What’s going on here

Honestly, not a lot. The weather has been crappy this year. The wind, severe. Snow, lots. Now it’s raining of course, I’m trying to get stuff done but blah. We have all the things to put up new obstacles on the obstacle course and I’m just waiting for weather to cooperate.

I’m also waiting on the garden. This year I’ve ordered wood chips and I’m buying compost and I might weed fabric. This better work out for me because I have the worst time growing things.

Still have pigs though we’ve added a mini pig who is satanic (jumps in the air to try to bite us). That’s a story because we were basically tricked into taking her. Blah!

Enjoy some pics!

Every animal on our property needs the pigs

I have found the pigs to be surprising in their usefulness. Yes, they are delicious and extremely cheap to keep spring through fall. I didn’t expect the million other things they’ve done for the property and those that live here.

First of all, when we bought the pigs we had a problem. I actually asked game and fish to come out and try to figure out what was murdering all of our poultry. We lost a lot of them; peacocks, ducks, chickens, etc. It was determined it was likely a raccoon and we couldn’t catch it because it kept breaking out of our live trap. I had just accepted the end of poultry keeping. Then Joey was brought to our property and suddenly the killing stopped. We haven’t lost a single animal since getting Joey 4 years ago. So, highly recommend putting a boar in your barn. Apparently nothing wants to mess with one!

Next pig benefit is the way they roam the property digging randomly. Our property needs some disruption. It also unearths things for the poultry to eat. They love to follow them around picking up things they’ve dug up for them.

One very unexpected thing is that the pigs have absolutely no problem breaking the ice in the waterers. I try to make sure they have fresh, unfrozen water twice a day. It’s cold while I’m at work though. It freezes over. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone out to give them more water to find the ice broken and random animals taking advantage. I’ve found the cats in their water. The chickens, of course. Wild birds and rabbits. Water isn’t found often around these parts and in the winter it gets rough. The pigs are personally responsible for hydrating every animal on our property.

They also keep the chickens warm. I’ve found the chickens sleeping on them when it’s real cold out. Oh piggies, I do love you!

Home made bee feeder

I have two hives this year and I want them to make it through the winter. On advice of a local bee expert I took the boxes with honey and condensed the bees into a single box each. As such they absolutely need to be fed. I wanted to be able to feed them without having to open up the body of the hive while it’s cold out. I also want to prevent the bees from having access to the empty box where the food is to be. Being cheap, and searching the internet for various ideas, I made this up out of items we had in the garage.

Strips of wood, this is cut from our porch. I cut them into 1 foot pieces.
Excess window screen.
I stapled it around the wood long ways first.
Then I folded over the ends and stapled it. This makes it firm and helps prevent the bees climbing out the ends.
Nice, firm bee feeder.
Can hold 3 jars along the length.
AND it’s in.

Obstacle Course Step 5- Rope climb/swing

The most dangerous building project yet. Dangerous because we bought a 25′ rope and 25′ turns out to be incredibly high in the air. It was pretty touch and go as we lifted this 16′ beam into the air. It turns out we only went 17′ into the air. Even then, very scary endeavor! We had some nice tips to help out this time though.

The first tip given to us was to put some boards up ahead of time to hold the beam in place while we get it situated. We had some spare 4x4s I screwed up with 8″ lag screws. It worked perfectly. Then we used the same lag screws to tack the beam into place while we bolted it in. Unfortunately I did not get any pics of the bolting process, but you get the idea. Same as everything else we’ve bolted in.

We intend to put three ropes up. I have a swivel bracket on the very edge, overhanging. Two ropes will go in the middle.

We intend to dig a pit on one side of the obstacle and pile the dirt on the other for a ramp. That will make swinging on the rope easier, as right now it’s pretty iffy if you’ll swing nicely or hit a pole. The bracket that hangs on the outside of the poles will be the climbing rope, no pit will be dug there.

Obstacle Course- Step 4- Ladder Climber

The ladder climber is one of the funner and more dangerous obstacles we’ve completed so far. Of course, it’s not completely complete but a work in process.

Buying the threaded rods already cut down to a smaller size was expensive. I needed to find a cheaper way. They do sell threaded rods in 4, 6 and 10′ lengths for cheaper. I decided I could buy several 6′ rods and cut them to length. My father has a band saw and it worked incredibly well.

To figure out what length we needed I took the circumference of the two poles and figured out the diameter the rods needed to be. One pole is much thicker than the other. I cut the rods into 12″ and 18″ pieces to fit the two poles.

I purchased 2x6x12′ boards. They are untreated and we used a sealant on them. It has the added benefit of making the boards a wee bit more enjoyable to grab on to.

I drilled and mounted one side first and then used the level to mount the other side.

I tried to measure each board to be 2’6″ from the top of one to the top of the next but, I do suck at measuring and putting things in where they should be. So they are ABOUT 2′ apart.

The kids have strict instructions to only go 2 boards up when we are not with them. When we are with them they can go 6 boards up. We are currently 8 boards up and can do 3 more. Right now it stands at 18 feet high.

Obstacle Course- Step 3- Zip line

The kids and I have been working for several years to get Husband to agree to let us build a zip line. He just keeps pointing out the risk for injury and death.

So, all these telephone poles were an opportunity to try again. The poles that are 50′ apart were ideal for talking Husband into a zip line. He relented. I jumped on it and immediately bought everything we needed. I bought a 250′ spool of 1/4″ airline wire. I settled on 1/4″ wire because I wanted to appease Husband’s fears of wire breaking by getting the thickest possible and the carabiner I purchased could handle a maximum of 1/4″.

I did consider buying a zip line kit but I figured out it was cheaper to buy everything separately so that’s what I did. I had a nice spool and pallet I’d used previously for the bees so I rolled that on over to the poles as our platform. The wire is simply as far up as I can possibly reach on my tippy toes. It does enable the tractor to go underneath it to maintain the path.

Needless to say, we all love it, even husband. The kids spend endless amounts of time on it. We had to purchase walkie talkies so they could go out and zip line and we could call them in for meals and bed.

As you can see it’s the perfect height for the kids to ride down, hop off and take the seat back to the next person.