Clark, Wyoming

Drop down door over window.

We jumped out of bed this morning at 8:00 AM, gathered up our dirty laundry, put a harness on Buddy, and headed to Powell.

Breakfast at McDonald's and then we went to J&S Laundromat to get six loads of laundry started (we haven't washed it in two weeks!).

While the clothes were washing, we went over to Ace Hardware and  got some stuff for the coop - paint, hinges, latches, and we got a small 4-inch electric fan that we will set behind the wood stove this winter and push heated air out into the room.

Spent more than I wanted to here - $68.

Then we headed back to J&S to get our clothes into the dryers.

Bob stayed with the laundry while I took the truck to the gas station to fill it.  Then I went with Buddy over  to Linton's Big R Store to get a big bag of chick grower ration.  Finally, we ended up at Powell Veterinary Clinic where Buddy got his annual check up.

Buddy got de-wormed and he got shots for lepto and rabies.  The doctor said that he appears to be in really good shape for a 9-year-old dog.  He weighs 46 pounds, his heart and lungs sound good, his teeth are not perfect but they are good for an older dog.  For $15 extra, we got the rattlesnake vaccine too.

I spent $73 at the vet - more than I wanted to, but probably worth it.  We have to come back in six weeks to get a rattlesnake vaccine booster shot.

We made a quick stop at the grocery store to get onions, spinach, and some fruit, and then we came home.

Welcome to the Ranch!

We put the drop down door on the back of the chicken coop using newer, bigger hinges, and bigger barrel bolts.  The north and east sides of the coop look nice!  I wanted to get more done, but a big thunderstorm came through and we had to get our toys put away.

While it stormed, we drove over to Red Lodge and paid the Beartooth Electric Coop bill.  I filled the gas tank again, and we came home.

Bob made a dinner of cod with baked sweet potatoes and gluten-free shells and cheese.  While he made dinner, I made the bed and put most of the laundry away.

Now it is time for me to shower, shave my face, and get ready for bed.  I have to work tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday. 

It's pitiful, but I just got paid today, and I am already broke again!

Clark, Wyoming

It rained again today.  Not enough to keep me from patching up the driveway and getting a little work done outside.

This afternoon we started to put siding on the chicken coop.  We are covering it with the Ironwood colored HardiBoard and  Monterey Taupe colored trim boards leftover from the house construction.

When finished, the coop is going to resemble the big house.

Tomorrow we are going to Powell to take Buddy to his annual vet check-up.  We will also do laundry while there and visit the hardware store.

It isn't really fair - I am only getting two days off this week!

Post #2470

These past three nights went by fairly quickly!  I guess that's because even though we weren't making anything, we had lots of stuff to keep us busy.  We had flooding events on two different nights.  We had lots of laughs.  We had rain each night.

I found thermal, light-blocking curtains on clearance at K-mart.  I tossed five pairs of these into the cart and took them back to layaway.  It will be nice to have curtains in the bedroom and in the loft upstairs.

Last night it rained in Clark, and Bob says it came down like a monsoon.  I could see that the road was washed.  We had a little erosion in the yard that I am going to patch that up with some gravel tomorrow.  Gordy also delivered a load of water last night.  Bob and Gordy had to stand outside in the downpour while the water drained into our cistern.

Another thing I intend to do tomorrow is begin cutting some of the HardiBoard leftover from building the house to get siding on the chicken coop.  Once I have the siding on the coop, I will begin working on fencing their outside yard.

Buddy has an appointment with Dr. Lyle Bischoff DVM in Powell at 11 AM on Friday to get his shots and annual check up.  We are going to do our laundry then too.

I am working on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, but the difference is, that these work days will be days - 7 AM til 7 PM because of the plant shutdown and inventory.  Next Friday I will rotate back to nights again.

Summer Solstice

New bumper, grille, and valance installed.

Today is the first day of summer.  "Hello Summer!  We've missed you!"

There will be over 15 hours of daylight today.  The days will start to get shorter from here until December 21.

After tending to our chickens and putting a feeder full of sugar syrup into the beehive, we dressed in jeans and collared shirts, put on our straw hats, and headed down to the 27th Annual Clark Jubilee and Rodeo.

We parked along the side of Road 1AB right in front of the Pioneer Rec Center.  As it turns out, we parked right next to Joe and Helen Phillippe - our neighbors down the road.  We had a nice visit with them during the parade.

The parade consisted of horseback riders, motorcycle riders, a few very old antique cars, all of the fire and emergency equipment from the Clark Volunteer Fire Department, a few local businesses, and some politicians seeking election.  We had time for the parade to go by twice - once in each direction!

After the parade we made our way over to the Clark Arena.  Here we found Gordy Stoltz barbecuing brisket at the concession stand.  We took seats on the bleachers and watched the events - mounted shooting, mutton wrangling for kids, the barrel slolum, and other rodeo events.  We stayed for a couple of hours and then headed out.

We drove up to the Belfry Country Store and got a case of Coca-Cola, and some Wilcoxson's Maple Nut ice cream.  Then we headed back home.

Back at the house I got the new bumper, plastic valance, and grille out of the storage container.  I also got my two tool boxes out and started removing the old bent up bumper from the front of the truck.  This is not hard - only four (4) bolts hold it on.

Then we had to remove the plastic valance from the bottom of the bumper (we needed to re-use the fasteners).  There are ten (10) screws and clips that hold it on.

With all of these fasteners in hand, we attached the new plastic valance to the new (chromed) bumper.  These two parts did not match up exactly, but we got eight (8) screws in and that should be good enough. Bob did most of the work on the valance and bumper while I snapped the new grille in place.

We also replaced the right bumper mounting bracket.  We re-used the left mounting bracket.

Now it was time to put the bumper/valance assembly on the truck.  Bob held the bumper while I put the four bolts back in finger-tight.  Then we lined everything up really good and tightened the bolts down.

Finally we drilled out the holes for the license plate mount and put the plate back on.

I just need to get the little white turn signal mounting clips that snap into the bumper from the auto parts store.  You snap them in, and then the turn signal screws into them.  It's coming along nicely now!

After working on the truck, I got the wheelbarrow out and began cleaning out the dog kennel.  I made about 7 trips carrying rotting straw to the draw.  I dumped it in, and then returned to fill it again.  I hope to have the dog kennel cleaned up good tomorrow morning.  In the future Buddy will enjoy the kennel while we work outside.

While I worked on the kennel, Bob was baking a chicken and brewing some tea.  We had a nice meal of baked chicken and buttered vegetables.

I cut my hair down real short and then took a shower.  Oh boy was the dirt coming off of me!  The water coming off of me was brownish!

Now we are catching up on email and Facebook.  A thundershower is passing through right now.

Tomorrow night I start three nights of work.  I get paid again on Friday.

Hello Summer !

Our first bar with comb attached.

These past three days nights at work have been slow and quiet - we haven't had very much to do.  The plant is shutting down for maintenance and inventory next week, so I don't expect things to pick up soon.

On Wednesday evening the electrician came.  He showed up at 4:30 PM and put in a new receptacle in our laundry room.  Now the house ventilator/heat exchanger is running.  He also changed out a light switch upstairs that was making buzzing noise.

He disconnected and took away the contractor saw service too.

That was the last thing we needed to have done by the contractor.  I wrote out a check for $5,500 and put it into the mail for Chris and Laura Gunn.

Because it does not look like ProBuild or Chris Gunn is coming to pick up the left over house siding, we are going to use a few sheets of it to cover our chicken coop.  If Chris balks at this and tries to charge me for it, I will tell him we are even because I did not charge him for 6 months storage on my property.

I climbed up on the roof this week and used an entire tube of silicone caulking all around the chimney roof penetration.  We had a small leak last winter and this will hopefully take care of that.

We cleaned the house up really good yesterday expecting Trace Paul, our mortgage loan officer, to show up today.  He never came today.  Oh well, at least we have a nice clean house!

Today we went out to open the hive and make sure the new queen got out of the queen cage.  As we were preparing I noticed a big shimmering cloud of bees in front of the hive slowly moving away - a swarm.  We went ahead and took the roof off, and lifted out bars.  We found the hive almost empty!  The queen we bought was still in her cage too!

We think the bees took off with the queen they hatched on a mating flight.  I hope they come back.

One thing that we found that made us happy and encouraged us was that one of the top bars had brand new white comb attached!  So we know the girls were busy building some new comb.  With so many bees gone, the hive is going to be weakened.  Bob is going to make some sugar syrup this evening and we will put the feeder into the hive tomorrow.

We also used a screw and removed most of the sugar candy plug in the queen cage.  Hopefully she will be out of the cage soon.

Tomorrow is the Clark Jubilee at the Pioneer Rec Center.  Gordy is going to be barbecuing for this event.  We will go and check this out.  The parade is supposed to have 800 people in it!  (Clark only has a population of 300).

Then another three nights of work starts.  

Weekend

Yesterday morning we drove to Billings to do our grocery shopping.  As always, these trips take all day long.

We stopped in Laurel to get McDonald's breakfast.  Then we went to the Heightened Harvest store to get bags of vermiculite, but they were out of stock (again!). 

Next we went to Home Depot to get some lumber, some sisal string, and other hardware items.

Then we went to Mary's health foods to get some organic tea for Bob.

Now we finally got to the groceries.  We went over to Sam's Club and got about $200 in bulk food items.  Next we headed down the interstate to Laurel and got the rest of our groceries at Wal*Mart. 

We brought our load home and began putting it all away.  This took a while. 

Later, after we fed the chickens, we put the boards on to the truck bed and drove down to see Gordy and have the 1x6's we bought made a little skinnier.  Two of them needed to be 4½-inches-wide and two of them needed to be 5-inches-wide.  These boards are going to be the fascia boards for the coop.

This morning I took Buddy for his walk, then I got busy on putting the fascia on the coop.  The soffit and fascia are done and we just need to paint it all brown before we finish the metal trim. 

I started the burn barrels to burning and then Bob called me in for breakfast.  As I came inside, Gordy drove up and left the oak trim pieces for our living room hearth area.  He cut and milled the boards, but we would have to cut the 22½° angles on them, polyurethane them, and put them into the floor with tile adhesive.

We also found out that two of our Studor Mini-Vent caps that vent our drains are broken and leaking.  They were making the house very stinky.  We swapped one out with one that is not used much, and we taped the other one up so that the gases could not come into the house.  We are going to have to buy replacements for these.

Trace Paul, our construction loan officer, is coming out to look at the house on Friday.  We are trying to clean it up and get rid of the clutter before he comes.

Farewell Days, Hello Nights

Yesterday was my last day on Day Shift until August.  I wish I could say that we were busy, but we put our
hands to "make work". 

Bob rode down to Cody with me yesterday morning because some old friends of his were vacationing in Cody and wanted to have lunch with him.  I let him have the truck, but I told him he needed to take it to Rimrock Tire and have our flat driver side rear tire patched.

Putting the queen bee inside the hive.

During lunch I was in the cafeteria heating my leftovers up.  Chris Schuler came in and asked me, "What are you doing?"  I said, "I'm heating up my lunch."  "Well, stop.  Tim wants to go out for pizza!"

Chris drove us in his big truck, and we went to Pizza Hut for lunch.  Tim, Lorie, Arnie, Nick, Chris, and me.  That was fun.

This morning, I changed the spark plugs and plug wires in the truck.  Then we had breakfast. 

Right after I took Buddy for his walk, we took the bee queen, and her eight (8) attendants, and put them into the bee hive.  In the picture you can see Bob holding  the top bar that has the queen cage hanging from it by a green ribbon.

The bees in the hive and the bees in the cage gradually eat a sugar plug out of the way for the cage and eventually free the queen.  Hopefully this takes long enough for the bees in the hive to get used to the scent of the queen and they accept her.

Insulating the chicken coop.

After we took care of the bees, we turned our attention to the chickens.  We cut out and screwed soffit panels to the hen house all around.  Then we started cutting foam insulation board out, dabbing contruction adhesive on it, and stuffing it between the wall studs.  Here is a picture of Bob admiring our work.

Tomorrow we are going to Billings to buy our groceries.  Those trips usually last all day.

Clark, Wyoming

Yesterday morning Gordy came up to help us get the metal roof on the chicken coop.  I am glad he helped - we had it done in less than an hour!  We need to get another sheet of the metal to cover the roof on the nest boxes, we will use the scraps from that to cover the top of our wood box.  We also need to get false gables to cover the open sides.  This is going to be one well-constructed chicken coop, and I won't have to rebuild it in two or three years either!

I pulled three 16-foot-long wooden beams out of the scrap pile.  These were made by nailing two 2x4's together.  I used my Wonder Bar pry bar to slowly pry them apart.  Today Bob used the angle grinder to cut the nails off of them.  We are going to re-use these to hold up the fence in the chicken run.

Today I had to work.  We found out that the validation run of hydromorphone hydrochloride that we ran last week is not going to count toward our three batches needed before the end of the month because they deviated from the batch record when making it.  We are about to finish up Batch 2, and that will be the first batch that counts.  These three batches are important because they represent 16% of our company annual goals and that determines how big our bonuses are in September!

On my drive home I traveled through rain storms and had to use the wipers for about half the trip.  I was about one mile from our road when I heard a loud "pop" sound.  Then the steering went all wobbly on me.  I slowed down and pulled over.  My driver side back tire was completely flat!

It looks like the tire threw a screw or nail.  My little bottle jack could not lift the truck high enough to change the tire, so I called Bob and Bob called Gordy to come help me.  Gordy brought his big floor jack and we got the spare tire off (first time it's ever been off of the truck!).  I think the tire can be patched because the hole is in the tread.

Overall this was a good day, but the evening was a little tiring!

Working Weekend

Today was another day great day of work outside!

The first thing I did was change the oil and oil filter in the truck.  This took about 20 minutes then we had breakfast.

After this I cut two 8-foot-long treated 2x6's into four 4-foot-long pieces and screw them into 12-inch-long 4x4's to build Bob's first raised bed garden.  We moved this down behind the house and onto a reasonably level spot.

Hanging chick waterer.

We checked on the bees and they seem like they are adjusting to life in their new hive.  I was afraid to put them into the hive box too early and leave the entrance open because I was afraid they would run away, but today there seemed to be just as many bees entering the hive as leaving it.  They are cleaning up some of the comb that we had to trim when we cut their Langstroth frames to fit into the top bar hive.

Next I cut some plywood and 2x2's to make a shutter for the back window in the hen house.  Now, when it is very windy or cold, we can simply lift the shutter up and latch it to keep the wind from blowing straw around on the coop floor and making the girls uncomfortable.  This will probably remain closed all winter long.

I installed a steel eyelet in the ceiling of the coop so that we could put a hook into it and hang a chain from it to support the waterer up off of the floor.  This will keep straw out of the water and keep the girls from pooping in the water.

We planted two raspberry bushes about 100 feet from the house.  I dug the holes and put them plants in.  Bob fertilized and watered them.  I don't know how much fruit we will get this year, but raspberry bushes are hardy and can thrive almost anyplace.

Restoring the front end of the truck.

Finally, we straightened up parts of the truck body and front end.  Then we installed the after-market fender we bought at Certifit.  I wish I could say it was easy, but getting all of the screw holes to line up was a struggle.  The fit is not perfect either, but this fender cost less than $40.  After that we put the wheel well liner back in and started the truck up for a trip to Red Lodge.

We stopped at True Value to get the chain and hooks for the chicken watering dish.  We also got the hinges for the rear window shutter. 

We had a nice lunch of burgers at Red Lodge Pizza Company. 


When we got home I put the headlamp horizontal and vertical adjustment screws in and proceeded to straighten the right headlamp out.  Tonight, when it is dark, I will turn on the headlights facing the house and I will do a rough alignment.  After that, the truck is ready to have the grille snapped back in!

This evening Bob made a pizza for our dinner.  

I really like these long summer days.  Lots of daylight and warm temperatures for getting lots done outside!

Weekend

Here comes my three-day weekend!  Yay!

Putting insulation board in.

It started at 6:30 AM with a walk outside for Buddy.  Then I read my email and browsed the Internet while Bob made a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and papaya.

Later we went outside to work on wood projects.  First I had to repair the lid to the compost bin.  That was easy and only took about 20 minutes.  Then we began to work on insulating the chicken coop.

We removed the screws holding the plywood roof down and took off half of the roof at a time.  We cut styrofoam insulation board to fit between the rafters and pressed it in.  We put two 1-1/2-inch-thick layers in, squirted Good Stuff foam into any big gaps, and then put the plywood back on.  We screwed it down very well.

Finally, we put a couple of  layers of tar paper on the roof and stapled it down really well.  I think I have a staple every two inches in lines that are 12 inches apart.  Tomorrow or the next day I will get the steel roofing cut and screwed on top of the tar paper.

We drove to Powell in the afternoon to buy auto parts, check out chicken feeders and waterers, and get some groceries.  It was after 5 PM when we got back to Clark.

As we pulled up to the house, I noticed that a bunch of bees were getting out of the box, and just clustering up on the sides of the box.  I told Bob that it was not good for them to be outside of the box, especially with it trying to rain.  We would have to find another box for them, or put them into the hive.

We decided to put them into the hive.

Because this decision was made on the spur-of-the-moment, we really were not prepared very well.  Bob put on his jacket and veil, we lit the smoker, opened up the hive box, and began to dump and brush the bees into the hive.  There were thousands of them!  Buzzing around very angry.

I  got stung on my left ear.  Bob did not get stung at all.

We got the majority of the bees into the hive and trimmed the brood and honey comb to hang with the rest of the bars inside the hive.  This was messy to do.  I used my electric jigsaw on a plastic table, and I was about 100 feet from the hive, yet the bees were buzzing me over there too. 

It took about two hours, but we had the bees, their brood, and their food, all inside the hive and closed up.

I am tired.  This was a busy day.  I plan to be very busy tomorrow too - I did not get very much of what I had planned to do done.

Clark, Wyoming

On Monday morning we had breakfast at the Perkin's Pancake House right next to the La Quinta Inn in the

Bob holding boxed bees.

University Park neighborhood of Denver.  Bob's friend, Julio Perez, who worked at Florida Hospital EMS with Bob, joined us and picked up the bill!

Then we checked out of the hotel and started our quest to find Certifit Auto Body Parts of Denver.  Oh boy.  Denver is a big city.  The streets do not run continuously.  The drivers are in a hurry and not very forgiving if you do not know where you are going.

It took us over an hour.  It was getting very hot outside.  Buddy was frustrated to be cooped up in the small truck cab with us.  Eventually we figured out the streets and end up in the 10000 block of 51st Street East at Certifit.

We got a fender, a passenger side rear view mirror, a grille, a bumper, and a valance.  The total came to $179.  After this we got up onto I-70, headed west to I-25 and went north!

We stopped in Longmont, CO to shop the Woodcraft Store.  Bob got a replacement pepper mill mechanism and a forstner drill bit.

We made another stop at Cheyenne, WY to pick up a nucleus hive of Carniolan honeybees.  The man we got them from could not be there - he had to go to work.  So, he left them on his front porch in a waxed cardboard box.  He didn't even tape the lid down!  Imagine our surprise when the lid lifts up a little and bunches of bees fly out and buzz us!  Well, we got the lid taped down securely, and then got back onto the highway and back on our way.

It was after 9 PM when we finally got back home.  That was a long trip down and back, but we came back with everything we went to get. 

In the mail I received an envelope from Mom with Grandma Pat's poems.  They are typed up nicely and signed.  I am going to work on a Blurb.com book for the poems and illustrate it with appropriate stock photography.

Yesterday we got up and drove to Billings.  We visited a greenhouse and got a couple of raspberry bushes and two tomatillo plants.  We got a 4 cu ft bag of vermiculite.  We bought some 2x6 lumber to build our raised bed garden out of.  We got brown steel roofing for our chicken coop.  We also got a bag of matching steel screws to fasten the roofing down.  We got foam insulation board for the chicken coop.  We got a couple of 4x4 posts for the chicken yard. We visited AutoZone and got sparkplugs, oil, oil filter, plug wires, windshield wipers, and an air filter for the truck.

Our trip back took awhile - there was a bad accident and traffic was backed up on US 212 for miles.  I didn't want to take the backroads with the truck heavily loaded.

Right now I have the new mirror installed on the passenger side.  I took the old broken grille out and I took off the right fender.  I need to straighten some bent steel back out and then I will put the fender on.  After that I will put the grille in.

Turns out, Certifit gave me the wrong bumper.  It's a bumper for my truck, but they gave me a chromed one.  Mine is black.  We will have to return to Denver with the bumper and the receipt to exchange it for the right one.

Today was an easy day at work.  I had to help clean one of the production rooms and take out some trash.  Tomorrow we will have a couple of lots running and there should be plenty to do.  Nice thing is, tomorrow is my Wednesday, and Friday is my Friday!

I will have plenty of things to do this weekend!

Denver, Colorado

I got up at 7:00 AM and took Buddy for his walk.  Right after that I began loading our clothes, computer, and other things onto the truck.  Buddy started wagging his tail because I think he understood that we were going someplace.

Today was Buddy's birthday - I adopted him 8 years ago today.  He is 9 years old.

We were on the road around 8:00 AM.  We drove to Cody and ate breakfast at McDonald's.  Then we continued down WY 120 past Meeteetse, into Hot Springs County where the road ends in Thermopolis.  We continued south through the Wind River Canyon to Shoshoni and then we turned east and followed US 20/26 to Casper. 

There was a very bad thunderstorm along the desolate stretch of highway going to Casper.  We had to slow down because dime-sized hail was coming down really hard!

We stopped at the Shell gas station in Casper and then got onto I-25 South.  About three hours later we were passing Cheyenne and approaching the state line.

Around 4:00 PM we got into Denver.  We drove to the south side of town near Denver University and got a room at La Quinta Inn.

We had dinner at Garbanzo Mediterranean Cuisine and we shopped Natural Grocery.  Now we are all showered (including Buddy) and we are watching TV.

Tomorrow morning an old friend of Bob's will meet us and take us to breakfast.  Then we are going to Certifit to get parts for the truck.  We are going to shop the Woodcraft store in Fort Collins.  We are going to pick up a nucleus hive with 30,000 bees in it near Cheyenne.  Then we will start our trip back to Clark.

These are really big states out here!