Daylight Big Boy

Well, the ten point showed up today in the daylight. First time I have seen him during the day since he was in velvet. This may not pose so well for him come Monday. Nocturnal bucks shouldn't start playing in daytime hours during gun season. It also means that Dad may actually get his moment of seeing the deer when he comes here. Of course, John will be mad if you throw things off for his hunting Monday. We only got about three inches of snow overnight. It was done by morning. I put extra deer food out. I have to feed the deer with the crooked tail fawns. She got injured somehow, and probably isn't with us anymore, but I promised that I would look after the two of them. The were late fawns, so they are more susceptible in the winter.

Second Time Around

The second rut is going. That basically means that the little dudes get their chance to breed. Apparently, this six point won the breeding rights for this. He has been here a few times with different does. The big boys, I am assuming, are back across the road. It will be interesting to see if they make another appearance around our place or not.

Rough Being Wrangler

I think that it was really nice of us to buy Wrangler a new couch. As you can see, he really enjoys lounging around on it. Apparently, the little playing in the snow he did today wore him out. This is how he spent most of his night.

More Pictures

Here are some pictures with better lighting. I included the picture of the driveway and some pictures of finches eating at the feeders.

Morning View

This is the view we had this morning. What was supposed to be flurries ended up being two inches of snow. Dave is here this morning doing what he can until the rest of the stone arrives. Due to the weather, that will be coming later today. Dave said the roads aren't snow cover that they are covered in black ice which is much worse of course. Leo had a government car this morning which is the car he is cleaning off in the above picture. They are calling for another inch or two of snow come Thursday. Too bad Anthony wasn't here. He could actually get to see the snow he missed last year.

Slight Chance of Snow

The call for tonight was a 30 percent chance of flurries and occassional snow showers. Well, that turned out to be 100% chance of snow showers. It has been snowing most of the night. I noticed earlier that it was accumulating a little bit. I just looked a few minutes ago and there is an inch plus out there. So much for that little chance of snow. We still aren't in a watch or anything like that, so I am assuming that this should be over relatively shortly. We aren't supposed to get snow again for a few days. I don't know how much of this will melt as it is supposed to be around the freezing mark for the next few days. Dave is supposed to put the stone around tomorrow. This shouldn't stop that plan from taking place. It will just slow things down a little bit I think.

The Pole Barn Saga Continued

Well, the floor to the garage looks good. The concrete guys were here until 5:15AM Friday to finish the job. I learned a lot about concrete floors and the process that goes into dealing with concrete. Once a job is started, you have to follow all the steps in order. You just can't go and come back the following day. Things need to be done when they are ready, or you stand the chance of the floor cracking or being unlevel. We spent part of the early morning hours watching deer. It definitely was one of the nicer dealings in the building of the garage. The color swatch arrived today, and it is the color we ordered, but as Leo saw today light makes a big different on how the color looks. What we did realize is that the garage wasn't built to our specifications. The garage doors were supposed to be offset giving us storage on the side. They built it equal all the way across. Leo is still deciding what he will do. Monday the bay doors will be installed. Either Monday or Tuesday, Dave, the excavator, will be here to put the stone down and re-grade the driveway. Luckily, there was a lot of stone left over from the concrete floor, and the concrete guys did a good job distributing it, so there is less that Dave needs to do.

Update....upon further review of the plans that were sent to Leo, the garage was built to the specs the blueprints were set. Leo didn't look at them real well when he got them. Now, he has decided that he likes the equal bay look better anyway and we still have plenty of storage out there, so we are keeping it as is.

On a Lighter Note.

Many of you are aware of the hunting saga that has been taken place here. John has taken the most of this week off to hopefully bag a big deer. Now we haven't seen any of the big boys for weeks. That was until today. Earlier today the cement guys made a comment about the big deer we have. I asked if they had seen one and they proceed to tell me that there is one across the street right now. Sure enough I look and the ten point is chasing a doe right next to the ditch across the road. They head down right towards where John stand is. Now, I think John may have him because I know John has been sitting in that stand for two days. Well, I look over and here comes John from the hunting area behind his house. I call over there and he hurries across the street. The deer are gone by the time he gets there. He stays out there for hours in the rain, but no deer come. Well, tonight we have all the big boys in our backyard. Even got to witness a two deer fighting and locking antlers. In case you are wondering, I bought a spotlight so we could see such events. Well the deer are still up there. It seems that they are spending the night. I called over to John to let him know. The good thing about this is that they seem like they are going to be heading in different directions come morning, so it shouldn't matter which stand John goes. We will see what happens. Hopefully tomorrow someone's head will be heading to the taxidermist.

Pole Barn Saga

Well, the pole barn started out well. On Tuesday, they got the outside structuring done. Leo took pictures since he was off from work. Yesterday, was when everything went downhill. I knew we were in trouble when only the younger guys showed up for work. The older forman gentleman was not with them. They got here and I heard yelling and looked out to see two of them wrestling over a tool belt in the front yard. They spent most of the morning screwing around to the point that I wasn't sure the barn was going to get done for the cement to be put in today. Now, there were two hard working guys in the group and they were doing their best to get things done. One of them eventually called to the powers that be to see what he could do to get the project done. As they started to put up the siding, it didn't look anywhere near the color we picked out. We will get to that a little later. So the oldest kid comes to get me to say they are almost done and to show me everything. It looked pretty good except for the color. Well, they left without saying anything when they were done. Leo gets home and what they did was left trash all over the place. Most of which was either inside the garage or blocking bays. Now this poses a problem because we have the cement guys coming today. Now, we had said that they could leave the excess materials here and the trash. After all, we can burn it and the excess we could always use on other projects. What we didn't expect was for them to leave everything where it was. You would think that it would have been organized. Plus, they cut everything in the driveway and left nails there. Leo spent a good portion of his night cleaning this up, so nothing was blocked for the cement crew. They got here this morning and actually got on their hands and knees looking for nails, so they didn't run over any. They found a few that were still left and got rid of them. They go inside and the kids from yesterday hadn't smoothed the floor, so these guys had to do it before they start. While we were out there, we checked on the color. The cement guys also agreed it was the wrong color. Later on, we realized that it is the right color but lighting reflection is extreme and changes the color drastically. The one guy from today said that it has to do with the steel siding. It would have been nice for the salesman to tell us that would happen. We would have picked a darker color due to the fact that the sun will be shining on the building and makes it look yellow instead of dark beige. At least the cement guys are good. Then, I had an electrician here to give an estimate to put electric in the garage. There are many names to describe this man. None of which are nice, so I will not use them. He was nasty in his tone. I had to call Leo because he wanted spot for spot on what we wanted out there. Now, Leo didn't tell him anything really different than I did. I did hear him say to his assistant that he hates dealing with women. Needless to say, we will not be using him. The garage doors will be installed on Monday. Sometime next week, Dave, the excavator, will be back to put the stone outside the garage and to regrade the driveway so we can pull into the garage easier. It is nice dealing with the subcontractors. The problem has been in dealing with the main group who you would think would be nicer since they are the ones that get the money. Oh, just to point out, the pole barn was not built by the Amish. I think part of the problem arose when they found out we were a non-inspected job. Since the barn is under 1000 square feet, it isn't required to be inspected by our townships laws. I believe the pole barn company took the chance to send a second rate team to build it instead of their top of line group. It will be nice once things are done.