Testing new gutters

There was a lot of rain that fell on the panhandle last week, but not much of it on SA.  Just by coincidence a small shower came along right after the men had finished installing gutters on the shop and above the garage back door at 1911.  Rain and even a heavy dew will run off the roof on to the back step and splash on the door.  Over time that has caused damage to the door and door frame.  The damage was repaired and a nice coat of paint put on it when I had the house painted recently.  I’m hoping the gutter will prevent the problem from recurring, or at least retard until I reach the point where I don’t give a damn anymore.  As for the shop, it also has a step on the north side and would be prone to the same problem.  The test shower showed that the gutters worked nicely.

Most of the place needs mowing now and last week I got some done on the south end.  There is a lot of raking that has to be done before the mowing so it more than doubles the time it takes to get a section mowed.  If we get more rain before the grass goes dormant in the fall it might have to be mowed again but shouldn’t require the raking.

Joyce and Janice made pickles using cucumbers from the garden.  Then Saturday Joyce, Kari and Abigail harvested more cucumbers.  Joyce says she over planted them.  She also said she and Kari were going to harvest beets but didn’t I see any of them if they did.  It’s that time of year when people start shoving produce off on one another trying to get rid of it.  Marsha Howard brought over a sack of corn from their farm.  She was supposed to do that last weekend but the fields were too muddy to get into.  We were glad to get it.  The corn I experimented with planting in the pond is pitiful and isn’t going to provide anything edible by humans.

One evening Joyce and Chris weren’t able to get a couple of the young guineas to go into the guinea tower.  They had manged to get across the fence on the east side at the back of the Storseth place and Chris couldn’t get them repatriated before it got too dark to see.  Usually a guinea that spends the night outside is an x-guinea but they managed to escape the attention of predators and Chris collected them the next morning.  Joyce reported that that evening these guineas were in the tower well before closing time, which indicates to me a level of intelligence I wouldn’t expect from such small brains.