Moldy walnuts

 My walnut harvest this year didn't go as planned.

This Fall I picked all the walnuts from the tree.  I removed all the green husks and placed the walnuts in several plastic bags.  I waited a bit as I had other projects.  I then saw some of the walnut shells had a little white mold growing on them.  So I removed all the walnuts from their shells.  I did not see any mold on the walnuts themselves.  So I placed the walnuts in two plastic containers.

Occasionally I would munch on a few walnuts.  After a little bit of time I noticed a little bit of mold on the walnuts themselves.  I looked deeper in the container and walnuts down below were even moldier.  I've never had mold grow on store bought walnuts I had shelled.

I threw all the walnuts away.

Last year to this year I learned how to better harvest the walnuts from the tree.  Next year I will have to do something different once the walnuts are picked from the tree so I don't let mold get a chance to grow.

Snow during bicycle ride

No snow on the ground before today.  Two to three inches of snow was forecast for today.  No snow when I fed hay to the cattle this morning.  I finished by 9 am and I could see potential snow clouds to the south and west.  Instead of waiting until later to ride my bicycle I decided to ride now before the snow fell.  The ride was going well and no snow fell yet so I decided to ride a little further and do a loop.

It started to snow lightly.  No problem.  I'll keep riding the loop and not backtrack.  Then it started to snow harder.  I had 4 miles left to ride.  Then the wind direction suddenly changed so I now had a headwind.  It started to snow harder and harder... and harder.  The air was so thick with snow falling I couldn't see far off.  The wind picked up and was blowing really strong.  I had to shift to a slower gear to keep moving along.  I had to put my head down to try to keep snow out of my eyes.  The snow was piling up quickly and deeply on the road. 

I turned and now had the wind at my side and half my face was getting cold.  After a mile and a half I turned again and then had the wind at my back the rest of the way home.  The snow was getting deep on the road and there was a track or two from the few vehicles on the road and I tried to ride in one of the wheel tracks to make it easier to ride.

Once I got home I was covered in snow from head to foot.  I had ridden 13 miles, four of them in heavy snow.

It had snowed like this from the snow squall for about an hour and a half before it quit snowing and the wind quit blowing.

We have quite a few inches of snow on the ground.  More than 3 inches.  It will be a white Christmas this year.

Bull's bad leg

This morning when I went out to feed the cattle I saw that Toby the bull had a problem walking.  He had a hard time using his back left leg and would slowly limp.  The last thing a person wants is a bull with a bad leg.  I then herded Toby into the south corral to eat hay there.  I will leave him in the south corral for the time being as then he doesn't have to walk much and doesn't have the other cows to bump him.

A nearby neighbor, Larry, come over to take a look at Toby in case I had missed seeing something about his leg. Larry has handled cattle in the past, and his brother and cousin each have cattle.  Nope.  I didn't miss anything.   Toby's leg is not swollen.  Since it wasn't me, Toby would walk away when Larry got close to him.  We don't see a break.  It looks like Toby may have pulled or injured a muscle in his thigh.  Toby can stand fine.  Walking is not fine for him.

In the past I have had a cow during the Winter injure one of their legs.  I would keep the cow in the south corral for a week or so and they recovered.  I hope that will also be the case with Toby.  It is one thing to have a cow with an injured leg as I have multiple cows, but I have only one bull.  And to breed the cows in June he needs to be able to stand on his back legs.

I'd say, "What a year", but my "year" started back in September of 2019 when I injured my head.  Life is different since then.

Of course, after I got my camera Toby would just stand and not walk so I could get a video of him walking.  And I didn't want to make him walk to get a video.

Flat tire

 Yesterday I noticed the front of my pickup was low on one side.  I looked.  I had a flat tire.

I had been feeding hay twice a day to my cattle recently.  Apparently I ran over a board out on the pasture even though I make sure I don't have boards like this laying around.

The repair shop said, and then I saw, the side of the tire was cracking in lots of places, in addition to having the hole from the nail.  One could see the cracks on the inside of the tire and not the outside. Rather than fixing the hole and trusting the cracks wouldn't go all the way through the tire soon, I bought a used tire instead.  As you can see, the flat tire's thread is getting low so it won't be super long before I replace all the tires.  Next year maybe.