Cowgirl's a bitch

Changes have occurred with the horses. The past week or so I have let the three horses into the yard to finally get to eating the grass down.

The first photos were taken the first day I let the horses into the yard: the day the June 23 storm hit.  The tree seen below is the big tree that was snapped off in the storm.

Today the owners took out one horse and brought in two new horses.  They took out "Sweet Sue", the older horse seen below. 

A side effect of having the horses in the yard is the manure they leave behind.

This morning "Glacier Cat" (the male horse) was laying under the patio trees.

"Sweet Sue" and "Glacier Lily" (seen in the first two photos) were BFFs.  After "Sweet Sue" was loaded into the horse trailer and driven away "Glacier Lily" got very upset.  She ran around and whinnied and tried to get out of the corral to follow the horse trailer.  She ran into the NE pasture and Tammy and I were concerned she would try to jump the fence.  She wanted to but couldn't figure how to.  She ran over and rattled the gate shown below.  Fortunately the chain held when the hook was popped out.

 "Glacier Lily" eventually settled down after a few hours.  "Glacier Cat" - the boy - was interested in the two new mares.  The owners wanted the horses separated for a few hours until they could get to know one another through the fences.  So the new horses were put into the loading corral.  "Glacier Cat" hung around the loading corral.

After a few hours I let the new horses out of the loading corral.  They had been behaving well.  Until I let them out.  Then all hell broke loose.  "Glacier Cat" ran over and the new horses wanted nothing to do with him.  They all ran into the NE pasture.  When they returned to the corral I shut the gates.  The better to keep them in a smaller space until they got to know one another.  They ran around chasing one another.  Several horses about ran me over in the excitement.

The new horses didn't want anything to do with the old horses.  Eventually they came to an understanding of keeping their distance from one another.

I let the old horses into the yard to eat the grass for a few hours to give everyone a break.  The old horses hung around near the corral.  When I opened the gate they immediately went back into the corral.  "Lily" went for water and "Cat" went over to the new horses.  They went to fighting once again.  The horse in front is "Cowgirl".

Eventually they settled down.  As long as the old horses kept their distance from the new horses.  The new horses were an older horse (Cowgirl) and a younger horse (Firefeather).  The "old" horses (a male and a female) were young horses.  Whenever the male horse got too close to Firefeather, Cowgirl would go nuts and run over and chase the male horse trying to bite it on the rear end.  Cowgirl wanted to be the boss and be in control of everyone.  She didn't like it when Firefeather got friendly with the male horse.

FireFeather

The male horse eventually learned to keep its distance.  Firefeather on the other hand was a flirt and a tease.  She would come over to the male horse when Cowgirl wasn't too close.  Cowgirl eventually would accept Firefeather making a move, but not when the male horse would make a move.

When Firefeather came over she would do a quick bite of the neck of the male horse then sniff around it.  One time it looked like Firefeather was giving the male horse a blowjob and he responded accordingly.  He had to be careful as if he got too excited "Cowgirl" would come after him.  After getting the male horse excited then Firefeather would wander off leaving the male horse frustrated.  Firefeather would wander back to Cowgirl and the male horse didn't dare go after her.

Hopefully the horses will have their pecking order settled by morning - else the male horse is going to be really frustrated.

Neighbor logs

Friday Jamie picked up the logs my neighbor sold to the sawmill for $20 a ton.  I decided not to sell some of my fallen trees.  I will use them for firewood.    The neighbor's logs that were too short for the sawmill (under 16 ft I believe) I got for firewood for cleaning up all the branches from the tree.  Several people suggested that my neighbor try to sell these logs to a guy who carves bears from logs using a chainsaw.  But my neighbors couldn't find the guy people talked about.

These logs from a fir tree are very dense and very heavy.  Jamie offered to haul them over to my yard to save me from cutting them up in the neighbor's yard.  He loaded his trailer with the logs and carried over a couple logs (foreground in the photo) using his Bobcat loader.  We then rolled the logs off the trailer as they are too heavy to lift.

Now I need to finish cleaning my chainsaw so I can get back to cutting.

First pocket gopher

Yesterday I trapped my first pocket gopher of the year.  Ya... I know... July 5... late to be having my first.  I haven't seen many signs of pocket gophers in the pastures this year.  My trapping efforts of the past years seemed to have paid off.  I saw a couple fresh dirt mounds earlier this year but I got distracted and never got around to setting traps.  It took a fresh dirt mound next to the corral to get my attention.  The next day... a dead pocket gopher.

The first - but not the last - for the year.   1599 cumulative total.

Front yard tree

As you know by now, the sudden Saturday June 23 storm took out the very large tree in the front yard by the road.  I really liked this tree and am sad to lose it.

Here are photos of the fallen tree and the work to clean it up.  It took several days to cut and clean up the tree.

Just after the storm and the view the next morning.

The wind blew this humongous tree a good distance from the tree stump!  The top of this tree also hit the power lines!

Tammy helped with the clean up.

The stumps were so large Tammy and I had to roll them into the pickup using these poles.  The weight of one stump had broke one of the previous poles I had used.

Multiple loads of branches were hauled to the pasture.

At the end of the first day I was so tired I needed a little "boost".   Isn't it strange that there is a hard to remove foil on top of the bottle?  One is tired and then they have to struggle to remove the foil.

Videos of cutting the front yard tree.

 The trunk was more than twice the size of my little 16 inch chainsaw bar.   5 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM-Mc4871Ec&feature=youtu.be


This guy cut fallen trees at Bob and Jan's place.  I let him dump their cut trees in my pasture.  First he had to help cut a path through my driveway.  He had a large chainsaw.  16 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2FDLX_ySQs&feature=youtu.be

Fireworks on the 4th

Tammy and I went to Whitefish on the 4th of July to see the fireworks.  There was a free concert going on all evening but we didn't go earlier because the music (folk) wasn't to Tammy's taste.  Our late arrival meant not getting a parking spot anywhere close to the lake to see the fireworks and Tammy didn't want to walk "a mile".  So we watched the fireworks from a park west of Whitefish.

The video is 1:06 long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkpIzGYA6cM&feature=youtu.be

Unexpected animal

Tuesday evening, after I unloaded the second and final load of branches from the second tree that had gone down in my yard from the storm over a week ago, I decided to walk along the river.  I hadn't been there for a few days now.  The river level has peaked and is now dropping.
It was dark but the moon was pretty full and shining brightly. 

I was walking along a high bank in the north pasture when I heard an animal right in front of me making noise.  Previous days I noticed goose and duck poop in the grass on the high bank.  In the darkness I looked for the animal making the sounds.  I saw light and dark colors and thought it could be a duck or goose in front of me.   Then the animal hissing at me came into focus.

It was a skunk!  The white I had seen was its back and tail.  The tail was up.  Fortunately the skunk was facing me and not  away from me.  However it was mad and hissing at me.  Even in the dark I could see its small head and teeth.  I was about five feet from it.  Waaayyy to close!

I stopped and started to slowly back up.  The skunk kept hissing at me and moved towards me.  Before the skunk could turn around and spray me I turned and ran like a bat out of Hell yelling all the way.

I outran the the skunk and never got sprayed.   Now I know why I occasionally see duck or goose bones and wings along the river in this pasture.

Ceiling light / fan / heater is done

I finished installing the new ceiling light - fan - heater in my bathroom:
Harbor Breeze 3.0-Sone 80 CFM White Bath Fan

http://www.lowes.com/pd_194492-69305-7109-01-L_?productId=3273559&site=shopLocal&utm_campaign=bazaarvoice&utm_medium=SearchVoice&utm_source=AskAndAnswer&utm_content=Default

When my uncles were here in May the unit was installed in the ceiling, but we couldn't get it to work.  We got the light to work.  The heater worked a time or two then quit.  The fan never worked.

Our efforts to troubleshoot the problem led to sparks from another wall outlet when we tried to bypass our wiring.  Also at times the unit seemed to have some stray current floating around it.

So we left it be (after turning off the breaker and power) so we could continue to work on other items in the bathroom - like the walls and floors!

Once I turned my attention back to the ceiling light - fan - heater I found:

• the third switch (fan) did not work because the wire from the circuit breaker was not attached.  Because there were 3 switches (one for each part of the unit) the wire from the breaker was split into three wires inside the box holding the switches.  The third switch wire was a touch too short and would pull out of the junction when the switches were pushed back into the box.  I replaced the short wire with a longer wire and this solved this problem.  The fan now worked.

• The heater:  the heater fan worked but the heating element would not generate heat.  I researched the heater on the internet.  A few other customers had issues with the heater.  I called the company (Homewerks) to ask about the heater not working - just in case there was a built-in thermostat.  I didn't really want to take the unit out of the ceiling and back to Lowe's.   Homewerks were very helpful and sent me a new replacement heater.  I got the new heater a few days ago and installed it and I have a working heater.

• Once I got the replacement heater installed I thought I was about done.  The light glowed bright but that was how I thought it was designed.  I ran the light for a few minutes and the light bulb blew out.  Hmmm... guess I had an old light bulb.  I put a new bulb in and turned on the power and the bulb blew out right away.  Okay... something is wrong here.  I researched the internet to confirm my suspicion.

Yup. My suspicion was right. The unit was to have its own 20 amp circuit breaker. When we removed the two electric heaters from the bathroom and hall we now had two unused wires.  The breaker my uncle and I had selected was a double 20 amp circuit breaker.  Ooppps.   That meant we had hooked the ceiling unit to a 220 volt wire - not a 110 volt wire.  Too much power!

See the two breakers set to the off position in the photo below?   I had to re-wire it to be a 110 volt breaker.  To do that I only ran one (the black) wire into the breaker.  The white wire went into the ground bar on the right side of the box.

Everything now worked.  After seeing how bright the light used to be, the light now doesn't seem that bright.  It is better than having the light bulbs blow out.

Now that the light - fan - heater all worked I had one thing left to do: install the duct work in the attic.  Since Sunday was a rainy cooler day I decided to spent a few hours to do the duct work.  Over four hours later I was done.  Ya... four plus hours.  As usual nothing was easy.

One reason the work took longer than expected as because an add-on had been built on the house.  I had an old interior roof to go through to get to a wall to vent the fan.

The jigsaw blade lasted long enough to cut through the wooden shingles before my only blade broke.  After that I had to use a saw to cut through the 1 by 10 boards that made up the original roof.

The attic got hot from my work and I was sweating worse than a pig.  Even my camera was affected.

The view once I cleaned the camera lens.

The inner wall has been cut.  The outer wall is left to cut.

The finished duct work.

Here's how my ceiling light - fan - heater looks in the new bathroom.

The only thing left to do is add a little more mud around the bottom of the box holding the switches.  The box had a tilt when it was installed and once I put the face plate on there was a gap between the plate and wall at the bottom.

Neighbor's trees: cleanup

I cleaned up the branches from my neighbor's yard.  I hauled four pickup loads of branches to my burn pile and one load of branches for my firewood pile.

Before the two trees were cut, and after.

Another neighbor, a logger, offered to buy the longer tree trunks for $20 a ton.  Otherwise the tree owner neighbor had said he would give them to me for firewood.  I told him to take the money to help pay for the $400 cost to cut the trees down.

Here is the load of branches for my wood stove.