Latestarter's ramblings/musings/gripes and grumbles.

[Mini Horses]

Nice looking H's. I love those gates with the "fence" bottoms. Don't have any but, wish mine were those. I have added fence to some of the pole gates. With horses, you don't need more than the pole -- Goats, different matter.

Besides, some of mine were CL super buys!

 

[Bruce]

Goats, different matter.

Chickens too

 

[Bruce]

The first one took the longest. Never done them before

Same here. But once you've thought through and built the first one, it gets easy ... until you hit the next rock in the hole.

 

[Devonviolet]

the red wasps managed to thwart my expanding spray foam somehow. And they are all over the place and pestering me

The red wasps (and stinky Japanese Beetles, for that matter) are out in full force! This afternoon, there was one flying around the Muscovy ducks. They love flying bugs . . . but not red wasps! When it flew near their heads, they ducked.

 

[greybeard]

We have both our front porch bug zappers running tonight. They're busy busy busy too. Tomorrow morning, the bluebirds and cardinals will clean up the tiny corpses off the porch railings and deck.
My niece's husband has one hanging over the little pond in their back yard...he has some really fat bream in that pond because of it.

I used a whole container of fire ant killer today just in the yard and garden space....they are busy too.

Just to show you 'other folks' how bad the fire ant problem is in the South, here's the results of a survey Texas A&M over a decade ago and I doubt there's been much improvement since then...I think one of the areas was in Joe's 'back yard' too.

(Mt Pleasant is Joe's stomping ground. Mt Bonnell is near San Antonio.
Joe's area had nearly 300 fire ant mounds per acre......

 

[Wehner Homestead]

That’s a lot of fahr ants!!! No thanks!

 

[CntryBoy777]

We wage war on those every year here, also....nowhere near 300/acre, but there always seem to be at least ~50 and tho we knock hills out they always seem to reappear in another place. They were much worse in Florida when we lived there. The bugs are getting active here too.

 

[Latestarter]

Yup them ants sure know where the best place to live is in TX... They're all movin' in here Lucky us huh? There may have been some change for the better since that survey. Either that or the previous owner did a lot of eradication here because I don't have 300 mounds per acre here (that I'm aware of). Maybe 25-50. Maybe this isn't the place to live anymore... Wonder where they moved to? I wish the damned moles/voles would move on too!

So went to cook me a late night snack last night and right as I got the butter & bacon fat melted in the pan, the power goes out. Guess that's what I get for thinkin' bout cookin' with a huge T-storm firing up right overhead. They started about 10pm and lasted till ~3-4am Not really sure as there was no power. The first storm to pass was the worst and dropped hail. Ended up with an inch from the rain and it's still pretty heavy overcast but the sun is tryin' to burn through. No fence work today. So my late snack turned into breakfast (2 thin sliced loin pork chops seasoned and fried).

Hope everyone remembered to turn their clocks ahead last night. So thankful the govt has made it so we have an extra hour of sunlight to play with. Wish they'd add a couple more hours so I could get "more accomplished". Funny, the time on my bedside clock had absolutely no effect on when I got out of bed... I guess I slept in an extra hour this morning. Doesn't feel like it though. Feels just about the same as every other morning.

Hay feeder fared well in the storm last night. The hay stayed dry and no tipping over. Didn't expect it to tip, since it's pretty heavy. Goats stayed nice and dry in their shelter. Plywood back wall is working quite well. Dot is getting closer to kidding. Starting to see some swelling & creamy discharge and she lays down and "talks" to the babies. She talks to them while eating too. The rest of the herd got their CD&T on Friday. April is as wide as a house... She was already a wide load but now she waddles when she walks. Bang is really widening out as well.

 

[farmerjan]

Looking at the weather for the eastern half, and the storms that y'all got last night, are headed this way. BUT it is supposed to start out as rain, change to a "wintry mix" then after midnight change to snow and put anywhere from 2 to 10 inches down. I mean really.... after 70's in Feb now we are gonna get our "winter" ???? Most are saying 3-6" but it is supposed to be a wet heavy snow.
REALLY, snow now? The weather and the months of normal progression for winter sure have gotten mixed up this year.

I hauled extra feed to the barn, filled the water troughs yesterday for the calves that are in on the nurse cows, got extra shavings put down in the 2 big pens....will put the nurse cows back out late this afternoon so they can go to the hay piles and won't make so much mess in the barn or kick out a calf that they take a notion to do.
Have one that is a real witch and she is leaving when I send her 2 calves off... Another that is going to be going dry soon and then 2 heifers and one cow that will be coming fresh in May, so will need the room in the barn anyway for them so I can get calves started on them. Have never had this many nurse cows so it is an ongoing challenge to get the timing right.

 

[Latestarter]

Here's some pics of the summer burn from last year when my son and his family was here. That pile was well over my head @ ~8' tall. That's one of my grandsons standing inside the back yard fence watching me light it off. You can see the "down wind" side was where it got lit. Flames leaning to the right.

Here was after burning for several hours. As it burned down, we used the rake to push everything in toward the center. You can see the garden hose we had available to water down the surrounding grass to keep the heat of the fire from drying it out and setting it alight. That's me, my son (youngest of 3 kids), and his 4 kids.

Here's the remainder of the pile after dark down to mostly coals. The grands were using those sticks to toast marshmallows to make smores. That's my granddaughter with her dad, my only son. He did most of the toasting as that bed of coals was so hot you couldn't stay close to it without getting burned.