Mike O'Connor » Farm

Fiber to the farm

Mike O'Connor — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:31:20 +0000

Hooray! Our local phone company, good old Nelson Telephone Cooperative, is plowing fiber into our house at the farm over the next few weeks! You haven't lived until you've seen me, an aging 60 year old geek, doing cartwheels in anticipation. So here's a post to document the process as it unfolds.

It started with this hint -- marking up Highway 88 to show where the fiber leaves the right of way and heads over the wetland on its way to the house (no, that white building isn't the house...).

Dale Goss of Nelson Telephone and Bob Travis of Finley Engineering came by this morning and took a look at the path the fiber will take from the road across the wetland. We were a little worried, 'cause when they plowed in the phone line they had a pretty rough time getting across the sedge meadow that's right behind them. But this time we're plotted a course that will bypass that stuff -- all smiles. Thanks guys!

I gave the guy marking out the electric-wires a hard time about putting his cones out -- he's the only vehicle that's been down our driveway THIS WEEK.

The plow is coming! The plow is coming! This gizmo turned up at our neighbor Emmit's place, just up the road. I'm so excited I did my first-ever McPlank to celebrate.

Here's a video of the Day of the Plough. It compresses a 10-hour day into 4 minutes. The lads did great -- they avoided all the places we were worried about only got a little bit stuck in the mud. Way to go!

Two for one — a farm project and a geek project

Mike O'Connor — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 01:50:58 +0000

This is a post to test a geek thing -- trying out the Wordbooker plugin to connect my blog to Facebook. This gizmo should be great for posting to Facebook from my blog, pulling Facebook comments into the blog and blog comments into Facebook.

Here are pictures of a farm project to test out the geek project. We've got one planted prairie where the dang aspen and birch have been invading like crazy. So, it's time to mow those rascals down and see if we can get things under control. We probably should have done this a couple years ago 'cause the stuff is getting pretty crazy-big.

Here are a couple of photos that show the comparison between before and after mowing...

And here's a photo of the ride back down the hill...

New blog front-page photo

Mike O'Connor — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:00:25 +0000

I take lots of pictures, and every once in a while I get a lucky break. This shot resulted from some great clouds and evening sun coming together while I was sitting on the couch at the farm. I ran outside, took this photo and 2 minutes later the sun went away. You can click on it to get the full-sized version.

Spring! Today’s the day…

Mike O'Connor — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:05:14 +0000

Yesterday it was still winter here at the farm. Today, Spring came with a vengeance. Here's a series of pictures from yesterday's Morning Walk...

Here's a picture of the end of our driveway where it meets the road. Pretty impressive mist, no?

Well, that mist has been here all week. Here's the story, as told by one of our weather stations -- practically a week straight of 100% humidity as the snow melted.

As you can see, today's the day the weather finally broke. Here are some comparison shots. This one is from the point above the house, looking down on Marcie's planting project this winter. Note the snow.

Here's another view of the same field. Also yesterday...

And here it is today. Yay! Snow all gone.

This is what the wetland looked like yesterday...

And here it is today..

Marcie was working on marking some stuff in the woods. See that tiny orange dot right in the middle of the picture? That's Marcie...

And here's the big payoff. The Crocuses are in bloom!

There's even a ground hog out, trying to build a house under our porch. Spring is here.