Tree stump burn

A few weeks ago, after I started the irrigating of the hayfield, I also burned an old tree stump.  I thought I was done with burning tree stumps as I planned on keeping the few left so the cattle could rub on them if they wanted.   But last year this stump started to fall apart.  It got to the point it wasn't worth keeping.  I planned on burning it last Fall but the cattle still rubbed against the remains at times.  But this year I decided it was time for the stump to go.

In the Spring I dug around the stump.  I didn't dig as deep as I normally do as I thought how rotted this stump was it would be easy to burn.  Instead of 2 to 3 feet down, I dug 1 1/2 to 2 feet down.  And as you can see the stump has a lot of large side roots.

I let the dug-around stump dry some.  Then we had off-and-on rain in June. I waited for the stump to dry some more.  Now that rain quit the beginning of July it was time for the burn.  I didn't want to wait longer as the grass would dry out and that could be a problem.  The timing was right as the grass didn't burn.   If I had waited till now, that could have been a problem.

Still, to be safe I didn't do a massive burn of the stump and burn it all in one night.  I did small bonfires on parts of the stump and did this over five nights.  And due to me moving irrigations pipes daily, I didn't want to stay up really late that a large burn would require.

And it was five nights of a burn because the stump didn't really want to burn.  This was odd. Spruce tree stumps will burn and then somewhat smolder to finish the stump off.  Sometimes they need a little help to continue to smolder.   Tamarack stumps are hard to get burning, but when they do get to burning they will continue non-stop.  No extra help is needed.   This stump was hard to get started.  And it also didn't want to smolder either.   I have no idea what kind of tree this stump was as it had died and became a stump before I started living here full time over two decades ago.  The side roots were very, very hard and difficult to chop using an axe.  And difficult to burn.   Not a tamarack tree as I have found old sap in a long dead tamarack stump's roots.   No sap in these roots.

Here is part of a side root after I ended the burn.  I used an axe to chop this off.  They are extremely hard and heavy.

But the stump is now gone.

 

Night 1.

Night 3.

It looks like a starship and aliens could be watching me and the burn.

Near the end of this burn I broke and knocked part of the main stump apart.  That is what is burning.

Night 4.

Night 5.  The last of a side root.

Walnut trees

Latest about my two walnut trees.

Here you can see my former older and larger walnut tree that the past two Winters have tried to knock out.  This tree is now growing back from the roots and the base of the tree trunk.  Growing so fast that when I irrigated near here the water knocked the new growth down.  Or now the wind will knock it down.  To help it tied the largest growth upright and to the tree trunk.  We'll see how this ends up.  I may have to trim some of the other new growth.  The cattle love eating Walnut tree leaves.

This is my younger and formerly smaller walnut tree.  It is doing great and now starting to grow fast.  The Winters haven't affected this tree.  So far...

And this year I found this tree is finally producing a few walnuts.  In the Fall I'll see how many walnuts the tree produced this year.  And what kind of walnuts.  The tree is suppose to be an English Walnut tree.  But I noticed the leaves look slightly different that my older Walnut tree.   You can kind-of see the difference in the leaf shapes in these photos.  The younger tree's leaf shape tends to be narrower.

Started irrigating

As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I've been irrigating my hayfield and pastures for the last few weeks.  That is part of why I haven't been blogging much lately.  I'm tired.

Because of the rains we had the end of June and the beginning of July there was no rush to start irrigating.  And I had a few other things to get done first.  Then the temperatures warmed up a lot and that slowed things down.  

A few weeks ago I had some fillings in dental work.  And the initial Novocain I was given wore off right away.  The second shot of Novocain didn't work as when the dentist started work I could feel it.  A different dose of Novocain worked.  And afterwards when I rode my bicycle home the Novocain really worked as my face was really numb.  A short time later, and after sleeping, the Novocain finally started to wear off.   The next day my gum where the three needles went was still sore from the needle 'pokes'. Due to the heat I then got little done that day laying out pipes.

The newer aluminum mainline pipes that replaced the steel pipes should have made setting up the mainline pipes easier.  But slowing me down was the pipe's hooks and the latches where the hooks went.  There are two types of areas where hooks are latched to.  A "western style" which is flat and is a triangle shaped.  The second is - what I call - a "bump up" style.  The "bump up" style needs a longer hook because of the bump.

"Bump up" style with a long hook

Western style with a shorter hook

This photo shows the two hook lengths.

Almost all of the newer aluminum pipes had a "bump up" style of latch.  And a longer hook on the other end of that pipe.  My older aluminum pipes had a western style of latch and shorter hooks.  It was hard to hook the different pipe styles together as the shorter hooks had trouble fitting securely into the bump up latch.  So I had to replace / switch the hooks between pipes. The longer hooks were moved to the western style pipe ends so that pipe could hook to the bump up pipe.  And the shorter hooks went to the bump up pipe ends as the bump up pipe hooked to a western style of pipe.  *whew*  At least in the future hooking up the mainline pipes will be easier as the hooks are on the right pipes now.

Now that the "new" mainline pipes are all laid out, I am happy that everything (the valve locations) lines up the way it did before.  The mainline total length seems to be the same.  So all my calculations worked.

Also, when laying out the pipes I found this rock in the hayfield.   Rocks can pop out of the ground sometimes.

Friday evening July 12 I finally got all the pipes hooked up.  Time to work on the irrigation pump and the input pipe.  The input pipe is in two sections.  That is because I don't want the plastic pipe in the river in case the river freezes. 

The two pieces are connected by the white "ring" left of the white elbow.

It can be tricky aligning the two pieces together so I can then move the ring to screw the two pipes together.  Add in the fact that the wooden platform is deteriorating making it tricky to stand on safely.  On my to-do list later is to rebuild the wooden platform.  It took a lot of effort connecting the two pipe sections together.  Then later I had to re-do the connection as I hadn't greased or put thread-tape on the thread-ring that screws the two pipes together and apparently it was leaking air when I tried to initially start the pump.

Once the pipes were put together, time to prime the pump and start it up.  The pump wouldn't pressure up.  Over and over I tried.  I tightened the packing ring structure.  The pump still would not pressure up.  Eventually I took the packing ring structure off and found the packing was gone.  Used up, melted, mostly gone.   The packing hadn't lasted from the previous use.

Last year I had to replace the packing: https://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2023/08/irrigation-work.html

It was now after 6 pm on a Friday.  The shop where I had gotten the packing was closed. And being a repair shop, wouldn't reopen until Monday morning.  What bad luck.

I then thought of calling Myron, my irrigation guy.  I reached him.  He had some packing.  But he was in Great Falls, Montana for the weekend and wouldn't be back until Monday evening.  But Myron gave me directions on how I could get to some of the packing at his place, and I was able to.

Early Saturday morning I put the packing and packing ring structure onto the pump and was able to start the pump up and get the pressure going so that I could then irrigate.

I wasn't sure if I had used enough packing material as the pump's pressure was around 52-54 pounds.  Normally the pressure is in the low to mid 60s.  But I was happy to get the irrigating going.  I decided to wait until evening when I would move the sprinkler lines, then I would shut the pump off and try to add more packing.  But when evening came I looked and the pump's pressure was now 61-62 pounds.  So I left the pump running.

Now that the irrigation is going, my day is messed up.  I move the sprinkler lines twice a day.  Between 7 to 9 am and then 7 to 9 pm in the evening.  It usually takes me an hour and a half each time to move 28 to 30 pipes.  My sleep habits are different now.  I usually get only 5 hours of sleep at night before moving the pipes in the morning.  Then I sleep again.   Initially sleep was after moving the pipes in the morning.  But now that our temperatures are in the 90s during the afternoon I do work the rest of the morning, eat a full breakfast at noon, then sleep 4 hours in the afternoon from 1 pm to 5 pm.   My work schedule is a mess these days.

Things are finally settling down.  Initially every morning a sprinkler would go bad.  Sometimes it was because some debris or weeds was stopping the flow out of the sprinkler.  I do have one sprinkler that doesn't want to start turning when the water starts flowing, but I move the clapper a bit and then everything starts working.  Other times a sprinkler didn't want to turn around and I would replace the sprinkler head.

One time I replaced the sprinkler head with another one and that one wouldn't work.  It turned out the nozzle flow reducer wasn't in far enough.  It would prevent the clapper from reaching the water flow.  I tried to screw the reducer into the nozzle more.  It was hard to turn.  I couldn't quite get it in as far as needed.  So I took a file and wore down the end enough to let the clapper turn all the way it had to.

One afternoon the pump stopped.   The pump will stop when the temperature is mid-90s or greater.  That day it reached 97 as a high temperature.  The sprinklers were throwing water at 1 pm when I went to sleep.  At 4 pm when I woke up they were not working.  So I waited until 7 pm, when I usually move irrigation lines, to restart the pump.  No sense moving the irrigation lines without a full period of irrigating.

Restarting the pump wasn't smooth.   The pump had cooled down by then, but nothing when I hit the start button.  I tried this.  I tried that. Nothing.  I was ready to give up and tried one more time, and the pump started.  The only difference was that I had the control door open to the electrical panel.  That shouldn't make a difference, but apparently it did.   I left the control door open.

Due to our weather forecast for more hot temperatures I thought I would be in a routine of losing a half day of irrigation.   We had a number more days of upper 90 degrees - and one 100 degree day - of temperatures.   But the pump never stopped any other day.   Knock on wood.  Maybe leaving the control door open helped?

One time I checked and the water pressure was back down to the mid-50s.  I checked the input screen and found a lot of water weed covering it - even though I had cleared away lots of water weeds before starting the pump initially.  I removed the water weeds from the screen and the water pressure went up to 64-65 pounds.

I now have made it across the hayfield and almost back.  Ideally that is all I would like to do. The grass is growing nicely.  But due to our hot and dry weather the ground dries quickly.   I'm not keen on another out and back as that takes about 12 days.  And just going out means I have a long haul to get the pipes back so I can irrigate the pasture.  I made a compromise.  I will go out, but in doing so I will move to every other valve.  Then seeing how the ground conditions are, coming back I will either use the valves I didn't use going out, or all the valves.

Due to the wet grass when moving the pipes I wear my rubber muck boots.   However the boots always crack on the inside arch of my feet.  No matter if the boot is a cheap Walmart boot, or a $150 pair of boots.  The boots only last a year or two before getting a crack.  A crack means leakage of water.   So I wear old soaks and place my feet in plastic bread bags before putting them in the boots.  Still everything gets wet.  After moving the pipes I have to leave stuff out in the sun to dry.

And the fancy boots have a tendency twist the bottom of my pants legs around my ankles and want to pull my pants down.  Why?  I don't know.  I wish it would not do this.   I have to untwist the pants so I can get the pants off of me.  And wear a belt on the pants that I normally don't need to wear a belt on.

Irrigation is good as things are dry.  But moving irrigation pipes is a pain.  Due to the Bonneville power line towers in the hayfield and the trees in my pastures, I can't use a wheel line and must use handline pipes.  I don't think many people use handlines anymore.  I can't wait to be done with irrigating this year.

Bicycle flat tire

On my bicycle I was in town shopping this morning when I noticed my front bicycle tire was acting different.  I looked and found the tire had a sideways distortion in one spot and was thinner at that spot.  I rode back home but didn't make it.  I was almost 4 miles from home in the most direct route, a route I don't normally ride because it is along the highway with a smaller shoulder.

I called Donna, and she and her daughter Kari were a few blocks away as they were shopping for a new riding lawn mower for Donna.  Last weekend her former riding lawn mower "blew up" and quit working.  Smoke came out of the engine but fortunately no fire.

They picked me up. We stopped by Walmart so I could buy a new bicycle inner tube as the one I just ordered a few days ago won't arrive until the 29th.  Then we stopped at few more places for them to shop for a new lawn mower.  I mainly sat in the shade or stood around with the daughter's dog, Max.   Donna's dog was back at her house.

Donna bought a new lawn mower from Lowes and we loaded it in Kari's pickup.  The Lowes employee and I had to push the lawn mower the last little bit to get it over the tailgate edge while Kari drove it up the loading ramp and into the pickup bed.

I helped Kari and Donna unload the lawn mower at Donna's place, then it was off to home were I fixed my bicycle tire, ate a full breakfast, and then went to sleep after 3 pm when it was 95 degrees outside.   Rascal was happy I was back home so he could lay next to me as I (we) slept.  Another day, not much done by me other than moving my irrigations pipes.

Motorhome. Chainsaw. Problems.

Another annoying day.   I'm moving irrigation pipes twice a day which messes up my day and sleep pattern.   Now that the NE pasture has been irrigated I wanted to move the motorhome out of the corral and back to the NE pasture.  I also wanted to drive the motorhome a few miles down the road to give it some maintenance rather than just starting and stopping it. 

I let Donna know I would be driving by her place and she and Rusty planned on riding the few more miles along with me.  Just after I drove out of the pasture and on the road the motorhome stopped running.  I restarted it and tried to drive to my neighbor's driveway to get off the road.  The motorhome stopped again blocking both lanes of traffic.  I couldn't get the motorhome to restart.  And then the battery died.

I told the pickup driver that was stopped that I would be back with my tractor and if he could steer the motorhome while I pushed it off the road with my tractor.  Fortunately Curtis was outside when I started my tractor and I asked him if he could steer the motorhome while I pushed it.   When I got back to the motorhome with my tractor I seen the pickup driver had left as he drove around the motorhome partially using the ditch.

I pushed the motorhome onto the neighbor's driveway and off the road.  Since the battery was dead Curtis offered to recharge it.  I looked at the battery's date and saw it was a few months past its lifecycle.  We recharged the battery. On my "to-do" list is to buy a new battery.

Since Curtis wanted to take several hours to recharge the battery I decided to drive to Donna's place and haul off the rest of the branches I had cut last week.  I also decided to chainsaw a little more of her shrubbery.  After removing some cut branches last week I saw an area had a large dead section down to the root.  I decided to chainsaw this section at ground level to get rid of this entire section.   Prior to doing so I spent time trying to sharpen the chainsaw's chain as it had gotten dull from the cutting last week.

It was hard wood to chainsaw, but I got it done after some effort.  I then cut a few more branches to make to shrubbery area that had been cut more straight.  The chainsaw chain quit moving.   I then learned the chainsaw's blade was messed up now.  The blade has a small "wheel of teeth" at the end of the blade to help keep the chain on the blade.  To cut the root section I had to sometimes use the end of the blade to reach and make the cut.  The "wheel" now no longer moved.   This has happened to me in the past and I had forgotten it could happen until it did once again.  So I will have to buy a new blade.

I loaded up the cut section.  It was big and difficult to get into the pickup bed due to the other branches in the bed.  At the top is the root.  Not a big root considering how large the whole section is.

I did get it up there.  Not as well as I thought as when I got to my place to unload the branches I saw this root section was missing.  I unloaded the branches then drove back down the road to find this root section.  I did, close to Donna's place.  It was easier to load in an empty pickup bed.

Once I unloaded these last branches several hours had passed.  I went to Curtis's place and got my battery.  I called out I was there but Curtis didn't hear me.   I put the battery back into the motorhome and it started right up.  I no longer was going to drive a half dozen miles, and I was able use Curtis's driveway to turn around as the driveway I had pushed the motorhome into wasn't big enough to easily turn the motorhome back around.

When I drove into my pasture the motorhome stopped running again.  At least I was off the road now.  I restarted the motorhome and tried to drive across the pasture.   After a little bit the motorhome stopped again.  This time it wouldn't restart even though the battery still had power.  I talked with Curtis.   Our theory is the fuel pump may have a problem.   He and I will look at it another day.   I went back to the motorhome and it restarted.  I was able to drive it to a spot in the pasture where I can later work on it.

It was after 1 pm now.  And the temperature was now hot.  I ate a full breakfast then went to sleep until 6 pm to get my full sleep for the day.  I had irrigation pipes to move again in the evening.  Jan called me while I was asleep for some help but we ended up putting that off until tomorrow.

Cattle into the middle pasture

Friday I finally let the cattle into the middle pasture.  It would have been a week earlier but first I had to work on fence near the river.  Then I wanted to burn a tree stump before letting the cattle into the pasture.   As you can see the grass is tall in this pasture.

Here is a video of Haynes.   He has a limp now.  I think it is due to him breeding the cows. He is getting big and the cows will move away if they are not ready to be bred. So up-and-down and up-and-down until the cows are bred. He probably pulled a muscle. Time for the bull to be sold in a month or so. The cows should be bred by now and this will give him time to recover.   https://youtu.be/ECmc2ZZoL4M

My plan was to fill in the dirt from the burnt tree stump before letting the cattle into the middle pasture.   But I had to help Donna with her well pump failure.  In the evening I decided to let the cattle into the pasture before it got dark.  I figured the cattle had plenty to eat and see and I would have time to push the dirt back into the hole before they found it.

After opening the gate and letting the cows into the pasture I went and got the salt block from the north pasture and carried it to the feeder in the middle pasture.  By the time I did this, even though the dirt was across the pasture from the gate and somewhat hidden by tall grass, some of the cows already were at the dirt and rubbing in it. 

I chased the cows away.   Then the calves came and got into the act.   https://youtu.be/L2quZEQmXhY

Then Haynes the bull came over before I got all of the dirt back into the hole.  Everyone had to stand back and watch as he rolled around in the dirt.   Some of the calves wanted to join him but Haynes would shake his head at them and the calves would run away.  I just stood and watched. No way was I going to make the bull mad.   Eventually Haynes just stood there. Standing over his domain.  I waited and waited until he finally walked off to go join the cows elsewhere.   That is why the light had faded in these photos.   I raked what was left of the dirt into the hole.

Donna's well pump failure

Donna had a well pump failure.  Yesterday her son-in-law replaced a switch that had failed.   By evening the well pump failed again.  This morning a well service guy - the same one who fixed and replaced Jan's failed well pump a few weeks ago - investigated and learned the submersible well pump was failing.  The pump's failure blew the fuses which then affected the switch.  Time for a new pump.  The old pump was 34 years old.

To get to the well and pump some shrubbery needed to be removed.  I was uptown getting groceries when Donna called.  I don't have a cell phone.  While at the grocery store I met Gary, a guy I used to hike with many years ago, who had moved to Utah years ago.  It was a surprise to see him as I hadn't seen him in years.  So we had a long conversation.

By the time I got home, got the phone message, and got to Donna's with my chainsaw, time had passed.  Her sister Jane and John - brother-in-law - were there working to remove shrubbery before the well guy returned with the new pump.  John's chainsaw wouldn't start so he was using a small electric chainsaw to chip away at the shrubbery.  I got my chainsaw started and cut away to find the well pipe.

I was done cutting and taking a rest when the well guy returned.  I had cut a large enough area so he could get his truck up close to help with his work to remove the bad submersible pump and pipe and then install a new pump and pipe.  He also put new wiring in as the old wiring was also 34+ years old.

Donna has water again.

On the left - after I had cut and before I hand removed all of the cut shrubbery.  On the right, the cleared area.

The overall shrubbery that grew up around the well pipe and pump house in the 34 years.

I loaded some of the shrubbery to haul it to my pile of dead branches.

The remaining shrubbery to haul another day.

The well guy's truck.