Don’t Miss
If you are a fan of popular music and the art of multi-track recording, don’t miss this documentary currently showing on PBS!
We stumbled upon the second episode last night and became instantly entranced. I always marvel over seeing that someone made the effort to record video —and subsequently save for later discovery— of surprisingly authentic moments of activity, like musicians working on a song.
Who thought to record video of these bands before they knew the group would turn out to be worth the effort?
This show renews my appreciation for the amount of creative manipulation behind all the recorded music we get to hear. It’s something that is too easy to take for granted.
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A Recap
How did we get to this point in the story? …Previously, on Something Relative:
John (that’s me) and his friend, Gary, were going on a trek in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal and wanted to share stories and photos of the trip with friends and family. Son, Julian, suggests I should use a blog for the purpose. I look to post something new everyday to keep the thing from becoming stale.
I write some poetry and take pictures. One day, my wife, Cyndie, tells me I should put my poems on my images. Words on Images becomes a regular, occasional feature.
I share stories and pictures from an annual bicycling tour and camping week that happens in June every year.
Cyndie and I go on a trip to Portugal to meet Ian Rowcliffe and his family and friends. Life altering trip inspires us to dream about creating a forest garden of our own and leads Cyndie on a path of discovery with horse communication.
When we decide to look into selling our suburban home of 25 years and shop for horse property, Cyndie gets recruited for a lucrative position with Boston Public Schools. Blog becomes filled with posts depicting me trying to cope with her absence while doing some minor remodeling in preparation of putting our house on the market.
Cyndie comes home after a year and we get our first offer on the house. We take a look at a few new properties in town before seeing the paradise that we chose in Wisconsin.
Blog becomes a chronicle of our transition to rural life while making property enhancements toward becoming first-time horse owners. Oh, we also got a Belgian Tervuren Shepherd dog named Delilah who has a knack for commanding all attention possible. Cat, Pequenita, is a sweetheart who demands less attention, but is no less loving and lovable.
I begin to figure out power tools and tractors. Cyndie and I trade off years staying home full-time to manage the property. We plot launching an equine-assisted training business. A relationship blossoms between our family and the Morales family in Guatemala, growing from a first meeting between Cyndie and Dunia at the Epona apprenticeship in which they were both enrolled. Trips back and forth to visit each other in our home countries ensue.
We decide to try building a chicken coop ourselves and make plans for a couple of years, fretting over how we would keep dog, Delilah, from killing them if we added a flock.
Neighbors (and our farrier), George and Anneliese temporarily move in with us while they are between homes in a plan to move closer to family back in Minnesota.
Somehow enough people overlook the crude and bullying, most times inappropriate, and occasionally vulgar statements and behaviors of a candidate with no previous governing experience to elect him as our 45th President in our national U.S. election.
Super moon arrives to the closest proximity in the last 69 years. It looks like a sunrise in my image.
I’m not quite sure what to expect next. Will we actually get chickens? Will we figure out how to grow our own hay and get it cut and baled? Will we launch the business? Will we ever get our dog appropriately trained? Will the climate continue on its trend of increasing warmth and extreme precipitation events? Will I continue to post something new every day? Will I find a way to get back to visit Ian in Portugal again? Will we get the significant projects under control enough that I can ride bike and play guitar more? When will I cut my hair again?
Stay tuned and keep following along. I’ll probably post about all the above and more, with photos!
Thanks for reading my “Relatively Something” take on things and experiences!
John W. Hays
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Coop Features
I based the specific footprint dimensions of our chicken coop on the size of the crates that I acquired from the day-job. We built the roost on one side and nest boxes on the other.
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We want to have chickens specifically for the benefit of their penchant for eating flies and ticks, but we won’t turn down the added benefit of collecting eggs they produce. Toward that end, on the side of the coop where we installed the nest boxes, we built an access door for collecting eggs from the outside.
To keep the chickens from perching over the nest boxes, we installed a slanted board above them, which resulted in dead space beneath it. Putting in an additional door turned that space into convenient storage potential.
Expanding on the access theme, we also put in a small access door on the back wall to facilitate frequent removal of the poop board beneath the roosting bars. Having the removable board will allow us to scrape manure to add to our compost piles and reduce the cleaning burden on the sand we plan to use for the rest of the coop floor.
We made the chicken door to slide sideways for opening. When closed, a rod fits in the groove to prevent the door from sliding, providing added security overnight.
The coop receives plenty of light through the translucent roof panels and three windows. That will provide necessary inspiration for egg laying.
There is no ceiling in the coop, simply a barrier of hardware cloth between the walls and the roof, so the entire top is ventilated. When we’ve been working in the warm sunshine, the inside has remained noticeably cool.
I may need to add something of a temporary barrier on the outside edges of the roof in the winter in case blowing snow becomes a problem. We’ll see when the time comes. Maybe it won’t blow at all.
While working on the coop Saturday, the wind was blowing hard enough by the house that one of our rocking chairs blew over. I could hear the gusts rustling the dry brown leaves still hanging on the branches of the big oak tree. However, there was no wind at all while I was beside the coop.
We picked a spot for the coop that is nicely protected from the elements, a little downhill from the house, nestled at the edge of a wooded spot beside the back pasture.
That location may just be the best feature of all.
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Coop’s Up
My carpentry lesson is coming to its conclusion. Yesterday we finished the corner trim and some inside details, bringing us very close to the end of construction. There are several final things on the punch list yet to install, including hardware to critter-proof all the doors and a ramp for the tenants, but we are just about out of excuses for actually getting some birds.
Maybe we’ll get around to taking this to it’s logical conclusion.
Built using substantially salvaged materials, all the way down to some reclaimed nails, it came from this:
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…to become this:
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Recovering Slowly
It’s a process. I’m still sad about the embarrassing outcome of our election, but some of the shock and traumatic stress is wearing off. The commodity of a good night’s sleep, which I hold dear, is possible again after several disturbing bouts of disruption. It is a mental illness I know all too well that leaves me wide awake at oh-dark-thirty with unhelpful thoughts running rampant.
I know depression. The events that played out to even allow the President-elect to be a choice in the end was depressing enough, but for the voting results to prove there are that many people in this country who would accept his rhetoric as deserving nearly sent me back to my darkest place.
How can I live with that? I live among them. How do I deal with this disturbing reality?
Love.
It’s all I can do. I know how I recovered from my life of depression. I will work my program. I will send love in every direction. I will strive to love the men and women who believe things with which I disagree. I will find a way to send love to people who find solace in hate and fear. I have fears, too, but we don’t fear the same things and we don’t respond to our fears in the same way.
Nothing is as exclusive and extreme as our minds are inclined to perceive. There is “both” where we see “one or the other.” We tend to be more similar to those with whom we disagree than we want to admit, especially in times of conflict.
People are inclined to inflate a point in order to make it. It’s too bad humans haven’t instead worked to develop a keener sense of detecting a point so there would be no need for the inflation.
Spend a little more time around horses and you can witness the art of keen perception. You can also come to discover the incredible power and reach of a heart-field.
Our horses help me to send love everyday. They are tapped in. We put the soccer ball out for them yesterday because the weather was nice and they were showing signs of being in a playful mood. Legacy spent the most time testing out the odd obstacle while the mares focused on their grazing, well placed in comfortable proximity to him.
Hunter expectantly waited for a turn.
They eventually moved over the hill and left the ball alone for a while. When we came back after lunch, the ball was all the way down the slope up against the fence, so someone had been playing with it again.
I’m following their example and letting my perceived obstacle be ignored for a while. When I reclaim my heart center and bolster my love beams, I can approach the situation again to see what happens when I show up.
I am not any less of a person as a result of what happens around me, unless I choose to react poorly.
After some faltering, I’m choosing love.
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How
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that light
is too bright
especially at this time of night
I can feel my eyes
putting up a fight
with hopes of saving
some small shred of sight
despite the unwelcome fright
of seeing what just might
transpire
I cannot understand
how so many people
would knowingly raise their hand
in support of one particular man
who has demonstrated time and again
so many traits unpleasant
while he repeatedly fanned
flames of hate, fear, and banned
good sense or even
complete sentences of real plans
just a catch phrase or two
bullying braggadocio
rising on the worst
his cultivations rehearsed
to prey on some rabid thirst
void of real love and honesty
what remains is some kind of curse
how?
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Another Tool
I have totally abandoned my attachment to manual saws for trimming high limbs, and I know exactly why it happened. I have enjoyed nothing but successful ease with our two Stihl small gas engines after making the leap of buying a chainsaw and trimmer.
They were my gateway drug.
It took nothing more than a casual work-place conversation reference to a chainsaw on an extension pole to trigger my conviction that that was exactly the tool I needed. We already keep a jug of mixed gas and have experience with two very similar engines. What’s one more?
When a discount coupon arrived in the mail from my favorite hardware store —the one that has supplied my fix of other Stihl equipment— I was all in. It felt a little like I was being possessed by Tim Allen’s grunting tool guy.
The first tall branch where I hoped to test it turned out to be a bit more than what I could reach. Why start small? I quickly learned its limitations. Even standing on my ladder, I couldn’t lift the motorized pole high enough to reach the height where the limb had snapped and was dangling.
It seems like it should be so simple in theory, but the combination of difficult angles, heavy weight of the motor and pole, and awkward leverage of the long reach make using this tool a complex challenge.
Still, it will be a very helpful addition to my arsenal for clearing overhead branches along our trails. Also, and maybe even of more significance, it will serve us well in creating a high hedge-like wall of growth along our northern border where our neighbor grows a field of corn.
For those of you keeping score, this now makes it four small gas engines, …and still not a leaf blower among them.
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Now
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what we don’t know
that waits around the corner
is not there
until we show up
if we do
with our bells on
it is our time
our moment
notes of a song
real
happening like laughter
singing
because timing
that is everything
is actual
like now
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