Day-to-Day Chores and More Clean-Up!

I didn't even make it out to the farm until 2:00 P.M. today!  I went to pick up left-over garage sale items from my sister's house and ended up just visiting for awhile.  It's nice to relax.

Once out at the farm, I focused on the normal day-to-day chore items.  I fed the pigs more feed, and they were eager for it!  Their feed had not settled in the hopper, so there was plenty left, but it was standing in the middle!  So the pigs were ALL OVER the four-wheeler while I was loading it!

I loaded another 10 bags today.

Hungry little boogers!

All they do is eat!

Runt still puts two feet inside!  The others are too big to do that!

I think each pig is eating around 2.5 pounds of feed per day, so that's 35 pounds of feed each day!  So I am going through roughly 0.7 bags of feed per day!  With 20 bags purchased, it's only going to last me 28 days!

Those bums are getting bigger!

But the pigs are certainly growing...probably a pound a day.  I would guess them to be in the 65-75 pound range right now.

Top photo is March 31.  Bottom photo is May 6.

When you're done eating but don't want to leave the eating area.

I burned the trash in the burn barrel, fed Callie, checked on the two kittens, and decided to go for a little walk around the pasture since the yard had been mowed.  I was looking for the metal bar from the mower that we could never find.

I had made it 99% around the pasture when I stopped right in my tracks.  It was almost unbelievable.  I was staring at a large piece of metal SO EASILY seen on top of the grass.  I mean, this was seen from every angle!  Nothing hidden.  It's EXACTLY how I pictured it being last week.  Easy to find, sitting on top of the grass.

Easy to see!

The metal piece easily seen in the grass.

I mean, this was EASY to see.  I had walked this area a couple of times and even swung the detector around here (I think).  So it boggles the mind.  But the long-lost piece has been found...easily.

I noticed some grass is coming up in the south pasture, so that's nice.  It's not much, but at least some seed took.  I think the rest has been turned over too many times by the pigs!

There is not much grass out here, but it's trying.

A little bit of grass is trying to take.

I broke for lunch/supper around 4:00 P.M. but headed back out to do some more work.

I added weight to the shade shelter.  I simply tied two concrete blocks to the horizontal piece of wood in front.  The pigs were QUICKLY on to chewing the rope, so we'll see if it holds.  I mean, they loved it so much, I actually said, "Well, I know what to get you guys for Christmas...rope."  But hopefully it doesn't topple over in the wind anymore.

And the pigs just love it.  It's actually quite remarkable the difference once you are under the roof.  It's windy all around you, but the temperature is so much cooler, and the air so much more still.  The pigs have taken a liking to it and use it readily.  They nap under it with no problems!

Life is good.

They love the shade shelter.

Napping in the shade.

Mom asked if I needed any help tonight, so I invited her out to tackle a project.  When she arrived, I said, "Do you want to do big or little"?  Little would be cleaning or organizing the garage area.  Big would be tearing down the east side of the barn area.

We went with big.

The whole east side of the barn is and has been a mess.  We have cleaned up so much already, but so much is left.  This appears to have been a cow loading or unloading area.  It has alleys and chutes and lots and lots of unique fence.  Everything from metal swinging gates to metal slide gates to wooden gates to iron pig panels.  And it's held up by stainless steel screws, nails, baling wire, and whatever else.

IT'S A MESS.

The east side of the barn area is just junky.

This whole area is such a mess!

So we decided to just start taking stuff down.  My long-term goal is to use this as pasture, too.  This will allow me to use the stalls in the east side of my barn (currently not used at all), and it should add about another acre of pasture to the property.  That would mean less mowing, too.  It sounds like a win-win.  Of course, that is a LOT of fence to add, but it's a project for down the road.

We decided to start with the iron pig panel fence.  It was attached via steeples to several posts.  It came down fairly easily.  I might try to sell these old rusty panels for cheap.  Even if someone gave me $20 for them, I might take it!  There are several of them, but it's just not the style I want to use.

All of this is going to go!!!  We started with this messy fence.

So much fence removed!

Scrap it or sell it.  Either way it's gotta go.

We also figured out a way to get the MASSIVE welded fence over to the concrete grain bin pad.  It's only good for scrap metal, so I will advertise it as such.  But it's been blocking our mowing path for awhile now!  That one piece of fence is so heavy and long that we just rotated it end over end all the way to the pad.  Whoever picks it up will have to cut it down to put it onto a truck or trailer.  More work!

After that, we made our way down to the large wooden fence just east of the barn.  It looked like we could just take out screws, but that would be too easy.  We quickly learned that the previous farmer had also used nails.  The nails were too long and stuck out the back, so he bent them over and pressed them deep into the wood.  An absolute nightmare.  Quite impossible to take out easily.  Ugh.  So unnecessary!  But so many projects are just extra work.

Speaking of extra work, the cattle sliding gate was held up by so much baling wire.  I untwisted most of them, but on a couple of them I cut the wire.  That would prove to be a terrible, terrible decision.  More on that later.

The ridiculous amount of baling wire holding up the sliding cattle gate.

We started to get a glimpse of the openness that is coming, but part of the work was just frustrating!  We felt like we took so much down, yet so much still remains!  Your mind tells you that you should start to see a huge change, and yet the remaining wood blocks that view.  I do think it's going to be beautiful once it's all open up, but there are so many pieces remaining yet.  It's going to be work.

The area is opening up, but so much more work remains!

The big fence is down.  The cattle sliding gate is down.  Little by little.

I do like that the barn can be walked around now without going around the long mess of fence!

Also, I had a wild experience tonight.  Right at the end of the night, I ended up stepping on a piece of baling wire that I had cut.  I didn't see it, and I let out the craziest guttural scream you have ever heard.  I don't even know how it happened, but about 383 things lined up just perfectly (imperfectly), and this cut piece of wire went straight up into my shoe and straight up into my foot and straight into a nerve.

I instantly screamed this deep uncontrollable guttural scream and hit the ground.  Mom thought I had broke my ankle.  It was the weirdest scream.  I can't ever remember having another one like it.  But the wire went deep.

As I lay there looking at the sky, twitching a bit, I just wondered why life can be so stinking hard sometimes.  I mean, this wire had to be perfectly lined up to even remotely have this happen.  A nail?  Sure, I get it.  A piece of baling wire?  It totally impaled my foot.

Straight up through the shoe and into my foot.

I just stared at the sky.

It was clean in and clean out.  The foot certainly hurt, but after a few minutes, I could walk on it.  What a weird experience.

Mom said, "I have never heard you scream like that."  Me, neither, Ma, me, neither.  It's amazing what's in our human bodies.  It hit a nerve.  Good thing I got a Tetanus shot last week.

We loaded up the old wooden fence posts and took them to the burn pile.  They are pretty rotted where they were in the ground, and I am really enjoying this "less is more" thing, so I'm just going to burn them.

The area looks better than this morning, and it certainly looks better than when I bought it.  But there is still so much clean-up left.  But Ma reminded me, "You know, you had planned on doing all of this over the course of five years.  We are on track to do all of this in a few months."

Totally correct.

But it's so good to work.  And work hard.

Two more crazy things today.  I saw a ground hog twice.  He is still living in the barn.  I had seen a larger one last month.  Today I saw one in the southwestern doorway, and then I saw him scurry in after scaring the chickens on the southeast doorway.  So there are still creatures living UNDERNEATH my barn.

I am going to have to trap them...however many there are.  These are the creatures digging up my stalls!

And second, my insurance company AAA says they won't insure this barn unless I "repair or replace the roof."  Apparently they don't like the rust.  I explained that it's a tin roof on an old barn, and that it's only surface rust anyway and nothing structural.

The agent said, "I can only tell you what I've been told."  I responded, "Well, would you insure a car that has rust on it?  Because I am pretty sure that every central Illinois car does, and you have no problem insuring those."

"Well, our company is really strict on roofs.  So you need to repair or replace it."

"Well, what do they mean by repair"?

"Well, that is up to you."

"I don't get it.  The metal is fine.  It doesn't leak."

"They just don't like the rust."

"So if I painted it, you will cover me"?

"Well, I can't say."

"Listen, I don't want to waste time or money on a repair if it doesn't fix what you need me to fix anyway.  I just don't know what you want me to fix."

"I don't know, either."

This was seriously the ridiculous conversation I had with my agent today.  He basically concluded that if I just paint the roof, then they will cover the barn.  Of course, I mentioned how silly that was and how paint has no structural integrity on a roof.  But he also assured me that he can't guarantee that painting the roof will make them cover the barn.  They are being so elusive it's not even funny.

"You need to fix the roof."

"Fix it how"?

"I don't know."

Ugh.

Oh, the joys of insurance companies trying to not cover anything that might be a risk.  That kinda defeats the reason for insurance, right?  If something wasn't a risk, then you wouldn't need it insured.  And if it is a risk, then shouldn't it be insured?

AAA doesn't seem to think so. "Let's insure things that can't go wrong, so we can take the customer's money and make oodles and oodles of money!  And then if they do happen to use us for something, we can punish them and raise their rates!"  This has happened to me.  I pay them for something, then when I need it, I am punished for it.

In other news, I have a contractor coming out tomorrow for a HUGE day for me.  He's the guy I really want to use, as he has done some amazing work on old homes in the past.  I just don't know what type of price he is going to come in at.  And I am a bit nervous!  He may be so far out of my range.  And that would be frustrating because some contractors just don't get old homes.  This guy does!

Aghhhhhhhh!!!  A BIG day coming up.