Turkey Taj Mahal

 Hi All,

First post in  a while. This one will be mostly about things other than the house. To start with we have ordered some grapevines we plan to plant this winter. Our California and French friends shouldn't get excited, in Texas about all you can grow are muscadine grapes which aren't all that good for wine.

Killing grass for where grape vines will go

Our other big project of late is the Turkey Taj Mahal. The story goes like this...  We decided to put in a solar well pump so as not to use our crack house tenant's electricity to pump water for the garden, orchard, vineyard and poultry. Because of all the trees around the well house we decided to put the solar panels out in the middle of the pasture, basically next to where the vineyard is to be planted. We quickly decided it made more sense to build a building and put the panels on the roof, that way we got another building for storage. But wait! How about we use the new building to house the turkeys? So now we need a concrete floor. We called our concrete guys and got a bid on a 8' x 10' concrete slab. Texted them on Saturday, called me back on Sunday, came out Monday to look it over. Before Adan and Adan Jr got here on Monday we staked out where we wanted the building. Man, 8 x 10 sure is small. Let's make it a bit bigger, how about 10' x 12'? Well, now we've gone from mixing bags of cement to getting a cement truck and we're going to pay for a whole load whether we use it or not. Now we're up to 12' x 14'. We told them to hurry up and get it done before we made it any bigger. Two days later, it was done. The concrete part anyway.

Slab poured

Three walls up

Starting to look like a building

It's done! Including rainwater catchment to water the turkeys

Took an evening off with friends to see the world famous Kilgore College Rangerettes perform at halftime of a Kilgore High School football game. It was very impressive!

And then there were six

That's all for now!

Take care.

Brian

Hallelujah!

We have finally finished (no pun intended) the wood floor in the living room and dining area! Not much to say, just thank goodness we're done with that project! Here are some pictures.

The floor as it originally went in, notice the furniture out on the front porch.

Sanded

Stained and two coats of clear poly

Phew! That's it for now. Take care.

Brian

Update on the Birds and the Bees

Hi All,
The attempt to split our two bee colonies into four didn't go as planned. The jury is still out but I think we'll at least be able to keep two colonies and there is a chance we may have three. It will be another couple of weeks before we have a better idea. They are fascinating creatures.

Oh boy, how the turkeys have grown. They have denuded the ground in their "house" so we let them out for a while most days to get their fill of bugs. This year we have a bumper crop of grasshoppers and crickets so they can get their fill pretty quickly. Here's a video of us taking an evening stroll.

In other news, we contracted our neighbor's son to build some cabinets for us in the mud / utility room. They turned out great! And of course continuing with the rustic look.

Before: Looking this way

Before: Looking that way

After: Pantry and storage

After: More storage

One other development since we last talked, we've signed a contract to have a solar system installed. Our original plan was to install it ourselves. The more we looked at the roof, specifically the pitch of the roof, the more we thought we'd pay someone to install it. As it turned out we found a good deal and it isn't going to cost us much more than if we had installed the system ourselves. I won't go into all the specifics but if you're interested drop one of us an email or message and we can go into the details.

That's it for now. Hope everyone is well.

Brian

Birds (Turkeys) and the Bees

Hi All,
In my previous posts I mentioned we had a renter in the house formally known as crack house. All is going well there. We originally thought we'd get a grad student or intern to rent the house. Since that wasn't the case we really didn't do a crack up job (pun intended) so went back and did a few improvements once our renter moved in.

There was no place to put her washer and dryer so we added a covered back porch with all the necessary hook ups. Here's what it looks like...

This past week we also moved the turkeys to their permanent home - a hoop house that Susan had in Georgia. It took us a lot longer to get it back up than it did to take it down.

The turkeys are getting big and appear to enjoy their new digs

And last but not least, we attempted to split our two bee colonies into four. It'll be a couple of weeks before we know if we were successful or not. One thing I can tell you, it's not great fun when a bee gets inside your bee suit with you.

This is what it looks like when you get stung on your eyelid

I'm going to go ice my eye some more. Take care.

Brian

New Neighbors

Hi All,
Since our last post we've gotten some new neighbors. One of them has been in the neighborhood for a few weeks. We've seen her visiting others in the neighborhood but she finally came by to introduce herself the other day.

Dulce Dos talking to Susan

She had to check out the chicken tractor

We've named her Dulce Dos after a friend's pet / tame deer Dulce. Susan and I were working on cleaning out the chicken tractor when Dulce walked up, very quietly, and nudged the back of Susan's arm with her nose. Susan liked to jump out of her skin, not knowing anyone or anything was behind her.  Dulce Dos stayed around about 30 minutes, following us around to see what we were doing. She and Duncan got along ok at first but then she seemed to be getting jealous of Duncan so she charged him once or twice to run him off. Duncan stayed clear of her after that.

Today we added two new neighbors.

Buffy has been sitting on some eggs for what we thought was two weeks, guess it's been at least three.

When we noticed Buffy sitting on eggs, she had three. While a hen sits on eggs she won't lay more eggs. Obviously when Buffy would take a break to eat or drink another hen would jump up there and lay an egg and add to the clutch. Breakfast was suffering so Susan wrote numbers on the eggs and from then on we'd take any new additions. That was after the clutch had grown to nine. Looks like they are stating to hatch.

One correction from the last post. As the turkeys have gotten bigger and their coloring has changed we've decided one of the Bronze has survived. That makes the count three Bourbon Red, three Narragansett and one Bronze.

That's it for now.
Take care.
Brian

Good News and Bad News

Good News / Bad News: Mostly Good

A little bad news to start. Shortly after our last post another of our baby turkeys died. We started off with three Bourbon Reds, three Bronze and four Narragansett. It was all three of the Bronze that died. :-(

The seven remaining turkeys moved to new temporary housing outside on Saturday. About sundown on Saturday four of them were outside the pen. We got them back in and fixed the places where we thought they got out. Sunday night before going to bed we checked on them- two were missing. Generally when they get out they stay right by the pen because they don't want to leave their flock. We looked all around and didn't find them. You know how parents worry when their kids aren't home on time. Well, they came dragging in at 6:00 this morning. I scolded them, told them to never do that again and grounded them for a week. What started out as bad news is now good news.

While I was trying to catch the two night owls and put them up I saw Duncan take off like a shot. I don't think he got the skunk but the skunk definitely got him. This was VERY BAD news. By 9:00 he's already had two baths but it doesn't seem to have helped a lot.

And finishing up with VERY GOOD news, the "crack house" is rented!  We thought we'd end up with an intern or grad student working at the Texas A&M Agri-Life Research Farm next door. But we ended up with someone even better. Our tenant (as of today) is a sweet 80 year old lady with a lot of spunk. She doesn't even mind we call it the crack house. We already like her a lot. We've made a few upgrades for her. We've put a new deck on the back of the house and today we'll start working on the roof over the deck. The deck ends about 4 feet from the property line, on the other side of the barbed wire fence are Texas A&M's cattle that are very inquisitive. They'll be checking on her anytime she's out on the deck.

That's all for now.
Take care.

Brian

The wood flooring is down!

Hi All-

A couple of updates and pictures from the last couple of weeks.

First and foremost, the wood flooring is down in the great room! Yeehaa! It's taken about a month to complete it. That's not the only thing we've been working on in the last month, there's only so much of that you can stand at a time. Nailing the floor down wasn't all that bad, it was prepping the boards to go down that took the time and was less than exciting.

Still work to be done (sanding and staining) but at least we aren't living with concrete floors any longer

This past Thursday we received a special delivery- ten baby turkeys. We had so much fun with them last year, right up until varmints got them, that we had to try again. It is sad but true that baby turkeys just look for a way to die. We're already down to eight. They were a day old when they arrived and it's not uncommon to lose half of them before they reach eight weeks.

Best picture I could get, it's hard to get down to their level

More news on the animal front, putting his nose where he shouldn't, Duncan was bitten by a snake. All indications were it was a copperhead. So, if you want to know how veterinarian offices are operating during the Covid-19 pandemic it goes something like this. You park in the parking lot and call the office. They put you on the list with everyone else that is in the parking lot. At some point (about and hour and a half for us) they come out and get your pet and take them into the office. A bit later they bring your pet back and tell you what they did. A few minutes later someone comes out with the bill for you to pay. I should say this particular veterinarian office never takes appointments, it's alway walk up, first come first served. Unless you're bringing a horse or some other large animal. Anyway, Duncan is fine and has already been spotted chasing a snake so he didn't learn a thing.  No surprise there.

Last but not least, Susan harvested her first zucchini from the garden today. This is the first year we've actually gotten zucchini from the garden. Thanks to our friend Stan that told Susan about using Liquid Smoke to keep Squash Vine Borers off of the plants.

Our first zucchini

That's all for now. Take care.

Brian

While there is no where to go...

Hi all,
My last post announced my re-employment but as you might have guessed with the current state of affairs I have been furloughed. Actually it's much more about the price of oil than Covid-19. Of course the price of oil might not be as low without Covid-19 but the price war between Russia and Saudia Arabia was the main factor.

With lots of time on my hands again Susan and I are back working on the house. Susan was working on it while I was working but some things really need two people. So here's an update on what we've gotten accomplished.

From the beginning our vision of the exterior of the house was board and batten. Battens are finally going up and it's making, in our opinion, a big difference on the way the house looks.

Here's the exterior as it has been for the last year

Now, with battens

We also have finally started putting wood flooring down in the great room and dining area. The flooring is out of the building we paid $200 for a year or more ago. Once it is down we'll sand it and refinish it. Putting it down has been realitively easy (thanks Tony for the floor nailer!) it's the getting the nails out and all the 90 year old dirt gone so the tongues will go in the grooves that takes all the time. We now have almost half of the flooring down.

The first furring strips going down

The first six rows of flooring down

Besides working on the house we have accomplished a few other things.

We made a very fast trip to Atlanta in order to get the last of Susan's possessions.  We worked out we were gone for about 38 hours, 22 of those were spent driving on I-20. A big thanks to our friends Mark and Tammy that not only gave us a place to stay but also helped us load the trailer. In the rain.

While Susan has done this before, I wanted to try my hand at beekeeping. We've been going to local beekeepers meetings (until they, like everything else, were canceled) and ordered two colonies. They are here and appear to be thriving.

Opening the hives to feed and check on their progress

 And of course we take a little time to fish in the pond.

Biggest one I've caught here

I think mom can learn from daughter

That's all for now.
Stay safe.

Brian

Blog Post #200

Hi All!
It's hard to believe this is the 200th blog post we've done. Lots has happened since that first post on November 30, 2014. What started out as a blog about our sailing adventure turned into a travel blog and then a blog on building our house in East Texas.

Seems fitting the 200th post would contain another change in direction of sorts. I have a job! Shortly after the first of the year a friend of ours called and asked if I could help him out at his oilfield services company. For those that don't know, Kilgore (we live about 10 miles outside Kilgore) is home to the world's richest acre. Back in the 30's when oil was first discovered in East Texas there were no restrictions on how close one oil well could be to another. Kilgore was covered with oil wells, 1,200 within the city limits. Since 1930 oil wells on 1.2 acres within the city limits have produced 2.5 million barrels of oil. There aren't nearly that many wells anymore but you still see pump jacks pumping all around town. Chili's painted the one in their parking lot to look like a chili. All that to say, oil is still big business.

My original job was to do inventory of all the pipe, fittings and other assorted equipment (flare stacks, seperators, sand traps, plug valves) the company uses. It took me to Midland, Pleasanton and Carrizo Springs- all here in Texas. That part is finished so now I'm working on a couple of IT projects, something with which I'm a bit more familar. (I wanted to say "something I'm more familar with" but Susan wouldn't let me end a sentence with "with". There, I did it twice.)

No, the house isn't completed but the estimated completion date of 2024 is still achievable. While I've been working at a J O B, Susan has been finishing up the Crack House. For all intents and purposes, it's ready to rent.

That's it for now. Sorry, no pictures this time. There weren't any in the first post either.

Take care.
Brian