Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Weather Weary
The first full week with Cyndie working her new job and me working at home as full-time ranch manager is behind us. She came home and went to bed with a headache and I am physically exhausted from working 14-hour days. Will the weekend offer us a chance to relax? I’m not sure.
I wasn’t able to get out and test the new wood chipper yesterday, after a morning of rain and an afternoon of hauling hay. I stacked 80 more bales in the hay shed. It’s beginning to look respectable.
I wish I could say the same about our uncut field. As feared, the weeds are maturing and weather hasn’t offered us much chance for enticing any willing neighbors to help turn it into bales.
I take some solace in the fact we are not alone in being unable to cut. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the tribulations hay growers are facing this year. We are lucky to have found a supplier who has some high ground, though he still battles the frustration of squeezing the process of cutting and baling into the short number of days between deluges.
Ideally, the process involves at least 3 dry days in a row, but we’ve been hard pressed to get 2, and the rain amounts have continued to be significant. That means the next sunny day or two after a rain event are often lost to waiting for the ground to dry up again. It just doesn’t seem to happen.
This also impacts my plan to do some wood chipping. One of the first areas with cut branches that I am hoping to grind into chips is at the bottom of a hill in a very wet spot. Getting down there with my tractor holds the potential of becoming a muddy, messy affair.
No matter how much control we pretend to have about eventual outcomes, the days will always be a delicate balance, subject to whatever nature chooses to offer or inhibit.
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New Accessory
No more burning brush piles for us. Yesterday, I brought home a new chipper that will be powered by the PTO of the diesel tractor. We could use the wood chips and we have plenty of brush to grind up, so it is a win-win for us.
I’m a little worried that I might turn into a chipping monster now that I have one of these things. I guess it will depend on whether I can stand the racket it likely makes, and how well it actually functions.
I was able to use the tractor to lift it off the truck, and once on the ground, get the chipper mounted on the 3-point hitch on the back. Then I needed to pour through the manual for information on how to use it. The instructions are very simple and straight forward. The hardest part was wading through the pages and pages of safety warnings to get to the operating instructions.
So, today I hope to get a chance to fire it up and give it a try. It will be tricky because I’ve been informed there are hay bales available for pick up from our new supplier, and that project has first priority whenever it isn’t raining. I’ve got 160 bales already stacked inside our hay shed, but that’s less than a third of what we are hoping to stock pile to get us through next winter.
It is pleasing to discover that for our purposes, the size of the hay shed we built has turned out to be perfect.
If we add any more equipment after this wood chipper, I think we’re gonna need another garage. I got it to fit inside the shop garage, but just barely. I’m happy that Cyndie and I both share a strong desire to avoid storing equipment outside on the property. We’ve given in once already, for the truck, but we’d like to leave it at that if we are able.
That just means that before we can add anything else, we will have to get rid of something to make room. Check with me in about a year and we’ll see how well that plan works for us.
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Unsanitary Landfill
I laughed at myself yesterday, thinking about my unorthodox methods. When I lived in the suburbs, I would collect fallen leaves and spread them all around our lot as ground cover, while all my neighbors were collecting theirs and bagging them to be thrown away. Now I am using composting manure to fill low spots, without waiting for it to become dirt.
One area I am working on is just outside the back door of the barn. Last year when we were creating the paddocks, we had water piped from the barn to a Ritchie waterer for the horses. Excavators dug a very deep trench to get below the frost line, and it exited the barn by that door. I think we are going to be needing to add fill over that trench for a few years as the dirt they filled it with continues to settle.
This spring, after the snow melted away, the ground had dropped down so much that the first step out of the back door had become a real doozy. I have slowly been filling that trench with the dirt and manure that was raked into piles in the paddock at the end of winter. I got the idea to use that for fill from the fact that the piles ended up being more dirt than manure. Still, I am putting poop on the yard as fill. How unsanitary is that?
The last few rain events interrupted the composting process on my main pile, by getting everything too wet. I’m using the oldest portion at the end of the pile anyway. It can dry out where I spread it to fill the depression caused by the trench.
You might be able to discern how I have segmented the pile to create sections with differing stages of composting. I think it would work, if I had a roof over it to control the moisture.
Not gonna happen. Not for a while, anyway. I’ve still got a woodshed to rebuild before I embark on any other roof constructing projects.
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Renewed Hope
I have been purposefully mute about anything to do with the second tree we transplanted to the center of our labyrinth because I thought we had failed again and it hadn’t survived. It looked so good at first, but then suddenly the leaves all shriveled. Since it was early in summer, I figured the tree was doomed. How can a tree survive the long summer with no leaves? I didn’t want to waste any more time writing about it, talking about it, or thinking about it.
I dragged my feet when Cyndie suggested we just buy a tree to plant there. That’s not what I wanted, but I didn’t really offer an alternative. I figured, if I didn’t think about it for while, maybe the problem would go away.
It is possible that it did.
Yesterday when I was down mowing the labyrinth path, I glanced up at the branches when I got close to the center and there before my very eyes were some brand new leaves! Lots of them, actually. What a thrill! It may not be (forgive me for this) out of the woods yet, but for the time being, all is not lost. There is hope once again that it might survive.
And with that hope, we are feeling a wonderful boost of precious joy.
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Hay Day
Picking up hay was delayed yesterday as a result of some light rain showers that moved through. Even when it wasn’t raining, the high dew point temperature made everything feel wet. I took it as a sign I should tackle some of the indoor chores that I’ve been neglecting, so I lingered in the air conditioning to finally pick up and put away bike stuff and camping gear that I’ve been ignoring since I got home from vacation.
I made it outside eventually, and headed down to clean the paddocks while I waited for a call from our hay guy. I pretty much had a days’ worth of work completed by the time I went in for lunch shortly after 1 o’clock. Just as I finished preparing my food, the call came for me to go get the hay.
As I pulled in their driveway, I spotted our new favorite hay dealer headed around a barn on his tractor, glancing back in the nick of time to catch a glimpse of me. Tom seemed very friendly, for a guy who at the same time comes across as all business. Without a greeting, he called to me to drive around the barn, guiding me as I backed the truck into position at a hay wagon. We’d hardly exchanged words and he was tossing bales into my truck bed. He told me that I wouldn’t need to bother strapping the load down if I placed the bales exactly as he instructed. I was all ears.
Much to my surprise, we fit 40 bales on that truck. It worked so well for me that I’m hoping he won’t object to our making many trips back to his farm, picking up as much as he is willing to sell to us, but in 40-bale-at-a-time batches.
If I borrow a trailer, things just get that much more complicated, including the time involved to load and unload. If I’m working alone, which is what will most likely be the case, 40 is a good number that I can move in a relatively short amount of time (before my body starts to get too fatigued).
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Gettin’ Ready
Even though we haven’t cut any of our own hay yet, there is still some to be had from other sources. Cyndie has connected with a local grower she found through the people from whom we purchased our property. The trick is, we —or more correctly, I have to haul it with our truck. Cyndie is up at the lake for the holiday weekend.
Our pickup has only a 6 foot bed and I am not expecting we can fit very many small bales back there. I’m framing it as something of an ice-breaker meeting with the grower and a chance to sample his crop. If it seems like a good fit for all parties, we could borrow our neighbor’s flat-bed trailer to go back and get more.
I’m supposed to show up at 9:00 this morning, so I did some cleaning and rearranging in the hay shed last night to make room for new bales. First, I moved 28 small bales that remain from the batch we received near the end of March, putting them on the other side of the shed. Then I struggled to roll one last large 700 pound bale of the ditch hay out of the way.
I’m ready to see what the day brings.
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Inexplicable Realities
How did I spend my 4th of July Independence Day holiday? Mowing. We have finally begun the transition from too wet to too dry. It’s crazy how quickly the environment seems to swing from one extreme to another. While there are still areas with standing water, the grass growing in places that have dried out is already beginning to show a little stress. The happy medium is an elusive ideal.
Last week when I mowed, the residual clippings were excessive and left rows of dead grass. I didn’t bother with picking them up at the time, and after a few days I realized it was significant enough that I wished I had. It inspired me to pull out the grass catcher option this time, even though it annoys me to have to stop and empty it as often as needed. It worked pretty well for the most part, but when the tube rising off the mower deck would plug, the clippings and mud accumulated around the blades beneath the deck.
By the time I finished, it had become a hellacious re-molded surface under there with barely space for the spinning blades. Yikes!
I got another chance to practice removing the mower deck from the tractor.
I’m feeling less anxious about finding someone to cut our hay field after talking with my next door neighbor to the south. In hind sight, I discovered that my usual pattern of allowing myself to endure pressure about doing things “correctly” (like cutting when it is time to cut) is one of the primary forces causing my angst. Just hearing from the neighbor that we can’t cut here yet because it wouldn’t be able to dry enough on the ground, brought me a huge sense of relief.
It didn’t hurt that he also mentioned that the person who rents his field, and will be cutting hay there as soon as possible, would probably be able to help us out if my first option doesn’t come through.
A few posts back somewhere, I made mention of Legacy and Dezirea being hesitant to pass through the gate to our grazing pasture. I think I figured it out. It wasn’t just because the ground was so saturated there, but because their hooves sink so far in the muck that somehow the electric wire running underground between fence posts had gotten nicked and was arcing in the mud. It was hard for me to hear, but they obviously sensed the problem and it made them very uncomfortable.
It is feeling lately as if the line between functioning and failing is a very fine one, making it all the more challenging to reach the goal we are seeking. Our sights are well beyond merely functioning. We hold a vision of positively thriving!
Time for me to go mingle with the herd and practice absorbing more of their amazing horse-sense.
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Ongoing Challenge
In our zealous effort to get Wintervale Ranch functioning optimally in the shortest amount of time possible, we have repeatedly run into weather related obstacles that have hampered progress. I think it’s even fair to say the weather has been more of a problem in the last two years than has our simple lack of knowledge or experience in managing life on big property with forests, fields, and animals that need our care.
The issue feeling most burdensome today has to do with growing hay ourselves. I’ve written before that we are on a multi-year plan to improve our crop, so this one moment in time shouldn’t be such a big deal, but there is a chronological sequence to the 2-or-3-year process that is putting pressure on us once again. In early spring we were hurrying to get the field cut short and over-seeded with a mix of pasture grasses. Now we need to cut it to knock down the weeds and encourage growth of desired grass.
The wet weather has interfered with everyone getting their first cut of the season done.
I learned yesterday that the neighbor who we were hoping would be able to guide and assist us to get our field cut and eventually baled is doubting he will be able to get to us in a timely fashion since he is so far behind on his own fields. Every farmer I drove past on the way home from work yesterday was out cutting his hay.
Time waits for no one. We don’t own (yet) the equipment to cut for hay ourselves (the brush cutter mulches what it cuts), nor the rake to arrange the cut grass into windrows, nor the attachment that makes bales, so we are currently at the mercy of finding someone local to help us out. If we miss this weather-window of opportunity and are forced to wait for the next dry spell, it will mean less nutritional quality of our crop and more weeds that can get re-established again, despite our short mowing to discourage them earlier in the year.
The horses are doing their darndest to help munch down the tall grass in the grazing field in back. Well, at least two of them are. For some reason, Legacy and Dezirea haven’t wanted to cross the extremely wet, soft ground that is just outside the paddock in that direction. You can see the old fence line where the tall grass starts and how the shorter grass in the foreground has been trimmed like a lawn by their previous grazing.
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In this shot across the shaded paddock, you can see the field we want to cut for hay in the background, basking in the sunshine. It is ready and waiting for us to make our move.
I don’t yet know what that next move is going to be.
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Changes Afoot
This week I am back at the day-job to cover for my assistant while she is on vacation. By coincidence, this week also happens to be when Cyndie starts a new job in education administration. In fact, today is her first official day in her new role as Chief Academic Officer of the Anoka/Hennepin School district, the largest district in the state of Minnesota.
How do these things happen? I don’t know. It’s not like we planned for her to land such a demanding position so far from our home. The opportunity arose and Cyndie peeked in at it, getting quickly swept in for another shot at solving the world’s problems through helping improve another public school system. Can it be done? I hope so, because she always gives her all in trying.
What does that mean for our plans at Wintervale? Probably that our efforts to launch a self-sustaining education and retreat center here will be a bit more drawn out. For me, it means that I will need to do a better job of again reducing the need to travel across the cities to my old day-job gig. My primary responsibilities will shift to managing things at home. Heaven forbid, I might be forced to finally do the grocery shopping and dinner prep for the two of us.
I have already started my unintended plumbing apprenticeship. I’m daily growing more comfortable with animal care: horses, dog, and cat. I’m getting the hang of using tractors and gas engines. Most importantly, I’m making connections with the farmer neighbors and local business owners who will become the new co-workers I will be interacting with to accomplish whatever needs attention on any given day around here.
We think it is a glorious opportunity for both of us.
Happy first day of July, 2014!
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I’m Trying
Honestly, I’m trying keep a positive attitude about the lack of progress with our situation at Wintervale, but my efforts seem futile against the elements. Wet weather is the greatest culprit. It takes several days after a measurable rainfall to see the crest of ground water drainage, so even two beautifully sunny days after a storm, our land just seems to become wetter. I doubt we have had more than two days without rain yet this year.
On top of that, the precipitation we have been receiving has been in crazy large doses. The storms rolling through have commonly dropped 2, 3, and even 4 inch totals. The horses have been reasonably tolerant, for which we are extremely grateful, but it is apparent they are burdened by the disastrous conditions of the paddocks.
We still have a temporarily roped small space on the gravel driveway where they can get a break from the mud. Cyndie recently helped me move the temporary fence defining a grazing area, to expand it onto some untouched growth. They seem moderately happy with it, but struggle to reach it through an area that is extremely soaked and soft. The sad truth is that everywhere is soaking wet, so it gets only marginally better after they cross that worst spot.
Often times, we find they have taken it upon themselves to come in from the grass and we find them standing up by the barn. It surprises us that they give up on grazing before we need to force them, and their acceptance of standing under the barn overhang is a new behavior, too. I’m guessing that they have just finally come to recognize all the sounds that come from wind and the creaking expansion of a steel building on a sunny day. The horses used to stay away from the barn whenever the wind was blowing.
It has been a week since I returned from the bike trip, and the lawn is in desperate need of mowing again, just like it looked when I got home and needed to dive into the project at that time. Too bad it is so rainy this weekend and I need to work the day-job next week to cover for my assistant who is on vacation. My chance to get some of it done yesterday was foiled from the get-go. My Saturday started with this message from Cyndie: “I have bad news…”
It was a special day for us, because Cyndie had scheduled her first mini-seminar of training. Our daughter, Elysa, was bringing friends and it would provide us the chance to do something of a test run through the routine we are envisioning will become the mainstay of our future operations of Wintervale Ranch.
“The kitchen sink isn’t draining.”
On the bright side, I got out of needing to do the vacuuming (which unfortunately still needs to be done). So, Cyndie had to prepare her welcome brunch and lunchtime meal without a working sink. I got to spend my day running a snake through the stink of drain muck, negotiating over the phone with local plumbers, running to the hardware store for a longer snake, spilling nasty water on myself and the kitchen floor, and finally succeeding and putting everything back together in time for dinner.
Try as I might, the ultimate victory over that battle didn’t do enough for my attitude to keep me from feeling helpless and inundated by the overwhelming number of things that await attention around here. We are sinking beneath the water and all the projects that are falling behind the endless passing time of days and weeks.
July is around the corner. I better get after those April and May projects pretty soon. Oh boy, I’m trying.
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Relative Something 