Posts Tagged ‘ice’
Favorite Photos
Holy cow, this year is flying by. It’s the 3rd day of January already! We are home again, and I’m happy to report that Delilah did great on the 4-hour drive from Grand Rapids, Minnesota to Beldenville, Wisconsin.
Today, I hope to do as little as possible in the way of productive endeavors, unless they involve power-lounging and idling away the time with trivial pursuits (which have their own way of feeling productive sometimes). I will mentally prepare for the return to the week of work that follows the New Year celebrations. Everything that was being held in suspended animation during the holidays will be released for a return to the regular grind.
Our next paid holiday doesn’t arrive for 5-months! At least the daylight hours will gradually be getting longer during that otherwise ominously staid period of time.
On that cheery note, I will endeavor to bring some pleasure to these proceedings with a sampling of a few of my favorite photos to emerge from our weekend visit with Barb and Mike.
The first two were taken by Barb when the lake was just in the process of freezing, and she generously shared them with me. The close-up shot is right out of my bag of tricks, so of course I love it the most. I asked her how she got it to be black and white, and Barb replied, “It’s not.” I love that it looks like there is no color in the captured image.
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This next one is mine. I took a picture of the water flowing beneath a dam, wanting to capture the water droplets on the edge of the forming ice. After zooming in, I was surprised to find the lines that look like a drawn-in animation. A moment after that, the whole thing took on a look of being more a painting than a photo. I’m really happy with it.
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Situations Happen
You just never know what is going to come next. When we went to bed on Saturday night, there were no concerns on our radar. I started the day yesterday in the sunshine, modifying pallets for future use. In a moment of pause, I gave Delilah a chance to join me on a trip to check on the horses, to look at the arena fence that Cyndie told me had been taking some abuse from Legacy.
The last time we took down temporary fencing that kept the horses out of the hay-field, it meant we lost the connection to electricity for the arena fence. Turned out that wasn’t a problem for more than a month, but horses have a way of eventually getting around to dealing with anything in their reach. Legacy has proven himself very persistent, once he figures out he can get his teeth into something.
It was time I put electricity back on the arena fence.
My first problem was that the horses would scarcely grant me a break from their messing with the portions of the fence I had just put back in order. As I moved to a different spot, they congregated at the previous location, eyeing their prize.
I reacted with little thought to the appropriateness of my action and ran after them, inviting Delilah to join me in the chase. She was more than thrilled at the rare opportunity. Most days, she is subject to firm restrictions when it comes to harassing the horses.
We rounded the bend at the end of the arena with maximum energy and the horses reacted with a bit of shock over the unprecedented sight. They scrambled around and circled to face us from a distance. Legacy was very unhappy with our behavior and snorted with a boldness I have not seen before.
I stood my ground, conveying the seriousness of my desire that they not mess with the fence, and then slowly headed back to my work on the next section.
Legacy moved them back up after a few minutes, and when I spotted him biting the fence again, I called Delilah to action, and we charged again. She loved it. The herd made a bigger circle back and stood a little farther away, this time staying put long enough for me to finish what I was doing.
On my way back through the paddock, I spotted ice covering their water, which meant the electric heat wasn’t working. That meant they hadn’t had access to their water all morning.
Best I can tell, the ground fault safety on the circuit breaker is either failing, or doing its job and telling me there is a problem. I’m inclined to believe it’s the former. Further testing to follow, as soon as I can find a replacement GFI circuit breaker.
Just a couple of things I didn’t see coming to keep things interesting around here over the weekend.
Situations happen.
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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.
Relative Something 