Posts Tagged ‘neighbors’
Triple Fenced
The heat and humidity have broken and it finally feels a little more like September now. We were expecting the transition to involve a lot more rain than showed up yesterday. The line of precipitation slowly moving west is doing so at an angle that is sliding from the southwest to the northeast and for some reason, most of the rain moved around, rather than over our region.
Ironically, now I am wishing we would actually receive a heavy dose of rain, because last Friday we put a lot of energy into shoring up the silt fence at the property line adjacent to our neighbor’s corn field. In fact, we turned it into a bit of a terrace with three-tiered layers of silt fence.
The first two are short sections to slow the flow before it reaches our long fence. Between the top two sections there is the skeleton frame for a berm, in the form of piled dead pine trees. The soil runoff will accumulate around the branches and hold them in place. Eventually, weeds and grasses will grow through the branches and that forms a nice natural barrier that will hold soil in place but allow water to flow.
We have added support to the fabric fence by using old hay bales that we can’t feed to the horses because they have gotten moldy.
If I am able, I hope to trek out there in the middle of heavy rain to observe the action as it happens. At the very least, I now know that we need to check it after every big rainfall and remove excess soil if it accumulates.
I don’t know why I originally assumed the soil fence wouldn’t need regular maintenance, but after the soil conservation consultant pointed it out so very matter-of-factly, digging out accumulation makes total sense to me now.
If our enhancements work to mitigate the mud overflow messing up that area, we will be one step closer to being able to enjoy a good cloudburst when it happens. There still remains a problem in the paddocks, where a terrace or silt fence is not an option.
We plan to do some digging to create a couple of better defined routes directing runoff straight to the drainage swale beyond the wood fence, hoping to reduce the amount of flow traveling to one spot with energy that washes away our precious lime screenings and creates a deep canyon of a rill.
It’s fine if a little flow goes that way, but it is currently a problem because most all of the flow is combining to rush sideways along the fence, instead of straight under it out of the paddock.
The trick in the paddocks is, our solution needs to be horse-proof. Their heavy hooves have a way of disrupting all of the simple spade-width channels I’ve created in the past, causing runoff to flow every which way, and ultimately not where we really want it to go.
The next version we have in mind will be scaled up. Maybe I should triple-size it.
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Periodic Maintenance
That tree in our back yard which leads the way in changing colors is cranking it up to full blaze now that we have arrived within the month of September. This image doesn’t to justice to the view, because our sunlight was muted by the smoke of wild fires in Canada and the western U.S. most of the day yesterday.
I spent time in the morning consulting with a specialist from our county soil conservation office as he surveyed the situation where the neighbor’s tilled corn field is overflowing my silt fence. According to him, we have done all the right things for drainage on our property, adding that compared to other sites he reviews, our problems are not very significant.
My perfectionism sees it otherwise.
He did basically fault the neighbor, of whom I gathered he didn’t hold a high opinion. The best fix to hold the soil would be for the neighbor to plant hay in that field, instead of corn. I don’t have any idea if that is something I might be able to influence, but I will suggest it at the first opportunity.
On my end, I learned that the silt fence does require maintenance to remove material when it starts to fill, because he said it is obviously functioning as intended.
I will do that, but I will also add another short section of silt fence above it and then start building a berm of branches between the two, eventually creating a thicket of wild growing weeds and trees.
Since it is so late in the growing season, such a barrier will take a year to become the filter I envision, but just having the skeleton of tree limbs in place before winter will provide an additional place for the silt to build up and start a foundation for a natural barrier.
Looking at the drainage swale below our paddocks and across the pastures, the advice was to periodically reshape the high spots by digging those out as well. Funny me. I had it in my head that there was a one-time solution where I could shape the swale properly and then never deal with it again.
Why should it be any different from the periodic maintenance required on everything else?
Lawns need to be mowed, septic tanks need pumping, engines need oil changes, rugs need vacuuming, animals need feeding, relationships need tending. There aren’t many things that can be ignored indefinitely.
Land needs management. I guess I won’t argue with that logic.
Though, given that, seems to me that days need more hours.
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Brief Scare
I didn’t get to hear about it until long after the fact yesterday, but for a moment in the morning, a chicken safety alarm was raised. Our trusty assistant, Shelby, was tending to the horses when a neighbor whom she didn’t know drove up our driveway exclaiming that a pair of wandering dogs had killed all her cats.
She suggested we protect our chickens, so Shelby ushered our three surviving birds back into their coop for the rest of the day.
When Cyndie told me this story, she said our neighbor described the dogs as a German Shepherd and a Chocolate Lab. That sounded familiar to me. A quick search of the trail cam files confirmed my suspicion.
These trouble makers were captured trespassing on our trail in the woods back in March of 2016. At the time, no harm had been done, so we didn’t bother seeking a verification of ownership.
Now, I’m thinking we might want to keep this photo handy on our phones for possible inquiries around the block. I will also look for a new vantage point from which to aim the trail cam again, in order to watch for possible new sightings of these two.
If they are still coming on our property, it troubles me a bit that they’ve been able to do it without ever being seen, beyond that time the camera caught them. With our frequent movement around the grounds every single day, it would mean they are pretty crafty in their stealth if they indeed have still been paying us visits unseen.
Even though it was just a brief scare yesterday, it has left us with a lingering feeling of unease.
Wonder if it will help to send these dogs love. If it doesn’t, I’d like to figure out a way to offer them some of Delilah’s sharp-toothed version of a greeting to discourage any future interest in choosing to cross our property lines.
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Standing Corrected
I stand corrected. My neighbor finally got my message and stopped by yesterday to discuss the soil eroding from his corn field. In my angst over the mess, I had jumped to the conclusion that he had neglected to leave a patch of un-tilled grass waterway.
In fact, he did, and it has a wonderful patch of grass, below which are some weeds taller than his corn. I had not walked far enough up into the field to notice the full scope of what was going on. Had I looked just beside my focus of the current source of sandy top soil, I might have noticed.
I think it was the willow tree that obscured a full view.
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The sad truth is that the heavy flow of downpour runoff has simply migrated to either side of his grass waterway.
There isn’t really anything he can do about it right now, but just the fact he is now acutely aware of the current situation helps my mind. When he cuts at the end of the growing season, he will better be able to see the whole picture of what is happening, allowing him to consider options going forward.
It may simply be that he tries making the grass water way wider. I got the impression that he believed it was just an unlucky timing of heavy rain in the spring, before the planted corn had sprouted, that created this situation, so the fix will rely on a hope we get lucky and it doesn’t rain like that next year.
I am more of a mind that the likelihood of heavy downpours will only increase until the global temperatures somehow reverse the current trend and drop a degree or two.
Either way, the solution appears to involve a wider portion of un-tilled soil, but that won’t take effect immediately. For now, I am facing the challenge of dealing with the filled silt fence and finding a way to stretch its effectiveness through the rest of this summer and fall.
I’m trying to decide where I can put the sandy soil if I dig out the front of my silt fence. I’d like it to go somewhere that doesn’t end up just washing away the next time it rains, and that’s a daunting feat. I love the hilliness of our terrain, but the runoff erosion tends to be a constant result.
I’m back to that challenge of striving to work with the natural order and not against it. I want to figure out a solution that involves allowing water to take the easy path it seeks, but without it causing such extreme erosion. It’s hard to convince water to flow gently when the land is not so flat.
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Oh My
Anyone need some August rain? We have extra. I’d be happy to share.
Unfortunately, all that water fell in a very short amount of time yesterday morning, so the result was something of a flash-flood type of runoff.
Our silt fence along the northern border below our neighbor’s corn field was already filled with sandy topsoil that has flowed with every rainfall since we installed it. That led to an overflow which flattened some of our grass beneath an inch or two of silty muck.
Balancing that negative with a positive, the trail at the bottom of our hill in the woods, where I placed the pavers, is working perfectly. There is a small lake-like puddle where I spread the salvaged landscape rock, while the pavers are providing excellent (dry) footing across that rest of that section.
The amount that fell overnight will get tallied after the sun comes up today, but by the looks of the radar and sound on the roof and skylight last night, we got a lot more of the unneeded wet stuff than we wanted.
I sure wish I could transfer a large amount of it to the drought-stricken regions that need the water a lot more than we do.
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Objective Achieved
Obviously, we have many objectives, and quite frankly –due in many ways to my lack of bringing projects to fruition– we have not achieved a great majority of them. However, if we were to focus on the dream of having chickens to scratch and spread piles of manure while eating bugs to help control pests… Objective achieved!
After dinner last night, Cyndie and I made a hay run to haul another pickup-load of bales from our latest supplier. We marveled over the phenomena of cultivating social capital to foster good will with the many service providers we have come to know in the area.
We are both intent on making the most of our limited time and work to maximize productiveness of the short hours available when I get home from the day-job. I squeezed in a couple of errands on the way home, including a stop at the repair shop that couldn’t identify any problem with the Kohler engine in my riding mower [grumble, grumble].
We settled on focusing his attention on the carburetor.
After squeezing in a very quick meal, we hustled to reach the hay farm at the appointed hour. Our new friend, Scott, entertained us with story after story while rolling bales perfectly into place for me to load. As I attached straps to hold down the bales, Scott tried a quick-fix to screw the rusted step-bar on the passenger side back onto the rusted frame, alas to no avail.
Then we chatted some more while half of me wanted to hustle home. The other half of me wanted to stay as long as he offered to visit. There have been very few, if any, interactions with folks that don’t involve some extended chatting. It’s really pretty precious.
It generates a social capital that we highly value. Projects can grow to take a fair amount of additional time, but the benefits of our interactions are always worth it.
The other errand I ran on the way home from work was to the implement dealer to see if they had any advice regarding the leaky gear box on our brush cutter. The last time I added gear oil, it seemed like it disappeared surprisingly fast. Then I spotted the dark wetness on the flywheel below and concluded the seals were bad.
An internet search on the subject was very entertaining. In classic form, I found multiple discussions where opposing views alternated with every other comment on discussion boards.
Corn Head Grease seemed to be a common recommendation. There were farmers who switched to grease over oil and hadn’t had a problem in 40 years. There were as many advisors who said absolutely don’t use grease, as it will move away from the friction points by the force of the spin.
Some wrote that they mixed oil with the grease to get the best of both worlds. The lubrication manufacturers strongly state one should never mix the two.
After twice scanning the offerings at the implement dealer, the clerk at the parts desk asked if he could help me find anything. At that same moment, my eyes landed on the answer to the question I was about to ask.
Farm oyl makes the very product I was hoping existed.
That’s one of those mini objectives, achieved.
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Peacefully Walking
Wintervale Ranch and Retreat Center hosted a World Labyrinth Day event yesterday and participated in the Walk as One at 1:00, a global wave of taking steps for peace.
Family, friends, friends of friends, neighbors, and previous property owners arrived throughout the afternoon on a beautiful May day to trek the roundabout path and ponder.
One participant mentioned she had spent 35 minutes striding to the center and back out again, adding that stopping to touch things may have lengthened the duration of her journey.
It was a delightful departure from my norm to see the labyrinth energized with so many souls walking together. I spend a lot of solo time in that garden.
Cyndie worked her magic in the kitchen to fill the counter with a wide variety of fresh-baked caramel rolls to provide both energy and incentive for walking. I was careful to avoid eating a great big serving, but by sampling bite-size nibbles from the plain, frosted, with raisins, and finally, a pecan covered version throughout the entire day, I’m sure I successfully obliterated the balance of my healthy food pyramid for the week.
After the labyrinth, the chickens and their coop became a prominent attraction for visitors, followed by a stop to see how the horses were doing.
It was an invigorating day. As always, our belief was confirmed. As fabulous a place to live as this is, it is never in full spectacular bloom until guest arrive to launch the ultimate greatness.
Thank you to all of you who found your way here yesterday. It made for a wonderful mix of energized peacefulness.
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Mobile Labyrinth
First off, let’s just get this out of the way. You are all welcome to be my valentine, but I need to ask you to hold off on the chocolate candy hearts. My will-power is hardly robust enough to withstand that amount of sweet gesturing of love. Happy Valentine’s Day! I offer plenty of my low-sugar love to all who happen to read here today.
On Sunday, before huddling in front of a rare MN Wild hockey game broadcast over the airwaves followed by a Grammy Awards broadcast that was entertaining to a degree, but failed —for me— to live up to the hyped level of “Music’s Greatest Night,” Cyndie and I braved a colder than expected morning to work on outlining a labyrinth on canvas.
Since our driveway was now clear of snow and ice up by the house, it became potential space where we could spread out this project that Cyndie has been planning.
Before we laid out the canvas, I used a push-broom to clear the loose grit away. If our neighbor still bothers to watch our every move, I can’t imagine what he must think about my obsession with cleaning the top of our driveway the last few days.
I had already done advance calculations to figure out how wide each lane could be, given the total area of canvas and the number of circuit loops in the design Cyndie chose. Our task of the day was simply to identify and mark the center point from which the rest of the circles will be referenced, and then place a few “tic” marks to place the lanes.
It is all pretty straight forward with a minor exception of the two lanes that become the routes to enter from the outside and the path that reaches the center.
We spent a fair amount of time laying out enough skeleton lines to define the potentially confusing part, leaving the finishing touch of just laying duct tape along the consistent circle of each lane for another time.
While Cyndie measured and ripped pieces of tape off the roll, I sat on the canvas absorbing the thorough cold of the pavement beneath while holding the tape measure dead center and calling out location metrics. I could see her hands slowing down from the cold as the minutes turned into hours.
There are a lot of tedious steps involved, but it was a labor of love. After each step we became inspired to go a little further to lock in the design for her to finish later with friends.
When we finally quit and hustled inside to warm up, we discovered the day hadn’t warmed up at all. The temperature was still in the 30s (F), and with the brisk wind, it became obvious why it felt so much colder than we were expecting.
In our haste to pack the project up and get inside, I failed to capture a photo of our final progress. I’ve informed Cyndie that she’s responsible now for getting a picture of her mobile labyrinth when it’s finally completed.
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Days Happen
Despite our lofty plans and petty concerns, time marches on. Days happen, one right after the other. The present moment unfurls and that quickly becomes history. Last night, I was struck by a reference in a PBS Frontline story to research done in the archives for information from 1977. Was that really that long ago?
I guess so.
Today I am struck anew by the amazing place where I now reside. As the year 2016 nears the twelfth month, we have become ever more normalized with our rolling hills and areas of hardwood forest. We have slowly developed new trails and arranged sections of fenced pasture. It is becoming a reflection of us and the animals now living here.
In the relatively short time we have been here, the neighborhood has changed noticeably. We are currently in the final weekend of the annual deer hunting season, an event that has quieted significantly compared to our first years on the property.
I’m not sure why there is less activity visible this year on the properties adjacent to us, but it’s been nice to have fewer sights and sounds to trigger Delilah into the fits of unnecessary outbursts she feels called to deliver. I wish I could attribute her good behavior to a continued maturation, but evidence hints otherwise.
It’s quite possible that her presence alone is a factor in relocating local hunters to more distant acres, although she isn’t chasing all the deer off. We still see them around with regularity. More likely, what has moved the hunters away is the combined activity of the horses and humans roving around here along with her on a daily basis.
Life is happening here everyday. And as soon as I chronicle it, the stories become archived in the “Previous Somethings.”
Time marches on.
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Let’s Party!
I’m Home! Before I even get a chance to write about the bike trip from which I just returned, it is time to jump into the next adventure. Today is the day our daughter, Elysa, is celebrating her 30th birthday with a gala at Wintervale.
I have some work to do to spruce the place up before guests arrive, especially getting my wet tent dried out and stowed. It is spread out with other gear all over the living room floor. I finished laundry last night but didn’t get the tent hung on the line until the sun was low because I was busy mowing the lawn.
I wanted to make sure that chore was done first.
The grass was a little long, but not all that unsightly. I have a fair amount of clippings to clean up this morning. There were a few spots that were pretty bumpy where some horse hooves left their marks.
While I was gone, the herd decided to go on a little adventure of their own. I got a voicemail from our neighbor across the street that reported our horses were wandering across his property toward his son’s house up the road and then had crossed into another neighbor’s corn field.
Cyndie said she was not home at the time and must have left a gate to the barn unclipped. That allowed the chain to be manipulated and the horses were able to navigate their way through an open barn door to freedom. Our neighbor left messages on both of our phones, but neither of us responded, so he just kept an eye on them.
I asked Cyndie if the sheriff got involved. She said no, because the herd took themselves home and our neighbor just followed to close the barn door behind them.
In a curious instance of timing, the reason I asked about the sheriff is because the very same day our horses were off gallivanting around the countryside, bikers in my vicinity were suddenly spooked by a siren that was the result of an officer responding to a horse in the road near the trail we were riding.
I didn’t see the horse, but one of the bikers from our group said that cars had stopped to protect it from traffic and the horse just stood in the road enjoying the view.
Was there something about June 23rd that linked these two equine escape incidents?
Now it’s time to party and celebrate our lovely daughter!
Elysa, you go girl!
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Relative Something 