Jack Of All Trades...

...and, unfortunately, master of none.Today, I put my mostly nonexistent carpentry and plumbing skills to work. My first project was this new haybox pictured above. The bottom is plywood with treated "feet" underneath and a hodge-podge of 1-bys and 2-bys for the side pieces. It was made completely out of wood that I already had here on the farm. Fortunately, the sheep don't care if the corners are square or the uprights plumb, which is a very good thing for me.

Then I moved into the cellar, aka "the dungeon" according to my 10 year-old son. First, I had to route a new discharge line for the sump pump. When I installed the pump, I ran the line out the door but this wasn't going to continue to work through the winter. It was a simple matter of going up to the ceiling and across and outside. No problems.

The second plumbing project was installing a check valve in the downstairs bathtub drain to prevent water from the washing machine from backing up into the tub. The check valve worked great but since the water couldn't flow up the bathtub drain it just backed up and overflowed the drain pipe behind the washer. Hmmmm... Apparently I've got a restriction in the line due to clogging or mineral buildup. When we moved here last year, the washing machine drain was plumbed into the floor drain in the cellar which I think runs into the stream. That was unacceptable so I plumbed it into the line for the dowstairs tub and opened up this new can of worms.

One of the problems I've discovered with old plumbing in old houses is that when you work on one section of pipe you often cause a leak somewhere else just by jiggling the pipe and putting tension on it. So now I've got a leak around the tub drain to deal with as well. Oh well, back to the hardware store tomorrow.

I also closed the sheep in the barns today in anticipation of separating the ewe lambs from their mothers and putting the ram in with the adult ewes for breeding. The hay box I made is going into the bachelorette quarters which is bedded and ready to go. We didn't make the move today, though, because there was a bitter cold rain blowing in from the northwest. If not tomorrow, then early next week. Sheep hormones are running wild here. The rams have worn the ground down to dirt pacing the fence line while watching the ewes.