Relative Something

For those of you who may have noticed something suspicious about the amount of activity I have been engaged in on the ranch lately, I will reveal that I have stopped going in to the day-job. For reasons beyond just saving gas money for the 65 mile one-way commute, or reclaiming the hours lost to driving, I am on leave from my usual employment.

At about the same time I started my leave, a person I worked with there moved on to a new position at a different company. How do you part ways elegantly when someone you used to see every day disappears from your life? Not a day has passed without me thinking of something that I would normally have told Katie about when we next saw each other at work.

Instead, I now find myself trying to talk with Legacy. It’s just not the same, I tell you.

I am trying to be open about the possibility of finding work closer to home, but my few attempts thus far have been met with rejection, so my inspiration is waning. In the mean time, it occurred to me that I can balance the loss of income by taking on some chores that we would otherwise need to spend a lot of money to get done. Yes, that means building fences.

A year ago, I didn’t know a thing about how to build a fence, but after watching the professionals put in our paddocks and string up the border of the big field, I’ve learned a lot. I thought it took them a long time, but now that I am digging my own holes and burying posts, I have a new appreciation for how much they could get done in a day.

It is very important to Cyndie that we get rid of the barbed wire fencing that is close to the trail where she plans to ride horses. Yesterday, I surveyed the most exposed section and came up with a new idea: Leave it be.

That fence has been there so long that trees have grown around the wire. It will be much less work if we simply erect a new fence, just inches inside the old one, and choose fence material that will serve as a barrier to the barbed wire beyond it. Since that old fence defines the boundary of our property, it is technically shared by our neighbor. Leaving it in place eliminates any question as to the location of the old boundary and avoids putting any burden on them to make changes they don’t need.

We really don’t want to cut down trees if we don’t have to, so putting our barrier up just inside the old fence means we can run inside the trees that have grown up right on the old line. It’s a win-win scenario!

Except I’m slow, …and I don’t get to talk with Katie.