Lorihadams-- hi guys...been busy!

[Quail_Antwerp]

I hope it's nothing major with the lawn mower. E said it sounds like you may have burned the clutch up and is it a Craftsman? (dunno why brand makes a difference, he just asked) or he said it could have knocked a belt off or there may be a shear pin broke off. He said it could be anything.

I hope you sell your ducks! they are super cute, especially that spotty looking one!

 

[lorihadams]

It is a cub cadet SLTX 1054. I dunno. All I know is that it runs but the PTO won't engage at all and I pulled an 18 inch stick out of the thing. There's so much tree litter in the yard and pasture from the storm this past weekend that I just missed that one.

Chad said he will jack it up and see if it is something he can fix himself. I hope so!

As for the ducks, I hope she takes them all I'll miss my 2 chocolates cause they were some of the first batch of runners I ever had. As she gets older she keeps getting more and more white feathers every time she molts. She is a mean mama though!

 

[Wannabefree]

It does sound like a broken belt lori. My FIL had one of those mowers and he broke several belts on his. Not too hard to fix either. So hope that is it!

 

[lorihadams]

I hope so! Hubby is gonna kill me! Good thing I got him a bunch of extra work today, huh?

 

[Wannabefree]

Aww it'll be fine. Make his favorite for dinner though, just in case

 

[lorihadams]

Yay!!!! hubby got $500 in jobs for today from my CL ad and I somehow managed to knock the tension spring completely off on one side...the belt is knicked in one place but it'll hold for a while. He got out the air compressor and pumped up the tires and cleaned the air filter and all underneath the deck to make sure nothing else was amiss....took about 30 minutes to take everything apart and fix it and put it back together again. I finished up the pasture last night before I milked.

Got to talk to my brother last night, he and his husband just got back from the Bahamas visiting BIL's mother. The funny thing was that as soon as she heard the hurricane was gonna hit them she got on a flight to NYC to visit some friends and then when she got word that the hurricane was gonna hit NYC she jumped back on a plane and flew back to the Bahamas....my brother and BIL actually beat her home by a day. They had a nice little mini vacation and after telling my children all about Atlantis last night they now want to go to the Bahamas.

So today I'm doing laundry before I have to go run some errands for hubby. He has 6 packages of t-shirts to mail out but the printer is out of ink so I have to go get the envelopes from the post office and bring them back home to pack everything up so he can ship it after he prints out the thank you letters to go in them. Their first hunt is Saturday and he is not going. He opened up the trailer last night and it looks like a hurricane went through it. One of his business partners was the last to use it and didn't do anything but throw everything in there all willy nilly. Does he actually wonder why we now need new equipment??? I could smack him.

He is seriously considering doing lawn care/light tree work with his "brother" on the side and getting out of it completely after this year. In addition to the $500 in jobs he got yesterday his brother also got word that the guy accepted their bid of $800 from this past weekend too so that's $1300 they will split in straight profit this week. They made enough in little jobs for $25-50 this past weekend to pay for all their gas for the vehicles and chainsaws and other supplies. He said he may go buy a new rake and pole saw today but that won't be much.

He said that he wanted to use some of the money to put a new table top on his nanny's patio table that my DS jumped through and broke. We cut a piece of wood to fit it and it is just ghetto looking....we want a piece of plexiglass to go on it.

Even if they only do one or two jobs every weekend that's still a couple hundred extra dollars every week. It adds up quickly. He is thinking of maybe doing leaf removal in the fall and some limb trimming stuff too and possibly mowing some smaller lawns. It could work out. He is taking his cousin's business cards to hand out to anyone that has bigger jobs cause he does tree work for a living and is insured so it is helping him out too.

I have mixed feelings about him leaving the company cause he has been building this thing for the last 6 yrs. We haven't turned a profit yet but are steadily breaking even every year. We would have made a profit last year but the weather screwed us up and we had to cancel hunts.

He's very good at it but he just has lousy partners....he does all the work and they show up to hunt. It's ridiculous.

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

Glad you got the mower fixed.

I'm thinking there must be $ to be made in yard work Our neighbor up the road started his own "Farmboy Lawn Care" business last year. His fee starts out at $20 for a small lot and goes up based on size of your yard. He has managed to buy a new riding lawn mower, a used truck and trailer, and recently, a used car for his wife and he's only in his second year of it.

I told E that the $20 lots must be a super tiny in town lot!

 

[lorihadams]

He's doing a job tonight on a 1/4 acre lot in the city. She has no major damage but lots of small branches in the yard and leaves everywhere. She wanted the sticks picked up and the yard raked....$100. Another one is a big poplar that needs to come down as it is leaning and that one is $800 but is at least $1000 cheaper than any other estimate the guy got. Another is for $225 and I think is a couple of bradford pears that got hammered, and another is for $175 that is some minor trimming and debris removal.

If you have a trailer and a place to haul the tree trimmings to (we have an empty spot in uncle's field where cousin puts his tree trimmings from his business to season for firewood later) you can make a good bit of money just hauling away debris that the city trash won't touch.

I was out hanging laundry and there is this bunch of weeds growing in the corn patch that have pinkish stems and are covered in thorns but are starting to flower with these tiny little bellish flowers in little spires. I kept hearing this buzzing and I looked over and there are hundreds of my honey bees all over the stuff!!! You can actually see the pollen falling off when they land on it....I took some pictures but here is the best one

I also got a good picture of maddie with Tonka yesterday that I wanted to share and a couple more of the waterpark

 

[TanksHill]

Hey Lori, one thing that came to mind. Chad granny's table. You might want to price glass, vs plexi vs a new table. My fil had a table blow over. They replaced with plexi. It was really spendy. Then it got a funny color and sagged in the middle. I have the table now so its holding up but looks kinda icky compared to the one with glass.

Cute pics of the kids.

G

 

[lorihadams]

Really??? We'll price out the tempered glass...I hope my children decide never to do another WWE move through it again

Chad called a little while ago and told me that he didn't know when he was going to be home that he picked up another job today from the CL ad I placed.

My children are driving me nuts and after they got into a fight I told them that if they got into a fight again they would both spend the rest of the night in their rooms. 30 seconds later they're hitting each other. So now they are only allowed to come out to go to the bathroom and take a bath later after I milk the goat and to be honest they haven't really gotten that dirty today so I may just skip the bath altogether, send them to bed early and make a cup of tea. I have a book to finish before we go to the library tomorrow.

Today is my BF's birthday and she has orientation tonight for her students at the school. She told hubby to cook a lasagna and thaw out a key lime pie and have it ready when she walked in the door I got her a cute card when I went out today and put a bag of skittles in it and left it by the back door for her.

I had to run some errands and now I just want to relax but I have to milk the goat and get the critters put up in a little bit. I also apparantly forgot to cut the frost free outdoor spigot off this morning at 7:30am....I discovered it on at 4pm today. I'm so aggrivated with myself. At least there is a nozzle on the end of the hose and water wasn't pouring all over all day long. Would have made my ducks really happy...wonder if it will do anything to my electric bill? What happens when you leave a spigot running but the water doesn't leave the hose?