Howard is a really sweet dog. He’s got a very tender heart - which is both good and bad depending on what’s happening in the moment.
Not knowing his previous situation makes training/discipline very difficult. I’m 100% certain that he was mistreated to some extent by his former “caretakers” so I’m trying very hard not to be harsh with him, but at the same time I need to teach good manners and proper yard dog etiquette. He’s still very much a puppy and has a lot of energy that needs to be burned off. I feel like we make a little progress towards that goal most days but there are times the hound dog stubbornness comes out and we (well, mostly me) struggle with that.
Yesterday was a good day - #1 Marine Daughter came over in the evening and we put up some temporary electric fence to shut the horses out of a section of pasture to allow the grass to recover from grazing. She brought her Doberman and we let all three dogs run free while we were working on the fence. Howard needed that after being mostly penned up for a few days.
After the new section of fence was finished we opened up the paddock that the horses had been shut out of. They always get the zoomies when they get turned into fresh pasture and Howard thought that was the most wonderful thing. He went out there and ran laps with them until they settled down. He’s not the least bit obnoxious with the horses like the other two dogs tend to be and the horses didn’t mind a bit him running with them.
On the tomato subject... the groundhog found them Sunday night. Dang varmint sampled at least one tomato on every plant that had one he could reach. I’ll catch him out and air condition him eventually, but in the meantime I placed an amazon order for a solar-powered electric fence charger, a 500 meter roll of fence tape, fiberglass stakes, insulators, etc. That stuff will be here on Friday. I’ll set up hot tape around the top of the perimeter fence to deter the horses from leaning in to nibble and some down low around the tomato cages to keep the whistle pigs from stealing my groceries.
And I will definitely try adding the fried green tomato slice to my BLTs. That sounds delicious.
Adding automation to the high tunnel and I thought of needing a good earth ground which means a ground rod. I have three of them spaced 10 foot apart right nearby for the electric fence. I can’t tie into those permanently though because the fence would mess with the sensors. That means a separate ground rod which is no big deal except that fence ground rods are supposed to be something like 150 foot away from any others including the one at the electric pole, else you’ll get electrical interference from the high voltage of a fence.
So now I need to put three rods out by the road for the fence, far away from electric pole and high tunnel, and then I can use one of the original three fence rods for the tunnel. Gonna try and pull 2 of the 3 out and reuse out by the road. I’m not using the fence right now so I can use that ground for the tunnel for some time.
I figured out a trick for pounding them in with a fence post pounder that keeps the rod from just bowing when driving it in. Slide a hunk of steel conduit or water pipe over the ground rod leaving 1-2 foot sticking out. Pound as far as you can go and replace the conduit/pipe with a shorter piece and pound some more. Repeat until it’s short enough to not need pipe over it. I swap to a sledge hammer when it becomes too short for fence pounder and by then, it doesn’t need the pipe.
IF you don’t hit rock, it’s really fast.
We used to have cordless phones fry a few times a year. We got phone before electric and they usually tie into the electric ground rod. Instead, they tossed one laying down in the 2 foot deep trench they had dug up against the house with the backhoe. That’s where they get started with their trencher cable layer. That rod stayed dry so it wasn’t a good ground. I finally pounded on one in the full 8 foot depth right next to the phone box and used that. Haven’t lost a phone since.
I may not be well grounded but this place is.