Posts Tagged ‘planning’
Mucky Misstep?
I’m having some doubts about part of the solution we settled on for improvement of the footing in our paddocks. The water is not draining through the layer of lime screenings we added. We did not focus on packing it down immediately, thinking the process would occur naturally over time. We weren’t granted that gift of time by mother nature before the heavy dose of rainfall put our efforts for improvement to a test.
The wet screenings have taken on a consistency very similar to fresh concrete.
I’m not so sure that the water would run off the top of the surface if we had packed it anyway. It is discouraging to see standing water in all the divots left where the horses have stepped. Maybe I am expecting immediate results where the reality is that the ultimate improvement will not be perfection, but a reduced duration of muck. We can hope.
What I found to be even more demoralizing yesterday was, one of the bad spots is located above the main area that the drain tile installation is intended to help. Even after the drain tile is in place and working as designed, my impression is that the high ground just beyond the barn overhang won’t be greatly affected. I’ll be thrilled to find I am wrong about that.
On a more positive note, we are entering the winter season in a completely different situation than we experienced a year ago. Last year it was dry, dry, dry. I firmly believe that the dry fall of 2013 significantly contributed to the loss of many of our pine trees when the winter that followed was so severe. This fall the conditions are almost too wet, if that is possible. Our growing flora look healthy and happy, and should be ready for whatever winter dishes out this year.
Our animals appear just as ready. Delilah was so vibrant yesterday morning, sprinting around at full speed with a gleam in her eye and a smile on her little doggie face, looking as if the temperature had finally reached a comfortable range for her thick coat. I think her preferred seasons of the year have arrived.
Winter has always been my favorite season. Now, if I could just find a way to be as ready for it this year as our plants and animals are. First priority will be new muck boots. My two main choices of footwear have both developed leaks in them. The recent rains have been good for making that known to me.
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Same Story
It’s the same old story around here lately. We’ve had three days of rain, totaling over 2.5 inches for the period, and the paddocks are a mess. It’s ironic to have the loops of drain tile tubing and the pile of pea gravel here, but it has been too wet for the landscapers to do the work of getting it installed.
They now hope to start on Monday. I am wary of what they will run into when they start digging. If they dig a scoop out of the ground and the hole fills with water, like happened to me when I recently tried to dig a post hole, will they be able to proceed? Since they are ultimately digging a trench, maybe they can dig all the way to the drainage swale and see if the water flows. It would be a good test of the concept, I expect.
If we have to wait much longer, the ground is gonna freeze. We were already threatened with snow overnight last night —which I slept through if it actually happened. It was sure cold enough. For the second night in a row, we let the horses spend the night in their stalls in the barn. The rain, wind, and cold temperatures are too much for them this soon, as they haven’t yet fully grown their winter coat.
Cyndie moved them in late, after we finished watching a movie. She reported that they were eagerly staged at the barn door, waiting and hoping to get inside.
I have been spending my time between rain showers the last few days cleaning up the last of the old hay-field fence in preparation for its removal. Doing so has affirmed my decision to spend the extra money to have this done when they come to install the fence we’ve been waiting for all summer that will enclose the pasture beyond. The posts of the old fence had really begun to lean. It is a metal fence and we hadn’t been able to electrify it because there was no isolation from ground, so Legacy had taken to messing with it, too. That’s behavior we prefer to discourage.
It will really clean up the look of that south side of our property. I’ll need to keep it clear of overgrowth, but that works to our advantage because we will then finally have a riding path available that we have long envisioned around the perimeter.
We left the horses inside this morning, awaiting the arrival of our neighbor and farrier, George, who will trim their hooves again. He tells me somewhere around 8-weeks is the period to shoot for. It always looks to me that they need it a little sooner than that. Probably because the nasty conditions they endure in our paddocks.
Here’s hoping their footing improves greatly out there in the near future. We’re tired of the same old muddy mess, over and over again.
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Impermanence Is
On Saturday, Cyndie and I enjoyed some blissful moments tending to our labyrinth garden. The horses noticed our activity and wandered over to graze beside us while we toiled. Cyndie pulled weeds and I did some rock-work to add robustness to the entrance of the center circle.
It has become apparent that one of the two boulders in the center is leaning away from where we originally placed it. I’m hoping to pull it back upright with some manner of rigging and then see if there will be a way to prop it up with a small rock beneath.
The almost imperceptible movement of that huge rock is a gentle reminder to us that things we tend to assume are static —permanent, even— are nothing of the sort. I need to keep that in mind and endeavor to incorporate that reality into my designs for enhancements to our property.
I guess the trail I recently worked to reclaim is another classic example. It will not remain a trail without regular maintenance. Another obvious example that comes to mind is how much erosion is occurring in our paddocks after the summer rains. Before the horses were in those spaces, there was grass growing everywhere, which worked to hold the soil in place. That is no longer the case.
Beyond all the intentional infrastructure improvements we have done —clearing brush, adding fences, creating new drive paths— there are natural changes happening all the time. There will never be an absence of change. Everything and everyone is in constant transition, and at a continually varying rate of change.
Impermanence is.
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More Designing
I recently built a platform outside the back door of the barn for Cyndie’s portable sink. She said she liked it, but that she was also hoping to have a work station for washing horses in that area. On Friday, I worked on a design for a way to provide that, just beyond the sink.
The area will require a fair amount of fill, so I decided it was time to use the loader bucket on the diesel tractor. Moving massive amounts of manure was one of the reasons I figured I needed this tractor, but up until now, we have been managing just fine without it.
Actually, our neighbor, George, was just asking about our manure pile, and happily offered us the use of his manure spreader, as long as we can fill it using the loader on our tractor. That would allow us to spread our fertilizer on the hay-field. His asking created incentive for me to practice my skills using the loader for something other than snow.
It doesn’t come naturally for me. I have better control using hand tools. However, there is no denying the increased efficiency the loader provides. I can move a lot more fertilizer in a lot less time. One of my problems with mechanized assistance is that it also allows me to make a lot bigger mistakes in a shockingly quick blink of an eye.
For now, I am using the mostly composted manure from long ago as clean fill around our property. I moved a few bucket-loads to the spot and now have a sense of space that will be needed. I plan to bury a couple of fence posts to make a hitching rail and build up a platform where the horses will stand. We have some plastic grates that interlock, which we will fill with pea-gravel, and then that will be covered by rubber mats. I expect there will be a layer of plastic beneath the pea-gravel to cause water to drain in the direction we want it to go.
Luckily, Cyndie said she doesn’t expect to be washing horses for a while, so I have time to proceed in phases.
She was able to make use of the new arena space in the afternoon, exercising the horses with a lunge line. It was beautiful to see. The horses responded nicely to the exercise, and moved proudly around her in this new workout space that has been created.
Every day is something new around here. The progress of late has been invigorating for the soul, yet taxing on the body. That end-of-the-day shower is becoming a ritual of renewal and recovery after long days of heavy laboring.
During a brief pause between tasks yesterday afternoon, Cyndie brought out popsicles and invited me to join her on rocking chairs overlooking the back yard. With a cool breeze washing over us, it was a precious (and intentional) opportunity to take a moment to enjoy the richness of blessings we are surrounded by here. They are more than enough justification for the hard work we find ourselves engaged in day-after-day.
Managing Tasks
It’s the middle of July and we are experiencing a cold spell to go along with the latest batch of passing rain showers. I finally pulled out a long sleeve shirt yesterday afternoon because I was getting a chill while I sat inside, waiting out the rain. Monday had me back at the 14-hour day, caring for animals and working on chores around the property.
On Saturday, I had a chance to do a little test run of the new wood chipper. Works like a charm. I’m looking forward to grinding all the piles of branches we have laying around.
Yesterday, I worked on cutting down small growth to open up a path for installation of electric fencing that will enclose the back grazing pasture. The area where I was working is down by the drainage ditch that runs along the southern border of our property. I am also working on cutting down the trees that have grown down in that ditch. The combination of cuttings from those two areas have made for several significant brush piles that I will be turning into wood chips. What fun!
Any trees that are too big for the chipper will be turned into firewood. Too bad I don’t have anyplace to stack firewood right now. Rebuilding the woodshed remains a priority, but it is below hauling hay and clearing a path for pasture fencing.
My other priority is to try to get 8-hours of sleep a night. I need the rest since I am working the long days. Unfortunately, my latest attempts have been foiled. Feels a little like burning the candle at both ends. It’s hard because my manager in this new mode of working self-managed, is a real task master.
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Changes Afoot
This week I am back at the day-job to cover for my assistant while she is on vacation. By coincidence, this week also happens to be when Cyndie starts a new job in education administration. In fact, today is her first official day in her new role as Chief Academic Officer of the Anoka/Hennepin School district, the largest district in the state of Minnesota.
How do these things happen? I don’t know. It’s not like we planned for her to land such a demanding position so far from our home. The opportunity arose and Cyndie peeked in at it, getting quickly swept in for another shot at solving the world’s problems through helping improve another public school system. Can it be done? I hope so, because she always gives her all in trying.
What does that mean for our plans at Wintervale? Probably that our efforts to launch a self-sustaining education and retreat center here will be a bit more drawn out. For me, it means that I will need to do a better job of again reducing the need to travel across the cities to my old day-job gig. My primary responsibilities will shift to managing things at home. Heaven forbid, I might be forced to finally do the grocery shopping and dinner prep for the two of us.
I have already started my unintended plumbing apprenticeship. I’m daily growing more comfortable with animal care: horses, dog, and cat. I’m getting the hang of using tractors and gas engines. Most importantly, I’m making connections with the farmer neighbors and local business owners who will become the new co-workers I will be interacting with to accomplish whatever needs attention on any given day around here.
We think it is a glorious opportunity for both of us.
Happy first day of July, 2014!
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I’m Trying
Honestly, I’m trying keep a positive attitude about the lack of progress with our situation at Wintervale, but my efforts seem futile against the elements. Wet weather is the greatest culprit. It takes several days after a measurable rainfall to see the crest of ground water drainage, so even two beautifully sunny days after a storm, our land just seems to become wetter. I doubt we have had more than two days without rain yet this year.
On top of that, the precipitation we have been receiving has been in crazy large doses. The storms rolling through have commonly dropped 2, 3, and even 4 inch totals. The horses have been reasonably tolerant, for which we are extremely grateful, but it is apparent they are burdened by the disastrous conditions of the paddocks.
We still have a temporarily roped small space on the gravel driveway where they can get a break from the mud. Cyndie recently helped me move the temporary fence defining a grazing area, to expand it onto some untouched growth. They seem moderately happy with it, but struggle to reach it through an area that is extremely soaked and soft. The sad truth is that everywhere is soaking wet, so it gets only marginally better after they cross that worst spot.
Often times, we find they have taken it upon themselves to come in from the grass and we find them standing up by the barn. It surprises us that they give up on grazing before we need to force them, and their acceptance of standing under the barn overhang is a new behavior, too. I’m guessing that they have just finally come to recognize all the sounds that come from wind and the creaking expansion of a steel building on a sunny day. The horses used to stay away from the barn whenever the wind was blowing.
It has been a week since I returned from the bike trip, and the lawn is in desperate need of mowing again, just like it looked when I got home and needed to dive into the project at that time. Too bad it is so rainy this weekend and I need to work the day-job next week to cover for my assistant who is on vacation. My chance to get some of it done yesterday was foiled from the get-go. My Saturday started with this message from Cyndie: “I have bad news…”
It was a special day for us, because Cyndie had scheduled her first mini-seminar of training. Our daughter, Elysa, was bringing friends and it would provide us the chance to do something of a test run through the routine we are envisioning will become the mainstay of our future operations of Wintervale Ranch.
“The kitchen sink isn’t draining.”
On the bright side, I got out of needing to do the vacuuming (which unfortunately still needs to be done). So, Cyndie had to prepare her welcome brunch and lunchtime meal without a working sink. I got to spend my day running a snake through the stink of drain muck, negotiating over the phone with local plumbers, running to the hardware store for a longer snake, spilling nasty water on myself and the kitchen floor, and finally succeeding and putting everything back together in time for dinner.
Try as I might, the ultimate victory over that battle didn’t do enough for my attitude to keep me from feeling helpless and inundated by the overwhelming number of things that await attention around here. We are sinking beneath the water and all the projects that are falling behind the endless passing time of days and weeks.
July is around the corner. I better get after those April and May projects pretty soon. Oh boy, I’m trying.
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Vacation Planning
Like this has never happened before. The faster I go, the behind-er I get. It doesn’t surprise me, but it seems so wrong. I am quickly running out of time before I leave for a week of vacation and I find myself unable to get into gear to prepare for departure. I feel like I have been afflicted by some zombie disease. My thought process is slowing to a crawl and motivation seems to be going with it.
I am thrilled at the idea of being free of the usual daily responsibilities and spending extended time with a group of very precious people, but that has not resulted in any rush of energy toward getting valuable tasks addressed in preparation. Most notably, since my vacation will involve riding a bicycle all day long for a week, this year I failed to get enough miles on the saddle to condition my butt in advance of the trip. I may finally have found a reason to test the use of a chamois cream, but my concern is less about skin hotspots and more about tenderness from prolonged pressure on the sit bones. It’s feels like a bruise until the body adjusts and builds up the equivalence of a callous in the region.
Yesterday, as I toiled away on an unexpected kitchen sink plumbing adventure, it occurred to me that I have done very little in the way of mental preparation for the annual week of bicycling and camping that kicks off in 4 days. I think that is because the trip is something I have done many times before with a common group of precious friends. I know what to expect, so I am less inclined to fret over preparations.
Unfortunately, it is feeling like I may have swung too far in the other direction and am at risk of finding myself unprepared at the last-minute. If something ends up being neglected, I’m hoping it is a chore at home that I overlooked which I can just deal with when I return. As long as I have my bike gear, the tent and sleeping bag, and a few things to wear, I’ll be ready to vacate.
Sunday, after a bit of anxious searching, Cyndie rescued me by finding where my tent and sleeping pad were stowed. The most critical elements are beginning to accumulate into a pile in the basement, so I’m probably in better shape than my foggy mind is making me feel.
The next phase involves the irritating challenge of a nagging perception that I am forgetting something. How do you figure out what you are forgetting if you don’t know whether you are forgetting anything or not?
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Take Two
What do you do when you step outside in the morning to discover you have 2.25 inches of water in your rain gauge from overnight storms? We decided it was a good day to transplant some trees.
A few days ago, I noticed a lot of maple trees were growing in the middle area of woods where my foot path to the barn cuts through. They looked to be in surprisingly good condition, considering they are well beneath the canopy of mature trees above, leaving them in shade all day long.
Yesterday, when Cyndie and I stepped out into the soaking wet conditions once again, I suggested it would be a good day to plant trees, pointing out the candidates I had found. She was all in, and soon we were selecting tree after tree, as each consecutive find seemed better than the rest.
If you have been following along, you probably saw my recent exclamation that the tree we transplanted to the middle of our labyrinth was alive. Turns out it was just barely alive, and not doing well enough for our purposes. We had dug that tree out of the ground last fall with a shovel, and the only new growth that appeared this spring was on a couple of sprouts along the lower trunk. There were no leaves budding from any of the branches above.
Photo taken by Cyndie
For our second attempt, I wanted to try pulling the roots of a tree from the ground, digging it up by hand. It is a method we had wonderful success with at our previous home. By saturating the dirt with water, which wasn’t hard at all yesterday since the ground was already saturated, it becomes possible to work the roots free by hand, but it takes a fair amount of patience.
Delilah couldn’t figure out what the heck I was doing, crouched next to that tree for so long, with my hand in that mud puddle. Luckily, she was tied on a leash and unable to get her paws in there to help. She resorted to digging 4 or 5 holes of her own, probably to show me how it’s done.
In time, the tree gets very tippy, and eventually, it pulls all the way out with minimal effort. Prior to that, my hand received quite a workout, trying to remove the thick clay soil that encased the roots, large and small.
Spending that much time getting intimate with the root structure of a tree this size made me aware of something that should serve as a valuable metaphor for the path our lives take. In similar fashion to the way moving water will meander and create rivers with an amazing number of 180° turns, tree roots will often make a U-turn and grow in the opposite direction from which they started.
From above, the sight of a root growing away from the trunk gives the impression it would logically continue in that direction. My probing hand found that wasn’t the case. It becomes apparent that a 180° change in direction is common, and provides strength and stability toward holding the tree upright despite forces that might otherwise bring it down.
How often do people assume the best path for our lives is straight ahead? A reversal of direction seems like a negative thing. I think reversing course, whether forced by circumstance or freely chosen, will more likely contribute to making us stronger and more stable in the long run.
The new transplant is in the ground at the center of our labyrinth, leaves already showing hints of the trauma. Today we are starting over with a second take, watching for signs indicating it is satisfied with its new location and the bright sunshine. No less than we were with the first tree, we are filled with hope that this one will survive.
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Shitty Education
In the time since our horses arrived late last September, we have been stockpiling manure in one primary location. Based on information Cyndie gathered, we roughed out a spot that we guessed would be large enough. That was about as far as we went in terms of a plan of action for manure management.
In my naiveté, I thought we could start piling at the back of the clearing we designated, and just keep dumping new loads toward the front. If it timed out right, we could access the pile from the back to remove old composted manure for use as tree food and fertilizer for Cyndie’s plants. I planned to scoop the front of the pile with the loader on our tractor, to stir and aerate the material, moving the composting manure back and making new space for fresh loads to be dumped in front again.
The more informed method involves an area divided into 3 separate sections. This allows the first pile to become fully composted and ready for use, the middle one to be in process of breaking down, and the last one for dumping fresh manure.
My system didn’t work the way I imagined because our method of dumping full-wheelbarrows ended up filling the designated space all the way to the front in a very short amount of time. Instead of dumping somewhere beyond our designated space, I chose to go up. I created a ramp and we just kept adding fresh manure on top of the previous batches already beginning to break down.
That has led to a pile with layers in varying stages of decomposition. It is obvious our pile shrinks over time, depending on how much new manure is being added, but the two key elements to accelerating the breakdown are the optimal amount of air and moisture, and our pile hasn’t been getting the correct amount of either. Our location is not covered, so I figured we would suffer from too much wetness, but the process of decomposition uses up moisture and will cause dry spots that interrupt decomposition if not stirred.
Yesterday afternoon, after I got home from the day-job, I cut deep into the back of our manure pile for the first time. I wanted to move some material from the pile that was already composting, down to the new location I created by the labyrinth. The impetus for that was our desire to give our newly transplanted tree at the center of the labyrinth a dose of horse manure fertilizer.
Even though the tree is showing signs of new buds along its trunk, there is no indication that the buds at the ends of the branches have any life in them whatsoever. It is really testing my patience.
So, I was able to cut into the main manure pile and get educated about what is going on down below, and I got enough cinder blocks stacked to create the start of a satellite pile where I will be better able to control the rate of composting.
Best of all, it will be conveniently located near the garden of plants that help define the form of our labyrinth path.
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Relative Something 