Meet the Orange Jeep Postman!

Meet the Orange Jeep Mailman!

Met the postman! You gotta love a mail man who drives an ORANGE JEEP! LoL! This pictures captures the color contrast between his Halloween Orange color and my Harley Davidson Orange. I'll admit, mine is a little more red-ish but...I get to say HARLEY DAVIDSON every time I describe it.  That's worth a few testosterone points right there.

He showed me where he'd like me to place the post. We talked a bit about the area. He lives two farms to the south of me. His brother lives across the blacktop from me and it turns out that his brother is the man who is farming our 80 acres directly across the street from me. The farm I am on is 160 acres but my Grandma was wise enough to buy the 80 acres across from us when it came up for sale. There's another 160 acre farm somewhere to the north of me, on the other side of town, but I haven't been there since I was a child.

Standard $30 mailbox

Anyway, I bought a $30 mailbox from the local farm store (Atwoods) and assembled inside (air conditioning, it's 94 degrees outside).

I'm not quite sure what the Postman will do when I order large items. I supposed he'll either open the gates and leave it at my farm house OR he'll leave me a note in the little mailbox letting me know there is a large box awaiting me at the post office. Anybody have experience with this? The following is the video I uploaded today showing me putting up the mailbox and testing out my Coleman propane lantern during a storm.

As I was thinking of things I can be working on while waiting for the mobile home loan approval, I decided one basic thing I can do for now is use the Ford tractor (always a bonus to drive it!) and the box blade to scrape up the cow dung in the cow's watering pen. For a good 45 minutes, I scraped dung heaps for future use in our family garden. It is a nice start on some good manure. The thought of starting our first garden here on the farm is really exciting!

After that, I used the Ford to pull more metal scraps out from the dirt behind the barn. I am collecting everything in front of the barn so that it can be sorted. Stuff worth keeping for repair or reuse will stay.  Stuff that is not useable with go to the recycling yard for some extra cash to use for gasoline in the tractor. I'm partial to the idea of sandblasting old farming tools and keeping them for display. I found several discs today.

I pulled the old Scouting trailer that Grandpa built around front too. It appears to be all intact, aside from the obvious bad tires. Once I put new tires on it, that trailer will be perfect for hauling wood or trash around the farm. Grandpa even built a swing open back tailgate. I'll show it on a future video for sure.

Specialized dart shotgun

I spotted a truck I didn't recognize heading through our north field pulling a cattle trailer. I called Cousin big D to ask questions. There have been national news articles of cattle being stolen and I'm not taking any chances. Turns out it was Cousin big D in one of his many trucks. He stopped by to visit.

Just my luck, he had a downed cow yesterday while I was at work. He and the local butcher (also down the street) made quick work of the cow on the backside of the property. I wish I could have seen that! They gutted it right there on the farm and took the carcass back to Mr. Butcher's house. There's some skills that will serve my family very well. He also showed me his dart gun and medicated darts and explained what happened when he tried to stop a 300 lb calf with a Shepherd's hook (not good).


~OJD

New Farm Rules

19) The sooner you use your windshield washer button to blast the fresh bug guts off your windshield, the better chance you have of being able to SEE out the windshield for one more day. If you wait, you'll have layers upon layers of opaque bug guts blurring your vision.

20) It's much easier to take down a 300 lb calf with a dart gun than it is with a Sheppard's Hook or sometimes called a Calf Catcher. (wisdom courtesy of Cousin big D, after he was yanked out of his quad and drug face down through the stickers and sand while trying to stop a calf with said Sheppard's hook).

Back Home Report

Team Alpha is busy helping Wifey pack up all our food storage. Years ago, we were blessed enough to put aside nearly a year's worth of food. It is either dehydrated or freeze dried. Originally, we had it just sitting on top of the overhanging knockout in our kitchen. Then we started to feel like we were broadcasting to anyone that came over that we had excess food so we decided to place it inside the knockout. I wrote a post on it long ago.

Thirteen more days until I head back to get The Clan! Woo hoo!