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Ellisville Bison Dispatch |
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Ho boy, I wanted to post something more often but instead it seems to have taken even longer to write an update! Late fall has been very busy with the final preparations for winter. Besides the routine tasks, Jodi’s mailbox got creamed by a car and we had to do an overhaul before the ground froze. We decided to put up a fancy swinging model that would be more difficult for the snowplow (or another car) to destroy. My son, Landon happened to be over so he helped me with the cutting/welding. Here’s Landon working on some of the parts, and here he is with the completed post assembly. After I installed it, Jodi gave it a coat of white enamel.
We spent one Saturday putting away the motorcycles. Cleaning them up, putting sta-bil in the fuel, checking the batteries, and putting them on trickle chargers. The mowers got a similar treatment including cleaning up the mower decks and removing the blades to get sharpened later, on some cold dark winter evening. Picking the last of the brussels sprouts and carrots completed the garden chores for this season. I installed the heater in the buffalo water tank and gave it a final cleaning before the freezing weather makes it hard to work with water.
At Jodi’s place we wired some lights on the inside of her horse trailer. They should come in handy on these short winter days when it always seems you’re loading in the dark. I also finished up some wiring in one of her out-buildings. We want to fence a 5 acre section behind her barn next spring and we tried something different. Instead of drilling the holes in the spring (read mud!) we waited till there was about 2 inches of frost and put the posts in. Boy, did that work great! The auger on the skid steer easily punched thru the frost. Instead of struggling in mud up to our knees and getting the skid steer stuck, we just drove around on top of the frost and hardly got dirty. We need to remember that trick for next time!
We had some wood splitting to finish as my initial design failed on us. Here’s the broken “pusher” from the splitter. It just wasn’t up to the task of splitting some of the larger stuff we had. I cut it all apart and rebuilt it using a different design. The final product appears to be indestructible as we easily split up the last of the wood, some of the pieces being quite large.
It’s that time of year when the snow comes and goes. Thanksgiving was white, to the delight of deer hunters. By the following Tuesday it rained (thank God we got those fence posts in!) and now it’s white again. Probably the biggest news is that Brian and I got new snowmobiles! We upgraded our matching ‘97 Ski Doo’s with another set of “twins”. This time we got 2006 MXZ Renegades. As much as I like those old Z’s, I think were going to like these even better. Now we’re really anxious for snow!
Larry |
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December 1, 2005 |
