The Collie Farm Blog

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we put Kirk’s house on the market. We chose to use a flatlist service, where you pay a flat fee to get your house listed on the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS), you get a “real” looking real estate sign, and a key lock box that real estate agents can use to get in and show the house. I, and several people I know, have used this kind of flat list approach in the past and have had excellent results. Kirk also sold a previous house of his without the help of an agent.

I am really good at software and graphics, and have made a beautiful flyer in PDF format, and also really nice online ads via postlets.com. The ad is everywhere we need/want it to be online. If we want to get it into any paper advertising, we could easily look up their advertising policies. But for now, we believe that the online tools are used by 99% of modern buyers, so we’re happy with the advertising outlets we are leveraging right now.

I used a digital fish-eye lens to photograph the house, so there are professional looking photos of every room. We are familiar with the Fair Housing Act laws as they apply to real estate advertising, The house is in impeccable shape– scrubbed clean, staged with nice furniture, and free of clutter. We did significant research on recent sales and keep a daily eye on new listings, so we feel confident the house is priced correctly. If we feel we need legal advice along the way, of course, we’d hire a real estate attorney, the only person who can legally give us legal advice. We have the schedule flexibility to show the house whenever needed.

So, why would we need a real estate agent to help us sell the house? I can’t think of any reasons, or anything they can offer that we don’t already have. And yet, it seems that many real estate agents still think we need them!  We are advertising the house on multiple for-sale-by-owner websites, and apparently hungry real estate agents prowl those sites, looking for potential clients. And they call– every day!

They are coy about their reason for calling at first, and get around to the bottom line slowly. And then, when Kirk tries to politely decline their sales pitch and offered services, they get combative. They engage him in an argument, trying to insist they can do something we can’t do. Sometimes they switch to insults, or probing and inappropriate questions, like wanting to know how much we owe on the house, or speculating that we must be facing foreclosure. Sometimes the conversations end unpleasantly. This, of course, is not the best sales tactic, so I’m not sure why anyone would employ it. And it’s driving Kirk crazy (it would me, too, except they have his phone number, not mine!).

I’ve  modified our online ads to gently, but firmly, say “real estate agents, we’re not looking for a seller’s agent, thanks. Please don’t call unless you are scheduling an appointment for a potential buyer to view the house.” But, these hungry real estate agents don’t read very well, or they are just mighty desperate, because they are still calling!

And what are they thinking, anyway? Does this really work, cold-calling FSBO owners and saying “hey, are you looking for a real estate agent?” Doesn’t everyone already know about two dozen real estate agents and have at least two in their family? If I were looking for one, I wouldn’t have to toss a stone very far to hit one. If I felt I needed one, trust me, I know whom to call. They’re in the phone book, and on the web, they’re everywhere. So are they expecting us to respond with some sigh of relief, and a reply of “oh my gosh! It’s so lucky you called, because we NEED a real estate agent, but had no idea how to find one!” Of course if we decided to  hire one, we’d hire someone we knew, someone we knew something about, and someone to whom we’d like our money to go. We don’t need to hire some stranger who cold-calls on the phone and tries to start an argument!

This weekend we had beautiful weather, so I went out to trim all the sheep’s feet again and check things out. The sheep all look very good, they are at good weights and seem generally healthy. A couple of the girls are looking big, I think those may already be four months along.

A couple of them still have foot rot, though none are currently showing lameness. This is frustrating. Part of me questions whether I should have had higher standards in only buying sheep with perfect feet. Certainly a lot of books and experts recommend this. But, sometimes I wonder if those experts are all in desert states! For, I don’t know anyone in our area who can claim zero foot rot on their place, our climate is just so damp and warm. I do think I can get them fixed with aggressive trimming, I’ve had good luck with it working on others’ animals at least. But, it is a drawback, for sure, to have this extra work to do.

A couple of the ewes have really good feet, so I do think there is some genetic component, that these two are resisting it better than the rest. I’ll have to note that when I decide which lambs to keep and cull this summer. But, #33 has the worst feet, and her daughter has the best feet- so they must not share that trait in common!

I also wonder about diet deficiencies. I recently read Pat Coleby’s Natural Sheep Care. Hers is an interesting book, that revolves almost solely around mineral supplementation to compensate for deficiencies in the soil. She makes a bold assertion that if you can get this corrected–either in your soil or with custom designed mineral supplements, that all problems (foot rot, parasites, birthing issues, wool quality problems, low production yields etc) should virtually disappear!

Intriguing notion indeed. I do believe that diet plays a big role in health, and we all know that unwise past farming practices have created deficiences in almost everybody’s soil. So, it’s on my to-do list, to have the soil tested, and figure out what I need to supplement and how I’m going to get it and offer it. Pat’s book asserts that just buying a general sheep mineral isn’t enough, that you need a custom one for your soil, so that the sheep eat what they crave/need, and don’t overdose on things they don’t need. She also asserts that most pastures are deficient in copper, and that most sheep need copper in their supplement. But, this goes against common advice, since there are issues with over-dosing sheep on copper; so all sheep supplements exclude it entirely. Food for thought!

Last weekend, I finally finished re-assembling my cargo van with all of my dog show equipment. It took me several weeks to think of how to re-configure all of the stuff. I like this design, there is a lore more room for hauling things like lumber and hay now. It’ll be a little less convenient for unloading the heavy “ex-pens” (exercise pens), but I’m traveling less to shows these days, so that is less of a priority.

It is nice to have all of this stuff out of the living room and back into the van! Right now, I have half a bale of hay stored in there, left over from the flood plain drills. Since we are currently lacking a barn or garage, this is the best place to leave a half a bale of hay, for now. All in good time…

We are getting a wood stove. This was Kirk’s idea, mostly. I liked the idea of having one, but may not have tackled the project for a long time. But Kirk has been burning a lot of the old barn wood, and feeling badly that it could be better used to heat the house, instead of just for recreational burning. And, I think he just likes to burn! So, he organized a bid from a local fireplace store. We did not get multiple bids, because we know enough about this place to know they are good, and they are local. The price was reasonable, and we liked their stoves.

The hard part was deciding where the stove should go. Our old 1929 house has kind of a weird floor plan. A previous owner had a wood stove in the living room, but this made a stovepipe go up directly in the middle of the upstairs bedroom, which we did not desire. We ended up choosing to sacrifice some space in the was-dining room. This room was eaten up by the winder staircase that was added more recently, anyway, so it no longer has enough floor space to act like a dining room. 

It’s really become more of a strange foyer, I guess; since there are French doors exiting this room that we use constantly as a farm in-and-out door. This, unfortunately, brings a lot of dirt into the central part of the house (as can be seen in the photo!). Eventually, we’d like to repair the laundry room door (which is currently stuck shut) such that we can use that as the dirty farm door access, and leave our piles of boots in there. I think in the end, our floor plan will turn out to be very practical, if not unconventional. But, right now, everything in the house is just weird.

So, back to the stove. The floors are all old-growth fir, and we’ll eventually get around to refinishing them. We were tasked with choosing a hearth pad before the stove is delivered and installed. We considered the prefabricated ones the stove place sells. But, they were very boring tile jobs, with huge, unattractive grout lines. We wanted something a little more original. We honestly considered pouring some kind of concrete pad right on the floor, and a little web searching led us to believe this is a realistic option.

But, Kirk has a friend who does a lot of different fireplace design artwork, I guess you could call it. We ended up deciding to have this man make us a custom hearth pad. He makes his projects out of wood (in this case, 2×4’s, plywood and cement backer board), and then covers them with some kind of concrete product he has developed. It’s kind of a stucco look. We made him a paper pattern, and told him we wanted it to be slate-colored (to compliment the enable black vintage-looking stove); we’ll see what he comes up with!

This is a corner installation, and we settled on a round-shaped hearth. It had to arc back tight enough to not interfere with the French doors. But, of course, there are specs on how far out it must come from the front of the stove. So it was tricky figuring out what kind of circle arc to use. We ended up making the center of the circle offset from the corner and not 45° out of the corner. Oddly, a non-centered circle looked best in this corner, since the sides are not symmetrical– with a door on one side, and a plain wall on the other.

The picture shows some tape lines on the floor of different options we considered. We thought about embedding tile into the wood floor and running it in front of the door. But, we were a little afraid to make such a bold alteration, as it would have made a lot of work to change our minds later and put the fir floor back! And, our friend’s heath pad, we think, will give the stove more centerpiece attention and hopefully echo the rounded nature of the winder staircase we eventually plan to build.

I have been struggling with a leaky faucet problem for maybe the last two or three months. This is an outdoor hose bib faucet, the kind with a long internal stem. These help prevent problems with freezing weather and broken pipes; as the stem closes off the water supply deep inside the house’s walls where it’s warmer, and the rest of the water drains out of the faucet when you shut it off.

The faucet was leaking where the arrow is pointing in the picture: right out of the tip of the stem, by the handle. This is a key piece of information, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I was annoyed with this whole situation, because the plumbing in this house is nearly brand new, only two years old! I didn’t expect to have plumbing repairs so soon!

I first tried tightening the two connections: the packing nut, and where the stem piece threads into the faucet unit. This didn’t  help. Next, I went to the store looking for replacement packing for the packing nut. But, I didn’t realize how many different designs there were, so I ended up coming home with the wrong size. I took the nut back to the store, and got a different packing. When I tried that at home, I realized that the packing nut’s threads were stripped. Back to the store, but they didn’t have that sized packing nut!

So, I tried a different local  hardware store. The “plumbing expert” there listened to my description of the problem, took a look at my stem, and at the packing nut, and concluded that my situation was hopeless. I bought a packing nut anyway, since they had one that fit. At home, I cleaned the threads out carefully, and got it to go back together nice and snug. But, the leak was still there.

Next I took it to Home Depot. I actually found a real expert there (this is rare for me), a by-trade plumber. I described my problem to him, too. He shook his head. He did mention a tidbit that would come in handy later, he said, “that there is an Arrowhead brand stem.” But, he also told me that they change the designs on these so frequently, that it’s usually impossible to get replacement parts. He asserted that I’d need to buy an entire new faucet assembly. And cautioned to replace it on a weekday, as people often break their copper pipe when trying to replace these, and then I’d want to call a plumber for backup.

Grumble. By this time, I had probably shut off the water to the house, and taken this thing apart, about a dozen times. I took it back home, put it together again, and sat there and watched the water drip… Then, I started to wonder: why is it coming out of the tip of the stem? And only when the water is turned on. How can that be? Though the stem is hollow (the handle screw threads into the hollow tip), it’s supposed to be sealed. The plug end of the stem is obviously working fine, because when the valve is shut off, no water is getting by.

I took it apart again. I’m visualizing pressurized water flowing all around this stem on the way out of the faucet. And sure enough, tipping it on one end made water drain out of the inside of the stem. And, then, I see it. A tiny flaw in the solder joint on the stem. Very tiny. But, enough for pressurized water to want to get in there and leak out the other end. It must have taken two years for the water to slowly erode that flaw big enough to create a leak. I tried to solder it closed, but I’m no good at soldering, and I think fixing a tiny hole like that can be difficult, as there is not enough surface for the flux to bind to. It didn’t work. But now at least I knew what the real problem was: something that all three hardware store plumbing experts missed, despite my clearly explaining to all of them that the water was coming out of the tip!

I almost believed the Home Depot guy’s advice that I wouldn’t be able to find a replacement stem. But, I decided to give the Web a chance. And lucky for me that  Home Depot guy knew the brand name: thank you Home Depot guy! Lo and behold, McClendons Hardware had the fix, for $12: they carry a whole line of these Arrowhead stems! Wow! I was a little confused about the sizing, when I measured my stem, I concluded that it was a 6″ one. But, when the 6″ replacement arrived by mail, it was too long, so I had to return it. What I actually have, apparently, is a 4″ stem (I’m not sure how they measure these to get those numbers, but ok, whatever). So, last week, I finally got the right sized stem, and replaced it yesterday. And choirs of angels sang: no leak. Thank goodness!