Feb 11 – March 3
Hi everyone. So, not great, but not as long between posts as last time.
Hope everyone up north is staying warm and safe in the winter weather.
So, it has been three weeks since my last post. What have I been doing?? Hmm..
Not as much as I’d like or should. I’ve been working late for work for an hour or two frequently. By the time I’m done, I’m not real motivated to go outside and work for the remaining couple hours of daylight. It is nice that the days are getting longer in terms of daylight again.
I spent some time on my micro controller projects but ran into a road block getting it to read the temperature sensors and I haven’t gotten back to it.
I used the tractor’s bucket to move some larger rocks that were dug up when digging the trench to the fence line.
Spent a weekend with a colleague, Erik, and his wife, Naomi, that came out to visit. Friday evening visiting for an hour or so before dinner. Saturday morning, target shooting with at Tom’s with Erik, Naomi, Tom, Andrew (Tom’s new ranch hand), Rachel (my daughter) and myself. It was COLD that morning (40’s). I know, not as cold as Michigan, but for here, here it was cold. It had been snowing Friday and there was a fair bit of snow on the mountains for much of the day. We shot for a couple hours at which time it was lunch time.
In the afternoon discovered we were low on water (go figure – shocking given a I let a leak go unfixed for weeks. I also showed Erik and Naomi around what I had gotten done and talked about my plans for the property. Dinner with the family and Erik and Naomi at Tom and Alicia’s.
Sunday we went to Bisbee to help for a couple hours on a build project that was underway. Then we went on to visit Marcia at Ransom Ranch and she gave us a tour of her place. We followed that with a visit to Bob and Karen who gave us a tour of their place and we visited for a short while. We ended the day with a drive through old Bisbee and a stop at the store “Olive Oil” and Bisbee Coffee, and finally the mining pit on the way out of town.
Got the tractor repaired. They repaired it under warranty. I removed the broken part from the tractor. Cheryl and Rachel took the part to Tuscon and made and outing of it staying over night. It turns out they ordered the wrong seal kit so it was going to take a third day to repair. I asked them to ship it and told Cheryl who was waiting for the call that it was complete to come on home without it. When the part arrived via UPS a couple of days later, I got it installed without too much difficulty. I replaced the broken zerk as well with no problems. When I went to grease everything, it was long over due and a number of the fittings would not accept grease indicating the grease in it had gotten old and dirty plugging up the works. I had to take apart 5 grease fittings, remove the associated pins that they were greasing, steal wool the pins, and scrape out and clean the sleeves the pins fit into, and clean out the grease fittings themselves. Lesson learned. Grease before each use or once every couple of uses. I bought a pneumatic grease gone to make it much easier. There are still a couple of zerks I need to replace but that is easy enough to do. So, tractor was finally back in service as of yesterday around noon.
I spent Saturday afternoon moving rock (never ending chore for the next few year while I’m moving earth around) from around the solar system to the fence line. As Rachel, Cheryl, Alicia, and Christine were all out of town at the First Robotics competition in El Paso TX, Tom arranged a guy’s night at his place. Dinner, drinking, and visiting.
Today, I started work outside around 8 AM. I filled a fair bit of trench and moved larger rock separated from the trench dirt to the fence line. Somewhat early in the morning I tore the screen with the tractor so had to replace the chicken wire. Notes to self: 1. work up wind of where you are dumping dirt. 2. If wind does start blowing dirt in your face, take you damn hands off the back hoe controls while you have your eyes closed. I added some heavy 6″ square fencing under the chicken wire this time to provide more support. That was a 3 hour repair and improvement effort. I worked for another three hours or so screening dirt and moving large rocks to the fence line. Filling the trench is going nicely with the screen and the back hoe. If I can get out of work and if it is not too windy this week (Monday and Tuesday are looking good – the rest of the week not so much), then I expect to make good progress in filling the trench this week. I will be sooo glad when that trench is filled and I can move onto another project. Having something done as opposed to half done like so many other projects right now will be really nice too.
With that, you are caught up.
Until next time.
Cary
Seeking Simplicity 