Posts Tagged ‘images’
Finally Chipping
My plan was to get both the tractor and the ATV down the hill to the spot where I’m clearing trees to make space for a new fence that will enclose the back grazing area. I put a bundle of tools in the ATV trailer and drove it down, parking between two existing brush piles. Then I walked back up to get the diesel tractor with the wood chipper mounted on the back.
To my surprise, I found the front right tire was completely flat. That certainly wasn’t in my plan.
I pumped it up and verified the leak was serious enough to need attention. The morning agenda suddenly had a new priority. First order of business would involve getting the wheel off the tractor, no small task when you don’t have the proper tools. Five of the six bolts came loose with a reasonable amount of effort, leaving the one that was obligated not to budge, to keep the project from being too straight forward.
Patience —albeit thin— and fortitude, produced eventual results, leading to the second order of business: I needed to find out where to take the wheel for repair. A call to my neighbor produced a recommended service station in town, but that place turned out to be too busy to help me right away. They offered up an alternative. I called the second option and learned they could take a look at it right away.
Now, I definitely know better than to blindly rely on the results produced by a Google maps search, and I even commented to Cyndie that I was surprised it was that direction out-of-town, but nonetheless, I fell for it without a second thought.
After a pleasant drive to discover the error of my ways, which took me down into a beautiful valley where there is absolutely no cell signal, I turned around and drove back up to high ground so I could call for directions. Sure enough, I should have headed the other direction out-of-town. Ironically, this place is where I recently stopped to inquire about finding someone to bid improving the footing of our paddocks. Two businesses operate out of this one location.
They fixed my tire, patching a hole in the tube, and after I got it remounted on the tractor, I was back to my original plan. The rest of the afternoon involved chainsawing and wood chipping. Everything worked pretty well for the rest of the day. I took down some more trees, and created a pile of wood chips by the labyrinth, to be used as mulch.
Working through the dinner hour, and into the mosquito feeding frenzy of early evening, I cleared some of the nearby trail with the trimmer so I could dump a trailer-load of chips there. While doing that, I came to one of the fallen trees that has been blocking the trail since May. Not anymore. I cut it into logs to be split for firewood.
The flat tire was a hassle, but all’s well that ends well. I got a chance to test my ideas and it looks like things are going to work as well as we hoped. The chipper eats brush as fast as I can feed it and the wood chips look perfect for the trail and mulching around plants in the labyrinth.
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Unnecessarily Helpful
Our dog, Delilah, learned too well to use the kiddie pool to wash up before coming in the house. Now she automatically steps in it whether she needs to or not. When it was muddy, this really was an “every time” necessity. Since it has gotten dryer, there are times when a dip in the pool could be skipped.
It’s a sad thing to get frustrated about, but she creates extra work by getting wet, instead of just walking right inside with me. I’ve gotta drop what I’m carrying, go inside while keeping her out, find a towel, and come back out to get licked all over while I try to dry her off.
It’s frustrating, but how can I be mad at her when she is being so darn cute? Plus, there are days when she’s choosing to use it to cool off, not to get clean. I don’t want to deny her that comfort.
She may not need to be washed, but she looks so proud of herself when she does it, I can’t help but thank her for being so darn helpful.
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Morning Light
After the horses finished their morning feed, they moved out into the hay-field. We are giving them access to the big field for a few days, post baling. That gives the grazing pasture a chance to recover a bit. I liked how they looked in the early morning sunlight, and in the absence of having my camera with me, I pulled out my cell phone to capture the image.
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Bountiful Harvest
You would be wrong if you thought the only thing we harvest at Wintervale is hay. Although, you gotta love that hay is one of our big crops, when our last name is, “Hays.” Of course, you may also be remembering that our horses produce an impressive amount of fertilizer, but as much as I boast about our compost pile, it will be a long time before we will be making any money off that.
The lesser known crop we have here, and the one with probably the best potential of becoming a future money-maker, is black raspberries. When Cyndie cans them as “blackcap” jam, they turn into liquid gold.
The wild bushes we have all over the place sprout a surprising amount of fruit in a short amount of time, often overnight. Cyndie has gotten in the habit of bringing a container along when she takes Delilah for walks, because new fruit seems to burst forth in places we didn’t even realize had the potential.
There is something special about the jam these berries produce. Their tantalizing aroma is almost as satisfying as the taste. If you already know and love that flavor, one whiff of the smell will trigger the irrepressible urge to consume.
We had no patience once the berries appeared, and Cyndie cooked up the first small batch she picked, to create a topping for waffles. A little local maple syrup over the top and we had our taste buds doing flips of joy over their good fortune.
This year, when conditions have been miserable for a lot of things, the raspberry plants seem to be doing quite well.
We’ve got a year’s supply of hay stacked in the hay shed, but I don’t think we’ll ever be able to stock enough of her blackcap jam. It’s just too irresistible.
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A Day
The day starts early, when Delilah announces she is awake and wants to get out of her crate. Yesterday, it was 5:30 a.m. I take her out for a short walk and then grab some breakfast before heading down to feed the horses. I put out 4 pans of processed feed and walk to the far end of the paddock to open a gate that allows them access to the grazing pasture. Normally, I also grab the wheelbarrow and collect any overnight deposits of fertilizer.
On this day, I planned to grant Cyndie her wish to have a mowed path inside the fence of the hay-field for riding horses. She also asked me to cut the area where we envision putting a riding arena. In order to do that, I would need to disconnect the new chipper from the back of the tractor and remount the brush cutter.
We have been without the loader bucket on the diesel tractor for some time, as it was taken to a weld shop for use as a template for a new hay-fork we are having built. The bucket was returned to us on Saturday, and I was excited to finally be able to put it to use. As long as I had the chipper removed, I thought I would scoop up the last of the winter pile of manure in the paddock before hooking up the brush mower.
That bucket can move a lot more stuff in one scoop than the pitchfork and ATV trailer method I had been using. The challenge then became figuring out where to dump the very heavy load. I got stuck trying to back out of my chosen dump spot, spinning two big divots in the gravel driveway.
Earlier, I had been moving a pile of unusable hay from the hay shed using a wheelbarrow, to make room for the new bales. As I drove by on the tractor, it occurred to me that I could move a lot more hay at one time with the bucket. I scooped up a huge amount and headed up to where we are filling in a ravine above the barn, just off the paved driveway.
I knew I was taking a risk as I dropped down off the pavement and partway into the ravine. I tipped the bucket to dump the hay and then tried backing up. No luck. Both large tractor tires spinning. I needed to use the bucket to push myself out, wreaking havoc on the lawn the whole way up. There is a reason the diesel tractor is not the best tool when the ground is wet.
Before I got myself in any more trouble, I headed up to get the brush mower attached. I was a little worried about running into trouble mowing wet areas of the field, but it turned out to be okay. I cut a path around the perimeter and then knocked down an area in the rough size and shape of a riding arena. It’s not possible to cut right up to the fence, so I went and got the trimmer to clean up the edges.
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I am not the fastest guy when it comes to doing things, and the trimming is a project I could work on all day and not get everything cut, so I made a point to only go part way along the fence line. I was aware that I started shortly before time to feed the horses in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to leave them feeling neglected. They were anxiously waiting at the gate for me when I arrived.
While they ate, I went back to hauling hay with the wheelbarrow, taking one short break to make a pass through the paddock to collect the day’s production of fertilizer. When Cyndie called to check in and report she was heading home, I was surprised to discover it was 6:30 p.m.
Trimming isn’t done, and removing old hay was not completed. Even with long days, there isn’t enough time to get everything done. Those chores will carry over into today, along with the plan to haul more loads of hay from our supplier, and with luck, get started on this week’s lawn mowing.
All in a day’s work!
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What Ever
It’s time again for everyone’s favorite Relative Something image guessing game called, “What”! You haven’t forgotten about it, have you? Well, it is back again and it’s simple to play. All you need to do is guess what is depicted in the image below. Do you trust your first impression, or ponder the possibilities? Can you hold off long enough to wait for the answer to come to you, or will you look for the solution right away? You are in charge, but it is strongly recommended you come up with some kind of guess before you click on the image to find out what this could possibly be. Guess your best, and enjoy!
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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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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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