I'm currently involved in a bit of a dust-up that includes a discussion of the cultural characteristics of millennials. Yesterday I quoted a line I saw somewhere recently: "In 1944 19-year olds were storming Normandy. Now they need safe spaces to protect them from things that aren't nice."
Then I saw the above pic on a friend's Facebook page. Yeah, I know it has to do with the breed and training, but it still struck me funny.
I'm now subscribed to a few Boer goat sites. Some are online classifieds for people with Boer goats or services and some are forums for getting help if, say, your bottle babies have persistent scours. One of them posted a publication this morning by the ABGA (American Boer Goat Assoc.) about their revised breed standards to be used in judging. We plan to eat, not show our goats, but I still read it with interest to see what a Boer buck and doe should look like.
This is not PC.
Does should possess "a wedge shape that is deeper at the rear flank that at the heart girth" (big hips). "Does should exhibit a feminine neck" while bucks should have "a heavily muscled neck displaying masculinity."
Goats everywhere are demanding a safe space.
I was up at my typical 3:30 a.m. and made myself some coffee. At 5:30 I got things set up for the goats' 6 a.m. bottles. At 6:15 I washed those bottles and then got ready to fix myself some breakfast.
Suddenly, no water in the kitchen faucet.
I hurried back to the bathroom and discovered no water pressure there, either. So, on to the electric panel to turn off the breaker that supplies electricity to the well pump.
That was about the same time the temp dropped to 11 degrees. In. Western. Oregon!
Baxter Plumbing showed up late morning and...best case scenario!...the frozen pipes were in the pump house and had NOT burst. It never occurred to me that the problem would be anywhere but underneath MoHo. The very nice guy used his heat gun and my heat gun to thaw things out and 30 minutes later we had water again. Minimum charge (different from cheap charge). I now have a heat lamp in the pump house and will get the electric tape wrap later today.
T'ank you, Fadder!
I'm also thankful for a wood stove and a creek. In a pinch two 5 gallon buckets and a rope will get enough water to refill the tank on the toilet. Which isn't to say you can't find some yellow snow 'round these parts.
Our plan has always been to build a tiny house here on Baker Rd. We sketched out a basic home measuring 20' x 30' (600 sq. ft.) that has a vaulted ceiling. The front half (20' x 15') has the living room and kitchen while the back is a bedroom, bath, and mud room, with a loft above that's open to the living room & kitchen. It would go where MoHo sits now, so site prep would be minimal. All the hook-ups are in place, so a little grading, pour a slab, and build up from there.
A few months ago I had an epiphanette: what if we tore the top off MoHo and built right on the rails that support this grand edifice? It measures (outside) 14' x 64', which is too long relative to its width and looks like....an old single wide. Solution: keep the width at 14', but take 12' or so off one end. Either cut the rails off at that point or use them as support for a deck. The living space comes in at 700 sq. ft., more than enough for what we need, just without a loft. We could still have kitchen, living, bedroom, bathroom, and a small extra room for Pam's sewing and crafting. That way there's NO site prep 'cause it sits right where it is. We'd miss out on the cool loft, but most people seem to think that at our age climbing to a loft isn't the best design option.
OK, I asked Todd, a neighbor who worked in construction, about the possibility and he thought it was a great idea. Except that most old mobile homes were built on very insubstantial frames. They were designed so everything held everything else together (the unibody method used for making cars these days). The hold together like a flimsy shoebox works; all sides support all other sides, this making a hefty frame unnecessary.
Today, thinking that I had a burst water pipe under MoHo I took off a big piece of the skirting. I figured that would save the plumber time and therefore me money. Then it turned out to be frozen pipes in the pump house. But getting that 12' piece of skirting off gave me a view of MoHo's underpinnings.
Two rails running the length of this beauty, each an I-beam 12" tall. Every 4' down the length are cross beams, also 12" tall running across the width with wings extending out to the edge. Think a ladder with extensions of the "rungs."
The manufacturer of this thing just laid the subfloor right on that ladder and built up from there. I could do that, OR, lay a 2x6 or 2x8 across the span and then build up. I'm not sure why except that it would reduce the span between what would then be floor joists.
If this worked not only would we save site prep, but there's be no foundation pour and getting utilities set in. I'd have the same crawl space that might also work for extra storage??
Hmmm. This warrants some cogitation.
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