Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Not Food
Time appears to be assuaging the angst, and moods are lifting for all the inhabitants of our household. Yesterday, for the first time since we brought her home, we let Delilah spend some time in the yard with us, off leash. She did wonderful. Since she was focused on the play, it’s not entirely clear that she even noticed that she was free of the leash.
Before untethering her, Cyndie was tossing the squeaking tennis ball for Delilah to help her practice catching it in mid-air
We continue to work on training her to respond to our commands, and she is showing continuous improvement, thus far.
There was also significant advancement in the process of acclimatizing the dog and cats to sharing house space. The cats are both showing clear behaviors of decreasing the distance they have been maintaining from Delilah, and the dog has actually had moments of calm, or at least, semi-calm, in their presence.
Last night Cyndie was coaxing the cats closer with some treats, and then decided to share the treats with Delilah, too, for behaving civil with the cats in plain sight, and within close proximity. It seemed like a moment of family bliss, and a hint of possibilities for the future.
A bit later, when Lilah was straining on her leash to get after Mozyr, she didn’t even realize that Pequenita had come to sit on the stool just over her head. The dog made a loop around to the other side of the kitchen island, searching for a better look at Moz, and then came back, suddenly appearing surprised to find Nita just sitting there overhead, inches away.
We were pleased to see Nita hold her ground, and even swing to tap away Lilah’s nose when she felt it was getting too close for comfort.
The phrase, “friends, not food” is being repeated often around here lately. I think we are getting the message across.
Just missed.
Ball is hard to spot; in line with the truck front bumper.
Dramatic Tension
The stories of our adventures creating Wintervale would get boring if there wasn’t a little drama involved. Last week we experienced the kind of drama that I could do without.
After we received the latest invoice for the ongoing projects, the dose of reality reverberated with a negative ripple effect. “What-ifs” started to run free for both Cyndie and me, and we are way too inclined toward feeding off of each others’ dark moods. It was as if each thing we were hoping to accomplish was crashing down in a succession of lost momentum. I think there was a moment for each of us where our thoughts were headed toward giving up on the whole long-term wild bunch of ideas we have about this place.
At first, I was surprised by the level of emotion that Cyndie was trying to manage, but eventually I came to understand the reason for her extreme reaction. There is an event in the Twin Cities in two weeks, associated with the program where she just completed her apprenticeship. She wanted to already have horses here and our operation functional enough to allow her to market her training sessions to the gathering of people who will be the perfect target audience for what she plans to offer.
When we first learned our offer on this place had been accepted, I suggested we live here for a year, and work on the infrastructure before actually bringing horses into our daily lives. Cyndie had a different timeline in mind, and we were trying to accomplish her more aggressive goal, but the weather has been a primary hindrance for that.
Only recently did we get registered with the state as a business, and we have yet to complete a lot of the administrative steps that we have in mind. It’s all work we can do (unlike some of the farm tasks that neither of us are interested in tackling, like managing a sprayer and hazardous chemicals to apply weed killer to the hay-field like everyone is informing us we need to do), but it doesn’t lend itself to being done all at once.
With that target date that Cyndie was eyeing, we were finding ourselves forced to try to do just that: all at once. And, to do so while trying to train our new puppy dog. See why I was feeling ready to throw in the towel?
I still am not sure what will happen. We obviously won’t be as ready as she wants, but as she slowly recovers from the feelings of giving up entirely, I think she is formulating a way to be just enough partially ready that she can still get her name out there, and collect names of others who have interest in what she plans to offer.
One of the things looming on the list of “needs-to-be-done” is smoothing out some of the rough terrain and getting a pasture mix of grass seed planted to improve our hay and grazing. Just when we were thinking we’d never get it all done, an angel appears to help. Our next door neighbor made a surprise visit yesterday. While we were talking, he suggested he could smooth out that area for us if we wanted.
It wouldn’t have felt right to ask, but there he was, volunteering for the very thing we would love to have him do. I found that to be a pretty dramatic moment. And that’s the kind of drama that I more than welcome.
Slow Process
Last year, late in the fall, we kicked off our big fencing project, enlisting the services of a fencing company to remove a portion of old fences, including some very old barbed wire that was entangled in years of tree and brush growth. When that work was done, the ground in those areas was a mess of deep divots with tangles of root remnants protruding every which way.
Two giant piles of root bundles and brush were created from the tree debris that was removed. Slowly and methodically, we worked to burn those piles through the winter and spring. Meanwhile, the fencing crew moved on to build new fences, creating our two paddock areas attached to the barn.
The incredibly wet spring disturbed most of our progress and planning, and the areas of dirt and divots that were too muddy to go near, fell to neglect. We ended up leaving them for nature to address. They eventually became less conspicuous beneath a cover of grass and weeds that grew through the summer.
A couple of weeks ago, when the excavator was here to dig the trench for our new water line to the paddocks, they dug two huge holes and buried what remained of the piles of root bundles that never did burn.
Last fall, a large pile of cut logs from those trees was left at the bottom of our back hill for me to split and stack for firewood. Yesterday, I finally got the last of that pile moved up to the top, near the wood shed.
The uneven terrain remains to be dealt with, but 9-months after we started that first phase of our initial fencing project, we are just now feeling close to having completed the entirety of that goal.
Of course, I still have all that wood to split and stack, but that task will get lost in a never-ending exercise of firewood production here. There are a couple of perfectly burnable dead trees waiting to be felled, and a few new ones that came down in the spring snow-pocalypse, that are all awaiting being cut into logs.
Mission Adjust
Since our project of creating the fences and horse space has crept beyond the budget we initially envisioned, we are in the grips of trying to find a way to complete this phase and have a functional containment area, with ability to expand into future ultimate design. It doesn’t make sense to just stop, leaving the things we started half-complete, so we are hoping to bring things to a logical resting point, as efficiently as possible.
We walked the property last night to review possible locations for a planned second round pen, and an arena. Knowing the location for the arena is good, because it will influence the overall plan, but we don’t need to build it until sometime in the future. We also reviewed the zones for hay-field, and grazing, as recommended by recent visits from knowledgeable consultants from the county extension office. Changes in the way we were seeing the hay and grazing areas are impacting the fencing we were envisioning, which is causing us a problem in trying to complete the current phase of work.
We don’t know where the fence should go! Cyndie and I think we know where we would like it to go, but it is beyond the scope of the current plan now underway. Our challenge is to find a way to close the fence line around the old hay-field. Now that the paddocks are built, the fence crew has moved on to driving posts for that project.
At this point, I am leaning toward cashing in some assets to free funds to extend the fence to what we ultimately want. It just doesn’t make sense to run a fence through the middle of our potential new hay-field zone, just because there used to be one there and it is the shortest route. Maybe we could do it with a temporary fence.
We are mulling options.
And pulling hair.
Gnashing teeth.
Typical spousal financial negotiations. It’s not nearly as fun as the dreaming of fantastic visions part.
Mission Creep
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but our simple project to install fences on our property, in preparation for safely securing horses (in case we should ever get any horses), has grown well beyond the scope of our original intentions. Planning and budgeting doesn’t really factor into dreams and inspirations as well as we need it to. Now we are in the midst of a water management project, that was triggered when trying to finish the front fence, and it became obvious that we could benefit from a gate in the front corner, but the access from the township road was on the other side of a drainage ditch. How are we going to pay for this? Creatively.
My favorite camera returned from the Canon service department yesterday afternoon, so I took some pictures of the new culvert being installed, to test the camera out.
Not Pretty
Not everything about our life here in paradise is pretty. Last night we sat down and worked on some of the nitty gritty details of payments-made and payments-due related to all our projects underway. A dirty kitchen seemed like the perfect place for such an unpleasant reality.
I am feeling mopey, because my life has been taken over by the demands of a new puppy who seems to have constant needs, and because I tried to replace my all-time favorite boxer briefs underwear, shopping online, only to find out they are nothing like the original (even though the description includes the word, “original”).
I am so attached to the old style that I tried searching the internet for the possibility of a long-lost pair still lingering on a shelf somewhere. The results where humorous.
I started searching the two most prominent groups of digits that look like model numbers. What I found for search results was a number of poor souls engaged in the same search as me. From my informal survey of the forum discussions that turned up in my results, I see that I am far from the only one who became frustrated by the undesired changes that exist in the design of the current offerings under the description of “original.”
I also discovered that those prominent groups of digits are not the right numbers. Further inspection revealed the location of the number I am supposed to use for searching the old style I seek. Too bad it doesn’t do me a bit of good. I got exactly zero hits on that number in a search query. Not one. Not even a bad result! Doesn’t that seem kind of strange?
I’m back to wearing the old pairs, and that is not a pretty sight.
Training Walk
It was just going to be a simple walk with our dog. I was barefoot, so I stepped into my clogs and off we went. Earlier in the day, Delilah had chewed two places on the web of her retractable leash, to within a few fibers of severing it entirely, so now we were using the straight leash that maintains constant contact. I think that inspired Cyndie to bring treats and a training clicker, to work on Delilah’s lessons for following commands.
Delilah is so strong, when she sets her sights on a goal, and is fixated on getting there, she can practically pull us off our feet. Most often, it is rabbits that command her strongest reaction, but she seems to also have a thing for flying creatures: moths, butterflies, and birds.
As soon as we got under way, I spotted a rabbit down the driveway, seated right on the edge of the pavement. I suggested to Cyndie that we choose the opposite direction. She reacted quickly to turn Delilah around and took the opportunity to engage her in some training exercises. When we got to the back yard, Lilah immediately spotted a bird hopping around on the ground, and Cyndie was put to work trying to hold on against the pull.
We picked a trail through the woods, and headed toward the paddocks, so I could show off the work I did earlier in the day, digging out the space where we will put one of our round pens for working with the horses. Cyndie had Lilah running some circles, as if she were a horse.
We made our way toward the end of the driveway, with Lilah chasing the occasional white moth, and decided to return on the freshly cut trail across from the hay-field. Delilah appeared to having a great time, maybe calming down a bit from all the exercise. After we turned the corner, I suggested we try getting her to respond to one of the commands. I got the clicker ready, and Cyndie was digging for a treat, when I glanced down the trail and spotted a skunk.
I hollered, “Skunk!”
Cyndie reported that Delilah was aware of it. I figured we’d have to fight her to get her to turn around with us. We turned to hustle back the way we had come. In the distance, I saw the white tail stand straight up.
All my momentum was headed south when Lilah, in her convenient effort to join us in retreat, stepped on the heel of my clog, giving me the equivalent of a “flat tire.” My body kept going, but my shoe stayed behind.
“Delilah stepped on my shoe!” I complained as I hopped around trying to reclaim it.
We burst into laughter over my predicament, Delilah’s hasty retreat, and the circus our simple walk had become.
I don’t know why, but for the remainder of the walk back to the house, Delilah wanted nothing to do with any command training.
New Passion
I have developed a new passion for black raspberry jam. Cyndie has been making the jam out of berries we are getting from all the plants on our property. We learned that the local term for these berries is “blackcaps.” I have always been a fan of raspberries, so liking the blackcaps is no stretch. The flavor of these is as deep as the color.
Cyndie cherishes the berries so much that when we were about to clear all the growth behind the barn, she stopped and went to get a baggie to save the ripe berries before we cut. Unfortunately, she then stowed the bag of berries in a bigger bag that was filled with our cutting tools, and by the time she got to the house, her baggie contained blackcap juice, not berries.
Lately, we have taken to applying her jam over the top of some regular cream cheese that we spread on bagels, toast, or any variety of crackers. It is a seriously delicious combination. It makes me hungry just writing about it.
The crop has been good this year, and we continue to find ripe berries, still. It seems like every day, more have ripened, so the harvest has been ongoing, daily. The plants have all grown up wild, along the edge of wooded areas. Cyndie has tied some of the bushes up in bunches, to make it easier to wander among them to pick the berries. But they are everywhere around the property, so wherever we go, there are berries to be picked.
I need to apologize, in advance, to those of you who would otherwise probably receive a jar of her blackcap jam as a gift in the coming days or months. I think I will have exhausted the supply before she ever gets the chance. It’s just that good!
Test Stack
I didn’t really have time to start this project, but I did, anyway, while I was lingering to help Delilah get settled in her kennel. If she sees us toiling about nearby, she seems satisfied to lay down and relax in there. After that, she seems good for a long duration.
I’ve placed some pallets on the ground and then started a stack of split firewood on the right side of the shed. Looks like I will actually be able to go 3 rows deep, so there will be plenty of room for our needs.
I discovered 3 leaks during yesterdays drizzly rain. I don’t know whether the screws in those spots aren’t tight enough to get the washer to seal, or there is some other cause. I plan to just glop on silicon caulk to cure the drips. Of course, one is smack dab in the middle, now pretty much 2-inches beyond my reach from every direction. That’s one problem with settling on a roof material that is not strong enough to walk on.
Situation Overload
We are now in the thick of things, in terms of change and land management here. The fence posts are going in for the fencing that we have selected around our front field, and that has driven an issue of committing to a decision on a gate. It is not a simple decision.
After consulting with an asphalt maintenance and repair company, about the damage that has occurred to our driveway, we see the value of having a second access road for heavy equipment. There is a spot where we saw potential for that second access, on the southeast corner of our property. It is an interesting situation there. Because of a drainage lane, the previous fence line jogs in, well inside our actual property line. The other side of that lane takes on the appearance of being the neighbor’s property. That is where a gravel access off the township road already exists, currently providing our neighbor access to that end of his property.
For it to serve us (since it is on our land), we need to get across the drainage lane. We had the backhoe clear a channel and dropped a culvert into it. That got the attention of our neighbor, whom Cyndie and I had previously visited, informing him we were looking into making changes along our shared border. Now he wanted to report that, years ago, there used to be a crossing that was further in from the road, and we might want to consider moving that culvert to that spot. Oh, and he asked that we be sure to create a berm on his side of the drainage lane to keep water from wandering out of the lane, into his field.
Meanwhile, Cyndie had a great conversation with someone from a local extension office who came out upon request, and they directed us to contact the office of land conservation to discuss drainage. I did that, and now have a conservation technician coming on Monday to advise us on the drainage situation of our property. I also have a call into our township chairman, to consult on any concerns they might have about changes we want to make. Monday, our fence contractor and the excavator will be here to find out what our plan is.
Cyndie also learned from the extension office visit, that it is highly recommended we apply a weed control very soon, like next week, to get rid of weeds that are toxic for horses.
For some reason, I chose yesterday to finally get around to talking with someone about what is required in terms of maintenance of our log home. Now we are considering finding a home inspector to give us a thorough review of the pertinent issues with this house, so we can prioritize them, and establish a plan for keeping it properly cared for.
Last week, I received a quote for maintenance on the upper portion of our driveway, but it completely neglected the damaged areas down below. I’ve have been so distracted that I haven’t gotten back to him to see what’s up with that.
We learned our new puppy has Lyme disease, and need to have her on antibiotics for 30 days.
Delilah is getting over her surgery and pulling harder on her leash than we are able to hold, behaving like a puppy when it comes to minding our commands.
I need to fill my wood shed.
Still haven’t cleared our trails through the woods.
Feel like I’m living on a farm, but have a day-job somewhere else.
Yikes! Our dream, and reality, are crashing into one another.
Relative Something 