Walnuts

My younger, now larger, walnut tree produced walnuts for the first time this year.  21 walnuts.   Much less than what my other walnut tree produced before the Winter freeze got to it.

Normally I have to pick the walnuts off the tree but this year the 52 mph wind gusts knocked most of them off for me.

I didn't wait to shell them from the green husks or breaking the hard brown shells.  This year the walnuts were a little different.  I don't know if it was because this was the first time for this tree, or if the hot/cold quick temperature change this Spring which affected lots of other trees and plants did a number on the walnuts, or if I didn't wait long enough before I broke their shells, but the walnuts inside the shell were smaller and soft.  Oh well, I still ate them.   And the brown shells were harder.  A nutcracker wouldn't work.  I had to use a hammer to break the shells.

On to the next year for walnuts.

Stump 2 in 2024, plus fallen tree cutting

I ended up removing another tree stump this year.  This was not planned.  Earlier I had decided to remove a pile of branches next to a tree stump and I didn't realize until the branch pile was removed that the stump was wobbly due to the deterioration at its base.

The pile of branches was an old pile.  One of two piles I have left in the pastures.   When I burned stump 1 back in July I used a bunch of branches from this pile of branches to feed that fire.  Then when I was checking pocket gopher traps in the south pasture this Fall I carried off a few tree branches each time to cut and use in my wood stove this Winter.  And then there were no more branches worthy of the stove.  Time to get rid of this pile of branches, and haul it off and dump it in a low spot where I don't harrow.

One pickup load of branches.  Then I was back to push on the tree stump.  It went over easily.  The part that went into the ground was mostly deteriorated and soft.   I chain sawed the rest until I ran out of gas. By then it was getting dark.

This afternoon I went back with a wheelbarrow and axe.  I cleaned up what I had chain sawed yesterday and then did a little chopping to remove that last of the stump to be a bit below ground level.   Good enough.  Now there is one less tree stump I have to drive around when harrowing.

Yesterday when I unloaded the pile of branches, and since I had the chainsaw with me, I cut the branches off the fallen tree.  The only branches left on the tree are the ones holding the tree trunk off the ground.   I'll get rid of those branches another day.

Cattle into the hayfield, and heifers that were sold

This morning I let the cattle into the hayfield.  The pastures are pretty much eaten down and the hayfield grew nicely after the second hay cutting.  The last week's overnight low temperatures have been in the mid to low 20s so the grass and alfalfa aren't really growing anymore.  And I won't be asked if I plan on doing a third hay cutting of my field. 

Before letting the cattle into the hayfield I gave them a bag of apples.  It is near the end of apples are most have fallen from the trees.

The two smaller animals in the back are the heifers I am keeping.

Now, into the hayfield.

My heifers were sold at auction on Friday.  I did better than I expected. They weighed 510 pounds each and sold for 2.97 a pound.  I got more for my heifers than I did for my steers.  That was a first for me.  And this was the most I ever got for heifers.   A handful of other sellers with heifers near my heifer's weight sold for a little over $3 a pound up to 3.16 a pound.  But I was near the high end of the market.

Barn painted

I finished repainting the barn.   The only time earlier I had put paint on the barn was back in 2009 when I had a little red paint left due to painting the house's trim red.

Here is text and photos from my blog post about this back in July 2009:

So I think I have finished painting the fascia on the house, garage and well pump shed. I still had paint left in the can so I decided to finish the can by painting the barn. I ended up painting two walls of the barn's addition. I had to do a little scraping of old paint off the bottom two boards of each wall.

Tammy picked out a pretty red, don't you think? Even though the white trim has not been repainted the red already makes it stand out.

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Last month when Kelly stopped by to check on deer hunting this year, and his deer stand, he also asked if I wanted some red paint.  Kelly has a business where he paints stuff for people.  He had two cans of paint he didn't want or need.   Red paint?  Sure.  I could paint something red.

Kelly gave me more paint than I expected.  Two five-gallon pails of paint. The red paint is in the black pails.  Ignore the paint in the grey pails.  That is the paint for the tool shed.

The red color is called "Cape Cod Red".

Originally I had planned on first re-painting the tool shed with other paint I have.  But I would have to pressure wash the tool shed to clean off the loose and flaky paint on it before painting it.  I decided to paint the barn instead.  It took me a number of weeks to paint the barn.  That is because I was also doing other things around the same time.  For over a week I only got 45 minutes to an hour of painting done each day.  So the barn painting was off to a slow start.

Then it got to time to start weaning the calves and they would be in the south corral.  To get that part of the barn done I picked up the pace and spent more time over a couple days to get that part of the barn painted before the calves came.

Due to the feeder I couldn't use the tall ladder to reach the peak of the barn.  I used a smaller ladder.  The feeder roof held up.  You can see how the shade from the roof overhang slowed the old paint from fading away.

Here is the finished south side of the barn.  The boards over the one window are because much of the six glass panes are broken.  Another day I will get a new larger single pane to replace the six missing smaller panes.  Year ago I did that to the window that is now under the feeder I later built.

While the barn addition had been painted back in 2009, the color faded over 15 years.  I decided to repaint the side in the south coral.

Then on the west side of the barn I got part of it painted.  I ran out of paint from the first five-gallon pail before I got the side doors painted.

From the second pail of paint I got the side doors painted even though the calves were now in the south corral.  Since I only had one five-gallon pail of paint left, and it didn't have to be painted now, I skipped painting the side of the barn under the side roof.

To get the part of the barn in south corral painted took an entire five-gallon pail of paint.  How much of the rest of the barn will get painted with the other five-gallon pail of paint?  For sure I wanted the north side of the barn painted.   As you can see the barn had two colors: red and brown. I'm sure the brown paint was due to my dad.  He probably got some discounted on-sale cheap paint.  I never liked the look.

The hay loft door needed work and paint.  On the barn and hay loft door the raised wood sections are used to cover the areas where the board pieces meet each other.  The barn most likely was built in 1940/1941 and I don't think 4 by 10 sheets of wood were available back then.  To cover the gaps at where the board pieces came together, a board was nailed over those areas.   The hay loft door had minor raised boards that most has deteriorated over time.  I replaced three of the four pieces.  Unlike the old raised pieces that had been painted white, I painted them red.  I left the frame as white.

I still had paint left.  On to the east side.  Let's see how much of this side I can paint.   Here you can see the new paint on the right. (When I took the photo the new paint already covered the brown paint.)  The old and faded paint on the left.  The brighter red was an area I had painted back in 2009 when I also painted the barn addition.

I was surprised that I was able to paint the entire east side.  And I painted the north side of the addition.  The last strokes to paint the addition were the last paint I had.  I had exactly the amount of paint needed to paint the barn (other than what was under the barn roof on the west side.)   Who would have thought?

Kelly said the red paint had primer as part of the paint.  I hadn't painted since 2009.  I found this paint to be more liquidly than the paint I knew before.  The paint flowed.  When I held the brush end of the brush up to paint, paint would flow down the handle of the brush.  My hands and arms got a good amount of paint on them.  And this paint was harder to remove off my hands and arms.  I think today after days of washing and scrubbing them of paint I got most all of it off me.  My clothes however.  That may remain forever.  Washing the clothes today appears to not remove much of any paint.

And I found my painting shoulder to be slightly sore each night when I went to bed as I used a hand brush to paint the barn.  The raised boards made using a roller to paint unworkable.

Well, this project is now done.  On to the next project.