Day 13: Lot's of labor! But all labor of love!

Today started out normal, doing chores. When I was out moving the chicken tractors, I had to crawl under the two with busted roofs again and stand up real fast to get it off! This was the third day in a row because of the storms at night. Also I got to see the unique relationship of Jim and Cristos in action today. The two steers that I mentioned the other day the ones that crawl through the fence and roam wherever they want, came trotting over to Jim, Cristos, and I as we were just wrapping up the chores. Immediately Cristos started growling and Jim goes, "Hey, you don't go till I say you go!" and there was a couple seconds of us just watching the steers, and then, "Okay Cristos, skit'em!!" Cristos sprang in to action and started driving the cattle back to their proper pasture, and remember, he is 14 years old, a pretty old dog! More shouts of "Skit'em Cristos, Skit'em!" I watched in awe as Cristos went through his steps, something he must have done  literally hundreds of times in his younger days, It was awesome to see! "Okay Cristos, that's enough!!" yelled Jim. Cristos paused and look back, his body language was saying, "Aww but I was just getting started!" He stood there looking at Jim with one foot still hanging in mid air, ears back in action mode. "I said that's enough!" That did it, Cristos' whole demeanor changed, he came trotting back to us, eager and expectant of praise, which he deserved, and received! "Good dog, Cristos you did good." Followed by a quick but meaningful pat on the head. It was so cool to see both Jim and Cristos back in there element, because Jim has told me that he prefers ranching to farming and gardening. I was also impressed by the obvious two way communication going on between man and dog, Jim was speaking to him like he would a human, and Cristos reacted and responded immediately, as though he understood the english coming out of Jim's mouth. I also noticed that Jim's praise towards Cristos was more along the lines of that which one old pal gives another, more of a recognition of a job well done between peers and equals rather than a whole mess of "Gooood boyyy Cristos! Gaga goo goo! Your so amazing!" You get the idea.

During morning chores I got to the end of the trashcan full of grain that is strapped to the back of the golf cart for feeding the pigs, so I drove over to the main supply where there's a couple of 2 thousand pound bags of the stuff. While refilling the trashcan, I notice there was some mold in the ton bag of corn, as well as a patch of heat in the middle where the chemical reaction was occurring. I mention this to Jim after breakfast and after his inspection the conclusion was made that we would have to transfer the remaining 1,500 pounds of corn feed from that bag, to another bag, during that process take out any moldy chunks. This task was bestowed upon me by Jim with a wry grin on his face. He either had first hand experience with transferring over a thousand pounds of grain by hand, or he just knew that I was going to be hard. Either way, he was right! It was pretty hard, I was pouring sweat by the end of it (which was just the beginning of my sweaty day) and my lower back was all knotted up! But I powered through the whole bag in just under 45 minutes which I think was a pretty good time considering that a five gallon bucket and my lower back were my only tools for getting the job done. But it was actually not as bad as it might sound, I had my podcast about Aliens and UFO's going the whole time so my mind was occupied while I was had my body in overdrive!

Here's a free loading peacock that was eating all the good grain that got thrown out with moldy grain..

I'll mention now that since I have started working alone more frequently because I'm starting to get the hang of everything, and since I'm alone and not interacting with people I listen to music or my podcast's a lot. I do also just have periods where I just have silence or the sounds of nature, but with music or educational talk shows going I feel like I'm multitasking! With music and work I feel like I'm fueling my soul and body, and with talk shows and work I feel like I'm fueling my brain and body! Both good things to be doing, and I feels amazing to do that for 8 hours a day!

After I was done with the feed transfer, I moved on to my original task before I got side tracked by the feed. Since it poured rain last night, it was to wet for planting in the garden which was our original plan, so today was instead mainly about fixing up the farm and doing odd jobs that needed to be done. Jim worked on building a milk stanchion for milking the goats. Which he literally built from scrap metal and welded it together! He is so handy, he also made me a wing nut today because the one that goes on the hatch of one of the chicken tractors has been missing for weeks but he didn't have any, so he welded two washers to a regualar nut. Picture is a manufacture grade one, and then Jim's homemade one

My odd tasks for the day were to fix the roofs on the three chicken tractors that have been busted for a while. As well as dig a hole around one of the irrigation hydrants that Jim accidentally hit with a golf cart and broke an underground pipe.

The chicken tractors were a simple enough fix in the end, but when I started out it took me forever! Jim just kinda sent me out there with some tools and left it up to me to figure it out! Which I love by the way, I love being given the freedom to figure things out on my own and being trusted enough to do tasks like that. Basically though, I ended up having to measure, cut, and glue together new ribbing for the inside of the roofs because the old ones had broken when the whole coop was picked up by winds and thrown across the field about 100 yards. I also had to disassemble the roofing tarp some what as well as reattach it when I was done, and I got to implement some camp skills when I was lashing the "ribbing" to the "spine" because the bolts that were there originally were all bent up from impact of landing. The first one I did took me maybe an hour, the second one 45 minutes and the third one a half hour, so I got faster and faster and they got more professional looking as I went! In the end I was happy with the results and so was Jim. However I did work up quite a sweat inside those things, plus there was the added bonus that I had about 15 chickens watching me the whole time, as well as 15 chickens worth of poop that I was crawling around in on my hands and knees, trying to fix their home.

Here is a picture of the tractors, it's obvious which one is broken, and I had already fixed the one to the left of it, and had yet to fix a different tractor not in this picture.

By the way, I imagine there is some confusion for you guys about why they are called chicken tractors. Most people think it's a machine or something. All it is, is a mobile coop for them that either Jim or I drags onto fresh grass each day. The chickens are fairly happy in there, and they have fresh grass daily where they can forage for bugs and stuff.

I ended up working through lunch to finish the chicken tractor repairs, but at one point when I went into the house to fill my water bottle Tina asked me to take some Pizza she had warmed up out to Jim. I said sure and then scarfed down two pieces before I got to him, you gotta take free meals where you get them, am I right?? Ha, just kidding, she actually intended for me to have three pieces and him to have three pieces, but I really did eat two of my pieces before I got to him, and its maybe a thirty second walk between the house and the work shop. :)

Oh, something that I forgot to mention yesterday is that there is a group of special needs kids that comes by the farm once a week to help out with stuff. Yesterday was my first time meeting them though, it was cool, they were bagging onions in the guest house/storage area while I was dropping off some pumpkins I had picked.

I was driving the cart around today and at one point there was just one chicken in my way and I was going pretty slowly, so I didn't deviate from my course and assumed that it would move... which it didn't.. Ha, I think I was actually touching it with my bumper when I finally gave in and reversed and when around it. The whole time it was glaring at me with it's beady chicken eye, as if to say, "ha, I sure showed that human who's boss." Maybe that's where the name of the game chicken comes from, maybe the real chicken is the guy that doesn't swerve!? Or maybe this particular chicken just doesn't know that golf carts can be lethal.

For my afternoon work, I was to be finding the crack in the pipe that Jim had made, I was genuinely looking forward to it because I love digging for some reason. Any how once he dropped me off, I turned on my music, and as the cart was driving away (the particular irrigation hydrant he hit is real far away from the farm) that sense of blissful living just came over me in waves again. I had my shovel on my shoulder, the wind was blowing my hair the sun was behind a cloud and I had Alexi Murdoch singing "All of my Days" to me. It was glorious. I highly recommend that song and that artist who doesn't already know of him. It's great music for wandering around doing farm labor, or just about any peaceful activity! The crack in the pipe ended up only being about a foot and a half under the surface rather than, "4 foot deep where the  pipe tees up with the main water line" as Jim would say. So it was actually a pretty quick digging job, and Jim said we would repair the pipe maybe tomorrow. As I was walking back to the farm, which was a good 7 or 8 minute walk I realized that I had a huge smile on my face and that I was still in a pretty blissful state, the wind was still blowing through my hair trying to steal my hat, and the sun had come out from behind it's clouds, but I was happy about that as well. If it is behind the clouds I'm thankful for the reprieve from it's hotness, but when it comes back out I make sure that I'm not ungrateful or upset about it, because it would be silly to be frustrated that the source of all life on this planet (including mine and yours) has come back out from behind the clouds.

I made it back to the farm in time for chores, and during my blissful walk back I saw a bunch of fresh coyote tracks in the mud in various areas in the pastures, chores were pretty avereage, nothing of particular noteworthiness, accept I decided to let you guys see what I see twice a day everyday. Most day's it puts a smile on my face to see the eagerness of the pigs for their grain, as well as reminding me that simple things in life like food, water, friends and space to play with them is all we should really need!

After chores I was exhausted! Driving the cart to drop eggs of at the freezer, I wanted to close my eyes so badly but I knew I wouldn't open them again. I made it back to my barn all in one piece thankfully and promptly began what I have started calling Farmers Naps, which is just a nap or a rest in whatever place and position you are in. It always feel so go to just let my mind and body rest completely. I was so physically tired, because I had been going basically non stop since 5:30 am and it was now 5:38 pm. Aside from 40 minutes of cooking breakfast and eating it, I was working hard all day! And I loved it! I know I may come off as over enthusiastic to some people reading this, but I sincerely do love all this hard work! And I want to make sure that I remind people that this is my own personal heaven because if I didn't, and just listed off all the hard tasks I did all day, it might start to sound like I'm complaining, which is the last thing I want this blog to be about! During my Farmers Nap, I was reminded of a story that one of my Aunt's told me about my Uncle. His name is Jianxin and he grew up in China working in the rice patties. He would begin work very early in the morning and work hard all day, by the end of the day, when he was finally done he was so exhausted that when he would lay down, he could feel and see the leeches on his legs from standing in knee high water all day, but he was too tire to remove them! How crazy is that!? I was reminded of that story because during my nap, I could feel flies buzzing around on my arms, hands and face, but I was just to tired and didn't care enough to do anything about it!


A couple of the cat's got the message that it was nap time, there's threes sleeping on the concrete, and then Stubbs is in the chair.

The evening storm rolling in again!

This is a rather long post, and it's been and even longer day! Over and out!