We had a busy day here at Chavez Mountain Ranch. To start with, I finished tanning a bobcat that youngest son and I called in and shot back in Dec. Bobcat hides are worth about $300, but this was my first bobcat and I decided to have the hide tanned and keep it. Jan came and went, Feb flew by, and March was upon us with the cat still in the freezer. Rather than send the hide off and spend nearly $100 having it tanned professionally, I decided to try it myself. Cabela’s sells a tanning kit for $20 and after I applied my points, it was free. The tanning process went well, the skin is soft, doesn’t smell (except for a lanolin oil treatment), and it looks pretty good. The cat isn’t the prettiest I’ve ever seen, but there it is.
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| Tanned bobcat hide |
After this, I worked a little on our septic system. Several years ago we had major problems and I ended up putting an “Infiltrator” system. You can Google ‘em… They worked fine until this winter. Georgia was doing something outside and decided to check the water levels (via an access pipe). Much to our horror, instead of recording the typical 2-4” of water, she got nearly 2’ of water. We tried some treatments and nothing seemed to work. There was nothing to do but dig down and see what’s up.
Now, we have a backhoe here on the ranch, but ever since I seized it driving back from a neighbor’s (working on HIS septic system…) it hasn’t run well. Big surprise there. I’m surprised it runs at all! I got the thing fired up and managed to do a pretty good job of uncovering the end of the Infiltrators and then dug a long narrow ditch past that. When I popped the end off the Infiltrator (using the backhoe), water gushed out into my overflow ditch. After a few days of draining (and it drained well), I decided to extend the drainfield. At first I was going to use more Infiltrators but then I figured that all I really need is some overflow water drainage and I decided to just use standard perforated 4” pipe and plug it into the Infiltrator end (there’s a cut-out for that purpose in the end panel).
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| Behold! The Yellow Peril! |
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| Before the deluge |
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| A ditch well dug |
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| Could it Be?! It is!!! The Cave of Caerbannog!!! Careful... |
Before I could add the new pipe, though, I needed to dig a little more right at the Infiltrator end so that I could put 1-2’ of coarse lava rock underneath for better drainage. After manipulating the backhoe into position, I did my digging. I needed to get something from the house, so I left the backhoe running and did that. When I came back, the backhoe was smoking. A quick look told me that the fan wasn’t moving. Fortunately, it was a cool day, but I needed to get that backhoe off the hole fast- there’s nothing worse than trying to move a dead backhoe! I pulled every thing up and made a run for the parking space. Made it. Then I noticed the broken fan belt… This is not an easy fix on this tractor. You can’t just slip the belt over the fan, but have to remove a hydraulic pump first. Messy job. I know it will be. So, the backhoe’s been incapacitated, and I honestly don’t know if simply replacing the belt is going to breathe new life into it or not. I guess we’ll see.
Back to the hole... I installed 10’ of pipe on the Infiltrator, placing the new pipe on a 4” lava rock bed. I watched it for a week or two and very little water even made it that far which told me that the Infiltrator system was working well again after being drained. I installed another 10’ and watched it for several more weeks. Almost no water made it that far, so today I went ahead and put 20’ more pipe on, again on top of a lava rock bed. I’m going to wait to push the dirt back in until I get some of the black weed guard you put on flowerbeds. My hope is that the weed guard will keep dirt from working between my rocks while still allowing some moisture to breathe out. It can’t … wait… I hope it can’t hurt!
After getting that done, I went out for a drive on the ranch to look at stuff. I ended up cleaning out a stock tank and turning the well on. The tanks build up dirt, moss, and cow poo over the summer and it’s a good idea to clean them every year or two, otherwise the “stuff” will build up and reduce the tank capacity as well as harbor parasites.
Georgia, meanwhile was getting fired up for a new garden this spring. She tried using railroad ties to create a raised bed, but it just didn’t work well. Then she discovered using old stock tanks (the bottoms rust out) as a gardening bed. We have plenty of rusted out tanks, so she’s going to give that a try. But first, the old “garden” needed to be cleaned. We spent a few hours doing that, hauling out railroad ties and raking weeds. Most of the railroad ties went back to their former life as parking space makers in our driveways but quite a few were solid enough to be delegated for use as fence braces.
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| Ye Olde Garden Spotte |
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| Parking spaces along with a 1980 Toyota pickup that I bought new |
We also moved an old camper shell that the boys had been using as a “playhouse”. They discovered that spiders also liked the camper shell. Wondering what to do with the shell, I decided that it would make a really good R/C truck jump, so we moved it to our driving area and I used the skid steer to cover it with dirt. I’ll add some dirt to the sides and we’ll have a fun little “mountain” to drive and jump over.
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| Soon to be an R/C truck jump! |
That was about our day and I’d say it was a pretty typical day in [Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom voice on:] Life On The High Plains. [off]
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