Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Fatal Flaw
At the end of December, I posted a description of the human-powered snow plow I got for Christmas. It is one of several great presents I received. The thing has been working superbly, right up until the second time I tried to use it.
I was making great progress clearing snow, but after about 10-minutes into the job, something seemed different. It was subtle, but I sensed that something was amiss. I figured out that the handles seemed lower. The main shaft was bending!
Talk about a weak link. This is the critical load bearing arm of the device. How could they design it with such a fatal flaw? I love this plow so much that I immediately began thinking about how I could brace it, to protect the thin tube from needing to bear all the weight. I really want to be able to keep using it.
I disassembled the parts to get down to the failing piece. Then it occurred to me that I should probably contact the manufacturer before modifying it with my own crude methods of attaching something for support. Especially, I thought, in the off-hand chance they knew of this weakness and already had their own fix in the works.
Luckily, I was successful in making contact with a service person, and without hesitation, she offered to replace the failing part. Unfortunately, that meant they didn’t have a fix in place yet. I prodded to see if they knew it was a problem, and she admitted that there have been other calls related to this situation.
I suggested heavier tube, or a support bracket, but I don’t think I was talking to the right person, I needed the responsible engineer. She told me she would have someone look at the weld of the replacement part before they send it to me. I’m not sure looking at it will make much difference.
I’m going to continue with my plan to devise some sort of bracket to keep it from bending at that spot. Everything else about this device has won my favor. The wheels work great, even though it seems like they would slip. The blade/scoop is a good size and shape. I like the dual hand grips. The quick adjustment for angling the blade is simple and functions well. The entire plow is not too heavy to lift. In fact, if it got heavier by way of using a more robust tube for that one piece of the main shaft, the added weight would be well worth it.
This is where John wishes he knew how to weld. And, had a machine to turn down the outside diameter on the one end. And, a way to cut square holes in the sidewall of a tube. I’d make the replacement part myself.
As it is, I will need to rely on the good will of some talented acquaintances, just to come up with a bracket I will be able to attach with common hardware. If it works, maybe I can sell it to the manufacturer of the hand plow.
Can’t Stop
Okay, I admit it: we are smitten with my son’s new album. I awoke this morning with one particular song running in my head. I just needed to hear it again, and when Cyndie noticed the sound of it playing, she asked me to play it again, out near the kitchen, where she could hear it better, because she wanted to hear that song, too.
If you read yesterday’s post here, and didn’t want to explore all the songs on Julian’s album, I will promote one for your consideration. Listen to “Of Mistress, Master, and Malcontent.” This song includes vocals from Dave Marshall, Julian’s friend in Chicago, and the blend of their voices together is a joy to behold. They have created an arrangement in this song that is captivating, and I think deserves to be heard by a wide audience. I have submitted it to a local radio station for consideration.
Do you think they will be able to see past the gushing parents to take time to consider the music for its own merit?
I hope so. That would make today a real SUPER Sunday.
Enjoy the day!
Frozen Solid
Not much worth doing on the ranch after a heavy rain downpour in January is followed by plummeting temperatures. Especially when it falls way below zero Fahrenheit. Everything is ice. Extreme ice. It is brutal in so many ways.
First off, our driveway is a disaster. Cyndie suggested I try cleaning it by plowing with the tractor the day after it rained. I balked, fully aware that doing nothing would lead to this, but there were small odds I would have had much success with plowing. Under the slush, it was too icy to provide enough traction, even with chains on the tires. Also, it was still warm enough that the wet slush would stick to the blade, and quickly become too heavy for what little grip my wheels could accomplish. I figured I could make a bigger mess of things than we already had, and get the tractor stuck, to boot.
Now the driveway is one solid block of ice. Either I will get lucky, and it will slough off in big chunks when the next warm up occurs, or we are stuck skating our vehicles up and down the drive for the next few weeks. Either way, any small cracks that existed before, are now being stressed, big time.
Water flows and seeps into every crack and crevass, then it expands with destructive power when it freezes. It’s how we accomplish some of our world class pot holes in the roads around here. I can’t wait to see how the driveway looks, come spring.
The colder it gets, the harder the freeze. The harder the freeze, the more dramatic the breaking. When ice expands, it makes a lot of noise. The bigger the ice, the bigger the noise the cracking ice makes. Standing on a frozen lake, when the ice ruptures, the boom of fracturing ice can be very disquieting. When a mass of ice on top of the roof cracks, it is downright upsetting. Of course, it tends to happen in the darkest, coldest hours of the night, which just so happens to coincide with the time a person is trying to get a restful night’s sleep.
Quite frankly, it scares the hell out of me to be startled awake by, (((BOOM!))). Sleep tight.
Cyndie snapped a shot of me as I was about to enjoy trying to navigate the driveway disaster, walking the trash down to the road last night, with the windchill at 21 below.
Flash Boom
Shortly before midnight on Monday night, I was having a very interesting dream, the gist of which I have now totally forgotten, likely because the dream was abruptly interrupted by a curious booming sound. It was thunder.
There is a brief period of transition from asleep and dreaming, to being awake, when logic has yet to establish firm footing. I raced right through that confused state of mind when the next bright flash and booming thunder snapped me to attention. That was when I realized we weren’t experiencing one of those rare thunder-snows. I was hearing a full-fledged downpour of rain, …in January. I have never witnessed anything like it in my entire life. It was pouring. A deluge. It included continuing lightning strikes, (we counted 7 in all), in about 15 minutes of roaring rainfall. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if this fell as snow.
I was like a little kid, running from window to window, trying to take it all in. This was an exceptionally dramatic weather event for me. Where was all this water going to go, with our ground frozen solid? I wondered if we might lose electricity. While I was still able, I hopped online and summoned a radar image.
There was a pretty big area of sleet that funneled down to a small tail of the classic green, yellow, and red of a thunderstorm, and that was centered right on top of us. It looked to be only about a couple of miles wide. Hmm. Aren’t we special?
We chuckled over suddenly having two cats show up in our bed, looking for some extra cuddles, a lot like the way children are known to act during a thunderstorm.
Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie and I took a walk to survey the aftermath and decided the rain was a good thing, even though it trashed the snow, and turned our roads into a nightmare of icy-ness. With the rainfall unable to soak in, it provided a perfect graphic representation of the drainage in the area we are planning our fences.
The spot where we cleared out the brush and created a small runway appears to work wonderfully. Then there is an area where the wetness 
spreads out a bit, before coming together again, right where we expected it to. The stakes that our fence contractor put in to identify the drain path are smack-dab in the middle of the wettest spots.
The whole experience was pretty exciting, if maybe a bit unnerving. It’s going to delay the start of our paddock fence installation for a while, but we learned a little something out of the event.
This is the second time since we moved here, last October, that our sleep was interrupted by a dramatic thunderstorm. With the house situated on the high point of our property, I’m not entirely surprised. It’s just that we haven’t been here during the normal time of year for thunderstorms yet. I wonder what’s in store for us when springtime finally arrives?
Cat Report
It has been a while since I gushed over our adopted kitties, Pequenita and Mozyr. I am, admittedly, slowly being pulled from my previous Scrooge-like attitude about cohabitating with feline critters. We’ll see how that holds up when I eventually step on a freshly upchucked hairball, unceremoniously deposited in the middle of the night on the path to the bathroom. Hasn’t yet happened. With Cyndie home often enough to handle the majority of feeding and cat-litter duties, my exposure to the chores I have minimal tolerance for, is fairly limited.
The experience thus far has not been entirely vomit-free, but, lucky for me, Mozyr seems to be happy to clean up after his sister, …and it doesn’t bother me to let him have the honor. Such situations are much the exception, and not the usual routine. They are behaving as if thoroughly happy with their situation here, and seem to be getting along well enough. They still have bouts of conflict that I am unskilled at interpreting as being battles for dominance, or simple playful combat. Whichever it is, I take solace in the fact that as quick as it starts, it ends, and they can be found lying side by side, in harmonious bliss. I’m pretty sure they have a game of ‘tag’ or ‘chase’ in their repertoire of playtime activities, which explains at least some of the frantic running, sliding, and banging shenanigans they get into.
We tried an experiment of banishing them from the bedroom, after it seemed like I might be experiencing some allergic symptoms, but it turned out to be related to a cold, and cleared up in a reasonable amount of time. We ended up with a pretty good compromise, in that they developed a fondness for the bed across the hall in the den, yet can come and go as they please, to check on us. Unfortunately, it is Pequenita’s habit to do her check-ins somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m., being very thorough to stomp and knead all about our heads in search of a face to which she can press her cold nose.
Yesterday, I walked into the den to connect my laptop to the printer and fired it up, making all sorts of noises that would typically startle them, without realizing they were even in there. As I was about to step out, I spotted Mozyr, sprawled in one of the little beds Cyndie recently brought home for them. It looked like he was out cold. Pequenita was so curled up, I almost missed her, entirely. I went and grabbed my camera.
After I got both images on my computer screen, side by side, we realized the cats appear to have each picked the bed that matches their color. Cyndie said she wasn’t even aware of the potential coordination. These were simply the least expensive beds, and the only colors available.
Their adorable appearance, while making the absolute best use of a cold and snowy afternoon, won them a blog post on this particular day.
New Ideas
We have a new idea about a way to make a hay shed fit in optimal orientation in the space we have available. We are considering creating a roundabout driveway to the barn. I have updated our planning image to show how it might look. It would allow a delivery of hay to pull in without needing to back up or turn around. After unloading, the route out would be straight ahead around the loop.
It is going to alter the perimeter of the paddock on that side, but we think it will be a worthy compromise. Determining the route of the fencing is important because the first batch of fence wood has been delivered. When weather permits, we would like to have paddock construction begin.
I have a new inspiration about possibilities here. We enjoyed a dinner date with Larry and Nancy, the wonderful people we purchased this property from, and during conversation, the word “spring” came up, and not in reference to the season of the year. I was pondering the fact that we still have so much to discover here, not having yet experienced the wet season after the snow thaws. I’m not sure what to expect.
Larry pointed out that it can happen that there will be areas that will be dry, but others not. One time he unexpectedly got the tractor stuck in a wet spot and needed to have a neighbor pull it out. Nancy mentioned the possibility of there being springs that are the source of wet spots.
I will be keeping a close eye on any areas that remain unusually damp after the snow melts, the seasons change, and the heat of summer begins to dry out the land. I would be thrilled to discover we have a spring. There is so much yet to learn, simply by being here for a full year of nature’s changes. It is a great thrill.
Today we are snugged in, having run errands yesterday, and we intend to enjoy a predicted winter storm from the vantage point of our living room. There is a fire in the fireplace, and plenty of indoor work to consume our attention. It is a downright dreamy Wintervale day.
Finally Fencing?
This week, I have been getting a taste of what it is like to live in the deep freeze of winter out in the country. It seems to me that things slow down a lot more than in the big city. We haven’t had any action on the fence project, so it has been more quiet around here than any other time since we arrived. It seems hard to fathom, but during this below zero spell, the most action I have seen comes from tiny birds, and a few squirrels. You’d think that creatures with so little body mass would need to stay snuggled somewhere sheltered when it gets extremely cold, but there they are, right out in the open, picking away at the food, as if it was just like any other day.
There is another factor in the pause of our fencing work. We need to decide on a place to store hay. Before we commit to locating the paddock fence lines, we have to decide where the hay shed will be. Before we can determine the location of the hay shed, we need to decide how big it needs to be. To determine the proper size, we need to figure out what form of hay bales we will be be purchasing.
About here is where our friend Mike might point out that the old rectangle bales have been discontinued, because the animals weren’t getting a well-rounded diet. The big round bales are certainly becoming more common. If we go that route, we need to figure out the necessary attachment for the tractor to move the bales around.
One factor that will help us determine what form of bales we will buy, will come from the discovery of who we will be able to purchase the hay from. It’s not like we can just go to some pet store and pick up a grocery cart of hay for the winter. It is a little more specialized a process for the agricultural industry, and we are complete outsiders, needing to find our niche in the limited local market.
So, where do we put the fence?
Yesterday, we took another step toward that decision. We are relying significantly on the local knowledge and experience of our chosen fence contractor, and comparing his advice with the research Cyndie has done. They seem to agree on the size of hay shed that should support our plan of four horses. He seems a bit hesitant to assume we will be able to stop at owning just four, based on what he has witnessed with other clients over the years, so he continues to push us to consider ALL possibilities.
We have an estimate on materials for a shed, and a couple leads on potential carpenters with skill and knowledge to build it. We measured, again, to prove it can fit. Most significant, we came up with a way to locate the shed in the best orientation, and still allow front access to receive a delivery from a typical hay-wagon trailer. We are going to add to the driveway approaching the barn, converting it to a drive-through, to eliminate any need to back up a trailer.
With that decided, they can proceed with building us some fence …when the arctic high-pressure weather system finally releases its icy grip.
Light Confusion
With our temperatures well below zero these days, I figured it would be a good time to check out how easily I could split the cut logs that were here when we bought the place. It worked like a charm. If that doesn’t feel like the epitome of moving to the country: splitting some firewood by hand in the freezing cold.
Last night we snuggled by the warm fire in our main room. It was idyllic. We had finished bringing in the forgotten variety of left-over drink options from our open house in December, left to freeze in the garage in the extreme cold. Oops. With order restored, we enjoyed a lovely evening, computing on the couch together.
I finally got around to buying a new LED bulb for the light fixture by the front entrance. The old CFL bulb wasn’t a quick-start bulb and in the winter cold it took way too long to provide valuable luminescence. The new one works slick. Comes on right away. Even when it’s not supposed to. I accidentally moved the little switch on the housing that changes the setting for time delay to go dark after motion sense. Then, for some unexplainable reason, I found myself messing with the other switch, for the setting associated with the daylight sensor. Now I don’t know where they were set before, and I can’t seem to get the light to behave the way it used to.
I decided to go around to the back of our house and see how the identical fixture by our bedroom is set. It’s hard to see the text around the switch, because it is just raised lettering, the same color as the background, so I moved the switches back and forth to determine where they were set.
Now the back light won’t time-out and go dark anymore, either. It shouldn’t be as complicated for me as I seem to be able to make it.
The silliest thing about all this is that I have been trying repeatedly to figure out how to get the light to stay on all the time by “double flipping” the switch. Since the old bulb wouldn’t light up fast enough, when we were entertaining guests frequently over the holidays, I wanted to set the light to be on all the time. Regardless my efforts, it kept timing out and going dark.
It was so frustrating! I would flip the switch back and forth, but still, ten minutes later, it would be dark out there. If I stepped out in front of the sensor, it would trigger and the light would come on in a dim glow until the gas heated enough to illuminate. Then, after everybody was gone, or usually the next night when no company was coming, I’d flip it on a couple times and “BINGO!” Light stays on all the time. But, I was never able to get that to work when we actually needed it to.
Seems I’ve fixed that problem now.
Well Done
We had a good day yesterday, on the ranch. Cyndie and I were lounging in the recliners in the sunroom, contemplating a plan for our day, weighing many optional tasks we have in mind. We’ve been meaning to finish cutting a trail in the southwest corner of our woods, but leaning back in our chairs, it was almost too easy to save that work for another time. We set that one aside and put thought toward other errands.
Luckily, we are flexible in our planning, and the activity in the woods came up for second review and won our favor. It gave me my first opportunity to try out the chainsaw that Mary and Tim loaned me to allow me to have some experience from which to make a more informed purchasing decision. Mary, tell Tim it worked great for me! I think it is just the right size for our needs.
It was warm enough that we worked without jackets which helped to allow us to get a trail cleared just as the predicted afternoon winds started to pick up. The arctic blast was on its way. That allowed us to snug in and build a fire in the fireplace. I got creative and found a way to listen to the broadcast of the Gopher hockey game against North Dakota. This morning, the temperature is -2°F. We will probably work on indoor projects today.
I didn’t get any pictures of our work on the trail, but on the way up the hill to the house, I turned around and captured Cyndie walking up behind me. She got me back by pulling the camera out when I was celebrating a goal by the Minnesota hockey team.
Melting Winter
Yesterday, the temperature in the region soared. Driving home from the day-job in the Cities provided a view of the changing landscape as the snow cover peeled back to expose the earth beneath. I got a hint of what spring must be like around here. It is invigorating. At the same time, the warmth makes me wonder if I am living in a time when the climate will shift dramatically enough to alter what lives and dies here.
Will we be able to grow things that previously couldn’t survive the long, harsh winter? Will it become so warm and dry that we will no longer be unable to grow things that used to thrive here? It’s hard to imagine, but with the last year being the warmest since records have been kept, I find myself closer to accepting the possibility.
I suppose that our plan to take on the responsibility of feeding and watering horses might be contributing to my thoughts on the subject. Are we trying to create a life here at a time when “here” is changing to the point of making that life more difficult to support? Well, maybe the changes will make things easier in ways that balance the things that get harder. We’ll take advantage of that.
Today, they are predicting that our current warm spell is to be short-lived. Temps are expected to dive tomorrow, and by Monday become the coldest of the season. The problem that this scenario unleashes is that our insulating snow cover disappears with the high temperatures, and then the frigid blast sends the hard freeze ever deeper into the ground. This kind of weather pattern does not bode well for dreams of being able to grow warmer zone plants here any time soon.
I don’t think there is much hope that we will be able to grow camellias like Ian has in his forest garden, even though there are hybrids that have been released in the U.S. that are expanding the range into warmer zones. When the arctic region stays above freezing, then maybe our growing zone will become the 7-9 that supports these hybrids. We currently show up as being zone 4b. We are too close to those blasts of polar air that bash us like someone left the door open to Canada every so often.
I’ll keep my hopes on the local farmers being able to successfully grow healthy crops of horse-hay, and our pastures staying green, no matter how hot and dry our region becomes. I probably won’t be building many igloos, but I might want to look into a way to collect any snow that does fall, to save the moisture content in a cistern for summertime droughts.
