Ohiofarmgirl'sAdventuresinTheGoodLand-where ya been? whatcha been doin

[Farmfresh]

Oh BOY did my house have some of THAT!

The old knob and tube was bad enough, but my house had people living in it for many, many years who thought if they needed a new outlet or new run of wiring the way to get that done was - scrape off the insulation off of an old wire (in the middle of a run), twist a hunk of new wire on the bald place and wrap on a bit of black tape - then off you go to a new location!

There was one place in my basement with 7 (!!!) such additions within a 1 foot section of old wire. How the place never burst into flames I will never know. If that was not bad enough we had blown in cellulose insulation surrounding brittle knob and tube in the walls and ceilings, a homemade central air conditioner compressor that looked like a big metal chicken coop and was operated with a hinged "Y" breaker handle (circa Frankenstein's monster) and one interior wall full of slimy wet insulation surrounding bald hot wires!!!

Old homes have such charm! :/

 

[lorihadams]

Good Lord woman! That is what makes me soooooo leery about buying an older home, but then there's a part of me that says, well, I could fix all that

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

the funniest thing was that the entire time we were there we were paranoid about the electric.. but when was had entirely moved out i left a light on.. and it started to over heat... and its a good thing that The Big Man went to turn it off or we WOULD have burned down the house!

hee hee hee

and yep - its all fixable... but i have to say.. having a house that retains the heat and doenst leak like a sieve is pretty good... not to mention the good ol' whole house air conditioning!

 

[Farmfresh]

Funny thing about ours was that we WERE scared to death of the old wiring, but in some ways it was safer than the new stuff.

One of the selling points to me was the NEW 220 amp breaker box and finished basement. Well at least I would not have to worry about that wiring - Right? The breaker box is perfectly fine but the basement wiring was horrible!! Two different times I ran into live wires laying unconnected to ANYTHING on the basement floor behind a wall. The first time I had a kitten crawl via a missing baseboard into the wall and when I reached back there to get her WHAM! Lucky I just brushed the loose wire or I would have been dead and also lucky the kitten didn't get it. Probably also lucky she went back there before the house caught fire.

Another time we were replacing a wall behind the basement toilet when I saw another wire end. This time I knew enough and hit the main breaker off before tracing it to the next live outlet. It was laying there on the sill plate behind the toilet (probably waiting to be turned into another outlet that never happened) live and ready to kill you with the first toilet overflow.

This is part of the reason I decided to learn how to wire. I figured I could not POSSIBLY be any worse than the guy who did that wiring!!!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

hey i think that guy did the wiring in OUR old house! hee hee hee

wowza!

me - electric is the only thing i wont do. i'm totally a big chicken. so i paid these two ol' boys to move a couple outlets and the overhead lights when we redid the kitchen. afterwards i felt like i coulda/shoulda done it myself.

oh well. one day i'll cowboy up and do it.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

Dudes. (note: under duress i revert to west coast slang)

i got a lard inflicted injury today. can you believe it?


Me (holds out hand to show my hubby): dude. they got me.

The Big Man: holy cow!!!

me: its just a flesh wound (i've always wanted to say that)

TBM: seriously - how'd you do that?

me: on the lard

TBM: but lard isnt sharp!

me: but its kinda slippery

TBM: do you require medical attention?

me: nope i poured tequila on it. (beats chest) i'm good.

i keep telling people that farming is dangerous. here's the hunk of semi-frozen lard-to-be that got me. note to self: them pigs is still tryin' to get me.

 

[big brown horse]

Dude!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

the forecast for today:

snow, snow more snow, chance that it WONT snow = 0%

dang. we might catch a break tomorrow and will hook up the sled and mush into civilization.

until then. sitting here cursing the pigs and the snow.

but wow the lard turned out great!

blunch today may just be: taters fried in lard

whoot!

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

how's the lard injury?

We're supposed to get (here anyway) 2 inches today, 2 inches tomorrow, 2-4 or 4-6 inches on Thursday and Friday....

We've decided today's a good day to have a big blazing fire outside....we're burning trash and scrap pieces of lumber left over from all our summer projects....

Maybe that will melt some of this dang snow!!

and I get to work on the inside of the chicken pen-which isn't that cold with the heat lamp and stuff....so we're good!

Except my call ducks are losing their thawed water, at least for now, because I yanked the heater out of their water tub....two of my calls have icicles hanging off their feathers.....it was like insta-freeze when they jumped out of the water....

had to bed them down with some straw....told them to be careful with that straw as since we don't know when this white mess will quit, everyone is on straw rations Gotta make what we got last, right?!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

exactly on the straw rations!

we put a straw bale (whole) in the duck garage and they stand up there and poop it all up.. which is making a HUGE difference in how dirty the straw on the ground is! it really helped.

you show that snow who's boss! burn baby burn!

i gotta take of my bandaid from the flesh wound. stupid lard. i was hoping i could use my 'mortal injury' as an excuse to recline on the couch like cleopatra... but that didnt work out.

;-)

stupid snow (kicks ground and sulks).....