Archive for June 2013
More Same
The end of June has arrived, and halfway through the year, we are getting blossoms on a tree here that smells like lilacs and reminds me a lot more of May than July. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record (it’s probably too late for that) but it is still too wet here to do much of anything we have in mind to do.
Yesterday, the work crew that is going to build our hay shed, tried a second time to get the corner posts installed. They are as anxious to get it done as we are to have it done, but I was surprised to see them here, since it did rain enough in the pre-dawn hours to give us a pretty good soaking.
Things have improved a little bit, and that is probably why they tried, because you don’t know unless you test it. The driveway loop firmed up enough to support the skid loader, so that work we did on it, by hand, appears to have paid off nicely.
When they started drilling a post hole, the first 20-plus inches down was dry and they were encouraged. That’s a lot better than it was the last time they tried. Unfortunately, that’s only about half the depth they are trying to reach. Beyond that, it turned to a thick pea soup consistency. Or maybe, cake batter. When they put a measuring tape down the hole, to check the depth, it just kept going, past the depth the hole had been drilled!
That’s not a very good foundation for the corner posts…
We’ll be waiting a while longer before proceeding with this project.
Berries Appearing
Looks like the raspberries are happy with the weather we’ve been having. The bushes are everywhere here.
Hey, Mary, we can have a contest to see who gets the most berries! Our problem will be that the raspberry bushes are spread across much of our acreage, not contained all in one location. I fear the birds will have had their way with them long before we get a chance to hunt them down and harvest.
We also noticed quite a sizable patch of wild strawberries growing in our pasture. I’m told they don’t bear large fruit, and won’t be as sweet as the cultivated ones that are sold in stores. We’d love to add them to our bounty, but I suspect it will be hard to beat the wild critters roaming the grounds, to getting them.
Last night, the frogs – or a frog – were/was so loud that it got almost obnoxious, so Cyndie stepped out the door to the deck and hollered at them/it and clapped her hands. Silence erupted, for a few minutes, anyway.
We have high hopes to get a lot done today, but rain may once again spoil our plans.
I expect the berries will all be just fine with that.
Managing Growth
We are in the last week of June now, and the growing things around here are finally at their fullest. If we are to maintain control of this property, we need to manage growth. Any areas that have not been mowed yet this year are now looking a lot like the pasture. It’s a shame we weren’t able to bring horses here soon enough for them to dine on our luscious grass. I can’t wait to see how different things will be once we get grazing horses to help keep the growing grass under control.
There are new trees growing everywhere. Unfortunately, many of them sprout in our walkway or in the landscape gardens around the house, where they don’t belong, or wouldn’t ultimately fit. Cyndie wanted to transplant the new babies. I guess she is still thinking in the mindset we had at our old home in the suburbs. Back there, we did everything we could to encourage new tree growth on our little corner lot.
Now we have so many new trees, it is mind-boggling.
I cleared out a space where I would like a new wood shed to be located. After cutting some grass and berry bushes at the edge, the area further in was almost all first or second year maple seedlings that were easier to pull out than cut down.
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It saddens me to take out any trees, but I am feeling encouraged by the incredible number of new trees sprouting without any assistance from us. It appears that it will be very easy to nurture expansion of the woods into any areas that we don’t end up assigning to other purposes.
We’re gonna want all the trees we can possibly add, if we keep experiencing losses like this year’s weather has been dishing out.
Hot Tamale
She finally did it. Cyndie made a decision on a truck for the ranch. We went back and forth over whether to get a new one that she would drive all the time, or a used one that would just be available when we need it for hauling or towing. She picked a used one.
We chose to keep our business local and worked with the Ford dealer in Ellsworth. After test driving a variety of trucks there, a few weeks ago, we paused the process to reconsider our plan. The folks at this dealership were great, and very patient with our creative (chaotic) method of shopping and deciding.
The second time we showed up, Cyndie asked to see the “most affordable” trucks they had, that matched our criteria. They said we could walk around to the back and look. These trucks were stored out of sight.
They weren’t bad looking, really. One had a scar on the carpet that appeared as if something toxic had been spilled. Another had the driver’s side mirror held on with layers of tape.
Cyndie bee-lined to the black one, I think because she still misses the old black Mustang she no longer owns. Next, she drove the silver one. Lastly, the red one, pretty much an exact color match to her current convertible.
The red truck drove better than all the rest, and was, by far, the best price.
When we got it home, we didn’t even drive up to the house, but put it right to work, parking on the hill of the pasture to pick up old fence posts to be moved.
Cyndie is thinking about calling it, “the Hot Tamale.”
Great Generosity
Much to my horror, I have become that guy who hangs on to a borrowed item way too long. It ends today.
Last fall, my sister’s husband, Tim, offered to let me try out his chainsaw to give me a reference for deciding what I wanted to buy. I hoped to do some wood cutting right away, before winter set in, and then get it right back to him.
In a blink, fall was gone, and I hadn’t done any cutting. I eventually found two convenient opportunities to try my hand at starting it, and doing some light work on small trees in our woods. I was pleased to have successfully started it on a cold winter day. The saw seemed the perfect size for me, but I had only tried to do the smallest of work with it at that point.
Then the days rolled off the calendar, and winter became spring. I checked in with my sister, to report that it hadn’t skipped my mind, that I felt bad I’d kept the chainsaw for so long, and that I wanted to get it back to Tim before he found a need to use it. I really didn’t want him to have to ask me to get it back. Mary assured me that he wouldn’t be needing it for a while, which provided some peace of mind for a few more weeks.
Now spring has turned to summer, and storms are throwing trees down, left and right. If ever there was a time to have possession of your own saw, it is now. Unfortunately, I still had Tim’s. Then, last weekend, we had a tree fall onto the road, down by our driveway. It was the perfect opportunity for me to give his saw one last trial run, and then return it. I boldly collected everything I thought I would need, and loaded it in our little trailer, driving the lawn tractor down to the road.
Then I promptly flooded the chainsaw engine and it failed to start.
A flooded small gas engine is one of my weaknesses.
I took the chainsaw back up to the shop and removed the spark plug to dry it, and revisited the manual and a couple of online sites for advice, and then gave it another try. Yep, flooded it again. They make it sound so easy. That’s the part that eats at me. Why can’t I figure it out? I gave up after a couple more failed attempts, and went down to finish the job with a hand saw. Cyndie had already stepped in to help, using a ratcheting cutter to trim all the branches up to the trunk.
After the multiple failures over the weekend, I wanted to prove to myself I could successfully start the saw again. Yesterday, after work, I fired it right up, first try, and it worked like a charm. I headed around to the back of the house where a dead tree stood within view of our bedroom window. For the first time in my life, I felled a standing tree. I’m proud to report that my first felling also happened to be a tree leaning the opposite direction from where I wanted it to fall.
It took an extra cut, when the height of my first one was too low, and then a little persuasion from a strap to swing it over and snap the “hinge,” but it landed right where I wanted. And, I didn’t nick the adjacent tree I was hoping to save.
A chainsaw like this one should work just fine for my needs here.
Thank you, Tim, for the generous gesture of offering the loan, delivering it to us here, and being patient with the long wait for me to return it.
We are ever so grateful for the encouragement and support from both my sister, Mary, and her husband, Tim!
Let’s Summarize
I have no idea how far back into the archive folks explore when they discover Relative Something for the first time, but for me, as much as anyone, something has inspired me to do a little summarization. If you are new, let it be an aide to fill you in on the background that has led to the latest saga appearing in current posts.
Back in the fall of 2008, I began planning for a trek in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal. My son encouraged me to create a blog to write about the trip, and share pictures with all my friends and family. That is the origin of Relative Something.
I was happy to suddenly have this vehicle to also publish some of my poetry and creative non-fiction, as well as some of my photography. My wife suggested I put some of my poetry on my photographs, and the series, “Words on Images” was born.
I wanted to add content on a daily basis, and that commitment has proved valuable to me in more ways than I imagined. I have chosen to manage depression without medications, and thus, have developed a variety of healthy habits that I must practice daily. Writing to the world is a good exercise for me. Being able to write and share my experience with depression is healthy for me, and hopefully of value to others. It’s a win/win!
In the fall of 2010, Cyndie and I traveled to Portugal for, what turned out to be, an experience of a lifetime. A life-changing experience for the both of us. We went to meet Ian Rowcliffe and his family, whom we only knew online. He and I had met in the online discussion community, “Brainstorms.” The story and pictures of that amazing adventure became easy content for me to post to the blog.
There is also (usually) my annual week of biking and camping that happens in June with a large gathering of wonderful and amazing people, many of whom have become precious friends. I love describing those adventures for the blog.
Finally, with our kids grown, and the seeds of possibility planted by our experience with Ian and family in Portugal, we decided to put our suburban home of 25-years up for sale and hunt for rural property where we could have horses. Cyndie had always been fond of horses, but they were not really her primary focus. After reading Linda Kohanov’s book, “The Tao of Equus,” which explores the mystical nature of horses and the magical connection between them and humans, and after spending 2-weeks with Ian’s horses, Cyndie enrolled in an apprenticeship program with Linda’s Eponaquest Worldwide.
For the last year I have be posting chronicles of our adventure to sell our home, to discover the property beyond our dreams, then move in and make the transition from the suburbs to the country, and now achieving upgrades and modifications in preparation for the addition of horses.
We have dreams of creating a space where we can host workshops to share the things Cyndie and I have learned. The horses will be integral to the whole operation, but we envision the future addition of a dog, or dogs, and probably chickens.
If I had no other new adventures in my future to write about, the simple story of our daily experiences with this place we have named, Wintervale Ranch, will provide content that easily fills my goal of posting something daily.
Yesterday, we did chores around the house. Cyndie hung laundry out to dry on the line. I cleaned off the covered gutters.
I’m honored to have you all reading and following along.
Weather Drama
The dramatic weather events seem to be never-ending here. Yes, it has been the wettest spring that anyone can remember, and this pattern is following the dry fall season that had us suffering under drought conditions. Now, we have entered a pattern of severe thunderstorms that keep rolling through, one after another.
We got rocked out of bed early on Friday morning, by a particularly thunderous storm. I headed to work in the darkness of driving rain, and came upon a very large tree limb, lying in a farm field. It was a big surprise to me, because there were no trees around from which the limb could have come. I turned onto a county road and a short distance further, I came to corner where a few houses are located, and every tree around appeared to be severely broken off, or completely uprooted. The debris completely covered the road.
I stopped my car, put on my raincoat, and stepped out to check if it would be possible to drive around the broken limbs. I discovered that just beyond the first few branches, a giant tree completely blocked the road. Then I noticed, that tree had also brought down a power line that was in the tangled mess of branches, just a step in front of me. I quickly returned to my car and turned around to backtrack to an alternate route.
One thing about that morning storm, as the intensity waned, the lightning flashed non-stop, yet there was only a rare rumble of thunder. It was strange to see so much flashing, without receiving the follow-up thunder booms. Last night, it was just the opposite. There was a storm in the distance that was giving off a constant rumble, even though we couldn’t see the corresponding lightning flashes.
In an interesting turn of events from the “it’s a small world” files, I think we made progress on the plan to get someone to cut our hay. Cyndie and I were hoping our neighbor who runs the CSA farm might be interested. Cyndie initiated contact by email, and received a phone message in response. He didn’t say, ‘no,’ but he hedged it a bit by saying that they are pretty busy trying to get their own hay cut and baled, in between rain storms. We figured we better keep looking for other options.
Yesterday afternoon, our fence guy called to check in, and expressed his vested interest in our getting the growth cut from the areas they will be trying to work. He hadn’t yet found anyone to take on our task, and was talking over ideas with me, when he suddenly had an inspiration. It occurred to him to call the “co-op.” He hung up to do so, right away.
It was hardly a minute later that my phone rang again, this time with a call from that very neighbor we were hoping could help us. He tells me the co-op just called him to see if he could cut my hay field!
It didn’t seem like enough time had passed for my fence guy to have made the first call, let alone the co-op person then reaching our neighbor, before he then made the call to me. He said they described my place and gave my name, and he was able to say that he knew me already.
I think he will be able to help us, but we are still subject to needing to wait for the right weather. He needs a batch of four consecutive dry days.
At the rate we are going, if that ever happens, it will be a dramatic weather event, in its own right. Four consecutive dry days?!
Nice View
One benefit that I have particularly enjoyed since moving to the country, is the improved view of the sky, and being able to see weather events. The shot below is from last Sunday evening, when we were returning home from Father’s Day festivities at Cyndie’s parent’s home in Edina, MN.
I wonder what thoughts went through the minds of the first humans to witness a rainbow.
This one changed a lot during the time we were able to observe it. There was a period where the colors became the most vivid and well-defined as I can recall ever seeing. Since we were in a moving vehicle, I had to wait until our car had turned just enough to allow me to capture a shot out of the side window. The windshield was so speckled from impacts with insects that I chose not to shoot through it during the time when the rainbow was directly in front of us.
Relative Something 