My Week Off

Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 10:00 AM

I took off a week from work this week because I have the time and the lull in activity at work so I seized the opportunity.  Far from a week's vacation, I took the time to get a lot of nagging projects finished.  I didn't work myself to death and could have gotten a lot more done, but hey...I'm on vacation here!

Here's a list of the things I was able to accomplish this week:

• Installed about 15 ft of  PVC in order to run water to the pig pen.  Now we don't have to constantly have the hose draped across the yard.
• Installed new automatic waterer for the pigs.  Now we have absolutely no need to set foot in the pig pen.  That's good since they're just getting to that stage where they like to wallow in the mud (mixed with other gross substances).
• Mowed the pig pen
• Weeded the whole garden, and I mean the whole garden.   Up till now I've been just doing a little here and there.  I actually had time to weed the whole thing.  Now a few days rest before they spring up again.
• Burn the brush pile.  I had to wait until it wasn't windy (a rarity here) but I finally got it done.
• Paint the eaves.  I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first painting they've had since the house was built in 1990.  They needed it bad.
• Went to the hay man to buy a few more months worth of alfalfa hay.  Man that stuff is expensive!  I only give it to the one milking cow as she's really the only one that NEEDS it.  The others have as much coastal hay as they want and plenty of green grass/weeds to eat.  The hay went up quite a bit per bale this year.  The farmer I buy from said not only are gas prices hurting him, but fertilizer is $1000 per ton this year.  That's up from $350 per ton last year!  I wanted to buy round bales because they're about 30% cheaper but he said he sold out of them in 2 days.  His next cutting is in 3 weeks, so maybe I can get some more then.
• Took Chloe (our not pregnant and not milking cow) to her new beau (a friend's bull).  Since we've had so much trouble getting her inseminated, we figured we'll try the old fashion way.  A not pregnant and not milking dairy cow is about as useful as a paperweight, and apparently very unmarketable.  I take that back, she has been a good heat detector for our other cow and makes manure.  I guess she's not totally useless.  I love that cow, but she makes an expensive pet.
• Mowed the lawn (o.k., actually DW did that.  She really wanted to so I had to let her.  Driving the riding lawnmower is only fun for the first 30 minutes or so.)
• Planted more watermelons and corn.  You can never have enough of either of those.  We're not so good a raising corn yet, but we're learning.

Back to the weekly grind.