UPDATE: Ann’s family descended upon our place this past weekend. We are only catching up with everything now. The property worked great for the family event and should work great for a jeep event, once we get one organized. 

Earlier this week, we managed to collect all the corral panels Ann won at the auction, including the 24′-long heavy metal fence (with an added 12′ foot gate). With the help of a tractor bucket, I was able to carry it home on our 18′ trailer (Dave, we’ve put those straps you’ve sent us to good use!). 

While loading the gate, a man came by in a truck to check on us. It turns out, he is the owner of the auction facility (Mr. Booker of Booker auctions). He asked where we lived and we said Prosser. Given he’s a long time resident of the Tri-Cities, I jokingly asked if he knew the former owner of our property in Prosser, Merlin Brown, as he was a bit notorious around these parts. Sure enough, somehow Mr. Booker had met Merlin while camping one time. Mr. Booker noted, “I thought I was a pretty good bullshitter, but that Merlin, he was over the top”. 

Meanwhile, in “slicer” news … I discovered that when I plugged in the slicer, it didn’t work. After dissembling the power box, I found the power lines weren’t attached to anything (see lower left circle and arrow).  Why didn’t they at least cap or cut the ends?

After some discussions with my uncle, we figured out that the former owner (Walmart) must have disabled/decommissioned before selling it by pulling the wire the power wire between the cord and the board (likely a safety thing). So, after unable to find any schematics online, we made and educated guess and I wired the hot and common wires to the board near that lower arrow on the left. Viola, it now works!

I also discovered one of the foots was an incorrect length (by half an inch see upper right arrow above), making the slicer unstable. It took a while to find at our local ACE store, but I finally found another 4″ metric Phillips bolt to properly adjust the footer to the correct length. 

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Originally Posted Sept 23: Ann’s family will be here this weekend, so the next updates will likely be Monday. So, we’ve been busily tidying up the property, inside and out. However, we did sneak away on Thursday to pickup some items Ann won at a local auction.

The principal purpose was to buy some corral panels (we couldn’t justify buying new ones at $200+ per panel), scoring about 200 feet of 12′ long panels at a great price. But, she also spotted a meat slicer for sale at the auction.

Ever since working at restaurants, I’ve always wanted a quality slicer, but it’s hard to justify the purchase. So, Ann surprised me by winning an auction for a Bizerba GSP HD 13″ slicer! Plus, it came with a stainless steel cart. Priced new (to my surprise) without the cart at between $4k-$7k. Meanwhile, a stainless cart goes for a minimum of $1500 all by itself. So, I was pretty shocked that she snagged the slicer plus a cart for less than $600.  I’d say she scored!

David recently refurbished his Knox trailer. Not a lot is known about these trailers, so we are still hunting for information on them. Rather than the standard round fenders, David’s came with some angular fenders, which we assumed replaced the stock round fenders.

Note the mural in the background; OKC is FULL of murals! Here are just some: https://www.camelsandchocolate.com/murals-in-oklahoma-city/

He writes, “I found it on Facebook Marketplace in Hot Springs Arkansas. Quite a drive, but it looked in decent shape. I didn’t know what it was, other than a vintage utility trailer. I replaced basically everything…axle, hubs, leaf springs, taillights, wiring, wood floor, etc. I sandblasted and painted the body Apple Red to match my Jeep. Replaced the 14 inch wheels with 16 inch. Sprayed the inside with bedliner.”

Monday I’ll have a regular update …

We’ve had family in town the last couple of days, so life’s been busy. The past week we also picked up Ann’s new Ford F-350 Lariat Dually, which will allow us to do some heavier towing, such as moving cattle around, pulling a tractor with our tilt trailer, and potentially towing a heavier jeep (more on this next month if everything goes as planned).

We happened to get lucky that Ann was at the Ford dealership testing out front seats on Wednesday when the new Dually was delivered from the factory, only to be declined by the person who had ordered it and put down a downpayment. That was good news for us, as there is an 8-10 month wait on these trucks. Ann loved the comfort of the seats, so that pretty much sold the truck. (We had been looking at a Cherry Red Silverado Dually 3500, which we really liked, but the seats weren’t very comfortable).

Here are just a couple pics:

This past week I also got this last of-the-big bunkhouse projects completed. The rear of the house wasn’t very good looking. The crawl space access had a wood lid that tilted down towards the house, so water could run into a portion of the crawl space. In the middle is a septic pump that moves waste from the bunkhouse to the septic tank. To the right of that is the crawl space access. In front of both items is an area where the septic pipe from the pump drops into the ground (so needs to be covered.

Perhaps the biggest challenge was using reclaimed, deformed and twisted pressure treated wood to build this. Between cutting down he pieces and using clamps, I was able to straighten the wood enough to make it usable.  Now instead of two different doors for accessing the pump and crawl space there is one larger door.

Before:

After: