August Heat

         

     August’s cool start gave way to more typical weather, though nothing like last summer’s record setters.  It is still pretty dry, but you wouldn’t know it from my attempt to farm.

    The biggest rain we have had has been .67” while south and east they have had multi-inch rains.   Still, I had problems getting the machine to work properly due to the wetness of the soil, combined with the residue from the grass that hasn’t decayed yet.

      When I first started, I had to stop about every 20-30 minutes to clean the grass and “mud” (not quite that wet) off the bar.  I finished Monday afternoon with one or two cleansings all afternoon.  Too early to plant wheat, so no use worrying if I have enough moisture.

     (When I was a high school kid working for a neighbor farmer, we always started planting wheat on August 21, unless that date fell on Sunday.  You would attract a lot of attention if you planted wheat that early these days.)

     On Tuesday I indulged the Goodwife’s hobby of inspecting every house that has ever been built.  We went to Colorado Springs’ Parade of Homes.  There were 35 homes on the tour, from Peyton to the hills above the city.  We toured our first house at ten o’clock, when they opened up.  We finally took a break at an Outback Steakhouse about 4:30.  We left there about 5:30, too late to view any more.  (Thank Goodness.)   

     Many of the houses we toured were rebuilds where the fire destroyed them last year.  Those all had a nice view of the flat old plain stretching out to the east with the city center tucked up against the hills.  The cheapest one probably went for $4k (most were privately owned and not for sale—mostly advertisements for various builders) and went up to a million.  None of them had a floor plan I would use, even if I could afford to.

     Thursday we headed for Kansas.  They have had more moisture.  The grass I had trimmed up three weeks ago was up pretty high again.  Problem:  Tecumseh engine on Marty J riding mower had an exhaust valve that wouldn’t close.  Four hours of troubleshooting and trying different solutions on Friday produced no results.

     It gave me an excuse to phone my old buddy Ralph, sitting in a nursing home in San Diego.  Ralph suggested liberal doses of WD-40.  Or, flood the engine cylinder with automatic transmission fluid.  The WD-40 helped.  I didn't have to go to plan B.

     The ultimate solution was a farmer one—use of bailing wire.  I threaded wire through the valve spring and made a loop around the valve stem.  I looped the other end of the wire around a piece of copper pipe.  Using the pipe as a lever, and with an assist from a nail bar hooked into the valve spring, I managed to persuade the valve to close all the way. 

      If I had to take the engine apart, I would have to get the engine out of the mower.  That would be a job.

     About 12:30 p.m. Saturday, the old engine came to life.  I spent four hours mowing in the upper ninety degree heat.  I was quite happy.  The alternative was my old Comet  lawn mower.  Or the slovenly solution of just letting Nature take its course. (My German barbershop buddy who visits occasionally would look askance at that solution.)

       Back to Colorado, where we enjoyed a round of golf in the cool evening.

The Owl in the Chimney

     The week started with a trip to Denver to pick up the chairs we bought the week before.  We drove in rain most of the way home.  Just west of Limon she really let her hair down.  We hit a spot of deep water on I-70 going  about 60 that readjusted the pickup’s exhaust system.

     In Limon, water was bumper deep in several spots, but as we progressed north, the rain lessened and lessened.  When we got to the farm, we pulled into the garage, unloaded the chairs and dried them off (they were covered with a tarp, but we went through some serious rain). 

     Having secured our valuable new property, I trudged out to the rain gauge.   .2” 

   Well, musn’t complain.  Something is better than nothing.  More on that, later.

       Tuesday seemed a great time to take on a project I have postponed for a dozen years.  This episode in life took place sometime in the 90’s.  Granny lived in the town house during the winter and the farm house in the summer. 

    It was an Easter weekend.  We pulled into the farm house on Friday.  We noticed a “scritching” in the chimney in the kitchen.  I said “dang (maybe) mouse” and set some traps.

    By Sunday morning, the scritching had stopped in the kitchen, but no mouse in any trap.  A trip to the basement revealed the sound was now in the basement chimney.  Closer inspection revealed the sound coming from the stove pipe to the old kitchen range.

    Somehow, further investigation got postponed until Easter afternoon. Astrid Korsvold and Mom were Easter dinner guests.  Following cleanup, the scritching had risen to the top of the priority list.

    Now, it was in the stove, no longer the pipe.  I pulled the stove away from the chimney far enough to remove the pipe, and there staring out at us, two huge owl eyes.  A hand in meant a hand pecked or taloned.

     “Let it die.  We’ll get it out then,” I said.

    “No,” wailed the Wife indignantly.  Off she went to get her dishwashing gloves.  Poor choice.  “Rubber” gloves aren’t talon proof.  I got her the welding gauntlets.

    They worked much better.  Now she could get a good hold on the owl.  But when she pulled to extract him, he spread his wings and couldn’t be budged.  Bear in mind this is all taking place in an oval stove pipe opening in the back of the old kitchen range, an opening designed to accommodate a six-inch stove pipe.

     Once upon a time when we were younger and still had the energy, we went on a scavenger hunt.  It was boys versus girls.  One of the items was a live bird.  So one of the ladies in the Wife’s group led them to a chicken house she knew of.  The lady, a farm girl, grabbed a flapping squawking chicken from her night roost and promptly tucked the hen’s head under her arm pit.  The squawking and flapping ceased instantly and the bird relaxed and went limp.

       “Cover their heads,” the lady explained.

     And now the Wife remembered this.  One gloved hand over the huge eyes, and this time the wings didn’t spread as she maneuvered and managed to extricate the bird from the stove.  That was really quite a feat, almost as remarkable as how the bird got into the chimney in the first place.

      Up the stairs came the knight-lady in shining armor having rescued her owl in distress.  Granny and Astrid oohed and awed.  Someone had the presence of mind to suggest a picture, but alas!  Not a working camera in the house. (1990’s, remember?  No cell phones, no digital cameras.  Just film ones, and we didn’t have a camera with film in it.)

     Astrid lived to be over 100 hundred years old.   The last time I talked to her, a year or so before she died, she brought up the owl story.  She never forgot that.

      The Wife kept the owl’s wings pinioned as we searched futilely for a camera.  The owl hardly struggled, head uncovered and all. 

      Finally, having failed to record a visual image of the remarkable event, we spectators formed a reception committee outside near the back steps, like wedding guests waiting around the church steps to shower the newly-wed bride and groom with rice.  (Millet?  Rice kills birds?  The Chinese invented kites to keep the birds out of the rice paddies.  If rice killed birds, kites wouldn’t have got invented.  How do such legends get started, and what fools are we to believe them?)

      Out came the Wife, bird in two hands, to stand briefly on the back stoop.  With a motion not unlike Wilt Chamberlain shooting a two-handed free throw, she released and launched Mr. Owl to the East.  We all sucked in our breath as Mr. Owl spread his six-foot wing span over our heads and flew off to take a second chance at life. 

      How did a bird with that wing span get into that chimney and then a six-inch stove pipe?

      Since that time, I have pulled two other owls out of that basement stove, one dead, one alive.  Let us expend an ounce of prevention.     

     The tin roof presents a problem.  With shingles, I could hang on to the dormer roof and get up and down.  Not so easy on a metal roof.

   The Rube Goldberg device I used to stand on while screwing the tin to the roof, my brother’s invention, had to be slightly modified for this job.  I barely could get it up on the roof by myself even with modifications.  Resolved: the next time I find it necessary to climb this thirty-sixer, I will put down some angle irons that will be permanent, like on grain bin roofs.

    The chimney really should be capped as well as screened, so:

    What I thought would take maybe four or five hours, took all day Tuesday and a lot of Wednesday.  Anyway, no more owls need apply, maybe. 

Fair Time Again

       The first full week of August.  Time to head for the county fair.  The Shave Ice Boss figures we have been doing this fair for 26 years.  Some things change while some remain the same.

    

    Cleaning up the equipment, including the poor old pickup, remains the same.

    Digging the equipment out of the barn and removing the year’s accumulation of dirt hasn’t changed much.

     Loading it up and heading out—the same.  The biggest change?—everything weighs more this year, the machines, the portable counter, all heavier somehow.

    One change for this year over last was the Boy Scouts decided to use their shed,  which we used the past couple of years, so we are back under our own awning.

  

     The weather didn’t behave like August.  The highest temperature was 85 on Saturday.  Wednesday didn’t get out of the 60’s.  Thursday and Friday were in the 70’s.  Not favorable to selling ice.  We sold a record low 250 pounds of ice, less than half of what we have done in years past.  That record isn’t due entirely to weather.  The fair just doesn’t attract as many people as it used to.

     To add insult to injury, we spent a lot of Wednesday waiting out rain showers.  We listened to some of the folks talking an inch, two inches, four inches of rain.  We drove home through mud puddles that undid all my pickup washing, only to get home to find the usual .2” in our gauge.

     The neighbors were back selling their buffalo one burger or brat at a time.  Saturday wound down and nothing to do but clean up the abandoned battlefield, pack up and head for home.

     Some salve for a not-so-successful week, .4” of rain fell late Saturday night, music to fall asleep to.

Some Not-so-Fun Jobs

     Every occupation has its share of jobs that are tedious but necessary.  Here follows a couple of my least favorite farm tasks.

     The pile of chaff you see clinging to the side of the combine is less than the tip of the ice berg.  It is easily dislodged with compressed air (easier if you get to it before it rains and glues it to the combine).

   The ice berg in this case resides underneath the operator’s platform.  Here is the “harvest” from that field:

     The “harvester” in this case is a combination of shop vac, compressed air, and a good old human arm.

      Before shop vac, that job was done manually, one fistful at a time while kneeling or lying on top of the feeder house.  Not much fun.  So why do it if it will only fill up again next harvest?  Moisture always accumulates in the mulch and rusts the metal is one reason.  Mice are a second reason.  They find it a nice place to nest with lots of material and even a food supply.

     There are four filters on top of the cab, two dry and two wet that have to be cleansed.  The engine, its compartment and air filters all have to be done, and the residue of grain in the bottom of the bin has to be cleaned out.  The bottom of the bin wouldn’t be too bad if it weren’t for the unloading auger and the auger shield over the auger.  The auger flights are sharp, and you are on hands and knees in the bin bottom.  This year we had enough showers that there was wheat growing in the bin bottom.  It hangs on to the metal pretty well.  A pancake turner and compressed air worked pretty well.

    All in all, it’s about a day’s job to remove the header, clean and stow it in the shed, clean the main machine and stow it.

    Here it is where it will spend the next eleven months.  Its roommate is a fifties version that hasn’t been out of the shed in twenty years.  Know anybody who wants a 60-year-old combine?

Once it’s in place, drain the oil, change the filter, fill with new oil, and you’re good to go next year.

    A little higher on the un-fun list is putting the windrower away. It has to come out to get the combine out. The header is 15’ 11 3/4” and the door is 16’.

    Everything is home now.  On to unlovable job #2—bindweed eradication.  Here is a patch that has straggled on for 20 years:

      Those cute little white flowers are bindweed blossoms.  The weed may take a year or two off, but it then springs back.  The seed can lay dormant for many years and then sprout and go.  Banvel and Torodon to the rescue.  You have to have a license to buy and use Torodon, a restricted-use pesticide.  The license costs $100 and a few hours of studying and test-taking, renewable every two years.  I use a hand sprayer, about three gallons of spray on this spot.  Of course the sprayer has to be cleaned, and then, me, too. (Do you suppose it’s cleaning things I don’t like?)

    Those jobs are all done and it’s back to farming.

     I got interrupted by rain!  Two thirds of an inch of gentle shower over a few hours!  We missed the ugly tornadic cloud about six miles north.  It chased me out of the field.