rachels.haven's Journal

[rachels.haven]

Very timely advice. Thank you. I appreciate it. The trailer breaks do have a very small control box in the cab. That was turned up to maximum until yesterday on our test run. An attempt at gradually slowing down from 55 on a hill was suddenly stopping because the trailer suddenly stopped on a dime. Knowing how that control is supposed to be used is really, really nice after that and exploring how the truck and trailer respond with the box adjusted. Currently the box is set so the truck and the trailer slow together but it feels like the very last little bit before the dead stop is on the truck when on hills. I will use my options appropriately.

Tonight we had a BBQ to use up some of our meat in the freezer. My brother, the third driver got to drive the trailer. His three year old was tired from being overbooked by her mommy and was being a terror but they enjoyed feeding milk bones to the child worshipping LGD's through the fence and even Riker condescended to delicately take biscuits and hide in the grass to eat them.

I'll relay the info on the break control box to my brother too. Control on hills was one of his concerns as a trailer rookie. Another was the lack of overdrive and because he drives manual transmission he fretted about wether it was staying in a lower gear for the climbs. I'm fairly sure it does and that was the louder engine noise I was worrying about. "We will not be accelerating up hills in that truck" were his parting thoughts. Nope, I think not. He took it up to 4k rpm. He thinks we can do it too, but it will be stressful. I'm considering looking at a 2011 Sierra at a dealership in Clarksville, but not thrilled about it so close to our trip. I like having a truck that's only 4" longer than a minivan! (and narrower, therefore easier to more accurately park)

 

[farmerjan]

If you are overly concerned about lower gear on the hills, drop the truck into the next gear below the D, as it starts to pull the hill....... It will keep it in that gear and not try to shift up to the D on the hill... Watch the RPM's and not get it too high so you don't abuse the engine. Use the "slower truck lane".... Yes, it will sound a little louder in the lower gear on hill climbing.
Don't change vehicles this close to moving. Your truck should be fine for you. A little consideration of what feels right will come with time.
The trailer brake box is designed to work with the truck brakes. But it is a little added insurance to use if you are in alot of hill country so the truck brakes do not get hot... ever follow a truck going down a steeper incline and hear the louder engine... they are using a "jake brake" that slows the engine down... to take the strain off the wheel brakes. If you ever get behind someone on hilly roads, especially if they are pulling a camper or other trailer, and they are on the brakes on their vehicle all the time, you can smell the brakes getting hot... that is where using the trailer brakes a little, helps.. and it is a very gentle hand on the trailer brakes... or it will try to stop on a dime as you found out with them not being adjusted to your truck brakes at first.

I think you will do fine...

 

[rachels.haven]

The tradition of going through the house and putting everything you don't want to unpack into a dumpster and filling it has been completed and stuff will be hauled away tomorrow. We are so not aggressive enough about throwing stuff away at the end of projects and letting little garbages collect here and there...
Honestly we should just do this every year.*

*not the moving part...

I thought clearing out the clutter was bad enough when it was just Mark and me and maybe a baby. I used to aggressively clear out the house and garage every year. Adding three growing kids with their own hobbies and interests and toys in to the equation is like...adding in three times or more in living debris.

 

[rachels.haven]

Ooo, I forgot. This morning Riker submitted and let me catch him so I took out all his blowing coat down to top coat with the undercoat rake. It comes out in handfuls. And you just pull on most of the mats with your hands or the rake and they pull right out like you're unstuffing him. I also took out the mats behind his years, trimmed his nails, switched his seresto collar, sanitary shaved him...all the things. He laid inert on the cold shop floor and let me do all but one of his ears so I had to cut down the felted mat behind it with hoof trimmers because he's so big and able to wiggle away. Rolling him over was...heavy. He's not fat at all and may not even be that heavy but he's TALL and long and all his legs going limp spaghetti were everywhere at once. Looks like he's coming with us too. The only person who responded to my listing him was a "sanctuary" farm person who wanted a ready made poultry guardian and my dogs only do that when they feel like it. The ad said goats and possibly sheep. Nowhere did I say birds. And they did not want to do any work. They just wanted plug and play and be unsupervised and dogs don't work that way so NO WAY.
And I don't mind because after his groom he decided HE didn't mind brushing and making me struggle so now he's been making demand barks at the fence for more milk bones whenever he sees me. Not sure I'd be allowed to catch him again, but fine, I can give cookies.

He also got fed macaroni and cheese that got forgotten on the counter over night (my LGD's especially during the hot times when they refuse to eat dog food get the weekly fridge clean out food) and since he and Bailey have diminished appetites I've left both Iams (chicken/egg/corn based) and Inukshuk marine (fish/barley/rice based) bowls out for them so if he wanted to eat he potentially could have been operating on a satisfied tummy today. The dogfood is still there but they both pounced on their macaroni piles.

He's a very sweet dog that feels like he's only 2" tall unless he's guarding his goats. Never did I feel like he'd bite me. I don't think he even thought about it. Good boy. You don't even have to be "firm" with him. I just do what I need to do with him slow and careful not to scare him. I did a bit of praising and listening when he did tell me something was uncomfortable and that he didn't like it because normally he shuts down and I'd rather we have a conversation like I do with Bailey and he not feel like he's given everything up by letting me leash and groom him. Plus, I don't want to make his skin hurt with especially the slicker brush and if he's busy acting like he's dead I'll never know unless the skin turns red.

So today I like him.

So yes, big Riker shed 2024 has been completed.
I like that kind of adventure.

 

[farmerjan]

Is Bailey feeling better? Glad that Riker is coming around better with you. Hopefully he will make the trip fairly easily and not be difficult for you once you get there. Is there a field there where he will be able to be with his goats and be contained? You said it would need work... so hoping there is some acceptable fencing for the dogs and their charges.

 

[rachels.haven]

Is Bailey feeling better? Glad that Riker is coming around better with you. Hopefully he will make the trip fairly easily and not be difficult for you once you get there. Is there a field there where he will be able to be with his goats and be contained? You said it would need work... so hoping there is some acceptable fencing for the dogs and their charges.

After I took Bailey off her joint supplement her behavior improved and she normalized again. It contained caffeine. I'm mad at myself I didn't check that earlier. She even had a withdrawal period after coming off it. Dumb, dumb, dumb me.

The dogs are going to have to be stalled/barned and then probably electric fenced in for a little while during the infrastructure switch over. I know net fencing will hold them and I have enough netting for a decent sized temporary area. The fencing is currently something like 6-8 strand electric with horse gates. I think the high tensile will hold them with the wires spaced as close as it is but the gates need to be changed. Not great but I think it will work.

 

[rachels.haven]

We mostly just decluttered with the dumpster-took everything we owned out and removed the stuff we didn't want to have anymore and then put the stuff we did back-so it hardly looks like we did anything with everything back in it's place, but I'm still putting this here. The garage, where stuff can collect so easily, is cleared out again.

Today we need to clean the kids rooms and clean the laundry. We are tired. I'm switching the goats over to Purina feeds because the Co-op will not be the same feed and I still need a kalmbach dealer up there, and those retained doe kids are NOT happy about the switch even though I made them fill up on their alfalfa hay first (because I accidentally ran out of everything with all the chaos going on and the co-op closed early today so now is as good a time as any I guess). The barn where the growout girls are is LOUD and I don't think they're going to over eat if they finish their half ration at all. *smh* Poor abused baby goaties on free choice alfalfa hay and almost free choice grain that they don't like.

And Riker decided I wasn't worth getting up for this morning so he let me pet him today via ignoring me..so he's either dying to death or come to terms with things or hoping if he ignores me I'll go away...which is technically true.

 

[Baymule]

Riker may be deciding that you are ok after all. Who knows what goes in the mind of a LGD?
Good catch on the caffeine in the joint supplement. It’s a warning to us all. I’m so happy that Bailey is back to being herself.

 

[rachels.haven]

My friend a or two town over came this (yesterday) evening with her husband to look at and drive my "rig". The husband has a lot of trailer experience including the big trailers on the lot and after looking at our 3.5 liter, 5 cylinder engine (2005 GMC canyon), he doesn't think our truck will make it and he wouldn't do it personally. But if we did want to try we'd need to be careful not to "overdrive" the truck or burn out the engine or transmission or overheat and just let the truck go at the speed it goes up especially up the mountains between us and destination on 81. And it's going to be very slow. And maybe we'll make it. For local trips or maybe an hour or two away my rig is good, which is sort of what I bought it for, but if we do use it to move we're going to have quite a hard trip ahead of us. * face palm *

...So I got in touch with the transporter I'm hiring to drive my does and we're going to make sure she's always going to be a few hours behind us, maybe more since we'll be slow, but if we break down or have to stop she'll be available to cram the bucks donning buck aprons into the doe trailer and get them to the house. This will be our safety net whatever we do.

And we'll stew today about whether or not we'll a) rent an unfamiliar truck for towing that we will have to return to the rental location and fly back b)buy a new old unfamiliar truck that might be a lemon for all we know and we won't know until we know or c)just do it and see how we do.

*And if we do replace or have to leave the truck I have a brother a few towns over who's got a bad heart and is on the spectrum of heart failure and drives a truck even smaller than mine from the early 90's, in manual that his wife can't drive, no abs and certainly no airbags, with only one row of seats that over heats chronically so the man with heart failure who is not supposed to get too hot with his three year old in the front seat in her car seat has to blast the heater with the windows open and go very slow in the Tennessee summer to try to keep the car functioning if he has to go anywhere while his wife has her car. That is where I'd like my little mighty extended cab truck to go as soon as we're done with it whether we let it go now or not.

Argh. so trucks are like chicken coops and you should always get one size up from what you think you need because suddenly you'll be moving across country instead of just going to local fairs or to vets offices with a sick goat in tow or something.

Stay tuned (or not) to see out which bad decision we'll make.

Man, I wish I could just skip this chapter and jump to the part where we're all there and moving in. Or if DH's work would just ship the bucks and trailer and truck too since they wanted the spouse so badly in Arlington/DC that they over road any other location option.

Anyway, this is a great example of how moving makes me tired. And also how I make bad choices and not have enough forethought.

DH enjoyed the visit with her husband though. Regardless of the industry they work in they're both Pennsylvania men and Mark doesn't get to socialize with enough men on his cultural/regional wavelength. This move and the decisions leading up to it have been intensely frustrating for me. The man could have gone and moved home and told the company to deal with it if they tried to tell him to relocate and could have even found another job. I could have had better foresight buying the truck. We've got to bring 25 goats to meet the rules for the ag reserve. But we only live forward in life and I just take care of the house and herd.

We're probably just going to drop the kids off at family and leave early and drive the truck we have and find a way to rent if we break down and pay a bunch of money to bridge the gaps because we always do things in the most expensive, least efficient way possible no matter how on top of the game we think we are starting out. Inexperience and lack of forethought is something I/we've got in surplus.

But all being said, I think if I could skip forward a week or two I'd find out we made it.

 

[SageHill]

It's would'a could'a should'a -- we ALL do that.
Since you're already hiring a transporter for the does why not ship the bucks with the does? You could either apron the bucks --- or I'm thinking doesn't the transporter have a divided trailer? I've got a partition in my 16ft trailer I would think someone in the biz has that or similar. If you did that it would be more than a HUGE weight off your shoulders and way way LESS stress. Any other option is questionable in the outcome. You certainly don't want to burn up any engine or be stuck on the side of the road - even IF the transporter is behind you. unloading and loading where ever a break down may be would be a nightmare.