electrician had missed cutting/un-wiring.  I removed the fuses so I could work on removing the wire from the barn without getting shocked.

Because I plan to re-shingle the tool shed after I shingle the pump house I removed the old wires from the tool shed.  To do so I had to use an extension  ladder to get up the light pole.  The ladder wasn't quite high enough but I was able to cut the wires and remove them by standing on the top rungs of the ladder and holding onto the light pole.  *whew*

While up there I cut and removed the wires going to the barn.  It looks strange now to not see overhead wires going to the barn.   For now I left the wires going from the light pole to the garage.




One of the three heifers must be in heat or coming into heat.  Buddy spent a lot of time Tuesday along the fence next to their pasture.  When he wasn't around a black heifer would stand by the fence and call out to him.   At one point Buddy got his head through the fence wires to better smell the heifers.  Everyone moved away from the fence when I came out there.  I added a couple extra wires to the existing wires to try to keep those wires together to stop Buddy from putting his head through the fence again.

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