A Day In The Life (22 June 2024)

The day started with the confirmation my wife helped me realize, that we were going to replace the 70 year old motor on the hay elevator verses fix it again. I was able to find a motor that would fit and drove into the city to purchase it. Although it was 3 times stronger than what we needed, a little larger in size than the old motor, the motor would fit well enough. The old girl got a new engine.

To get the new motor installed I first had to get the pulley off the old motor. After the many decades, this would not be a simple as wished. But, after some elbow-grease, a bit of penetrant, and some heat the pulley came off, and was set onto the new motor. After installation, a test of the wiring – and yup, I reversed the counter-clockwise vs clockwise turn of the motor. Rewire.

Once the rewire was finished and test proved correct, we were ready to go after breakfast (12:30 PM). Once we got going, the elevator worked well and threw up all the hay into the mow. The main aisle now clear brought a sense of calm and order. It becomes stressful when things get out of order and backed up. Getting the hay in the mow was a good feeling for the mind and soul. The remainder of the day would be devoted to rotating the animals and cleaning in the barn.

The area’s starling fledglings have been grouping over the past week into what is now turning into a quite large flock. At this point, we have the what I call the black-horde growing in size early, and learning that Loudonshire Farm is a food and water source. I would estimate the horde is around 200 birds. By summer’s end, this number will swell into several hundred. When this horde invades the farm, they foul every waterer, eat every piece of food, and eventually start entering the barns to eat. I have been too busy over the past couple weeks to really hammer down on them; but, over the next week, I hope to return to doing my part in exterminating the devil’s flying rats before they cost us financial loss, yet again.

After all the day’s chores we retired to the garden to weed. We made a lot of progress in the corn which has gotten away from me again this year. The garden area is occupied by Japanese Knotweed, which is invasive as invasive can become. Not only is the knotweed prolific, it will grow to 7 feet tall and disperse seed heads that dwarf the cereal crop’s production. As the corn is not grown in fabric covers, the knotweed is outperforming the corn with all the nutrients that we give for the corn. Day by day, little by little we will save the corn from the knotweed.

Today we also collected a handful of peas. We are grateful for the sampling as we haven’t had peas in a couple years. As I would plant the peas, the turkeys would come in to the garden and grab the seeds out from under the trellises. The seeds that the turkeys would miss would germinate, but only to give the geese something to pull out of the trellises. This year they saved a handful of plants for us. We feel grateful that they showed us a scratch of kindness allowing us to glean their pea trellises.