Saturday's Work

 We had a very busy Saturday. I chopped up 5 pounds of chicken, a pound of carrots, 8 stalks of celery, mushrooms, and an onion and started another big pot of soup which will be served at the shower tomorrow.  As soon as that was simmering on the stove I left for the barn. Valiant needed a bale this morning but the skid steer wasn't back yet which meant the bucket had to be moved so the log splitter could be attached to the tractor for weight, then the bale spear attached to the tractor. Karin, Magda and Isaiah arrived to ride, below Mark is bringing out the bale for Valiant while Isaiah brings in Mika.

Magda brought in Missy and Karin brought in Sally.

Once the bale was moved Mark took off to cut down trees.

The site prep man arrived to check out the field and ended up measuring it with his lazer.

The truck was used as the tripod and the measurements were taken all over the field.

He is holding the target and the lazer mounted on his truck goes around and around until it hits the target. That shows how much land must be moved from the high point to the low point. I'm not sure exactly when they are going to start the site work but he is also going to build the drive going into the field to the barn.

I headed over to mom's house where Dan, Abram and Levi were hard at work pulling wire from the solar panels to the inverters. The picture below is of the wire heading up to the rooftop where Abram and Levi were working.

Below are just a few tools needed for this big job.

Dan would head down the basement to the utility room where he had already installed the inverters to grab the wire and hook them up.

Above are the inverters and below Dan is working on attaching the wire.

Dan is also installing special batteries just in case of a power outage the power from CILCO will transfer immediately to the batteries. She will not even know there has been a power outage.

Dan sells this system called Liberty PAC 24V 7KWH for $2000.00 (that may be just for the batteries as they are very strong and last for YEARS). When hooked up to a solar system the house can be off grid but when hooked up to the batteries and the power company it is even better than a generator. His company name is Meister Brother. IF interested in this though you will need to call Dan direct and he can tell you everything you would need to know. His phone number is: 309-208-4957. Dan had left the door open at mom's going into her balcony. There are no flies out yet, mom didn't have to worry about flies making themselves at home instead it was dogs coming in.

Both Diesel and Emma decided to come inside.

When I got home the transient neighbors were extremely noisy. There was a huge flock of starlings landing in the pond pasture and on all the trees. The tree branches were filled with chattering birds. 

The camera could only capture a fraction of them, there really were thousands. Jacob delivered the skid steer late morning. Below Mark is getting ready to drive it down into the barn.

Jacob's 2 boys had to take some time to play on the hay.

This afternoon Quint came out to figure out the water supply to the new barn. We are thankful for his ideas. Mark talked to him and showed him our plans while I started the taco meat, defrosting 6 pounds of hamburger and browning it. Most of it will be used for the Sceggel dinner but some was served in a taco salad for our supper. All the laundry was also done today. Galena's udder was checked this evening. It is filling up but no waxing yet. She isn't due for 17 days. It would be wonderful if she would deliver before I need to leave on the 20th, exactly 14 days from today. She is huge and kind of muddy and will need a good groom but not today I was just too busy. The video below was taken when she had her first foal. I had open heart surgery a few months before and was not allowed to pull because of my chest being wired shut. Galena was having trouble and I had to call Mark out to help. I was very thankful he was able to get that big foal out.  

I'm sure glad tomorrow is Sunday, I'm more than ready for a day of rest.