Posts Tagged ‘neighbors’
Planning Again
Sometimes, between the daily chores and ongoing projects that never seem to be finished here, we allow ourselves to imagine new things we could be doing to benefit our operation. One specific vision we have held from the very early stage of arriving on this property is to have chickens, but it just keeps not happening for us.
Initially, it was seen as a way to naturally control flies and break up piles of manure. That benefit alone was enough reason for me to look beyond the details involved in actually caring for and protecting a flock of birds. We could sure do with less flies.
One early delay in our acting on that vision was that we didn’t yet have horses, and we instead brought home a very carnivorous young dog that required a lot of time and attention. When the horses finally arrived, our attention was consumed by the combination of orienting ourselves with actually owning and caring for the 4 very large creatures, as well as the puppy dog and 2 cats.
Now, as we have become more acclimated with our animals and the surroundings, and have grown more familiar with our neighbors, the subject of owning chickens gets discussed as a natural given. We should have chickens. George has even offered to give us some of his.
When someone else we met reported that, in addition to having less flies, they haven’t seen any ticks since they got chickens, it was a lock. We need chickens.
All we have to do is build a coop.
Do you know how you would build a chicken coop? There are as many versions as there are people in the world. As is usual for me, I would like to accomplish it using as much found material as possible. I searched for plans using pallets. There are as many versions of plans for chicken coops built out of pallets as there are flies in a barnyard.
I am now at the point where I have a real good general idea of what I would like to do. That just leaves an unending number of actual details that need to be figured out and executed.
Yesterday, Cyndie helped me prepare 5 more pallets that I brought home from work. They have 4 extra blocks nailed on top that I remove to get a flat platform. We experimented with several orientations to see if there was a natural fit that would work easily. She then disappeared to the back of the shop garage for a minute and returned with 3 perfect clear vinyl panels that could be used for windows.
I had forgotten about those. The previous owners had screwed them on the sliding screen doors for protection from their small dog. I had completely forgotten of their existence.
A few more baby steps toward building a coop so we can get chickens.
One of these days, it might happen. It will be just like we have been envisioning throughout the last 4 years.
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Hazardous Conditions
Yesterday, while working outside for long hours in the spring wind, we exposed ourselves to enough tree pollen to cause significant irritation to our delicate tissues. I think I also successfully altered the weather to shut down precipitation here for some time.
While my nose dripped at an ever-increasing rate, I built a barrier of old, moldy hay bales in the trees by our uphill neighbor’s corn field.
During heavy rain, the water comes off that field in a torrent and washes sediment onto our property. Lately, it has started to fill in a drainage trench beside our driveway.
Oddly enough, I actually wanted it to rain today, so I could see if my creation worked as intended, but the forecast shows no precipitation expected in the days ahead.
Given that, I guess my project worked. It has stopped the sediment from pouring into our trench, hasn’t it?
While I was working in the tangled bramble of uncontrolled growth that forms the border between our property and that cultivated field to the north of us, I decided to finally address a remnant of rusted barbed wire fencing that had been swallowed by a tree.
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The tree had long ago been cut off, leaving a stump that was about the height of a fence post. Made sense, since the barbed wire ran through the tree, it was already functioning as a fence post.
Removing the rusted fencing was made easier by the fact the tree was rotting to pieces. So much of it came apart simply by prying at it with one of the old fence posts that I found myself struggling near the end, to finish it off in the same manner. Eventually, logic, and my increasingly irritating allergic reactions to pollen, led me to hasten the task by way of the chain saw.
The area looks like it has been through a serious spring cleaning now, with the added benefit of opening up visibility to the area where water flows off the neighbor’s field. It is easier to see if the barrier I built is doing the job of keeping sediment out of our ditch.
Sneeze. Cough. Drip. Stinging blink. It’s the hazardous working conditions of spring!
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Lambing Season
As I pulled in the driveway yesterday afternoon, I found Cyndie walking Delilah on the 26′ retractable leash. Cyndie was shaking her head as she approached my car. I glanced down at Delilah and saw that she was carrying something in her mouth. Guess who found a rabbit’s nest?
With all that length, it is easy for Delilah to explore a little ways off the trail, into the woods. By the time Cyndie realized the dog was onto something, rabbits were already scattering in 4 directions.
Before I could even get the car backed into the garage, Cyndie was calling out that our neighbor George had sent a text message that there are new lambs. Since Delilah was preoccupied with a project that we didn’t want to see, we left her on her own in the kennel and drove to George’s.
He hadn’t returned home from his farrier work trimming or shoeing horses, so Cyndie dropped off a treat of homemade muesli cookies inside his door and we went exploring on our own. We found two mommas in pens with heat lamps, each with a pair of lambs.
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It has been rewarding for us to gain an up-close view of the activity of livestock farming on the small scale.
Thank you so much, George, for coming into our lives!
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Social Success
Our cookie social was a success, despite not drawing as many new faces as I hoped we might meet. The new people we did discover were a wonderful pleasure and we quickly learned, once again, how small the world can seem. We have a good variety of kindred spirits in the vicinity, revealing a number of common connections, many of them being our friend, George Walker.
The rural setting, with many of the homes tucked far from the road, makes it too easy to see less of neighbors, unless proactively putting effort in seeking to connect. It motivates me to be quicker to ask neighbors for advice or assistance in the future.
What’s the worst that could happen? If they weren’t able to help, I am learning they would most likely know someone who could, and they’d be happy to provide these referrals.
The downside about the small number of folks showing up is, there is a dangerous amount of cookies and holiday treats left over that I want to avoid consuming in my quest to eat a low sugar diet, even with Cyndie loading up mountains on take-home plates for folks.
Before guests arrived, I took Delilah out for a walk to burn off some energy and we made our way down to check on the horses. We found them at nap time, with Hunter laying down on the raised circle of hay in the paddock. Dezirea and Legacy were up by the barn where he was eating hay out of the box and she was falling asleep in the sun.
Legacy turned to interact with me, and while he was facing me, I could see Dezirea behind him. She kept buckling as she eased into too deep of a sleep, and would startle to catch herself and stay upright. Each time she startled, it made Legacy jump. He would turn to give her a look, and she would be standing just fine. It happened over and over again, creating a hilarious spectacle.
It was as if Legacy was peeved over her spooking him, and every time he turned to throw his grumpy gaze at her, she was standing perfectly calm, like a little angel.
I tried to take a picture of her to catch that moment, missing several times before I realized I should be recording a video. By the time I did, she must have figured out what was happening and remedied things.
I have a couple of minutes of video showing her standing rock solid.
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Try Imagining
Try imagining that you are daily striving to tightly control the percentage of sugar in your total caloric intake, despite the onslaught of incoming treats at work from a number of generous, well-meaning sources, and yesterday, when you arrived home from work and opened the door to your house, you were met by an overwhelming aroma of fresh-baked goodies that practically lifted you off your feet.
For some reason, as soon as I am home from work, I want to eat something. It is one of the trickier parts of my day, in terms of managing my choices in avoidance of unnecessary sugars. I’m happy to eat anything, as long as it doesn’t take any time to prepare. Crunchy, salty, and sweet tend to be cravings that most strongly nag me.
Yesterday, at my weakest moment, Cyndie was moving fresh-baked cookies off a tray, onto the cooling rack. I don’t think there is any better time to test a cookie than when it is still warm from the oven. I hadn’t even finished setting down things I had carried in the door when I sank my teeth into the irresistible goodness of a cookie that tasted like a cinnamon bun.
Cyndie mentioned that she hadn’t put the icing on yet, which helped to calm some of my angst. Knowing that I was eating less sugar than the cookies would ultimately have helped me justify my choice. See how that works?
Really, try to imagine walking in the door to this:
I wish I could provide a smell-o-vision feature, to give you the full effect.
Next Sunday afternoon we are hosting a “neighborhood cookie social” for folks living around us, most of whom we’ve yet to meet in the three years we’ve been here. Cyndie printed out an invitation and then drove a loop of the immediate roads surrounding us to the west, where we know a handful of folks, including our good friend and trusty farrier, George Walker.
Multiple locations have mailboxes grouped, and she wasn’t sure about which mailbox went with which house, so she just put an invite in every box. Roughly 30, she said. We have no idea how many may show up, and we likely won’t recognize but a few.
Imagine that. It should be fun!
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Deer Season
It is quiet this morning, meaning, there have been few gunshots echoing around us. Yesterday was the opening day of the deer hunting season and shots were heard with regularity.
Even though the majority of land around us is cultivated for crops, there remain a fair amount of forested lanes and steep slopes where deer herds tend to travel. The farming neighbors who surround us on every side all don the blaze orange head-to-toe uniform and ply the hunt.
It’s a bit nerve-wracking.
I don’t mind them thinning the herds. The other main predator of deer seems to be cars and trucks, as the sight of dead deer by the side of the road is a daily spectacle. I recall that there was one in the road ditch of this property years ago when we came to visit in the weeks after our purchase offer was accepted.
The previous owners told us that one doe came up to the house and gave birth to her fawns in the nook by the front door. We did see a pair of deer in our yard frequently that first year after we moved in. Not so much anymore.
I figure it is a combination of our getting Delilah and the horses. We did add a trail through our woods, which actually opened up a new path for deer, but we subsequently began using it regularly for walking the perimeter with Delilah. The deer traffic became less conspicuous.
I’m sure they are still passing through. We just don’t see them as often.
The neighbors must still see them. They found a lot of reasons to shoot yesterday. Across the road from us, as I was returning up our driveway from the mailbox with Delilah, the neighbor-hunter group shouted a greeting, waved, and showed me they were successful on opening day.
For us, it means the horses are edgy, the dog is on high alert, and the nearby woods are alive with scanning eyes and booming firesticks, sunup to sundown. It is a brief anomaly in the sedate ambiance that usually prevails.
It is deer hunting season, and the hunt is on.
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Mutual Support
We have received a lot of support from our neighbors, George and Rachael Walker in the time we have been here. They have provided us with meat and eggs from a share in their CSA farm, cut and baled our hay, George trims our horse’s hooves, and Rachael has provided riding lessons. We welcomed an opportunity to finally offer support to them in return.
Yesterday, we went over to learn the details of feeding their variety of horses so that we can “farm-sit” while they are away for a few days over the weekend. Most of their animals will be set up with enough food for all three days, so it is just horses that will be our primary responsibility. Still, I found the process of feeding some of the other animals equally fascinating.
The pigs eat anything and everything. Rachael found a stash of eggs that had been secreted away in some nook, so she tossed them to the pigs. Mixed in with the pulverized corn that had already been served, it looked like a baking accident had spilled in there. The pigs took to it like… pigs.
I didn’t see the ducks getting fed, but they put on a nice show of their dark colors, strutting their stuff in the yard. It had me wondering how we might ever condition our dog, Delilah to accept the presence of poultry on our property without assuming they were put there for her to eat.
I’d like to have some ducks and chickens as assistants in controlling the fly populations around here.
After animals were all fed, and George finished cutting one of their hay fields, we joined them for dinner at the nearby El Paso Bar & Grill. I ate fried cheese curds, and other ill-advised choices at an unusually late hour, and stayed out way past my bedtime. It was wonderful.
George and Rachael are a joy to be with, and we feel ever more connected to community as we grow more familiar. Being able to offer them some support contributes greatly to that feeling of connection.
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Got Rocks?
Our neighbors are slowly getting familiar with our peculiarities, and don’t seem all that fazed by our interest in collecting rocks. It is an easy request for them to fill, because farmers are always trying to get rid of rocks. I got a call yesterday afternoon from the man who lives just south of us, and he said the guys who rent his field have a truckload of rocks for us. They just needed to know where we wanted them.
The options on where they could deliver on our property are pretty limited by the wetness, so he had to stay on the driveway. I had him dump them on the edge of the new loop that runs around the hay shed.
There were two skid loader tractors maneuvering in the fields next door all morning, collecting rocks. One had a mesh drum that rotated, which could dig out large rocks that were still half-buried. When it got the rock up out of the ground, it would spin to drop the dirt and hold the rock.
The man who delivered the rocks said some of these have been underground for a long time. He had broken up the hard ground last fall and these rocks pushed up as a result. It will take a couple of good rainstorms (just what we need [end sarcasm]) to wash them off and allow us to see what we’ve really got here.
There is a good chance a lot of them will end up being used under the opening where that culvert is visible, in the background of this image. The others will need to be given a ride in the bucket of our tractor, back toward the area of the labyrinth.
It is a great feeling to value material that other folks are constantly trying to get rid of.
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Good Neighbors
How do you thank someone for thanking you? Some things rise beyond words. You reach a level that is ethereal. Especially when it is between really special people. Even more so when those people are your next-door neighbors. Cyndie and I are lucky to enjoy the blessing of living next door to two really great families. On Easter Sunday, Elysa and Cyndie snuck next door and placed some baskets of goodies as a surprise treat for the Skattum kids. On Saturday, the kids delivered their response in the form of still-warm, fresh-baked banana bread (with chocolate chunks!), accompanied by their priceless artwork.
We cut into it immediately for a pre-dinner indulgence. Then I had some more for dessert. It was the first thing we ate the next morning for breakfast. What a treat!!
Yesterday, with all that sunshine raining down on us, we took on a number of outdoor chores. With the variety of usual tasks demanding attention, there was really no reason for us to invent a new one. But inspiration doesn’t really follow reason. Cyndie commented about a large rock that was lying mostly out of sight among some of our trees and bushes. Suddenly, I find that we have left all other projects behind to try to dig up this rock. This spontaneous endeavor was on the fringe of even being possible, but there we were, scheming away with improvised tools and methods.
About this time, in stepped our wonderful neighbor, John Lawton, to offer a hand, a plan, and a better prying tool. Without a moment’s hesitation, John joined our rudderless effort, offering his help, regardless our not knowing where we were going with this boulder. The extreme difficulty in moving it helped to determine where we would ultimately place it. As short a distance necessary to move from out of sight to a very decorative spot on the edge of the trees.
Our simple thanks seem entirely inadequate. Good neighbors are a true blessing and we have been richly blessed.
Relative Something 