Archive for April 2025
Mixed Result
My mind continues to linger on the shade sail project even though our contractor, Justin, won’t be available to do the post-installation until 10 days from today. I’d like to do as much preparation as possible before his hourly rate kicks in, so I decided to work on the leaning fence line yesterday.
The first thing I did was tie a guide string that indicates the straight line originally established for that length of fence. Then, I stood and stared at it for a long time, wondering how to go about the multiple steps that would be required.
- I knew I would be unscrewing horizontal boards from the posts.
- I wasn’t sure how to manage the pending curiosity from the horses.
- I was hoping to pull the uphill post that will end up being replaced by the new shade sail post.
- The other post to be replaced has a gate attached to it.
- Where do I put the gate when it has been removed?
- Can I temporarily put fence webbing to keep horses from trying to cross there?
- Maybe I could pull the other posts upright before pulling the gate post.
I opted for pulling the first post because that seemed the most straightforward. The only way I could imagine successfully extracting that post and persuading the rest of them to stand back up straight was to use the diesel tractor.
After wrapping a chain around the hook on the loader bucket and then the post to be pulled, the slight touch of the lever lifted that post flawlessly. That’s the way I wish all things worked.
Next, I moved the tractor back and wrapped a tie-down strap around the next post over to apply pressure against the weight of the tractor. I’m sure the come-along would have been the more appropriate choice, but it was up in the shop garage, and the strap was right there to grab. I’d already made more trips back and forth to get one more thing than my sanity in the moment wanted to tolerate.
I was able to bring the post in line and only lost a little of the upright level when releasing the pressure. Looked straight enough to the naked eye. Moving to one of the two most tipped posts, which happen to be on either side of the waterer, I repeated the routine with the strap.
That post offered much more resistance than the first one. I’m going to need to do a lot more digging in order to gain the inches needed to get it in line again.
It was getting close to feeding time for the horses, and I wanted to get everything put away before starting that process. That meant repeating the routine of trips back and forth to carry all the stuff I had brought out throughout the hours of trying one thing after another to achieve my goal.
I made enough progress in the end to feel successful about my efforts, although I didn’t realign as many posts as I hoped. Luckily, I have plenty more days to fiddle around with this before the sail frame installation officially gets underway.
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Thinking Things
I hope you don’t mind that I haven’t asked you, dear readers, for money, and I haven’t splashed advertisements all over this virtual space, either. It’s not what I do. I consider myself lucky that I can get away with that. Obviously, asking for money is a reasonable thing to do when you have no other source of funding.
These thoughts have been triggered by two things. First, the multitude of activist organizations that are bombarding my inbox with messages emphatically spelling out all the atrocities occurring in our country that need to be stopped.
“Send us $9 monthly.”
“Donate now.”
It’s hard to argue with the craftily written paragraphs that imply the money I give will stymie all the threats to our democratic freedoms unfolding over the last three months. Alas, they are undone by the repetition of requests and the absolute nothing that happens to stop the horrors piling up by the day.
The second thing that has been irking me is the massively intrusive advertisements that a certain weekly documentary series mashes into its podcast format with overdone hype. I am grateful that this person is traveling far and wide to gather stories and employing a crew of staff to record sound and video, which costs a lot of money, I’m certain, but there must be other ways to finance the project.
The current method they use is making it hard to listen to their otherwise very interesting story.
I had a very interesting –read that “chilly”– bike ride yesterday afternoon. When I finished mucking about with various small projects, I was warm, and the air temperature was almost 60°F. I figured the exercise of cycling would naturally heat me up, so I didn’t put on long sleeves.
From our wonderfully nestled property, I did not perceive much in the way of wind. I also didn’t notice that the brief clearing in the sky we had been enjoying was over, and thick clouds were blocking the warm sunshine.
I soon discovered it was closer to 50 than 60°F and felt more like 30 when creating my own wind chill effect during rapid spurts down hills.
The route I selected was a short square that ended up putting me into a stiff headwind for the last miles to our driveway at a time when my arms were already uncomfortably cold.
Checking the wind speed when I got home verified why the neighbor’s flag was stiffly blowing straight at me as I passed. My weather app indicated a steady 15mph directly out of the north. Yeah, brrr.
I’m thinking I should have worn long sleeves.
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Everything Arrived
Thursday started with a morning delivery of the lumber I ordered for my shade sail project. The truck stopped on the road, and the driver used a three-wheeled forklift to move my posts and boards up the driveway.
Having never done anything like this before, I’m uncertain about a lot of the details. I’m feeling confident about the overall concept, and I have purchased everything I think I will need, but I’m haunted about how it will all work out in the end.
I have decided to install a header around the top of the posts to bolster the stability of the whole frame against the pull of the canopy hardware and the pushing guaranteed to happen from 1200-pound horses with an itch. Watching how the 24-foot-long 2 x 6 boards flopped like noodles, it occurred to me that those probably should have been a beefier dimension.
I’m not used to dealing with such long dimensions in lumber, or anything else, for that matter. It’s hard for me to visualize where 24 feet of something will fit. Even the forklift driver needed to make some tricky adjustments to barely fit between the hay shed and the wood fence with the boards balanced on the forks. There was a little squeaking as the boards rubbed against the metal shed as he eked his way through.
By noon, FedEx had delivered a box with the shade sail canopy on our front steps. Cyndie and I tried to unfold it in the loft, letting it drape over the railing to get a feel for the size. I didn’t realize how big 18 feet is. It doesn’t seem like that much out in the paddock, but in the house, we couldn’t find space to stretch it out.
I opted for the barn.
It took me several tries to rig up attachment points that worked, but we eventually got it stretched out enough to take up slack in the metal cable sewn into the outer edge all the way around.
There was no way we could have done this outside yesterday with gale-force wind gusts howling all afternoon, leading up to a robust thunderstorm just before sunset.
I’m aware that maximum tension is the key to getting the shade sail to perform optimally, but my initial rigging in the barn showed me there are a few little details to achieving my goal that make this project a lot more complicated than it seems like it should be at the start.
My new contractor friend, Justin, will stop by today to take exact measurements to determine where we will place the posts.
We are getting close to finding out how much the horses are going to freak out over the strange new feature appearing in their midst. So far, the flapping labels on the lumber outside their paddock kept them on edge for much of yesterday before I pulled everything off the wood.
If only they knew what was going to happen next.
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Mostly Clean
The problem with taking on a chore like picking up downed branches is that there is no end. Even though my focus was on the area beside the lane around the back pasture, as we made progress, just a few steps away lay another pile of branches equally deserving of attention. It is frustratingly difficult to just leave them be for now and stay focused on the limited original target area.
It has been three years since we paid professionals to cut off dead limbs around the two large maple trees. At the time, we had them leave all the cut chunks on the ground where they landed to reduce their time on scene and save us money. My plan was to clean it all up myself on my own time.
How’d that work out for you, John?
Yeah, I didn’t make much progress with that. Then, a large limb they didn’t cut snapped off in a storm. We cut some of that back, but the rest just added to the mess from before.
We haven’t removed every last chunk that was cut down three years ago, but we accomplished a heck of a lot in the last two days, pulling out what was most visible near the lane by the fence. I’m calling it mostly clean, which is good enough.
I’m exercising my ability to accept that perfection is not a requirement.
It was all rotting in place. Now it can continue to rot in the long, tangled pile of branches forming a border fence along our northern property line.
Late in the afternoon, I met the contractor who will be helping me with the shade sail project. Delivery of the canopy was pushed to today, same as the scheduled delivery of the lumber.
The contractor, Justin, will return on Friday to take precise measurements and provide a cost estimate for his services. He will find me a post-hole auger to rent, and he sounded very supportive of my plans. Looks like he will be available after next week to do the work.
I do believe a new source of shade for the horses will soon be achieved. I am excited to find out how it will look, and how different it will end up being from the images I’ve been creating in my head for the last few months.
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Clock’s Ticking
We are quickly running out of time to accomplish any of our goals that require an ability to see clearly into our woods. Leaves and flowers are about to burst forth like a volcanic eruption.
Grass is growing enough already that I did a little mowing with the push mower in front of Cyndie’s perennial garden and the sunny spot behind the barn that always grows faster than anywhere else on our property.
While I was tending to compost piles mid-morning, I looked up and found three of the horses on the ground napping with Light standing watch.
I finished the afternoon with a shift clearing out downed branches that have accumulated in the area where we recently pulled out a few miles of grape vines. All the time I spent in there battling vines revealed just how many branches were on the ground.
We keep going back and forth over wanting to pick up dead wood that falls or leaving it to decay. We soon discovered it’s a fool’s errand to think we could stay ahead of the number of branches that are constantly dropping. The problem is that ignoring the situation for very long gives the place a neglected look and makes the clean-up job much more work when we finally decide to do it.
I made piles that must now be hauled away from the lane around the back-pasture fence. Anything dry can be run through the chipper, but the rest will be tossed onto the natural fence wall where we just piled all the willow branches we cut down on Monday.
If we don’t move all these branches today, I worry we will get distracted by other projects. Suddenly, the piles will be swallowed by grasses and brambles, and we won’t see them again for a year.
We are on the verge of a green growth explosion. If we listen closely, I think we could hear leaves unfolding all around us.
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Topped Off
In preparation for the pending installation of a shade sail in the paddock, yesterday, Cyndie and I cut off the last of the big branches on the dying willow tree. This is what it looked like before I started cutting:
Despite a strong, gusting wind and ridiculous footing due to the saturated heavy clay mud all around the tree, all three large limbs came down without a disaster occurring.
If I had needed to make a hasty exit due to an unexpected twisting or a limb snapping where I didn’t intend, there is a good chance I would have needed to leave a boot behind, suctioned in the muck, to pull my foot out and dive clear. Thankfully, no evasive action was required.
I am very grateful that Cyndie was able to act as a spotter and offer smart advice to cut portions at a time but not make more cuts than necessary. She also carried more than her share of heavy loads in the clean-up work after the main cutting was done.
We made good use of all three of our Stihl chainsaw tools to complete this exercise. The little hand pruner is priceless for cutting all the small branches off the main trunks. I needed to use the big saw to cut the large limbs into pieces we could carry. It only required three trips with the trailer behind the ATV to haul away all the debris and leave the paddock and surrounding area looking better than it did before we started.
The result was more dramatic than I anticipated it would be. Removing all that height of branches towering over the small paddock created a startling difference in the ambiance of the entire area. My first impression is that I don’t like the change. However, it won’t be long until the next phase will happen in the form of the shade sail, and I think that will go a long way toward compensating for the loss of the tall willow tree branches.
We are expecting delivery of the canopy by the end of today and the lumber is due to be delivered on Thursday. I am meeting with a local contractor on Wednesday afternoon to negotiate his support to rent a post-hole auger and then supervise or assist as needed in getting the frame erected. I saw his company advertised on the Nextdoor app, offering professional help to lay people trying to accomplish DIY projects that stretch just a little beyond their abilities. It seemed like a perfect fit for this endeavor. It sounded like he felt the same way in our initial email exchanges.
By the end of this week, we should have a good idea of when the groundbreaking will occur. I can’t imagine the horses have any clue about what’s in store.
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So Rewarding
Yesterday, our daughter, Elysa, brought friends for a day of Wintervale exploration, a day that had been planned for weeks. Cyndie and I have been watching the weather forecasts which consistently reflected a chance of rain. Instead of precipitation, we were rewarded with a fair amount of afternoon sun.
We had spent an afternoon sprucing up the labyrinth in preparation for their visit, trimming bushes, re-balancing stones, and removing accumulated leaves.
It looked pretty good, which rewards us every time we walk past.
There is already enough grass growth happening that it could use a mowing to keep it looking well-tended. I will certainly need to cut it before the arrival of World Labyrinth Day in three weeks.
I’m looking forward to that day because of my plan to measure the circumference of the transplanted maple tree in the center circle of the labyrinth annually on the first Saturday of May. Last year was the first time I measured it, establishing a reading of 7.25 inches as the initial reference dimension.
After the five guests finished walking the labyrinth, they made their way to see the horses, where we were rewarded in several more ways. First off, simply the fact that the horses were in a very social mood all day was a big plus. The horses rarely seem bothered by groups of talkative strangers and all the added energy they bring.
The herd was on their best behavior. They all took turns lingering at the fence for scritches or treats being offered. Most rewarding for me was seeing Mia, the mare most easily startled, stay engaged at a fence gate to receive hands-on attention even after a couple of flinches when something spooked her.
That is uncommon for her.
Elysa was reaching to untangle some fairy knots in Mia’s mane until Mia had had enough. Instead of stepping away, Mia simply reversed her orientation and gave up her other side for scratching.
The most timid horse showing such self-confidence warmed my heart.
Once again, it is visitors who truly bring Wintervale to life. That is a reward we will never grow tired of receiving.
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Memory Tests
Here’s a simple tip for managing undeveloped property: After you cut back any growing tree or plant, always follow up and cut back new sprouts that emerge from the stump. My challenge is remembering where to look for the new shoots that pop up since I tend to forget where I have left behind fresh cuts.
That grapevine sent out at least six new shoots that spread out in every direction. It had been a while since we cleared out this area and I discovered some of the shoots had traveled several trees away to climb branches. I think we need to start putting little flags in places where we cut something off to trigger me to come back sooner rather than later to follow up.
Our pile of extracted vines is getting pretty tall. It’s too bad I can’t seem to make progress on the thought of building an archway out of vines. At least I’m able to remember that I was considering the possibility.
Yesterday, I spotted a horse that I thought was Swings lying down for a nap and was planning to sneak closer to take a picture. Then she picked up her head and I saw it was Light, whom we wished would get more deep rest because she was acting sleep-deprived. I stopped my approach and took the picture from a distance because I didn’t want to disturb her.
She ended up getting to her feet shortly after my aborted approach. Hard to say whether it was my doing or a choice she would have made regardless of my presence.
Last night we had a humorous lapse in our memory for a dinner date with our friends, Paul and Beth. Cyndie picked a new restaurant to check out in Stillwater and made reservations. As I made the final turn into the parking area, I realized we’d been there before.
I recognized the front seating area where we’d sat with Paul and Beth the last time we’d been there. They had picked the restaurant at that time because they had been given a gift certificate to eat there.
At least I remembered that the food was good.
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Everything’s Changed
The rule of law seems to be melting into meaninglessness right before our eyes. When insider trading is happening out in the open, in the highest government office, it sends a pretty blatant message to the rest of us. I’m so happy to be on an expedition avoiding sights or sounds of HeWho (as in “He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named”).
Every day that I give ZERO attention to awful people who feed on attention is a day when my power wins the battle.
In our herd of horses, the role of muddiest mare has changed from the usual pair of either Mix or Light to Mia this week.
Mia displays a trait of flicking her head with a feigned biting gesture to ward off unwanted contact. It is very easy to read and respect when she is not feeling touchy-feely. If I approach her with kind words and a gentle hand, giving her time to sniff me and judge my intentions, she may not feel threatened, but she will usually still give that little biting-the-air motion as a proactive protection/personal space preservation.
I usually tell her that it’s not necessary, but I don’t take offense. The other day, she approached me as I was doing my usual housekeeping chores in the paddock. She came very close, so I stopped what I was doing and let her do all the sniffing she wanted. I was happy to have her initiate such intimate contact.
Then she made her little nipping toward me move, which triggered a quick response of objection from me.
“Uh uh. Not this time, girl. You approached me! Don’t be bitin’ in my general direction in this situation.”
You know what else has changed for me? Every time I see something about Canada, I experience a deep disappointment over being a citizen of the U.S. of A.
Disrespecting our good neighbor to the north really didn’t need to happen. If HeWho and his minions weren’t such (expletive deleted), that relationship could have been preserved.
At this point, I don’t see how we will ever be able to regain the goodwill we had before.
I guess not everything has changed. I’ve been told that a certain group of people still blame Biden for anything that is going wrong today. And, you know, Hillary’s email.
I wish there was a way to make America intelligent again. Not that it ever was to a degree we liked to pretend, but at least this current tide of idiocracy didn’t always have unobstructed access to the controls other than in the movies.
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Relative Something 