Weather | 6/2, sunny, 57°, 84° | 6/3, 0.25" rain, cloudy, 67°, 81°
| 6/4, 1.29" rain, 59°, 63° | 6/5, p. cloudy, 55°, 75° | 6/6, cloudy, 59°, 77° | 6/7, 0.29" rain, 58°, 67°
| 6/8, sunny, 0.03" rain, 56°, 77° |
- Monday, 6/2: New-to-us Riding Mower
- I drove to Quincy with the trailer to get the riding mower and ran into construction everywhere. Just a few miles down the paved road was a road surfacing crew. The driver of a dump truck told me the road was closed. I turned around (fun with a trailer behind the pickup) and drove north to Lewistown, where I finally saw the "Road Closed" sign. If you enter the road anywhere in the middle, like we do from our gravel road, you have no clue it's closed!
- After getting cash from our bank, I followed Google Maps to the mower owner's address. When I got near the location, a construction fence loomed across the street, due to a new bridge going in nearby. I stepped through the fencing, found the house, looked at the mower, and gave the guy the money. Then I turned the pickup/trailer around, again, and drove several blocks around the neighborhood to get to the correct location.
- I mentioned that there was a clatter when the mower deck was on and he admitted that his wife told him the blade was hitting the deck. I thought the tractor's 25 horsepower Kohler engine seemed sound and I could fix the deck. He gave back $100 due to deck issues, so we got it for $900. We loaded it on the trailer. The tilt feature of the trailer works nicely. Two straps secured the lawn tractor. I checked and retightened the straps three times on the way home.
- I returned home via 260th Street all the way from Highway 6, which involves several miles of gravel, to avoid the closure of J Road. Still, I had to drive about an eighth of a mile on J right when they were resurfacing that exact stretch. The guy driving the grader told me to wait until he graded fresh gravel over the tar. A few minutes later, I drove on it, then to home.
- Mary froze 12 quarts of spinach while I was gone.
- After that, she finished weeding the onions, which isn't easy when pulling grass from around small onion plants.
- After unloading the riding mower and parking it in the machine shed, I picked more cherries, adding 3.75 quarts for a grand total of 14 quarts of this year's cherries in the freezer.
- Mary said she heard a red-bellied woodpecker throughout the day in the ripe mulberries growing in the cedar trees next to the near garden. These berries sort of keep birds out of our cherries. Though, I still see bird-pecked cherries under the tree.
 |
Our dust-covered riding mower parked in the machine shed.
|
- Tuesday, 6/3: A Nice Rain
- Rain fell around 9:30 a.m. and lasted for an hour. High humidity prevailed for the rest of the day with heavy rain starting again at 4:30 p.m. Rain fell throughout the night. We've been dry enough that puddles don't exist from quite a bit of rain. In a 24-hour period, we received 1.54" of rain. The moisture should help future raspberry and blackberry crops.
- I meant to finish picking cherries, but never got to it. Just as well, because aching muscles tell me I've gone up and down ladders too much, lately.
- Elderberries are blooming, which is about three weeks early.
- Mary keeps picking full bowls of strawberries. They make our morning oatmeal taste exceptionally great.
- I did a bunch of online research related to the riding mower we purchased yesterday.
- After spotting an 80% off sale at L.L. Bean, we ordered four T-shirts for Mary and a chamois shirt for me.
- Wednesday, 6/4: Lawn Tractor Seller was a Fibber
- Mary and I spotted a brown thrasher fledgling in the lane this morning while walking Plato. It looked miserable and cold. We turned around and left it alone with its parents.
- I took in a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) Webex presentation featuring chanterelle mushrooms. They never grow on wood, so the orange mushrooms growing on an elm log in our yard cannot be chanterelles.
- I downloaded three lawn tractor manuals for our riding mower...an owner's manual, engine manual, and an illustrated parts manual. Then I checked maintenance parts on the tractor to discover that the guy who sold me the mower was full of BS. The existing air filter is dirty, so it wasn't changed five mowings ago. One spark plug is super clean and the other is fouled, so that's also not a recent job. I think whoever serviced the plugs only changed one, but not both spark plugs. The oil filter is an off-brand version sold by O'Reilly Auto Parts, proving that Farm & Home didn't change oil in it, like the seller said, since they have and sell Kohler products and would use a Kohler oil filter on an oil change. The oil on the dipstick is black, so not a recent oil change. Kohler filters and spark plugs are expensive, so I found alternative items online and available in Quincy stores. I also looked up prices of decks, discharge chutes, and blades. Of course, all are expensive.
- Throughout the day, I saw a rose-breasted grosbeak and several cardinals eating berries in a small mulberry bush outside the south living room window.
- Mary identified wood ear mushrooms growing on a weeping willow root on the path to the chicken coop. HERE is a link to an MDC webpage about these mushrooms.
- Mary spotted the first ripe black raspberries after we put the chickens to bed for the night. We ate one, each. DAMN! They're really good.
- I watched the Edmonton Oilers beat the Florida Panthers in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals with a 4-3 overtime win. It was fun to watch.
- Thursday, 6/5: Cherry Picking (Almost) Completed
- When Mary and I walked down the lane to mail out bill payments, we found a horde of ants in the mailbox. For the second time this year, I killed them with a Dawn soap solution and wiped the inside of the mailbox out with paper towels. The war is on.
- I finished picking cherries in the big pie cherry tree and have a grand total of 17 quarts in the freezer. There are still just a few yet-to-ripen cherries in small trees. This year, the sweet cherry tree produced very well. Cherry picking was interrupted today by a few sprinkles. I finished around the top of the big tree in the waning twilight after supper.
- Mary picked the first raspberries of the season, collecting about 10 berries. She collects a bowlful of strawberries every evening.
- Mary thinned apples on the Granny Smith apple tree. Just the tippy top is left to thin on that tree.
- While working in the Granny Smith tree, Mary heard the bleating sound of a deer fawn from down the lane. They make a sound similar to a lamb, but louder.
- High humidity and heavy dew brought out fireflies that we noticed while walking Plato on his nighttime outing. We walked to the north yard and watched them in the trees. They were exceptionally bright. While watching, we noticed a bat fly over our head a couple times.
- Friday, 6/6: L.L. Bean Scam
- During an online check of our credit card, I found that what we thought was a purchase from L.L. Bean was instead from a company called Prolific Market.com in London. The purchase was an obvious scam. I called our credit card company to dispute the charge. A later email from Wells Fargo asked that I contact the company to ask for a refund. There is no contact for that company. I called L.L. Bean. They have no record of me, nor are they doing an 80% off sale, so I called the credit card company to let them know.
- I removed the deck from the riding mower and discovered another fib the former owner told me. The blades aren't recently sharpened. They look like they were used to mow a field of gravel and are extremely worn. One spindle has bearings so worn that I can tilt it from side to side. That's why the blade under it rubs on the deck. There's also a one-inch crack in the deck. I've got a bunch of work to do to get this in operational shape. I guess we're push mowing for awhile longer.
- When we put the chickens to bed, two hens refused to go into the coop. Head-high blooming motherwart plants filled with bees make it impossible to chase chickens into the coop. When we tried to coax a hen to the coop door, the bird would walk deep into those weeds. Frustrated, we left them outside. I checked after dark and didn't see them. They probably spent the night under the coop. The next morning (6/7), they were still there and one met Mary at the gate.
- I watched hockey. Florida won, 5-4, into the second overtime, evening the series at 1-1.
- Saturday, 6/7: More Rain
- Rain fell between noon and 5 p.m. It was a nice, steady, slow rain. All plants are saying, "Thank you!" The air was thick with moisture as you looked to the distance. The junk mail I pulled out of the mailbox was soggy just from soaking up damp air.
- A cooler and slightly wetter spring means better crops. Snow pea blossoms are very plentiful in the near garden. We see tons of green raspberries and blackberries. Tiny pecans and black walnuts are showing. We've never seen a strawberry crop like the one we're getting this year.
- Before it rained, Mary picked a bowl of black raspberries. She saw lots of bumblebees in the persimmon tree blossoms near the large raspberry patch in the west yard.
- I looked up costs of mower deck parts. They are quite high. I found a new mower deck in Indiana that is minus the discharge chute and spindle guards for $500. I might go with that, if shipping isn't too wild. It is shipped to the nearest Fastenal location, which for us is in Quincy, IL. I'll know more on Monday.
- While Mary cross stitched, I did some checkbook updating and balancing.
- The two wayward hens that spent last night outside of the coop were right there tonight when it was time to put them all to bed.
- I heard a wood thrush in the north woods while we handled chickens this evening.
- Low-level fog was hovering over the grass as we walked Plato at night. Dew was thick on all grass.
- Sunday, 6/8: Picking Fruit & Mowing
- After doing more online research I learned that our riding mower's deck has a GT, or fabricated, designation. That means it has thicker steel that is welded together. The deck I'm looking at in Indiana is stamped out of thinner steel. Stamped decks are how most push mowers are made. It's something we need to consider in buying a new deck versus fixing the existing deck.
- Mary picked black raspberries and finished a quart bag in the freezer, while starting another quart bag.
- She also picked strawberries, and snow peas. She has enough for three bags of peas.
- I picked a third of a quart bag of cherries from the sweet cherry tree and a small pie cherry tree that is next to the Empire apple tree.
- Mary and I both mowed. I mowed the inside of the near far garden and the near garden, along with between and around the fences of the near garden. Mary mowed the east lawn between the house and the lane. Grass clippings went on a row in the far garden and Mary started a final mulching of the onions.
- Our mowing was stopped by rain.
- We saw a mourning cloak butterfly.
- Mary was buzzed by a hummingbird that brushed against the side of her head. She had another hummingbird do a zigzag flight in front of her while Mary was picking peas. Her bright blue shirt is a real hummingbird magnet.
