The exterior of the Northwest doors recieved another coat of primer today.

Re-priming the doors.

/ Jacobhouse / By

12/31/19

(Above: The exterior of the Northwest doors received another coat of primer today. Now, they appear especially bright.)

Active Summary: Today began as usual with a bit of writing and a beef pasture check. This was ensued by freezer room activities that included: fixing the north-west-west door*, repriming the all of the northwest door frames, and repriming the doors themselves. After that, I returned to Jacobhouse where I harvested some greens for lunch (finished thinning the broccoli) with Padre’s help and performed a little bit more writing.

(5:26 PM Update:) Farm activities – including the usual rituals of feeding / treating / and moving cattle from place to place – concluded early this afternoon. Therefore, I returned to Jacobhouse where I set about writing and revising the remainder of this entry before engaging in more creative writing.

  • Freezer room interior north west side.
    The interior of the northwest doors were also given a second coat.
  • A manure pile with tiny mushrooms on it.
    A manure pile adorned with myriad mushrooms. The heads of the fungi were delicate and feathered, while the stalks were fibrils about as thick as human hairs.
  • A mooshroom pile.
    More mooshrooms.
  • Garden with the late noon sun falling upon it.
    Jacobhouse’s garden bathed in the light of a late-noon sun.

TIL: Today I learned a new painting method that seems to work quite well, especially when it came to coating large surfaces (doors). It is a three step regimen that I will define briefly below:

1. Dip the brush. This is the standard procedure of dipping the paint brush into a reservoir of paint. I read today (and concur with the fact) that one is not supposed to dunk that brush into the tray/can any farther than 1/3 of the way up the bristle, as doing so will only result in some mistaken drippage and a whole bunch of hard-to-clean-out paint near the root of the bristles.

2. Load the surface. This is the new step I learned. When painting a large surface, I have found that it is good to slap on two or three large ‘dollops’ of paint that I can then proceed to work with in step 3.

3. Spread and smoothen. Proceeding quickly yet gently, spread the paint out across the surface until it becomes uniformly thin. Next, using up-and-down strokes (or side to side, based on preference), smoothen the paint, ensuring that all strokes are aimed in the same direction. Make sure to work only with the wet paint in this step or odd-looking stripes will form.

Commentary: The cooling off of the weather from yesterday to today has been slightly rough on the young bovines, but I myself found this morning to be pleasantly cool and fresh. It should also be noted that the presence of sunlight made today stand out compared to many of the gray ones belonging to the past week.

Summoning a cow once again, this time from across the field.

Final Note: Tomorrow I will likely end up preparing the metal gate area in the freezer room for priming. This will include a hefty bit of cleaning and wire-brushing. At some point soon, I will also be procuring a ladder to clean the western gables like I mentioned a couple days ago.

*Fixing the north-west-west door consisted of my attempting to add a hinge to the lower right side where one was missing – a repair whose intention was to ensure the door’s stability and longevity. Little did I know I would be spending about 30-40 minutes tending to this task, because once I added the hinge, the door did not want to close all the way. I next tried adding various spacers and repositioning the door/hinge connection. None of this worked, so I removed the new hinge. The door already operated quite well without that extra bit of ‘reinforcement’ bungling up the works, so I decided to leave it be.