Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Alternative Location
I mowed the paddocks on Sunday. Knowing the kids were coming mid-morning, I headed out to the shop garage to move equipment around for access to the brush mower and watch for their arrival. I didn’t see Elysa’s car drive past, but looked up and noticed it parked by the house all of a sudden. A second later, I looked up to find Julian’s Jeep parked there, too. How they both got past me without my seeing them drive by is a complete mystery.
So much for that plan.
After chasing Julian around on his Onewheel, I left him to do more practice laps and hopped on the tractor. Elysa opened gates for me and stood on the lookout for wandering chickens.
I didn’t realize that Cyndie had reported a headcount of only seven hens located and I sent Elysa off to can pickles after I’d made a few passes around the perimeter. It seemed to me that I would be able to spot chickens if they showed up.
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When I got closer to the middle of the paddock, the grass was so tall and thick that it was impossible to see what I was mowing over. I looked up after navigating a tight circle around one of the high spots and I caught sight of one Golden Laced Wyandotte slowly and calmly walking away from the grass toward the paddock fence.
Had she been hiding in the tall grass, just as I feared possible? I wasn’t entirely sure, but the thought was unsettling.
The paddocks looked pretty good when I was finished. After six years of successful close maneuvering, I finally broke my first fence board when I miscalculated while backing up to turn around. Curses!
Cyndie took Delilah for a walk through the newly mowed grass and the dog sniffed out where the Wyandotte had been.
It looked like my tractor tire rolled over about ten eggs in the hen’s alternative to our nest boxes.
We are hoping the loss of cover will help convince the vagabond bird to return her laying habit to the coop.
Is it possible to teach old hens new tricks?
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Future Arrives
The kids stopped by yesterday for Cyndie’s day of canning pickles and Julian brought along a new commuting vehicle that bridges recreation and transportation. Have you heard of Onewheel?
I suppose it could be compared to a skateboard, but it gives more of an impression of snowboarding… only without the snow.
The device just recently arrived and he wanted to practice riding while wearing his computer bag to get ready for “boarding” (I’m told the term being used is “floating”) to work. He lives and works downtown in Minneapolis, so mastering our hills and uneven terrain would go a long way toward building strength and confidence for the urban surfaces he will more often encounter.
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He started down the driveway.
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Then turned onto one of our rough trails.
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He popped out in the back yard and rolled down the hill.
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Into the woods again.
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Floated through the gazebo beside the labyrinth.
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Along the back pasture fence line and around toward the barn.
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He picked up speed as he reached the weed-covered gravel around the hay shed.
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After that, he turned onto the asphalt driveway again and completed a very successful first attempt at adjusting to the added weight on his back. I think he will do just fine on the streets and sidewalks in the city. With each outing on the board, he will gain strength and skill.
No, I didn’t try it out myself. I’ll stick with two wheels and pedals. However, I am not against the possibility of an ebike somewhere in my future.
All these budding electric-assisted modes of transportation popping up definitely make it feel like the future has arrived.
I’m wondering if I will be able to catch up with it.
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Double Visits
Yesterday, we had a precious opportunity to visit our horses because we were invited to lunch with friends on the lakeshore at Gary Larson’s home, and the two destinations are in close proximity to each other. Our double accomplishment came at a cost of limited time at each location, but the blessing of any amount of time with a treasured group of really great friends and a hands-on visit with our horses fills our hearts and energizes our souls.
After a luscious lunch (Thank you, Gary!) and a quick dip in Christmas Lake, I switched into long pants and boots and Cyndie and I drove a little further west to spend a few minutes with Dezirea, Cayenne, Hunter, and their old (re-newed) herd-mates.
When we arrived, the horses were out of sight, down the hill from our point of entrance. A short walk in and we spotted them before they sensed us. It was calls of alert overhead from ospreys nesting on a platform by the car that caused the horses to take notice of someone inside the fence.
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They all moved to the base of the incline and peered up at us with great interest, but came no closer. We slowly walked down to meet them.
The interactions with the large herd are a little complicated by us having a close relationship with three of the horses but barely familiar with the others. It was difficult at first to have focused time with our horses while surrounded by the heightened curiosity from the others over the strangers in their midst.
I was allowed to have a brief connection with Dezirea before her new gang of worshippers interrupted, probably trying to figure out what she was getting that they might be missing.
Eventually, we had a chance to spend quality time with each of our three horses. Cyndie pictured with Cayenne above, me with Hunter below.
Hunter appears to have adjusted well in his return to the old herd that formerly held him toward the bottom of the pecking order. At one point, when I was standing with Cayenne and him, I heard one of the other horses in the vicinity give a little shout and the group of three who had strayed a little too close suddenly hustled away. I didn’t see what he did, but Hunter clearly claimed our space and the others definitely got the message to leave us alone.
All too soon we needed to start the drive back to tend to Delilah at home alone all day. Cayenne and Hunter insisted on a long Minnesota goodbye and stepped after us as we tried to break contact to leave.
When we looked back from the top of the hill, those two were still alone together in the spot where we left them, as if lingering in the in-between of time with us and returning to the herd.
In the car on the drive home, Cyndie and I smelled like horses. The rest of the day we lingered in the in-between of time with them and returning to the rest of our real world.
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Precious Memories
We had another company looking at our deck yesterday to quote replacing the boards. While I was waiting for the appointment, I took another shot at pulling up boards to expose more of the joists. The previous person who looked at it suggested getting rid of everything and starting from scratch. Yesterday’s suggestion was much more to my liking. We can just add a board between each of the 24″-spaced joists and put down a new surface, leaving the railings in place.
I like that plan. The handy-man neighbor that was first to look at our project was ready to slap on whatever new boards we wanted to buy, never a worry about the too-wide joist spacing.
Since we are going to keep the railings, I spent some time preparing them for refinishing, while yesterday’s guy took measurements. I’m hoping he got the numbers right because we also chatted the whole time. He used to own racehorses in the early days of the Canterbury Downs track in Shakopee. He understood what it is like to no longer have horses.
As I talked, I was unscrewing the multitude of clips that our friend, Marco Morales, had meticulously placed for a flexible LED light wire Cyndie wanted along the deck railing for a special party while the Morales family was visiting four years ago. Remember these, Marco?
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The clips didn’t hold up well against the abuse our winter weather dishes out and the tube had become almost black as the plastic aged, but it looked great that night!
As I unscrewed each clip, I enjoyed remembering the times we had during that visit. It seems like longer than just four years ago to me.
It is hard for me to imagine we might have an opportunity to make new memories from a future event that will match the peak we reached those days in August of 2015.
Honestly, I don’t know if we are fixing up the deck so we can enjoy it for years to come or to improve the appeal for someone who might want to buy the place, but it doesn’t matter.
I will always have the precious memories of living here.
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Yay Internet!
Amid all the clutter and junk on the internet, the social disasters and false information of the great technological curse of the century that we can’t live without, this week I was able to enjoy one of the gems that occasionally make life better for those in search of answers.
The overly complex Denon receiver for my home theater unexpectedly went silent one day. I sensed something was amiss right away upon power-up because the tell-tale click of relays engaging was absent. There are so many features that we aren’t utilizing, it’s difficult to know what buttons are even pertinent to my situation, let alone which one might have been inadvertently toggled.
It is so rare that I even look closely at the displays on that unit or the power distribution module beneath it that I couldn’t tell if something was lighting up different than usual. In fact, something I did find hinted at an over-current surge which was certainly believable given the stormy weather that transpired on Tuesday when no one was home.
I was prepared to deal with disconnecting everything and sending in the receiver for professional service, but not without spending a little quality time using my digital meter to step through rudimentary troubleshooting. The light on the sub-woofer was not coming on, so I started there.
Measured good voltage at the power plug, pulled the fuse and happily found that intact. Like magic, reconnecting everything brought the sub-woofer back to life. The power light came back on.
Next step, remove AC voltage to the receiver and let that sit for a few minutes. Not so lucky on the magical reset there.
The final step before finding a service center was to see what the manual offered. After spending more time than I wanted to waste in the manuals file in the den and not finding what I wanted, I went to the computer.
Before even downloading a manual for review, in the search for my unit, I included the words: “loss of audio out to speakers.”
Multiple forums with a variety of similar issues on Denon units appeared.
“The problem may be dust in the headphone jack.”
Really?
That was certainly something I could investigate myself. I grabbed a 1/4″ headphone plug and headed up the spiral stairs to the loft. After a very technical step of blowing into the headphone jack on the front of the receiver, I plugged in the phones.
Music!
The output amplifiers are not blown! I unplugged the jack and the room speakers came to life.
Imagine if I had taken the time to disconnect all the wires and pack up the unit to be shipped for service for that repair.
Thank you, internet. Thank you.
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Holy Leaves
When I got home from work yesterday, I discovered a lot of leaves on the ground. Definitely more leaves than branches, although there was an unsurprising number of branches scattered about, too.
I’m guessing that the broad line of thunderstorms that rolled southeast across Minnesota in the middle of the day yesterday dropped some hail over our property. Nobody other than Pequenita and the chickens were here at the time, and they’re not talking.
Cyndie took Delilah up to the lake for a few days, so all I know about what happened here is based on evidence gathered in the aftermath.
The sky in Plymouth became impressively dark as the storm arrived there in the morning, but I didn’t witness any dramatic wind. I did spot two impressive cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. The rain was moderately heavy for a while, but never as epic as what the boss experienced in Bloomington, where he reported roads temporarily flooded over.
From the looks of our yard at home and the meager half-inch of water in our rain gauges, I think a little hail is about the worst we received.
A few of the leaves in the yard have holes in them, providing additional clues to the likelihood of hail.
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Happily, I couldn’t find any other signs of damage. Skylights on the house, shingles on the roof, and the plastic corrugated roof panels on the chicken coop show no evidence of the assault.
I didn’t find any stray eggs laying out where they might get damaged, either. Found five in the nest boxes, from the eight birds, so the numbers still lend credence to the possibility one or more of the hens have decided there is a better place to lay than in the coop.
Hopefully, the birds had enough sense to seek shelter when hail started to fall. I didn’t notice any holy chickens, so I think they fared well enough.
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Remembering Woodstock
Ten years ago, on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, I wrote a blog post musing about how that event influenced my taste in music. In honor of reaching the milestone of 50 years hence, I’m going to re-post those thoughts once again…
Have I mused on music already here? I don’t remember.
It was 40 years ago now that the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held. Three days of peace and music. I was 10 years old. I don’t have any recollection that I had any clue it was occurring.
I’m not clear about what point in my life it was that I got hooked by the music being made by artists like the ones that were so well represented at the Woodstock concert. The first album that belonged to me was a gift from a sibling or siblings (anyone remember?). It was the Monkees, “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. That album was released in November of 1967, so maybe I got it Christmas of that year. I remember they pranked me with the trick where they taped the album to the cover of the box the present was wrapped in so when I lifted it and looked in the box, there was nothing there.
The next record I recall getting was one that my sister, Linda, allowed me to select for myself, as a gift from her. I didn’t have a clue what to pick and went with what I saw before me when walking the aisle of the local record store. Black Sabbath’s “Ironman” was something that I recognized as having heard on the radio and it was in the front of a stack down at my eye level. I picked it and remember her trying hard to make sure that was what I wanted. I’m pretty sure she could sense it was not a well thought out selection. But I held firm, trying to portray that I was making an informed decision. I wasn’t.
Eventually, I came to revere the music of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The first concert I ever saw in person was The Allman Brothers Band. I was a fan of The Beatles, Derek & the Dominos, America, Loggins & Messina and a wide range of related groups. I have always liked live recordings and I think my favorite albums from all the above artists or groups are their live concert recordings.
Impressionable years
Somewhere in my very impressionable music years, I heard the live recordings of Santana, The Who, Richie Havens, Country Joe & the Fish, Canned Heat, Ten Years After, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joe Cocker, John Sebastion, and I’m sure others who performed at Woodstock, and those songs all locked in my consciousness as foundation blocks.
I probably heard them on the soundtrack of the documentary film released after the concert. From those songs, I built a fascination for Leon Russell and records like Mad Dogs & Englishmen, The Band, “Rock of Ages” and “The Last Waltz”, Little Feat, “Waiting for Columbus”, George Harrison and the musicians he recruited for “Concert for Bangladesh”.
This wasn’t music that was played on popular radio (remember the AM band?). This is what record albums and FM radio were all about. Eventually, I got a job at a retail record store for about a year and became immersed in more albums than I could comprehend.
I wasn’t old enough to be aware that the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was happening at the time, but later, it became a very significant part of my music world because of the recordings made there. And the music that was made there came from the spirit of that moment. Woodstock was a very important event for me, after the fact.
Increasingly more so, in the accumulating years following that August weekend back in 1969.
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Decked Out
We’ve limped our deck along thus far using patches for the boards that rotted out, but it is getting to the point where the bad spots almost outnumber the good ones.
It’s time to replace them all. For us, the process starts with a search for a crew in the area who are willing to quote the job. Cyndie’s first call landed a person who lives remarkably close and seems hungry for the work. Maybe too hungry. He’s made three visits already, two of the times with a different potential “assistant” in tow to analyze the scope of our project.
He wanted to get to work right away with a verbal “rough estimate” and a willingness to start removing boards yesterday. We’ve got another quote scheduled for Friday, so we are making him wait.
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Cyndie and I took the steps of removing all the furniture and I pulled up a couple boards to reveal the condition of the joists below, hoping to make the quoting process as easy as possible for our estimators. It’s enough to almost entice me into trying to do the whole thing myself, if it weren’t for the nitty-gritty details for which I have no experience, such as what to do about the railings.
Ain’t home maintenance grand?
I’m leaning toward the extra expense of choosing composite boards for the job, specifically to reduce the amount of ongoing maintenance required. The boards that receive some shade from pine trees tend to get mossy and the boards out in the open face extreme UV abuse.
It would please me immensely if we never needed to deal with rotting boards ever again.
Of course, there’s always the other option of just selling this property and moving away to a place that doesn’t involve doing our own maintenance.
Is it too soon for us to move into a senior living retirement apartment?
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Rural Pleasures
We had the wonderful opportunity to drive through the cities to the rich countryside of Wayzata yesterday for the unfortunate occasion of a memorial service. Some of that time in the car spawned discussion about what might be next for us now that we no longer have horses. It is a complicated dilemma, although dilemma is too extreme a word.
It’s really just a question, one that could be simplified to the alternatives of continuing to live here, or selling the property and moving somewhere else. One of the first complications is that there is nowhere else I would prefer to be. We have become very accustomed to the space our little sanctuary provides.
Back home in the afternoon, Cyndie hung up the authentic Guatemalan hammock that our friends the Morales family gifted to us. In the shade beneath giant oak trees, I joined Cyndie to luxuriate in the open privacy of our little nature preserve. Then Delilah decided to join us, too.
We are truly blessed to live here. It is a real struggle to even conceive of leaving for something else.
Discussions have continued on the neighborhood group about our recent close encounter with a mysterious wild visitor. The fisher is too rare an occurrence for some to accept, so the opinion has shifted to a woodchuck.
That’s good news for us, as that would be much less threatening for our chickens.
Those hens seem to be luxuriating in the rural pleasures themselves. It’s pure luck that no predator has disrupted their ranks all summer and it seems to have inspired a dangerous, comfortable confidence in them.
One of them has decided she doesn’t need to use the nest boxes in the coop to lay her eggs.
This morning, Cyndie noticed a newborn cow in the neighbor’s pasture. Last week, she reported a group of five eagles soaring together, high in our sky. Delilah picked up a feather left on one of our trails by a wild turkey and carried it like a precious treasure for several minutes, ultimately dropping it with a vividly contrasting lack of interest.
Today, it is beyond my comprehension that there is any other place where I will be as happy living as our rolling hills in the rural countryside of west-central Wisconsin.
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Bad Decision
It has been a while since I used the Grizzly ATV. Last time I had it out, I decided to park it in the hay shed since we no longer need to store hay in there. That turned out to be a bad decision.
Maybe birds don’t like the Grizzly and they were sending a message.
If I had parked it one foot over in either direction, they would have at least missed the seat. It was positioned directly beneath a joist where they perch. Just lovely.
I posted a message to the neighborhood group for input on our fisher sighting. Nobody else has reported similar. We still have all eight chickens, despite visible signs where the critter had dug to get in and out of the barn. Luckily, the chickens aren’t ever in the barn. We keep the doors shut.
There were no visitors to the chicken coop in the last twenty hours other than Cyndie and the chickens, based on the surveillance of the trail camera.
Maybe the fisher is more interested in moles and voles than chickens. After mowing yesterday, it became obvious there are plenty of burrowing rodents active across our land.
That’s probably why the big weasel showed up. It’s here to rid our yard of pesky moles.
See how I visualize the outcome I desire?
I’ll let you know how well it works. (I’m guessing not so well in this case when delivered with a heavy amount of sarcasm.).l
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Relative Something 