It was another to-do list day, and I didn’t manage to make some progress on some things, so that was good.
I filled up the diesel can with fuel, put of my car tools in my CNG van (So I could disassemble the picnic table if needed when I went to pick it up), got a load of wood chips for my mom, which were a significant pain in the butt to unload because my trailer hookups no longer charged the battery in the dump trailer, so the battery was dead.
I grabbed one of the batteries that I had charged from the garage, but that didn’t last even long enough to dump the load. So I grabbed another battery, but that one didn’t even last more than a handful of seconds. So I grabbed I think a third battery, and that one only lasted maybe 10 seconds?
Apparently the batteries aren’t very good. 😅
Finally I got my good jump box, and did it just fine. 🥳
It was touch and go for a bit because I was on a little bit of a hill trying to dump from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill, and so I had to keep lowering the trailer all the way down, or almost all the way down, in order to be able to drive forward without spinning the tires because I’ve never fixed the four-wheel drive on my truck.
The biggest success of the whole operation I think was actually the fact that I only took 6 minutes to back the trailer around the crazy tight corner by the garden and then back the other 90° onto the driveway.
I figured that would have taken me 30 minutes because I’m pretty crappy, sometimes, at backing up a trailer.
After getting that done, I hopped in the CNG van and headed to Springdale to fill Up the fuel tank. Amazingly, it did really well. It shifted super hard into reverse from park, but the entire drive after that, it was great.
I need to find the receipt for when I had the work done on the tranny to see if it’s still possibly under warranty. I haven’t even driven the thing probably less than 200 miles since I got the tranny rebuilt. It’s just been sitting because it had the CNG issue.
After filling with CNG, I drove to Fayetteville and bought the picnic table from the guy off of Marketplace. Once home, I managed to unload it and set it up myself. It’s one of those folding kind that you can get from U-line. It’s not in the greatest shape, but it’s fully functional, so it’ll be good for the fathers and sons outing that the kids in the ward are going to have here.
After that, I borrowed Jim’s pressure washer and pressure washed all the sap and green stuff off the CNG van. It’s been sitting for a long time underneath trees, so it took quite a bit of effort to get the gunk off. Amazingly, it’s still not all the way off, but at least it looks A lot nicer now.
I’ll be putting an ad up for it here shortly.
Sell. Sell. Sell. 🙃
Oh! I forgot to mention that as I was coming back this morning from getting the wood chips for My mom, as I was pulling into the gate, there was a big great pyrenees and a goldendoodle trotting toward our gate from having been wandering inside our property. Looks like they had gone down to the creek, as they were all wet.
Having flashbacks to the two hill dogs that we lost a couple years ago who ran off and got hit by cars together, instead of letting them just wander wherever they were going, I coaxed them up our driveway and put them in our dog run.
No collars… No identification…
Maybe they have chips…
So when I was coming back from getting the picnic table, instead of going right home, I started driving through the dirt roads in the hills that surround where we are, knocking on doors, trying to find somebody who might know where the dogs belonged.
But no dice. Nobody even answered the door at any of the houses that I went to, I don’t think.
Before heading home, I went over to the trailer place where I bought my dump trailer and was able to find the part that I needed for the broken rear-door retainer. 🥳
I came home and disassembled the new one because I didn’t need the whole thing for the repair, and didn’t want to weld for that matter because I don’t know how, and then helped Andres with chicken and livestock stuff for a little bit before heading down to work on clearing the property.
Even though it was a crazy windy day, they gave me burn permits. 😅 So I proceeded to light the big brush pile that’s been sitting there for probably a month down in the lower pasture. And then I lit a couple more brush piles from sunday’s work on fire.
I spent more time clearing, and I spent time taking down the fence posts that’s jutting out from the area where we’re going to be keeping livestock. After Jim got home from work stuff, he brought the tractor over and helped me finished getting the posts taken care of, and he also moved a bunch of stuff that was cut down into the brush piles.
Really making some good progress. 🙂
After The fence removal, the burning of brush and clearing of more brush and trees and whatnot, I headed back out to try and find the owners of the dogs. This time I was able to catch lots of people home because I waited until after regular work hours to go, but still, nobody knew whose they were.
🤔
I stopped off to say hello to Joe on the way home, and I told him about the dogs, and he volunteered to take them over to the vet in the morning to see if they have chips and/or see if the vet recognized them at all.
That’s super helpful! Thank you, Joe!!!
He also mentioned that he’s putting in a new fence and is a little concerned about a couple of the really huge dead oak trees either falling over or having large limbs break off and smash the fence that he’s about to have put in. Definitely a valid concern, so I’ve got that on my radar because he’s having the fence built in less than a week, I think, and those are huge oak trees that are going to be no joke to take down.
I’ll need to talk to Jim and Ramona to figure out what to do. Not looking forward to taking down that size tree. Massive massive effort there.
After chatting with Joe, I went back to some of the burn piles to pile up the branches and logs that didn’t finish burning in their first go round. Hopefully I got them piled up well enough that they will burn through the night without leaving many leftovers.
🤞
Ate dinner. Mom went out and got some food for the dogs, so we had the dogs. Found out that apparently I did all the work necessary to get the data I needed to submit my sales taxes for February, but apparently I didn’t submit them, so I ended up getting those done and paying the fairly large fine for being late.
It was super late, but by that point, I didn’t want to risk forgetting March as well, so I went ahead and got all the data together and verified and submitted to the state–paying both months’ sales tax bills and the fine.
I got an email replied to that’s been a thorn in my side for… months?
And gratefully, the company that issued me the bond for the VW was willing to renew it at no charge. Arkansas requires you to through the bonding process within 30 days of buying the bond, which I hadn’t done because I was still holding out hope that the woman would actually be helpful and just get me a duplicate title.
But no… No such luck.
So, I’m extra grateful to the bond company for their willingness to do that without charging me again. 🙏
So… that was the day!
Love to all!
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 