Archive for October 2014
Special Time
October has always been a special time for Cyndie and me, going all the way back to 1974 when we started dating. Now, October will always bring to mind the start of our life in Beldenville, WI. It was 2-years ago this week that we moved here.
I just spent about an hour looking through some of my old posts from October 2012. I encourage you to explore the “Previous Somethings” menu on the right and do the same. It’s a hoot.
I will provide a link to the description of the day we finally closed on this place. It was Comical Adversity for us.
A lot has happened around here in the last 2-years. The first year, we were getting the place ready for horses, and at the end of September, 2013, the horses arrived. I wonder what year three will bring?
Stay tuned to find out. We’ll discover it together.
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Fire Fun
Sunday was no rest day from work, even though we were graced with a visit from family. We started a fire to burn a couple of tree root bundles along with the remains of the brush pile we chipped the day before. While that was burning, I used the chainsaw to cut logs out of the tree trunks that were too big for the chipper.
We had the ATV down there with the trailer full of tools, the tractor for lifting one of the tree roots onto the fire, and the pickup to carry all the logs back uphill for splitting into firewood. It looked like quite the activity center.
When visitors arrived, they were welcomed at the fire. While I stayed to supervise the burn, they headed up to the house for some lunch Cyndie had prepared. Bless her heart, she brought me down a serving of a fabulous stew/soup she made in the slow cooker using meat from our CSA share, courtesy of our neighbors at Walker Farms. It tasted extraordinarily good to my hungry appetite, standing in the great outdoors beside a stoked fire.
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Nieces and nephews brought all their youthful enthusiasm to interact with Delilah, walk the horses in the round pen, and help around the fire. Where there is fire, Cyndie’s container of s’more supplies is never far off.
Beck unknowingly handled the working end of the stick that had been used to stir the coals. Is it that obvious? Doesn’t really matter when there are marshmallows to be roasted.
The weather was perfect, with just enough wind to keep the fire energized, and just enough sunshine to feel comfortable outdoors.
After everyone was gone, and most of the equipment was put away, I walked back down to get the truck and to make sure the fire was done burning. It wasn’t, and I didn’t have the heart to extinguish it. It was a beautiful evening and I became mesmerized by the serenity of the fire, the horses nearby, the vista of fall colors, and the quiet that the end of the day offered.
Looking up at the trees that still block a view of our house, I noticed that we are at about 50% foliage. The last few days the leaves have been raining down heavily from some of the trees. The rest are not going to hold on to theirs much longer.
The season of more and more fire fun is upon us. Time to get that woodshed back up to cover our firewood. Probably also time for Cyndie to re-stock her tub of s’more supplies.
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Cyndie’s Magic
My favorite scene from yesterday, out of the many fabulous moments, is without a doubt the one where Cyndie magically solved a problem when a branch became stuck in the chipper.
Cyndie and I work in very different ways, and even though it drives me nuts, I am aware that it is a blessing. In simple terms, I am concrete-sequential and she is abstract-random. She also seems naturally able to believe that dwelling in possibility will derive whatever good outcomes she imagines, while I more often find myself bound by laws of physics and a recognition of the probability that what can go wrong, will.
She offered to pull branches out of the brush pile and stage them for me so I could feed them into the chipper. Great!
She suggested we bring the truck down to catch the chips directly in the back of it. Brilliant! I wish I would have come up with that idea.
Things were progressing nicely, despite my frustration over her random version of staging, when one rather large branch became tightly wedged in the narrowing feeder chute of the chipper, bringing things to an abrupt halt.
I tried a couple of pulls and pushes, quickly deciding to shut down the tractor engine for a closer look. That, and my angst laden appearance, brought Cyndie over to view my attempts to wrestle it free. With both of us wearing hearing protection, we weren’t doing much in the way of conversing. She stood by politely while I pulled with all my might. I leaned in closer to determine the primary issue. Moving it from side to side did nothing to release the pressure of the knobby knot that had become pressed hard against the metal.
I bent over to see what hardware I would need to remove in order to take the cone off the chipper. When I stood up, Cyndie was standing there holding the branch that she had pulled out of the chute.
I was dumbfounded, staring wide-eyed in astonishment at her accomplishment. Without speaking, I walked toward her, sensing her confusion over what I was about to do. I got close and reached up to squeeze the muscle of her arm.
She smiled.
My attempts had probably loosened it for her. Yeah.
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Big Strides
Today we have reached a milestone of 2-years since the day we stood in the suburban Verizon store making a purchase of a mobile device to provide internet access at our new home. I know that because our 2-year contract ends on the 17th. That step was the first of many we would be making to transfer our lives from Eden Prairie, MN to rural Beldenville, WI. For some reason, I have a solid memory of that Verizon event, probably because it was the first. Most of my other memories are much more vague.
With the daytime temperature yesterday soaring into the 70s, it was a banner day to get things done around here. I finally finished getting the bird feeder re-built and re-installed in its old location outside the sunroom. It feels great to have that off my list.
I spread out just enough of the pile of gravel in our driveway to see there would be enough to put some down as a base in the round pen. That is another goal we have wanted to achieve for a long, long time. Cyndie is home from work for a couple of days and she was able to help distribute the gravel that I was bringing with the tractor.
She also asked for my camera and took some action shots while I was manning the controls. You can see I left the wood chipper attached to the back, to serve as a counter-balance, but that was a nuisance because it inhibited my maneuverability inside the limited space of the round pen.
Luckily, she didn’t get pictures of me panicking at the start when I realized I left a gate open and the horses were getting into the area I intended to work. I had removed a panel from the round pen and laid it down, and then propped open the gate into that pasture area. Then I headed off to get the tractor. As I was driving over to get access to the gravel pile from behind the barn, I spotted the horses milling about in the area I was planning to work.
I stopped the tractor and rushed over to remedy the situation, but did not check my energy. They picked up on my anxiety right away and started their own mini-panic. Two of them reacted correctly and rushed back into the paddock. The other two turned the opposite direction, extending my problem. I didn’t know which way to go, back to close the perimeter gate I had propped open which would give them a complete escape, or to the paddock to contain the two who had moved inside where I wanted them.
My hesitation allowed the two in the paddock to come rushing back out where I didn’t want them. In their hasty flight, they cut right through an area of composted manure I had spread to create a viewing plateau. Legacy slipped in it and smeared his entire right flank with a huge tattoo of blackness, but kept his momentum going and continued on with the rest of them.
I eventually restored order and got on with my task, but they were all amped up and continued to sprint around the hay-field and back into the paddock a few times before finally settling down again. Cyndie said that they were getting some good exercise out of it.
Between their energized running and our finally accomplishing the goal of getting a base layer down in the round pen, it was a day of truly big strides.
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Measured Freedom
I spotted a recent invitation to connect with an old acquaintance on the career oriented networking site, Linked In, and in a moment of spontaneous whimsy, decided to update my profile to reflect my recent employment change to full-time ranch manager. Who knows? One of my connections there might someday be seeking advice about manure management or moving from suburbia to the agricultural countryside.
As manager, I have decided I should begin establishing and documenting our ranch policies. First off, all visitors arriving from West African countries, Spain, or Dallas, TX, will need to have their temperature measured before entering the property. Also, as a proactive measure, anyone even thinking of visiting the countries of West Africa will be checked for a fever.
Forgive me if that seems insensitive, but my coping method for dangerous or intense situations often involves attempts at humor. That runs the risk of offending if someone reading happens to be directly affected or involved. No offense intended.
Maybe that is why I find myself making so many wisecracks about manure. You see, the title of “Ranch Manager” is just a nice way of labeling the job of manure collector. Sure, I also take care of the dog and cat, manage the maintenance of our fleet of machines, tend to the grounds keeping and forest management, and am the general contractor for all improvement projects, but those activities all happen while I am at the same time scooping up manure.
Yesterday, true to my word, I kept Delilah confined to a leash the entire time I was working on projects. She got one break for exercise when I unleashed her to chase flying discs. When I was working, I always knew where she was. I would describe her reaction to being leashed as, contrite.
I’m pretty confident she understands what is going on. Countless times she has demonstrated a memory for something from a day before. If she was remembering her little escapades from Tuesday, and wanting to return to those adventures, being confined to the distance of her leash was a clear manifestation of having her freedom revoked.
I think both she and I are looking forward to the day we get back to practicing her appropriate measure of free run.
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Twice Fooled
It’s the dog, again. She fooled me twice yesterday, and will now be back on a leash or in her kennel for a while when in my care. Each time Delilah runs off I feel like such a sucker to her shenanigans. She had been doing well lately, so I had become less concerned with her getting out of sight on occasion.
Yesterday morning, she was behaving like her usual self and checking out the crew and equipment of the fencing company. With all the activity happening, it surprised me that she would run off and leave it. She was gone so long that the fencers finished and left, and I went in the house for lunch without having seen a hint of her for hours.
I kept my eyes out for her during my lunch, and eventually spotted her movement down by the barn. I hollered at her and got her to come running for the house. She was a mess of burrs. Delilah was confined to quarters while I tended to a few indoor projects after my lunch, but then something in me decided to give her a second chance.
To start, I gave her 100% of my attention, and we spent a long time together on the front lawn where I worked diligently to detangle the burrs from her thick coat. It was another beautiful day, as sunshine had returned with such strength that Delilah needed to get up and move over to some shade in the middle of my de-burring effort. The beautiful wispy clouds in the deep blue sky were dreamy.
As I lay in the grass beside her, I closed my eyes and realized I could easily fall asleep. It was probably less than a minute, but the sound of her rustling in the leaves nearby woke me from the brief slumber and told me I needed to get back to an activity that would keep her around. Delilah did great, keeping me close company while I worked in the shop to repair a broken bird feeder.
It’s the one that has been laying on my shop floor to dry out for, oh… probably 6-months, after an incident when Cyndie was on crutches and took Delilah out on a leash in a thunderstorm. A boom of thunder had caused Delilah to bolt for who knows where, wrapping her leash around the post of the bird feeder, tipping over both it and Cyndie, as well as the bush growing there, all in one frenetic moment of panic.
I kept Delilah in close contact while I fed the horses and as a load of gravel was dumped in front of the barn. She smartly gave the huge truck due respect and stayed by my side. As I spread some of the gravel around, she laid down in the shady grass on the other side of the pile. In a blink of time, I came around the pile and she wasn’t there anymore. No sight of her in any direction. No answer to my whistle and calls.
She’d done it to me again, twice in the same day. I was really irked by that. After giving her a reasonable amount of time to return on her own, I set out on an unhappy hunt to find her. With my suspicions about her visiting the neighbor’s place across the street, that’s the direction I headed. I popped out of some brush at the edge of our property onto 650th Street, just in time to see her sprightly stepping off one neighbor’s property about to cross the road (without looking) to visit another neighbor’s property.
My angry shout for her obviously caught her by surprise. She approached with trepidation, clearly reading the message in my tone. I did not put any effort toward removing the fresh batch of burrs she had acquired. It had to wait until I could work myself “back to grazing.” Hopefully, that will be today. I just couldn’t get myself there last night after getting fooled twice in the same day.
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New Fence
How many times will I say this? We have another new fence! Yesterday, they hung the wires on the posts creating the fence that surrounds our back grazing pasture. I discovered it is a case of “be careful what you wish for” because we have been wanting this fence for about a year, and now that I stand beside it, I feel a bit of a shock to have my ability to freely traverse that field impeded. What was I thinking!? (*start singing “Don’t Fence Me In*)
Honestly, it is going to be a special feature that will allow us to simply open a gate to give the horses somewhere to go when the paddocks become too muddy. In addition, it will grant them convenient access to what will be our primary grazing pasture. Also, it looks incredibly slick. I’m almost a bit embarrassed about how good it looks. I guess I’ve grown too accustomed to the look of the t-post temporary fences we have had to rely on prior to this.
I stood in the middle of the south run and took pictures in both directions, east and west, and have merged the results into one image. It is a bit of an optically disorienting look, making it seem as though there is a corner in the middle, but I like how it provides an equal view at the two opposite directions.
Today they will finish the installation by burying a wire beneath the gate openings to complete the electric circuit, and then they will hang the gates. We are recycling gates that were left here by the previous owners.
Our horses will be so happy!
I will be happy, too, but with the horses having so much access to pasture now, I will need to become more intentional in my efforts to get out and redistribute the manure drops they leave lying around. In the paddocks, we remove them, but in the pastures, I can get away with just breaking them apart with a rake or a good swift kick. I just need to get out there and do it.
This is one of the reasons that keeping some chickens remains on our radar. We have been told that they automatically spread out the piles by scratching for larva. You get a 2-for-1, because they help control the fly population while breaking up the manure droppings.
See how that works? I go from talking about a new fence, to getting chickens. I have come a long way from that life in the suburbs, don’t you know.
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Chippin’ Brush
With the lawn mowed and the piles of composting manure all in order, yesterday I was able to focus my attention on changing brush piles into wood chips. Once again, I found myself processing several preliminary steps to reach the point of being able to start working on the primary thing I intended to do.
I decided to let the chipper create a pile on the ground, so before I started chipping, I wanted to cut the long pasture grass down to the ground at the location where I would make the pile. I planned to use the Stihl trimmer to do that, but first I needed to change from a metal blade to nylon line for the job.
Next, I needed to solve the problem of a missing pin on one of the stabilizing arms of the 3-point hitch, before I could move the tractor and chipper down to the designated spot. When I was putting the tractor away after the last time I used it, I noticed the stabilizing arm was hanging loose, and the pin that was supposed to be holding it in place was missing.
It was a long shot, but I decided to look for the pin down near the spot where I had noticed the chipper swinging wider than normal when I was driving to put it away last time. I figured the unusual behavior probably started happening soon after the pin fell out. It was a little worse than looking for a needle in a hay stack, so I didn’t look for long.
I borrowed a pin from the ATV snow-plow blade, and was on my way. It was another beautiful day, and I remembered to take a photo before I started chipping, so I would have a comparison for how it would look afterwards. Little did I realize that it would also provide reference of how the beautiful day later turned gray in a matter of about an hour.
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I started working by myself, pulling branches from the pile and feeding them into the chute of the chipper, but soon recognized how much quicker it would be to have another person helping. Elysa and friends had come over for the afternoon, so I took a short break for lunch to see them, checked in with Cyndie, and mentioned I could use an assistant.
They were generous enough to come to my aid after they completed doing some exercises with the horses. Extra hands made a big difference, turning that pile of branches into chips in less than half the time it would have taken me on my own at the pace I was going.
It brought to mind this: I completely understand why farm families benefit from having a lot of children.
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It’s Beautiful
It was Saturday, and Cyndie was home, so I wanted to take advantage of having a potential assistant. Despite my wishes, there are some tasks that demand attention, particularly when it is essential they be completed before another task is able to occur. During the week, while the landscaper and fence crews were working, my attention needed to be on their activities, and I postponed chores like mowing the lawn and managing the manure pile.
The landscaper is done and the fencers are off for the weekend, so Saturday was a chance for me to catch up, regardless of the fact the tasks were the ones I try to save for when I have no one around to help. I absolutely needed to rotate the composting manure piles to create space for dumping the fresh daily collections. Production never stops, and I was running out of places to put it.
It worked out well that Cyndie chose to spend time with the horses, doing some grooming and then exercising them in the round pen, before turning them out into the hay-field to graze. Our activities kept us within sight of each other, so it felt like were working together, despite our different tasks.
It also worked out nicely for me that Cyndie had scheduled an afternoon fall-color drive with a friend, so I could get after the over-due mowing while she was gone.
Well in sight of the middle of October, and I am wondering if this is the last time I will need to mow for the season. I set the mower to cut the grass short and am hoping that will be it. I’m conflicted between wanting the new grass I planted in the drainage swale to grow and the lawn grass to stop growing.
The place looks great with the fresh, close-cut green grass complimented by the colorful leaves of fall. We are in the midst of a series of warm, sunny autumn days with cool nights. I want to be sure to give this pleasant weather as much attention as the wet and cold days usually get.
It would be nice if I stopped and took a few pictures to capture the beauty, I suppose. Maybe I was just working too hard yesterday, but I neglected to pull the camera out even once, even though I had it in my pocket all day. You’ll just have to trust me. It’s really beautiful here right now.
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Relative Something 