2021 5 29
The first problem out of the dog runs was going to be the Poison Ivy or just plain Ivy whatever it is it's going to take a lot of effort to get rid of it until we remembered the goat project and the5 goats Janine bought thinking they were girls but that thing in the back was not an UTTER so we now have five neutered male goats who are super at cleaning brush well not cleaning brush but eating anything that's green with the exception of the Fern which apparently is poisonous grazing animals----- I put out our first three goats SNAP crackle and pop and they really kind of looked overwhelmed so I called Janine and asked her to bring over the two she still had and with five goats working we got it all done in about a day and a half------ so they now have been moved to another section of the world and are very busy knowing away all we have to do is give them water apparently space ------other than that I have two companies sending fence---DEERr Busters has a very neat collection of things packages weather have posts and a sleeve to pound into the ground first and just set the post into it ----- the problem with deer Busters is is there website is very difficult to deal with and I ordered on May 17th and as of yesterday (28) they still hadn't gotten it until the freight so 2 phone calls and a lot of harassing they called back and said it is now on its way from dear Busters--- but I got tired of waiting so I went back to my farm tech old faithful that's farm TEK dot com they don't quite have the same thing but enough to get us going on other projects with the fence like straightening out what we have and then running a Polly whatever well they call it a baton along the top which among other things will allow us to to visually check the fence across the field to see whether it's all still up ------
this whole project will eliminate an awful lot of mismatching chain link fence which Lynn has her eye on as we resort to basically 2 by 4 wire twisted wire horse Fense with something at the top sometimes that white batten will work------ in some cases we may have to put a conduit pipe much like what I now have around the chickens in some places we're going to be able to use basically chickenwire one inch HEX design which is covered with black Polly whatever polymax it is very nearly invisible so we're going to put that around the pond and around the puppies most anything else can happen after that
there was a woman and her son who came up the driveway within the last week looking for community service hours over the summer for her son and his friend and I certainly want to announce now that yes we are as of Monday all set for preferably kids with a lot of energy who could help us with the fence project and do their community service hours of the same time. In addition to that I think we have. two older kids. who will actually be on the payroll... God bless community service. there will be a lot of physical effort involved with this project.
I hope I can include a picture but I have taken about the excellent work the goats are doing ---it was taken from our driveway and the first three dog runs have been stripped of everything green and you can see the goats now working on the next part.. the only thing they haven't eaten was the Fern which looks fairly attractive which is also poisonous to grazing animals and the goats know that. the other thing we're going to have to figure out is now that they've eaten all the leaves off these small trees and whatever you can't just cut them off at ground level and leave a tiny little one inch stump because that ends up being a little pointy thing which can seriously hurt a dog running around or a horse if it's long enough so these small trees or whatever I got the other need to be pulled up or cut off at about 1 foot tall either way the pastures are much improved because of the goats.
now that COV has been slightly abated.. I'm looking forward 2 the participation of our volunteer crew help with the donkeys and chickens and other things around here to keep crazy acres on an even keel if there is such a thing.... I would like to get some baby chickens as the ones we have very little old and in spite of the roasters here we don't seem to be making any babies of our own which is not unusual in the chicken world.
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and then we get to megasoft aegus. - Anna is officially diagnosed as megasafaga's which is based basically I think a pouch in the esophagus which collects bits of food so there's a mechanical problem there which also can'cause inhalation pneumonia which can be fatal---- there's a lot been said and read about megasoft Acas and we have lost puppies because of it but that was before the Bailey chair arrived which is a designed chair where the puppy sits on their rear end with her front paws on the table in front of them with the food and they sit there about 20 minutes half hour after they eat so everything gets washed down there are a few other things involved like medication but the Bailey chair seems to be doing a very good job the last dog we started on this was Tilly who is here today with Lindsey who did overnight and she's doing fine she outgrows the first chair and we bought a second one I thought we would buy a third one but we don't seem to need it which makes Lindsey basically our expert on megasoft aegus she did a lot of reading and research and although veterinarians will say they can't outgrow it... what seems to actually happen is their owners learn to manage it better because right of the moment Tilly is eating out off a raised feeder like we do anyway and is not getting any other exceptional care and she has had no problem I always hate to say something like that because of Fate'l get you every time but she right now is almost a year old and they're showing no signs of having a mega soften his problem whether that's because she outgrew it or Lindsay learned manage it better who knows we're on our way with Anna there's a wonderful picture from last night's mail calls with bud holding Anna upright for the prescribed half hour after eating arana fell asleep and bud nearly fell asleep in the chair in front of the fireplace somebody did take a picture it's cute..
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Speaking of bud which I often do as I was riding around lining up fences bud was dressed in his pverallsworking on the tracgtor... . he would wipe off the grease gun fitting and then pump in a little bit of Greece... so I sat there talking to him I asked how many of the maybe 10 people who were o n ther farm yesterday would even know what a grease fitting was and nobody did------ not only did they not know what a grease fitting was they didn't know you really supposed to wipe it off to pump in anything or else you're pumping in a whole bunch of dirt where you need to have the slippery stuff ----------is there no one left in society that learning to take care of mechanical things like bud does??
Routine maintenance seems to only pertain two cars being maintained by dealers so that you can get on their computer system and when you sell the car it's worth so much more because it's had routine maintenance but the rest of the world with lawn mowers and tractors snow blowers and things like that routine maintenance is a thing of the past unless you happen to know somebody like bud who knows an awful lot more then how to grace a tractor... but I keep thinking that all these kids doing community service here really should make a point of being here when buds here it'll follow around for 20 minutes they would get an education but they've got nowhere else.. Case in point two washing machines deemed irreparable by the repairman were fixed bye bud for $13.00 each.. now how many washing machines are there in the various transfer stations that could be fixed for $13.00 you have a regular business going every time I have to throw away one the bike can fix I always want to take the motor out because they have excellent usually heavy duty electric motors in them but nowadays people don't want to do with the electric motors the same 30 years ago one of my favorite places to go was the town dump'cause I could get more things out of the dump than I would take to it
the town dump has now been replaced by the transfer station which generally is so busy they don't have time to pick out the very valuable things that are in the dump ----I I watch lumber being tipped into that pile which 30 years ago I have been pulling that out as fast as I could -----the worst case at the trans. portation that I go to was the big cardboard box full of copper pennies which they then just tipped out onto the ground ----they were there for months nobody pick him up with that horrible sludge which ends up in the foreground there but there was a lot box full of pennies---------- there's a lot of electric light switch probably only needed cord----- I just I just plain could not work there..
used to be... when I first moved to this area there was an old man lived on a corner in topsfield he did have a barn an old barn and he collected bicycles which he then repaired and put on his front lawn and sold them for 30 or $40.00 each and he had more bicycles that he could deal with people would throw him out because they didn't how to fix them take a bicycle with a bent front wheel because somebody hit a curb or something all you gotta do is replace the wheel and who perfectly good bicycles
he's not there anymore but there is an official bicycle repair shop in town where you can have bike fixed or maintained for $64 a year or something like that I don't know even bicycles gotten so complicated they're hardly any good anymore.
they should be a means of transportation.. and in some cases like Cambridge MA it's faster to go by bike then car -------and the completely idiotic bikes are the ones in fitness facilities where you pedal this thing against against friction. and and you could be generating electricity at the same time------ I've often wondered in some of these monstrous fitness places well they have 20 bikes in a row how much electricity they could be generating.. as much as the wind mills????.. it certainly seems to me like it's a waste of energy which which instead of making electricity just get stored as fat.
Along time ago there was a person who had hooked up a pedal bike to a generator and made his kids pedal to watch television where is that band now maybe it was a woman... if the kids had to pedal to work their cell phones I might be a little more agreeable about cell phones and I bet the kids would be a lot more fit
