Hi I'm Mike, projects pile up and somedays, like today, you can feel overwhelmed.
When that happens, I've found the best thing to do is just dive in.
Pick one and go for it, knock something off your project list, today on our Wyoming life.
Hi and thanks for joining me today, on our Wyoming life, every Tuesday we take a look
at this big board behind me and as well as adding projects to it, we try to cross some
off.
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us, please subscribe and escape the ordinary as we bring you everything from the ranch,
the cows, the gardens and ranch style cooking and a whole lot more.
Before we get started today, I want to let you in on a whole new thing we are starting
here on our Wyoming life and that is the herd report.
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So today, I am suffering from what I like to call a motivational crisis.
There is a lot to be done, no emergencies today and sometimes those are the hardest
days to get going.... when you have an emergency staring you in the face, fence broken or water
not working or something like that, it’s kind of the kick in the pants to get moving
and once you are moving then things seem to flow, for me anyway.
It’s a cool 25 degrees outside, the wind chill is down to about 15, the cows are fed,
pigs are fed, everyone has water and today the ranch is working like a well-oiled machine.
I don’t have to work outside if I don’t want to, so today we are going to spend some
time in the shop.
First, we are going to clean up a bit, then we are going to take a look at the gator,
which has a low idle issue.
With being so busy outside lately, the shop tends to get neglected, tools don’t get
put away and things start to pile up.
As we move closer to spring, we are going to need it to be organized and clean to work
on other things so it’s a good place to start, in addition, it will give me a chance
to give you a bit of a tour of the shop.
The shop is where most things start and stop here on the ranch, every day, I come to the
shop to start getting my day in order, my projects lined out and it’s kind of like
my office.
As I clean and put stuff away, let me give you the dime tour.
The main shop itself is a 60x40 foot heated building.
We keep the temperature in here about 45 degrees.
The feeding tractor lives in here all winter long, along with a majority of the tools we
use on the ranch, including the gator, which we will get out of our way for now.
The shop has two roll up garage doors, both 16 feet wide and 12 feet tall, allowing us
to move vehicles in and out easily, the electric openers are a huge help when you have to get
in quickly with a downed calf for something as we use the main shop as a staging area
during calving, nursing calves back to health before moving them to the barn.
As you probably do with your office, I like to fill the shop with memories and all over
the place hanging on the walls you will find different pieces of memorabilia that probably
don’t mean much without context.
This is a picture of my father in law Gilbert, he is what brought us to the ranch in the
first place, when he got sick Erin and I left our 9-5 jobs and came here, starting over
and eventually finding a life that we love and couldn’t imagine living without.
We started our family and I believe that without him our lives would truly be lacking something.
He passed away in 2012, and before he did, I made a promise to him to keep doing this
and protect the one thing that he cared more for in life than anything else, this ranch.
So, his picture hangs over us all every day, as a reminder of a promise.
On the same wall some of the things that really do remind me of him, an old horse hitch from
a wagon he loved and some antique logging equipment.
A small windmill that I built our first year here and put out on the ranch, Gilbert loved
windmills.
Eventually the wind blew it apart but I managed to save the actual head portion of it.
Over here is a toilet seat, that one may take some explaining.
Our second winter here, we went out to feed one day and found a cow with a toilet stuck
on her head, Gilbert had built a small outhouse and this cow had found it and because cows
are curious creatures she of course stuck her head in it.
After a few hours of work, we did get it off of her and its lived on the wall ever sense,
you never know what’s going to happen around here.
Now that I think about it, pretty much everything on these walls has some tie back to Gilbert.
Being an old rancher, he never was much for travel, but one year he did visit France and
came back with this pitchfork, which he told me was actually grown by a French artisan,
bending and forming the branches go a small tree until the rough shape of a pitchfork
was created then cutting it down and finishing it by sanding it down.
The sombreros were given to him by some Mexican friends of his and the sled was his when he
was a kid.
This gilbert told me this was made by his dad back in the 30's and it’s a snake catcher.
When he was a kid they used to catch rattle snakes and put them in 55-barrel drums, not
sure what for but kids back then didn’t have iPad and I'm sure it kept them busy.
The shop also houses a small kitchen which Erin uses a lot during growing season to store
and process vegetables.
All of our freezers for beef and pork are located out in the shop as well.
Erin has been collecting gallon milk jugs over the winter for here spring growing where
she fills them with water and uses them to retain heat in the high tunnel.
Placing them between plants One touch of mine to the shop is the license
plate collection, somewhere along the line I started gathering old license plate that
I found around the ranch.
I found a website with the original colors and some of them I even repainted.
Ok, now with the shop looking a little better we can actually get something done.
The gator has been running a little rough lately, the idle has been running too low
of rpm and when it’s cold it doesn’t want to stay running, I'm afraid its the idle controller,
and will everything being electronic on it, including fuel injection, it may require a
trip to the john Deere dealer but one way I can check it here is to open up the engine
compartment and take a look at what is going on.
In order to get to the engine however we have to take off the cake feeder, removing the
connection to the battery and using the bobcat to slide it out of the back of the gator.
Once it’s out then I can take a look at the engine itself by raising the bed.
After consulting the internet, one culprit might be a fuel leak and although it might
have been an easier fix was a fuel leak, but after taking a look, there doesn’t seem
to be any fuel leaking anywhere.
So much for the easy fix.
Another thing that might be causing the issue is a clogged fuel filter.
I keep a cabinet full of fuel, oil and air filters for all the tractors and the gator.
And I think I might just have one.
Now to remove the old fuel filter.
It’s a high-pressure fuel system, so first we disconnect power to the fuel pump and run
the engine until the engine dies, taking the pressure off the line.
Then we remove the old fuel filter, which is kind of buried in here and replace it with
the new one.
After reconnecting the fuel pump, we can fire it up.
And we are still having the same issue, looks like it could be a failing fuel pump or maybe
it could be the idle controller.
It might just need a trip to the john Deere dealer after all.
Looks like it’s going to need some more investigation.
It’s always something, and this one gets put back on the list.
Luckily it is running, the idle is just low.
It’s not a detrimental situation and I can keep working on it as I have time.
I guess that’s how it goes, you win some you lose some.
At least the shop is cleaner.
Thanks for hanging out with me today and I had fun taking you around the shop and showing
you some of the history of things around here.
I struck out with the gator, but that’s ok.
Yak live to fight another day.
More on the way this week as Erin is all set to start planting her seedlings, getting ready
for some early spring gardening and transplanting in the high tunnel.
Coming up on Sunday we have another ranch video, this week featuring an animal here
on the ranch that doesn’t get a whole lot of attention but brings us a lot of joy.
The peacock.
Be sure to subscribe on our website to the herd report and we will see you soon, until
then have a great week and thanks for joining us in our Wyoming life.