Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Wherein water is returned to the house...

and the "tractor man" has been found and negotiated with.

It took us two tries (the first one with the "wrong" pressure tank) but the pressure tank has now been replaced and our water pressure has stabilized. The first tank we found was designed to work with a shallow well pump and was expecting plastic fittings, and as we tried to get it set up, it really didn't want to work. I will take it back tomorrow, as K found and bought the type tank he was expecting and was familiar with early today and managed to get the plumbing installed and tested while I was at work.

Good thing, as dishes need washing, ditto clothes and the carpet cleaner guy is showing up tomorrow too.

On one of our plumbing parts runs to the local small hardware store, I happened to ask the fellows there if they knew anyone hereabouts who worked up gardens with a small tractor and they gave me a name, which I put with a phone number on line and called. He lives, it turns out, at the other end of our road (but not quite ON it) and was down in a few minutes to check out what needed doing, quoted a price and pledged to start on Friday. It will, he says, take several passes to do a proper job (I agree) and if we start finding rocks, if I walk along and pick them up, it will go faster. I also agree with that... they are already Maine's best crop and seem well naturalized; no need to plant more! LOL

I had hoped to get tomorrow of for a less populated, cooler day at the MOFGA fair but Martin needs me to work so I will take two half-days, Sat. and Sun hoping that will allow me all the workshops I want / need to take and allow K to experience the fair too. So I will take a couple of hours off from rock-picking, go in to work and go to the fair the next day. But I will have my GARDEN TURNED!! and the berry/orchard area too, at least the first bit of it. I have yet to sharpen my scythe, hoping to learn more about that at the fair and if it cannot be sharpened, I will get a new blade. Need to learn how the hand-holds need to be set to fit me properly too... and then I will start working down the back area as a start to planting windbreak trees there, possibly more orchard later.

The plow guy says with as much as I am going to have under cultivation I should call it a commercial enterprise and then -- if the deer and turkeys get into it, sufficient calls to the Game Warden will allow me to shoot -- without a permit and out of season, I believe -- the varmints that want more than a fair share. Of course that will mean (a) getting a gun and (b) leaning how to hit what I aim and and (c) being willing to do it with K living here -- knowing he will never be able to eat "Bambi." I'd just as soon load rock salt, as my dad said they used to, for shooting at stray cats caterwauling on the fences in summer. Non-lethal, stung like heck and thoroughly discouraged them from that area. We will see...

2 comments:

Robin Follette said...

Brandi might be enough to convince the deer to stay away. Except when the lazy mutts are sleeping in the driveway and back porch all at once and don't sense a doe and lamb across the road, they do a good job of keeping moose and deer out of the garden.

Jj Starwalker said...

Yeah, IF I can get her to stay out there and NOT under the porch, licking her rump!

(we will be rebuilding the porch though.. )

And once I get the perimeter cut with the scythe -- which will be shortly after the Fair -- I will be walking her around every day with me, so her scent will be about. I dare not let her be totally loose though, as she hasn't the sense to stay out of the road. K was thinking about costing out a perimeter dog run/deer fence of the sort I have heard about folks using (4' tall, two fences 4' apart) around the whole place but... $$$$

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