Where There’s Smoke . . .

      It looked like this on Labor Day weekend.

      That’s the sun, not the moon.  Underfoot, it looked like this.

     Ash whirled into piles like swirling leaves or drifting skiff of powder snow.  Then the rain and the snow really did come.

      Maybe it would be over!  But, no.  Things flared up again and took a big jump this past week.

 

      The story isn’t over.  Two hundred thousand acres are now on fire or already burned.  A big snow would help, but even when the fire is finally extinguished, there will be repercussions, not just for those poor souls who have lost property, but for all of us who have had a steady diet of smoke to inhale.

     2020 rages on.

       Robert Burns gets the final word, as he addresses a mouse whose “house” has been destroyed by Burns’ plow:

“The present only toucheth thee:

 But och! I backward cast my e'e,

 On prospects drear!

 An' forward, tho' I canna see,

 I guess an' fear!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                         

Cellar Door Project

       The cellar door project began maybe in 2018?  Mice in the basement always brings the problem to top priority.  (https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7358692302968743913/1273023153080464776

     I had made repairs to the door before and had staved off the tide of unwanted furry rodents.  Replacing the old siding opened gaps over the cellar door.  They boys took off two layers of siding, the vinyl, then the old wood siding that went on when the house was built.  They put back one layer of siding.  There was a gap.

     Mice, like water, always find the way.  Water has to follow the laws of gravity.  Not mice.  They can crawl, jump, survive falls.  If there is a way in, they find it.

         I had made some repairs to the door.  I beefed up the rotted lower end in the spring of 2019.

      One day last spring (2020), the grandchildren and I were in the basement looking for something, ball bats and gloves? One of them pointed out a dead mouse in a trap.  It was time.

     I knew the door had to be rebuilt.  I had bought treated lumber to replace the framework probably two years ago.  It lay in the garage in a stack low enough that an automobile could drive over it and not snag it.  I had the frame planned out.  It was just a matter of getting to the job.

     What to use for the door?  I have been contemplating that for a couple of years.  My preferred method would have been to cover the four-foot opening with a chunk of boiler plate or other metal thick enough to bear two or three hundred pounds and skip the wooden door.

      The metal was available at a steep price and the shipping more than doubled that.  I settled for a 4 X8 sheet of plywood.  (The photographer forgot to snap a shot of the door without the covering.)

    Then the problem was, what to cover the raw plywood with.  I followed several leads trying to track down some sheet metal that was over four feet wide.  I thought I had found it a roofing company.  We even ordered it. 

     Two days later, the salesman who placed the order called and said he could get nothing wider than four feet.  Well, actually 46 inches, he said.  That won’t work.  The door itself is four feet wide.  Add 2X4 frame on either side of the door and four feet is over  six inches short.  He cancelled the order for me.

       Ultimately, I  fell back on my roofing experience.  Two sheets of roofing metal would easily cover the doorway, with a big overlap to discourage any moisture entering.  That is what I did.

     We have been mouse-free for a couple of months.  The new plywood got a little wet in the Labor Day storm with the old sheet metal covering it.  Mother Nature hasn’t blessed us with the chance to test the moisture resistance of the new roof covering the new plywood.  I guess she figures if I could put things off for a couple of years, why can’t she? 

Drilling Wheat

       Riff raff.  Trash.  No, not another political add.

      This trash is debris left over from the 2019 wheat crop--stubble, straw.

 

     It was a dry year, but we did have a half an inch of rain plus the snow that came with the cold on Labor Day weekend.  We had a similar Lavor Day snow and cold front in 1959. 

      The storekeeper in Genoa kept a farm in Washington County a good twenty miles north.  He had a new tractor hitched to drills, still trying to plant wheat (Labor Day was considered late planting in those days when everyone planted in August).  Marvin trekked out in heavy wet snow to drain the water out of his new tractor lest it freeze and crack the block.

     One of the wettest years in memory, ’59 and ’60, followed that early snow.  It seemed it snowed every Friday of football season.  I don’t think we have to worry about that this year.

     But the 2020 Labor Day storm did provide enough moisture to get wheat up, maybe.  The problem was that with the dry summer, I didn’t have to “work” the wheat ground much, only twice by September.  That’s good for the fuel bill, but not so good as far as preparing a good seed bed.

     I could have drilled into the twice-worked ground, except for the trash on top of the ground.  There weren’t any serious weed problems—wild purslane which will finish dying with the next hard freeze, and a few sprigs of volunteer wheat.

      I took the drills for a dry run to see if there was a chance of getting through the trash.  In a hundred yards, I plugged up three or four times. “Plugged up”—the drill acts like a hay rake, the straw catches in the drill shanks and forces the drill shovels out the ground.   Scratch that idea.

     Eventually, I broke out the oneway disk.  It turns the soil over, which buries some of the trash.  The downside is, it turns up damp soil, moisture, which dries out. 

     I drilled the third week of September.  All the signs were right.  The moon was in the waxing stage, good for above ground and cereal crops.  It had cooled off a lot.  And the neighbors all around me were planting.

       I plugged up a few times, but nothing to worry about.  A three-tined hayfork soon removed the straw.  The important thing is to stop and clean out the straw before dirt starts building up in front to the straw.

     I finished planting on September 25.  Some wheat is trying to come to life.

     It is hard to see any wheat in all the trash.  Will it make it?  It’s not up to me now.  I have cast the dice.  Nothing to do now but sit back and try not to worry about things I can’t control.  So goes farming.

     Sure could use a good rain.