Periodic review of life on Six Acres
by rakeeter Early in the week Joyce spied a couple of big black dogs on the place and called Chris. I was blessedly unaware down in the cave. When Chris got into action he found that they were trying to burrow into his guinea run. 
Continue reading “Some snow and more dogs”
by rakeeter You may recall several weeks ago I mentioned raking leaves and running them through the shredder except I couldn’t get the shredder started so I wasn’t able to determine if that was a viable strategy or not. Since then I’ve learned the trick of starting the shredder, at least some of the time.
So today I hitched up the trailer to the tractor and filled the trailer with rakings along the inside of the west fence. Once the trailer was full I came back to the shop where the shredder was, cranked it up and ran the load through it. I dumped the shredded material on the caliche mounds. The alternative to this is bagging the leaves one bag at a time. I think the shredder method was a little faster for handling a lot of material. Only trouble was, after shredding the first load and collecting another load I couldn’t get the shredder started when I got back to it. It starts OK cold and hot but in between I don’t have the right combination of throttle, choke or no choke so I wound up bagging the second load. Continue reading “Cats and dogs but no rain”
by rakeeter After two years of drought Joyce told herself unless we got decent moisture this winter she wasn’t going to bother with a garden this summer. Without some help from Mother Nature it is just too hard to get things to grow you see. Well that’s easy to say in August or September but then comes along a mild winter day to undermine one’s resolve.
So, yesterday we fired up the chipper and finished the garden cleanup started some weeks ago. It’s unusual to have that chore done this early. I want to redo the rows by replacing the metal edging with 2X8 treated lumber. Last winter we made the mistake of letting the chickens in the garden. We could have hardly done otherwise since we didn’t have it fenced off. It was a treat for the chickens but they scratched a lot of the dirt out over metal edging which sort of defeated it’s purpose. Also, the edging has a tendency to get pushed out by the dirt and in places it lays so flat it doesn’t keep the dirt in or the grass out. Continue reading “Garden: To have or not to have”
by rakeeter We got a little more snow Saturday. The leftovers from Christmas only just disappeared Friday and we’re back in the deepfreeze where we’ve been mostly since Christmas with the exception of Thursday and Friday. Saturday was a cold and dreary day but Sunday dawned bright and beautiful. A little more snow fell during the night so that the ground was covered.
by rakeeter We were thwarted in our plans to travel to Garland on Christmas by the weather. For the second year in a row, it snowed on Christmas. Unlike last year’s gentle snowfall, this year the snow fell horizontally because of high winds. It started about 5 a.m. and continued most of the day. The flakes were small and it was hard to tell how much snow we got because the wind blew so hard it redistributed the snow unevenly. Maybe 2-4 inches. The wind made the 20 degree temperature hard to take, especially if one tried to walk into the wind. However, once we got to the neighbor’s house, we didn’t have to get out again until time to go home. We had breakfast, exchanged presents and played games in comfort. Pity those poor folks who had to contend with tornadoes on Christmas in some parts of the country. We will make our trip to Garland this weekend. Continue reading “White Christmas on SA”