Cold Weather has come to WA

On November 25, 2013November 25, 2013 By Ann Kidwell AuthorIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Kinzie the building inspector, fell asleep on the job.

My fun DIY projects have taken a backseat to maintenance. DH has not been feeling good and is unable to do all the stuff that needed done outside, so I have been picking up the slack when I’m not at work.

Our temperatures have been in the low 20’s and even some nights in the single digits, not fun. I don’t like cold weather.

Today’s chores were to get a stock tank heater which meant a trip to town. L&G Ranch Supply had everything I needed. This particular tank is between the 2 paddocks where I feed April and Cheyenne. April is our beautiful paint, but I think she is part pig, as she wants everybody’s food, and she can be a bully. So I lock her and Cheyenne, our 7 month old weanling, in separate paddocks, otherwise she would be eating Cheyenne’s Junior Feed.

Not having messed with that part of things around here, I had to get Lynn to walk me through it, to make sure I did it right. The ground is frozen so digging to lay an electrical line is out of the question, and he told me he had a short in the outlets near the tank, so I had to improvise.

Got the heater in the tank, but I had to bust the ice to get it to sink. That ice was pretty thick for this early in the season, but I got it done. I can now check that off the list.

Plans for my 4 day Thanksgiving Holiday are to fix a turkey and the trimmings and try to dismantle the bed in the guest room. We are going to have to get a hospital bed for when Lynn comes home from the hospital in Dec. Hoping we will just need it for about a month, but that will depend on if he has to have hip surgery or not. I swanny, ( southern speak for “I swear” with out really swearing, I think the medical world is slower than government at getting things done. At least it feels that way when you are the one in pain.

Sorry I haven’t gotten to putting up the last railing on the porch, but I certainly haven’t forgotten. Might do that on the 4 day weekend too. Also, have a couple of books to do research on, a quilt to finish, and about 400 books to read, and, of course, all the domestic duties. Ugh, well, that’s all for now. Some pictures of our critters, just for the heck of it.

Annie, the novice farmer. 🙂

Sadie, RIP we lost you about 2 years ago.

A Vacation Day from Work, to Work on the Porch

On November 14, 2013 By Ann Kidwell AuthorIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Winter’s coming all too quick for me. The temperatures are in the 30’s in the mornings and barely making it into the 50’s in the afternoon. Being a sun worshiper, this doesn’t make me happy. But, that is one of those things I can’t change, so I adapt. Seeing that today was the last day to make it in the 50’s for a while, I decided to burn some vacation time. My intentions were to finish painting and maybe put a flood light (install only) on the porch. Got the light installed, and my electrician (Lynn) will connect it to the juice when he feels better. This girl does not do electrical.

The other thing I accomplished was to put up one more railing. Got half of it done and stood back to check out my work and found that I had miss-measured by an inch. And it stuck-out like a sore thumb!! I don’t know where that saying came from, but alas, I hit my thumb when I was hammering in the rails. Jiminy Cricket that hurt like a son-of-a-gun. Unfortunately, my verbalization’s were not that clean at the time. I now have a black thumb nail. Again, I am getting to old and clumsy for this kind of work. Need to stick with quilting.

Back to the miss-measurement.

Well I had to fix that mistake which didn’t thrill me. Got that done, then measured for the next small railing (the last one), and some top boards to finish them off. Really proud of my work with the chop saw and the drill press. Although, when I brought the top boards and laid them on top, I realized that I was not paying attention when installing the railing that they needed to be set back about an inch. Ugh, that means that I have to disassemble some of it to correct it. I could just go ahead and install them, but they wouldn’t be right. That is something I will have to do another day, soon. Not a perfectionist, but that mistake is too big not to fix. I’ll pray for a few more mild days.

I really wanted to finish this porch and get the lights up and have an after photo of it finished. So, that isn’t going to happen this year, but I can do the next best thing. I can give you some before pictures and some of where I am now. So I will go through my archives and post a couple I took today.