How the other half lives

Regular readers will remember multiple years of whinging from me about our lack of a suitable livestock trailer and descriptions of various flimsy lash-ups, as well as outbreaks of outright bodgery to make up for lack of the same. To say this problem has driven me to distraction in previous years would be an understatement.

(Here's a selection of totally classic posts in this vein:
1, 2, & 3)

There's even a very fine wood craving made by father-in-law Dick Phillippi of one such incident.

Memorialized in artwork, no less.

But obviously, this annual tradition had to end somehow.
Something Needed to be Done this year, if the pigs were to be safely transported to the slaughterhouse, and if I were to keep my sanity.

After weeks of perusing Uncle Henry's and Maine Craigslist for a suitable trailer, I finally realized I wasn't going to have the money to get one that was ready made and perfect.

Therefore I would have to make one.

I've made a small livestock trailer before using plastic sheeting and two-by-fours, and it worked alright until I backed the flimsy trailer frame into the barn's concrete slab with the four-wheel-drive pick-em-up truck, in four wheel, low range, and, unhappily, made the previously rectangular frame more of a rhomboid.

After that, my fine trailer wore out a new set of eight-inch tires every twenty miles. Obviously the trailer couldn't be used on the road anymore, although I still use it regularly for hauling firewood out of our woods.

I removed the plastic cap and made that into a stand-alone livestock crate, which we still have and which works fine for sheep, but is too flimsy for big pigs.

I finally set aside $300 after paying bills one Friday and set out to shop for a trailer. I found one in Carmel, just up the road on the way to Bangor, advertised for just that price.

I was a bit suspicious of it at first, because the axle had clearly been struck and was bowed about an inch, but the tires weren't worn and the owner swore he has been using it on the road. The rest of the trailer was fine, and I figured I could get a replacement axle for it, if need be.

But I haggled harder than I normally would have, because of the bent axle. He and I settled on $230, but he threw in a new trailer hitch, and a secondhand 1 and 7/8 inch ball.

The seller had tarted it up a bit, probably with some black Rustoleum in a spray can. He hadn't bothered to remove the decking to get at the rust on the frame underneath, which I resolved to do as soon as I could.

I let it sit outside in the yard until I got to a good point in some of my other projects, and so today after finishing the second full side of metal roofing on our barn, I wrecked out the floorboard decking and chopped them up for winter kindling, removed the remainder of the floor screws, ground off the rust with the wire brush attachment on the angle grinder, washed away the dust and dirt (which is right about the stage I took this picture), and then finally sprayed the whole chassis with half a quart of black Rustoleum in the pneumatic sprayer.

I have new decking sorted already, the same treated wood we've used on the truck bed.

The trailer came with decent, solid hardware for crate sides, supposed to fit into 2 by 4 sockets built into the frame, which will do just fine for most loads, and so I'll make new crate sides with the same hardware.

However, we'll need metal sides and a metal roof for pigs, so I can foresee a trip to the metal yard in Bangor in my future.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the pigs eat and sleep and drink like happy pigs. They're on their last half-ton of feed, though.

Do you think that if they knew that when this lot was finished, they'd be off to the butchers, they'd eat a little more slowly?

Tim'rous...

To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough

Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Old school

I went over to our old house,, the "Bale House," to do a solar power system repair for the occupant.

While I was there I found my old box of photos and letters in the shed.

I needed to retrieve it, and conserve it from the mice and the damp.

There wasn't very much damage.

Here's one such old photo, of an RAF Mountain Rescue LWB Land Rover Ambulance parked outside one of my old billets in Skelton, Yorkshire.

The very skinny guy on the right is me, about 80 pounds lighter, nearly 30 years ago.

Unbelievable.

A bird in the hand

Our very predatory cat, Shenzhi, is always bringing live and dead small animals into the house. We tolerate this because if we didn't allow her to hunt freely, we'd have rodents in the house and in the barn, spreading disease.

If we're going to have a cat, we need to get the use of a cat. Otherwise why have a cat?

But I was a little peeved yesterday to have to set this small bird free with an open wound Shenzhi had given it. She'd bought the bird into the house, but then lost hold of it. When I caught it, I saw the wound.

Poor wee bugger. And nasty, murderous bl**dy cat.

In other news, the truck is all back together with new leaf springs, brake drums, and muffler, and fresh anti-rust paint all over the rear end. It isn't finished yet, though. We're still waiting for a new flex hose, and there's a tiny bit of muffler pipe on the top of the join that I can't quite reach with the stick welder, so I need to make up or buy a new welding cable extension.

I need to get the truck out on the flatter hard standing where I can jack up all four wheels safely, then I should be able to reach it. That will take either another twenty feet of direct current welding cable, or twenty feet of 220-240 volt power extension cord.

I made myself moderately miserable trying to get at this small weld yesterday, on my back in my hot woolen welding jacket, in 90 degree heat, with the frame of the truck pressing down on my chest, the welding cable wrapped around my chest, and the welding helmet sitting skewed on my head because of the tiny amount of space between the truck and the ground.

Actually, what I really need is a lift. I need a lift in my nice clean, epoxy-floored, custom designed, three-bay, general-purpose mechanical workshop, but the lift alone (never mind the workshop!) would cost about $2,000 more than the extension cord.

Which might be more than the truck is worth right now.

The last bit of news is that he spell of hot humid weather finally broke yesterday afternoon and the nasty muggy mid-western air cleared right out, to be replaced with some nice cool Canadian air.

We could use some rain too, but for now we'll settle for finally being cool.

Haggis is happy about this. he's been in minor respiratory distress for days now, unable to stop panting even in his sleep.

We call this panting Haggis "huffing" and it can be pretty annoying, since it's louder than the radio, than TV, or than our own conversation, so Haggis generally gets banished to another room or the porch.

Being a sensitive kind of dog, actually a bit of a mummy's boy, he doesn't like being banished very much at all.

But he "huffs" at about 80 decibels.

Noisy dog! Go to the porch!

HOT!

Here's our outdoor thermometer reading well over 90 F in the sun today. The humidity is also way up -- dew point of 72 F, which means this is a very uncomfortable kind of air that Maine doesn't often get.

Too hot to work outdoors, that's for sure.

I worked on the truck this morning, while it was a little cooler. I scraped and wire-brushed the rust with the air-hammer and angle grinder, and painted the underside with the pneumatic sprayer, and fitted the new drums.

I need a bit more paint to get a little better coverage.

And I need my new leaf springs to be delivered.

Come on, Fedex. I'm sure your vans are air-conditioned, right?

A very silly dog -- enlarged

Pipes and drums

Anyone who knows me at all, looking at the truck rear-end and muffler-pipe repair job I started a few days ago, would know that if Aimee and I had any extra money to pay for new parts, there would be a lot more to do.

And there was. I found out that both leaf springs were broken, and I also decided to put new brake drums on.

As usual around here in the summer, time is relatively abundant, but money for parts and materials less so.

All the same we were able to splurge a little on some additional repairs. Not that they didn't need doing. Just that we could have used the truck again this winter without doing them.

We could have squeaked by, in other words, on our old brake drums and springs.

(Ouch.)

The old springs had survived a good deal of abuse, including hauling much of the lumber to build the Bale House, as well as hauling very large amounts of hay for the farm. There was no surprise that they were broken.

The old drums were rusty, and I had known this since two winters ago, when I had repaired the emergency brake mechanism

Brake drums are always rusty. What required these to be replaced was the really bad rust that was eating away at the rim, making it harder and harder to pry the drums off using the normal kind of drum-prying technique.

The new drums have come in already, and Fedex says that the new springs will be here shortly, tomorrow or Friday.

Tomorrow's job, while we wait for the springs, will be to fit the new drums and do some rust removal and spraying of Rustoleum and undercoating.

This truck will be spanking when we get done, and good for another few winters, touch wood.

It's that old high-miler engine that will be the death of this beast.