Picking, Grain, 3 Generation Bike Ride, Repairs, Creek

Well, that was an eventful day yesterday. I started out picking squash a couple hours earlier than normal since I had to be leaving the farm by 7:00 am. I managed to pick 25 pounds of squash which were set in the cooler without bagging them until later. I left the house with the trailer full of barrels and the bed of the truck full of boxes of squash. When I got to the first brewery again I found a couple of full barrels when I was just dropping off empties, so I loaded them onto the trailer before going to the next brewery down town.

I had 5 barrels of grain but the one I combined into one of the big barrels so I had 6 on the trailer. From there is was the half hour drive across the city to the other side of the valley where I dropped off 11 boxes with 230 pounds of summer squash at the co-op. I made it home only 10 minute later than I normally do from just the delivery route.

I parked the truck and trailer and let them sit by the coop while I ran in the house and got things ready to go for our bike ride. It was the coolest day of the week yesterday so I wanted to get out and ride. My father, myself, and my two boys all went out for a ride to the lake and back. This is the first chance I got to take a picture as we were entering the southern edge of the park boundary.

3 gen ride.JPG

This was the trail to the lake that runs out through the woods and connects into the park road and the path around the lake. We rode around the lake then stopped at the gazebo by the playground where we ate while the boys played some. There was a good number of people at the lake but that was not out of the ordinary for a Friday.

After we left the lake we took a bit of a meandering way home but tried to stay on the less traffic roads. I am hoping the weather stays on the more moderate side so we can get out for more rides.

Once we got back to the house from our ride and had cooled off a bit I went out and emptied the barrels of grain. All 6 barrels got dumped out in the sheep pen where they didn't even find it for hours since they were in the upper pen. The birds attacked the piles until the sheep finally found them.

During the day I did a search on Craigslist for a bike for J. I have been looking for a while but never found anything quite right, until yesterday. The perfect bike is up and it is in North Spokane, a Diamond Back 20 inch 7 speed mountain bike for $120. I texted but they are at the lake for the weekend but Monday I will setup the purchase. The bike is not his favorite color but it will be a lot better than the 16" BMX that he has been riding all these miles on so far.

With the bike lined up I set about fixing the bike computer that was on J's bike. I neglected to think well enough about the mounting of the unit since the bike has a swivel neck, one of the trick ones that allows the handle bars to rotate 360. Well that was the key to my problem, the handle bars had rotated 360 degrees which pulled the wire tight and snapped it in 2 places. I used butt end connectors to couple the wires back together but I won't know if it is really fixed until I can install it on his new bike.

I setup a sprinkler to rain on the pole garden. The plants were all looking blah with the dust/dirt/ash coating. Once the sun had gone behind the trees mostly I ran the sprinkler for a while which cleaned up the leaves a good bit and made the plants look a lot better.

Once Hive account@stryeyz got home from work we went down to the creek. The most amazing thing happened while we were standing in the creek, but that will be for the next post.

Today I have to get to picking first thing, we have to do a grocery order and pickup, house cleaning, finish the glycerin, and try to find our crawdad friend.