Posts Tagged ‘farm’
Before After
I searched my archives for an image of what the area behind the barn looked like last fall when we arrived here. Do you remember when I discovered the eagle statue that had been hidden beneath brambles? That was right on the corner of the barn. Actually, it was the excavator who pointed out the eagle to me, when he was surveying the area for the project we had in mind.
The new access has turned out very much like we hoped and imagined. Success!
That pine tree in the “Before” image on the left is now back in our brush pile to be burned. We had thought about trying to save it and relocate it, but then the 18″ snowstorm we were smacked by on May 2nd tipped it over and broke the roots. That was the only “keeper” tree sacrificed for this project, and the storm made the decision for us. I cut out a bunch of sumac and trimmed up that butternut tree quite a bit. Of course, the different seasons make the images a less than exact comparison, but you get the gist of it here.
Before
After
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Here is a shot from the day we were working on clearing the brush out in preparation for the arrival of the excavator:
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.
Progress Applenty
We had a lot of progress yesterday, and one big failure. My favorite little pocket camera has failed me. I did a little research and discovered a Product Advisory was issued that defines the exact failure that I experienced, and I hope to be able to have it repaired at no cost to me. 
Unfortunately, I didn’t get all of the images of progress that I would have liked. Some shaky cell phone images will have to suffice.
I finished getting all the roof panels attached to the wood shed. I hope to be stacking wood in there soon.
We assembled a dog run for Delilah. She spent a little time in there yesterday, 
seemed at ease in the space, and she appears to be doing well, following her surgery last Thursday. She has been a bit more vocal the last two days, barking to get our attention. We were a bit distracted yesterday, so she was justified in trying to redirect our focus back to her.
The crew arrived to finally make some real progress on raising the hay shed. It looks like a game of pick-up sticks. All the vertical posts are buried and braced.
More Same
The end of June has arrived, and halfway through the year, we are getting blossoms on a tree here that smells like lilacs and reminds me a lot more of May than July. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record (it’s probably too late for that) but it is still too wet here to do much of anything we have in mind to do.
Yesterday, the work crew that is going to build our hay shed, tried a second time to get the corner posts installed. They are as anxious to get it done as we are to have it done, but I was surprised to see them here, since it did rain enough in the pre-dawn hours to give us a pretty good soaking.
Things have improved a little bit, and that is probably why they tried, because you don’t know unless you test it. The driveway loop firmed up enough to support the skid loader, so that work we did on it, by hand, appears to have paid off nicely.
When they started drilling a post hole, the first 20-plus inches down was dry and they were encouraged. That’s a lot better than it was the last time they tried. Unfortunately, that’s only about half the depth they are trying to reach. Beyond that, it turned to a thick pea soup consistency. Or maybe, cake batter. When they put a measuring tape down the hole, to check the depth, it just kept going, past the depth the hole had been drilled!
That’s not a very good foundation for the corner posts…
We’ll be waiting a while longer before proceeding with this project.
Intermediate States
We have arrived at the U.S. holiday weekend of “Memorial Day.” For us, this usually means a trip to the vacation getaway of Cyndie’s family, in Hayward, WI, for “Work Weekend.” This is the time when the property gets a major cleaning, the beach gets raked, toys and floatation devices pulled from storage, and boats get scrubbed and hauled down to the lake. The work culminates in a spectacular community feast at the main lodge.
We aren’t there this year. It feels strange.
We have our new property to tend to this spring, and have been granted a pass from contributing our labor to the lake place.
It feels as though everything at our place is hanging in an intermediate state right now. The two biggest projects, the hay shed and paddock fencing, have been stuck in limbo for weeks, waiting for conditions to dry.
I think the geothermal furnace installation looks complete, but I don’t know the status of whether or not it is fully operational. Almost all the work of installation occurred while we weren’t home. Each day last week, I would check progress when I arrived home from the day-job, trying to discern what had been done, and why, and how. As of last night, it looks like everything is wired and plumbed, but we found no indication of the status, nor instructions on operation. They did leave manuals out. I suppose I could do some reading.
We finished digging up the drain line from the septic tank. It looks like the distribution box is disintegrating. It also looks like there are a lot of illogical twists and turns in the plumbing. I have no idea why they originally chose to do it the way they did, but it did work fine, as far as we can tell, for almost 25 years, so we won’t redo the whole thing. The septic professional I have been consulting has located a replacement distribution box, and will also replace the section of cast iron pipe originally used. It being a holiday weekend, that work will not happen until next week some time, weather permitting.
We need to do a lot of cutting of grass, as the growth is so rapid this time of year, it gets long on one end of the property before you finish cutting the other. Julian helped us greatly last weekend, by doing the first cut of the season, but he wasn’t able to mow the back hill, due to geothermal installation that was in process. It had time to grow doubly long, and we knew rain was coming, so we jumped on that chore late yesterday, before it could get any worse. I am happy to report that Cyndie was eager to have a lesson on the operation of the tractor, and then looked to be having so much fun, I might get away with doing a lot less of the grass cutting around here than I previously anticipated.
In a classic demonstration of our different modes of operation, Cyndie took off with glee, mowing around a tree and then wheeling off in any direction, haphazardly picking off areas of long grass wherever it appeared in her view. I am inclined to mow in a line, back and forth, very methodically. I am a bit more timid. She boldly devoured areas that deserved to be cut, but that I would have been hesitant to try with that mower. I was thinking it would require the brush hog attached to the large tractor. She demonstrated otherwise.
Cyndie and I are a great combination. She spotted some mushrooms growing under a dead pine tree in our front yard. I told her they tasted funny and she got all riled up, exclaiming that I shouldn’t eat them until I know what they are. I was teasing her, of course. Comparing images we found online, we are very confident that these are the very popular and definitely edible morel mushrooms.
We started tending to our little landscape pond with waterfall, but finally came to the full realization that they didn’t leave a pump behind when they moved out, so that project is awaiting a purchase. One more thing hanging in limbo. We also may try to test drive a pickup truck this weekend, a task we have been talking about accomplishing for months.
One last thing that has us feeling unsettled is how much we miss our friends, Alane, Dunia, and Marco. Cyndie has been working with Alane and Dunia for much of her Epona apprenticeship training. I met them and Marco last weekend, and in that short time, developed a deep feeling of connection with all of them. We feel a deep longing to have them here with us, and, in turn, they have indicated a desire to have us visit them in Guatemala and Australia. Long distance relationships can be hard, but we truly hope to make these connections flourish.
Our projects may hang in an intermediate state, but our friendships are definitely established.
Project Interrupted
Happy Mother’s Day, all you moms out there! 
Yesterday, the crew showed up to begin the process of framing the hay shed. They didn’t get very far. Guess what. It’s too wet. Imagine that. At least they accomplished the first critical step of stringing up the exact square dimension of the future structure. After that, they drilled one hole with the skid loader, and quickly discovered they would not be able to set the posts yet.
The dirt that came out of the hole was a sloppy muck that plopped to the ground like a wet cow pie. Then the hole filled with about 2-feet of water,
the sides of the hole collapsing, as water ran in. If you look closely at the second image, you will see the muck in mid-air, dropping from the drill on the skid loader.
Progress is stalled, once again. But, not for lack of trying. At this point, all we can do is wait for nature to take its course. Luckily, it was a windy day, which does wonders for drying things.
Too bad it was offset by a May 11 snow shower. We need wind and sun, not wind and snow.
I busied myself with getting a fire started in the brush pile nearest the barn. We haven’t been giving this pile as much attention as the other one, partly because it has so much dirt on the pile. It also has a much larger collection of branches, most of them still too green to burn easily.
To get them to ignite, we have to feed a lot of dry wood to the pile, so I made multiple trips up the hill toward the house, to pull out dead branches that are stacked throughout the woods across from the house and shop garage.
It isn’t the type of walking exercise that I am supposed to be doing, especially when I am trying to lift too heavy a batch of branches, but I hope it counts for something, because it totally exhausted me. I decided to end my work before something gave out on my body and forced me to be done.
We’ll see if I quit in time to save energy for today. Over half of that brush pile remains, and I have plenty of trips to make if I’m going to reduce it a noticeable amount by the end of the day.
Too Much
When there is no snow on the ground, a whole lot of work becomes available, all at the same time. It is a mental challenge to figure out where to start, and what to do next. It is a physical challenge to do it all. There is too much to do, but that doesn’t stop us, and we are loving it.
We ran into one hitch, though, yesterday. The snow may be gone, but the water isn’t. The ground here is like a saturated sponge. Our plans for the day changed early, when our fence contractor arrived to see the area we had hoped to work, was still too wet. However, it turned out really sweet for us. Since they couldn’t do any work on our property, they were headed to buy maple syrup from a local farm, and they offered to pick up some for us.
On their way back, they stopped in the road at the end of our driveway, and I walked down to collect our prize: Two quarts of pure maple syrup in unmarked Ball Jars. What a treat.
Then, it was back to work. We did some burning at both of our brush piles, then Cyndie worked on cleaning the barn, while I mixed up some concrete and put in a base for a removable umbrella style clothesline. I greased the tractor, and put in another shift on the burning brush pile.
At every turn, there is something additional that deserves attention. We have definitely neglected some organizational tasks, as we haven’t yet figured out where our preferred places are to store some of the common use tools. We want some things near the house, in the garage, and others belong in the shop garage, or the barn. We know full-well that wherever we leave a rake or shovel, we’ll inevitably need it next, in one of the other locations.
Ultimately, I’m hoping we don’t just end up getting three of everything. That just seems excessive, like a bit too much, to me.
Looks like a great conflagration
…but it’s just a drop in the bucket.
More Posts
Monday is the weekday I don’t drive to the day-job, with my 4-day work week, and yesterday provided me the opportunity to witness the process of fence posts installation. I discovered there is a lot more to the task than just digging a hole and dropping a post down into it.
I am very grateful to see the crew we hired are very particular about getting the posts precise, to assure we end up with not just a functional fence, but one that will look good, too.
With each post, they have to watch multiple things, simultaneously: first, that it is the right distance from the previous post, but then also that it’s set to the right depth, level in two directions, square to the line which the cross-boards will run, and ultimately, in line with the rest of the posts.
When they finally achieve all of those parameters, they need to back-fill the hole, packing the dirt tight as they go, without allowing the post to move out of position. When you are setting a lot of posts in a line, one bad one can really stand out of the bunch. They have to repeat this series of steps over and over, with sustained vigilance to meet each goal, for every post. I think it’s pretty impressive.
They also agreed to create a radius, which I didn’t think they wanted to do, so the fence by the new driveway will follow the arc of the loop.
While that work was happening, we received one more truckload of sand for the driveway, and then the trusses for the hay shed. The dump truck driver informed us it would be the last load for now, as he discovered the route has been posted with road restrictions for reduced weight limits, due to the spring thaw. That restriction will likely last into May. We got close, but we were intending to put at least one more load than was delivered yesterday. Luckily, we have the fill we need for work on the shed to commence.
Here is a wide shot that shows how the fence line will arc with the driveway, and where the hay shed will be located beside the driveway loop:
Relative Something 