The Hot Water Heater Eruption

 On Saturday, August 19, our hot water heater erupted. Our hot water heater is on a platform at the highest point of our two story house... for a reason. Johnny had it plumbed for solar originally and also for the hot water from the wood stove downstairs. Since hot water rises, the water warmed by the wood stove circulates upward to the tank, theoretically lowering our electric bill. The cooler water at the bottom of the tank circulates downward to be pre-heated by the wood stove. This time of year, that's a moot point.

I was watering in the greenhouse when I heard a thump which I assumed was Johnny doing something. He also heard it and thought a bird had hit a window. He went outside and saw water gushing out of the roof. He hollered. I went upstairs and saw water gushing out of the hot water heater, all over the floor and everything on it... which in my messy office is a lot of stuff.

So that began the Great Hot Water Heater saga. He hollered for me to turn off the hot water heater circuit breaker. He turned the water off and hooked up a hose to drain the tank safely out the upstairs window into the back yard. We mopped up the flood upstairs and rescued what was being soaked. 

And Johnny investigated what had happened. He says the lower heating element had blown out of the tank. It was an 80 gallon tank so there was a lot of water... 80 gallons worth. We were lucky to be home and inside when it happened! If we'd been gone for the day our whole house would have been flooded and I dread to think what would have happened when the still plugged in tank ran out of water to heat. After some gratefulness time, and a lot of cleaning up, we tried to find another 80 gallon tank to replace this one, installed new in 2010.

After much searching on the internet and finding only horrendously expensive tanks, Johnny went to town... and learned that nobody sells 80 gallon tanks anymore because they are "dangerous". They are still made but are "boilers", not hot water heaters. And not for installation in homes. So he bought a 50 gallon tank.

And then commenced the Great Tank Remodeling Project. But first the old heater had to come out. Happily we have friends and neighbors who are big and strong and volunteered to help. I did not watch the proceedings so do not know how they managed except Johnny said they had no problem. He had built a wooden platform from ladder to tank cupboard to see what had happened to cause the tank eruption and also, when he deemed it was not repairable, to cut four pipes holding it in place and the electric wire. That wooden structure served as a platform to get the old heater out and to a place where the two big guys could get it down. We opened the big window at the foot of the stairs and put up a wooden ramp to slide the heater down.

Then Johnny went to work remodeling the new heater to accommodate the solar and wood stove connections.Those same strong friends returned to put the new tank into place. Photos show the scene...

It takes a lot of tools to perform surgery on a hot water heater

the banished 80 gallon hot water heater

 It's very nice to have hot water again. But the upstairs is still full of tools and ladders, because Johnny says he is "not quite done" messing with the new heater. Sigh.

Summer Wrap Up and Trail Camera Photos

 Black Oystercatcher monitoring season is over. The Road's End nest successfully fledged their one chick. I was never able to find any BLOY at Cape Kiawanda so who knows if any nested there. My big toenails fell off and finally healed and have new nails growing in. My hips that were overworked with all this hiking steep trails have improved and only scream occasionally. 

Meanwhile, back on the home front, Johnny finished putting up the high fences around our 4 fields, with gates we can open to let the wild things through. I put up a couple trail cameras to see what wild things we have. That has been exciting! Here's a sampling...

Well, I set one up first to catch whatever had been raiding our strawberry bed and eating all the strawberries, even though they were covered with mesh. Naturally, it was a raccoon. 

 

 

We weighted the mesh down with firewood. That seemed to work. Then the strawberries ended and I moved the trail camera down to a path where we had been seeing little scats full of berries and suspected the gray foxes were back. We got horse and dog and deer... plus eye shine at night from something or other.

 

I moved the trail camera to the horse paddock which is unoccupied at night, has horse and dog during the day. Eureka! I like the fuzzy antlers on this young buck...

a bigger buck...

But there was the problem of where to aim the camera to get a low animal like a fox or a tall animal like a deer... and to avoid gates and railings and bushes...

Doing better! But what I wanted was a fox... Camera is still too high...

 The reason we love the gray foxes is because they eat rodents... and not chickens. They are pretty small and so eat small things. And they climb trees!

 

Success! Black tip to the tail tells me it's a Gray Fox

 

Then I found some bigger scat I could not identify in the arboretum. So I set up a second trail camera along the deer path behind our A field. And captured a spotted fawn. I have now moved that camera to the open gate behind the B field, since that's the only way the deer and everything else can get into that field, thanks to the new very high fences, and jump from there to the A or C fields, over lower fences.

 

Meanwhile, back in the horse paddock, the fox was still moving through...

 

And so were the deer...

I look forward to seeing what the trail cameras find in the future. In another month, the bears should start showing up...

Where Did July Go?? Or... Our Amazing Grandchildren

 

Where did July go?? The highlights of the month seem to have revolved around grandchildren. No, they did not visit nor did we... but technology is a wonderful thing and we enjoyed a Zoom concert by Kestrel singing and playing guitar and Cedrus accompanying him on the piano... his new piano. The occasion was a request from me for Grandmother's Day (a fictitious holiday I made up). Kestrel sang "Imagine" at my request. He also sang a Portuguese song that he has sung locally at an open mike. Cedrus is simply amazing on the piano and gets more amazing every time we hear him. There must be some incredibly fortuitous combination of musical genes on all sides of the family... generations removed. Those genes skipped right over Johnny and me.

Those same two kids then spent weeks in the Boston area at camps. These were not your ordinary summer camps. Kestrel's was a young writer's workshop at Bard College at Simon's Rock. 

 https://simons-rock.edu/academics/beyond-the-classroom/young-writers-workshop/

Kestrel has been writing novels since he was a little kid. This camp was like a coming out party for 16-year-old Kestrel. The introvert became extroverted and now has many long distance friends from camp and a whole new way of looking at story writing. Plus, he spent every weekend at nearby theaters with others from his camp watching incredibly well-acted plays. One of the plays was the best acted play Kestrel said he has ever seen... the seldom performed Shakespeare play, Henry VI Part 2. He was so inspired that he is now writing "Clyde V" -- in iambic pentameter!

 Plus, on a less happy note, he got Covid. That gave him another set of friends since all the Covid kids (there were 15 of them) were isolated from the rest of the camp for the last week of the three week camp. And Kestrel became friends with all of them. Thanks to modern technology and smart phones, Kestrel is keeping in touch with his new found friends. 

 

Meanwhile Cedrus was at an arts camp, Snow Farm, for two of those same weeks, taking ceramics plus painting and drawing. 

 https://www.snowfarm.org/

 

 

Cedrus, 14, whom I have considered to be an extrovert since birth, tells me that he is an ambivert... and his mother agrees. (I had to look up ambivert.) Whatever, he is extraordinarily good with people and now has a pile of 14-18 year old friends, all of whom were as excited about the arts as is he. I think that was one thing both mostly home-schooled boys were amazed at... how many young people share their passions. Although Cedrus has been drawing and painting forever, he had never done ceramics and was thrilled to learn. And in the drawing and painting side, he said he learned how to create the same thing he has before but in a different way. 

Plus he did a metal smithing workshop where he got to make rings from a sheet of copper with a blowtorch. What young teen wouldn't love that? 

Cedrus is very happy that one of the friends he made at camp lives just 20 minutes away from where he lives in California. (Most of the others were from the Boston and Springfield areas of Massachusetts.) Serendipity! 

Munazza had found and arranged for these incredible camps and accompanied the kids to Boston at the beginning of Kestrel's camp, then hung out with Cedrus for that first week exploring Boston. When Cedrus started camp a week after Kestrel, she flew home. Two weeks later, Steve flew to Boston to accompany the kids back to California. What a busy summer!

Our grandson in Washington is having a busy summer, too. Kevin and Jessica's son has been working all summer for a CPA (and part time during the school year). Ian is a business student at a Univ. of Wash. business school. Just this week he flew to a convention in Las Vegas for an honorary organization he belongs to:

 

 Ian found time (while driving) to phone us when he returned and tell us a bit about his Las Vegas adventure. His chapter of this Accounting Honor Society is from Univ. of Wash. Bothell. Ian is vice president of that chapter. To join a student has to have 3.0 GPA, be in a certain selection of majors, plus have a certain number of community service hours and professional hours. Ian has all of that.

This convention focused on professional development, chapter development, and networking. The University paid for it. Ian graduates in June and will take the CPA exam right after graduation. It is a four part exam that has to be taken all at once... and, he was told, there is a 98% chance that everyone who takes it will fail one part.  Whew.

Ian is my usual partner on treks to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. However he is so busy now that I've asked him to just find a weekend to come to the farm and hang out with us. Hopefully, he'll be able to squeeze that in before school starts again. In the best of all worlds, Kevin's partner Kellin will be able to come with him. Kellin is an artist and an animal person, especially dogs, something that is much more like me than art or music or business sense! 

Grandkids, my father once told me, stretch us to learn about worlds we never knew existed. How right he was.

CATCHING UP

On June 1st, I hiked with friend Ruth up Cascade Head from Knight Park. The goal was to check for Black Oystercatchers (BLOY) at the one site I can see from that trail. Usually, I drive in from Hwy 101 on a forest service road, but that road washed out two years ago and I haven't been able to get in since. 

The hike up is long and steep but we did get to where I can see north to the nesting area... where there were no BLOY in sight.

 

 

The views from that trail are lovely, though. The Thumb, where I mostly monitor BLOY, is visible in this photo, with the rocks where the BLOY nest below and to the right (west):

 

 

 The hike down was painful and taught me a painful lesson: trim toenails before hiking down steep trails and wear snug hiking boots. I had done neither. As a result, I have been mincing around in roomy crocs and fat socks to cushion my very black and blue and painful big toes. 

But life goes on and I was able to do my usual pick up hay bales and put them on the hay wagon for Johnny to stack. And then put them from wagon onto hay elevator. Friend Mary drove the tractor.  Photos in a previous blog post.

The BLOY at Road's End still needed monitoring on the weeks when co-monitor Casey could not go. So I minced my way up the steep trail on June 9th and saw the one chick that Casey had reported finding.The adult is on the left side of the photo. The chick is on the right side facing away.

 

On June 11th a friend from Washington and his two Japanese exchange students visited and I hiked them through our woods that had not had trails cleared yet this year. It was very brushy. We all survived but I vowed to clear trails. On June 24th, I mowed arboretum and woodland trails, got the mower stuck and had to get Johnny to help get me unstuck.

The garden has been difficult thanks to the weather and my sore feet. But I made compost mounds in the garden for corn, also for cucumbers, and  planted a line of pumpkins around the perimeter in the one strip Johnny managed to till, sort of. I replanted tomatoes in tires every few days as they died. Some of them are finally taking off and looking like they may live... and hopefully someday produce tomatoes. It's a tough year.

The hooves on Nightingale, our one surviving horse, have been getting long and I've been either too sick, too busy, or too sore to trim them. So I put on very big, very sturdy boots and worked on her fronts June 16. That changed the angle of her pasterns dramatically and she was walking tenderly on hard ground for a few days. On June 24, I attempted the rear hooves but managed only to even them up a bit... they have been breaking off unevenly but hopefully will wear down evenly now.

Meanwhile, Johnny has been busy with a pile of projects. I'll try to get to some of those in another blog post. And we both still do Ren Yuan (a form of Qi Gong) on Sunday morning with a group of friends... a great way to start the week emotionally and physically.

Tomorrow, June 26, I'm off to The Thumb again, with toes still recovering. Casey could not find the chick last week, so I'm hoping it was just in hiding and will reappear tomorrow. Hope springs eternal, as my mother always said...

 

The Hay Is In The Barn!

 The hay is in the barn! And in wheelbarrows, loose... Baler was not terribly cooperative. The best thing about haying this year (besides the fact that it's done) was the cooperative weather... no rain and not too hot. However the nutty weather earlier... endless rain followed by freezing cold and no moisture at all... created rock hard soil that kept the lotus from getting as lush and tall as we would have liked. As unpredictable as the weather this year has been, maybe it will surprise us and give us rain this summer and a second cutting in the fall. Well, I can dream.

Although I sure don't want to buck more bales and they don't hop magically into the barn loft. I am compensating for the diminished bale count by opening up more areas for the goats to browse. We need their help in keeping brush down anyway, because of fire danger. Photos of the hay operation, when I remembered to take them... totally out of order...

Johnny mowing the B field (2nd of 4 fields)

The herd who eat all that hay

The herd out on brush control duty

The traditional jumping the last bale: the takeoff

the jump start

...in the air...

and the landing!

First day friend Mary drove the tractor. She had always wanted to drive a tractor and thoroughly enjoyed it. That was a great help for us. I pick up bales and put them on the wagon, Johnny stacks.

Johnny baling the South field (4th of 4 fields)

Mary on her first day... grinning like crazy

Johnny spent more than one day repairing the baler

I guess I never did get a photo of Johnny raking. And the first photos should have been of him repairing the mower... that was quite an undertaking. The rake and baler are ours but we borrow the mower from a neighbor. It always needs repairs. This year one of the discs had to be replaced... Johnny finally found a suitable replacement part: a cast iron frying pan...

I told the story here: 

https://lindafink.blogspot.com/2023/05/johnnys-farm-projects.html

post script:

Johnny, never one to let a piece of machinery defeat him, spent the better part of two days, after haying was "over", trying to figure out why the knotter on the baler didn't work right. He eventually succeeded and rebaled all the broken bales and loose hay. Three days after the alleged end of haying, we put those last 9 bales into the barn.

A Spectacular First Day of June

In what will likely be my last attempt to monitor Black Oystercatcher nests on Cascade Head, friend Ruth and I hiked up the Nature Conservancy trail from Knight Park. It was a beautiful day, but I found no sign of BLOY. And destroyed my feet and hips in the process. I learned a valuable lesson: cut your toenails before hiking a steep trail. Continually ramming my big toes against the end of my shoes on steep downhill grades resulted in a black and blue toe and much pain.

But the views were lovely...

 

First Black Oystercatcher Monitoring Trip of the Season

 Since 2005, I've been monitoring Black Oystercatchers on the Oregon Coast for various agencies. Eight years ago Portland Audubon took over the largely abandoned project, kept going only by volunteers who didn't stop monitoring even though there was no agency using our data. I kept monitoring but did skip out one year for various reasons, but mostly because of changing access to my sites. Now the access issues are even worse since the road I drove into Cascade Head washed out year before last, so I could not monitor there at all. This year I hope to hike in and at least monitor the closest Cascade Head site. As of last year, I have another monitor to take turns doing the long hike into The Thumb at Road's End. That hike is getting to be too much for this old body, so who knows how much longer I'll be doing this. 

Yesterday, Monday, May 22, I made the two mile trek up to The Thumb, with the help of my trusty ski pole to lean on. It turned out to be very worthwhile.

My co-monitor, Casey, who is younger and more athletic, had hiked in twice earlier in May but seen no BLOY nesting activity. Yesterday, the BLOY cooperated for me. 

Not seen or heard at first, I finally heard a quiet call and then saw a BLOY preening on the east side, the side I can see from The Thumb, of what I call Middle Rock. It is a long look and I use binocs to spot the birds, then my camera to document their location. Scanning the rock, I found a bird setting. It stayed in that place a long time which told me it was almost certainly on a nest. I took photos and will just let them tell the story (in captions). (I had North and South mixed up in my original post, so have now corrected it.)

Almost there! The Thumb is visible between trees.

A view north to Cascade Head

A whole cliff side of these flowers were in bloom.

This is Middle Rock, where BLOY have long nested.

A BLOY sitting for long periods means a nest. Thank goodness for that red bill.

This is South Rock where BLOY have also nested.

A BLOY was here on sentry duty, but looking not toward the traditional South Rock nest area, but rather toward Middle Rock. I think it is the other half of the Middle Rock nesting pair.

The long view showing South Rock on the left and Middle Rock on the right with "Back" or "Black" rock behind it

.

Having found the setting BLOY, I just let my camera take frame after frame in hopes it will capture any happenings, which it did. Way too far for me to see even with binoculars.

Second bird showed up in bottom right quadrangle of this photo. Nesting bird top left quadrangle very near the top of the photo.

I did not know about this until I got home and saw the photos on the computer. Nesting bird is putting more pebbles next to her egg.

Egg barely visible here. Bird with pebble in her bill.

Gathering another pebble. And now the egg is visible!

I have never documented pebble additions after egg laying before. Never knew it happened!

Here is the aftermath of a nest exchange. One bird leaving, one bird about to settle down on the egg.

Mission accomplished (almost two hours after arriving), I left. On my way out, this Gray Jay was grooming for quite some time, ignoring my attempts to get a photo. It finally held still long enough.

 

  BLOY usually lay 3 eggs, so the story has just begun. Thank goodness my co-monitor, Casey, will be going up next time. My aging legs could use a rest!