Posts Tagged ‘Rain’
Not Again!
When it comes to birds, I don’t know why I thought I might get away with doing nothing about keeping them away, after destroying the first nest I found in the gutter downspout on the barn a week or two ago. I’m noticing a theme the last two days, having to do with my neglect to take timely action.
Washouts!
Regarding the gutter downspout, I actually talked about putting some kind of screen at the opening to the downspout, but just talking about doing it didn’t turn out to be very effective prevention.
I don’t think it rained very hard overnight Sunday, but there was plenty of evidence yesterday morning that the downspout was plugged, because the water overflowed out of the gutter and created washouts in the lime screenings on the ground in the paddock.
We received less than a half-inch of rain in the gauge up by the house, but that was enough water coming off the barn roof to make a significant impact. This is the whole reason why I wanted a drain tube attached to the downspout and buried underground down to the drainage swale outside the paddock.
A downspout nest.
With more rain likely this week, I dared not hesitate another day before doing something about this, so out came the ladder and off went the electric fence, and up in the air I did go to pull screws and dismantle the downspout. I’m proud to report that I thought to bang on the downspout before climbing up the ladder, which chased out the bird that would’ve startled me into a calamitous fall, had I not.
Immediately below the gutter there is an elbow, and then a short, straight section before another elbow. The bird had packed that straight section completely. I assume the little trouble maker must know to get out of there during the rain or it would drown for sure. The water would have filled that first elbow before backing up and overflowing the gutter.
I found some bird netting that Cyndie had used for covering her garden back in Eden Prairie and cut off enough to cover both ends of that first elbow. I will have to keep an eye out for the bird, because I have no idea if this will work or not. I suppose it could decide to just put the nest on top of the elbow at the drain cutout in the gutter, using the netting as a nice starting base.
I know better than to think they won’t try again because the sliding doors on the other end of the barn have a new nest on top of them every day. It doesn’t cause any damage, so I can forget about it for a few days if we don’t open those doors. When we finally do, it generally results in, sadly, the falling of eggs.
At least I never need to fret over cleaning up the messes that result with Delilah around. When she has eggs for breakfast, she eats the shells and all.
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Sibling Revelry
Despite a sloppy wintry mix of precipitation doing its best to dampen our spirits (sorry ’bout the pun), the gathering of Hays relatives was a joy and a half. As always happens to me at family gatherings of limited duration, the riches of access to siblings I grew up with is enticing, but the reality of our usual chaos leaves me wishing there was more time. It is hard to finish a story, and sometimes a single sentence, without interruption. My attention is too often wrenched away from the person I was listening to, and time flies by so fast, the hour of departure comes up way too soon.
Regardless, every moment was precious. Reconnecting after long periods of separation, with siblings who share so many tendencies and characteristics, is refreshing and invigorating. I tend to feel a kind of validation of who I am, discovering the brothers and sisters that I grew up with remain so similar in behavior and perspectives. I am among my people again.
I’m lucky that, as a family, we all get along. These are the people who inhabited Intervale Ranch with me from the day I was born until 9 years later, when our family moved out and the property was razed for development into an industrial park.
With technical assistance from my son, Julian, I was able to display a digitized version of a slide show I put together close to 30 years ago, which featured that old farm property. It provided an opportunity to exercise our memories, as we analyzed some of the images and compared recollections.
Meanwhile, there was non-stop food to be consumed, youngsters to get reacquainted with and entertained by, and horses to visit. Unfortunately, that last part with the horses was complicated by the weather conditions. They have been a little jumpy the last two days. I’m thinking there may have been some coyote activity in the area. That jumpiness was then compounded by wet precipitation which brought them to shivers.
As the bulk of our visitors wandered down to greet the herd, the attention suddenly needed to be redirected to preparing the stalls and moving the cold, wet horses inside. At least people were able to witness the process as it happened, and see the horses enjoy the reward of coming in to warm up and dry out.
Delilah was pretty excited to have so many visitors, but eventually adjusted to the clamor of all the conversations and quietly laid in front of the fireplace. She seemed more than happy to accept cuddles from Reese, one of the older grandchildren present.
It’s nice to see the kids doing well with our animals, because we see them as potential ranch hands in the years ahead. When their parents eventually start thinking about sending them off to some camp for the summer, we can put in a pitch for the valuable experience they could gain here, doing chores at Wintervale. Seems like a win-win.
Cyndie and I express our extreme appreciation to all the family members who made the trip through messy weather to bring our place to life with their love and energy. Here’s hoping we don’t let too much time pass before the next Hays family gathering materializes!
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Rockin’ Now
I rescheduled a planned work day at the old job in order to be home Monday morning for the confluence of both landscaper and fence contractor arriving to work on our long-awaited projects. As Cyndie headed out the door for her work, I made some passing comment about my high anticipation, and the number of other mornings I had suffered disappointment for similar expectations.
After rising promptly to eat an early breakfast, and getting outside for chores that would make me conveniently available to greet the crews, I received a call from my fence guy. They were hit by a few “Monday issues” that would delay their arrival a day. Why was I not surprised?
Luckily, the landscape crew arrived and saved my day from being a bust. They started quickly and had the ditch created so fast that I thought the project was going to be a cinch. Then, the process of adjusting the slope of the ditch, with a laser as reference, slowed things considerably.
It didn’t help that the end they needed to make deeper was through thick clay soil, which made for very difficult digging. The upper part of the run involves an easily visible drop, but the lower portion levels out. That created something of a challenge for them to achieve an evenly descending slope.
When the drain tube was finally dropped into the channel and covered with pea gravel, I felt a sudden urge for more rain, so we could see how well it works.
Boy, if that isn’t an unlikely thing for me to be writing… an urge for more rain.
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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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First Test
Yesterday we received a steady rain that coincidentally arrived on the day work was supposed to begin to install drain tile above the barn and paddocks. 
Instead of making a muddy mess by bringing in digging equipment, they limited their effort to delivering the tubing and pea gravel. It was a bummer that the project I have been pining for all summer was delayed one more day, but it was great to have our water problems vividly visible in real-time for the guys who are about to install a system to mitigate the flow.
Meanwhile, although it was a bit sooner than I hoped, I witnessed the first real test of our newly defined drainage swale. The grass seed I planted at the end of last week has barely had time to germinate, so I fear a good percentage of it was probably set in motion down stream by the flowing water.
There are some wispy visible sprouts making an appearance at the far end, so I’m hoping all is not lost. The good news is that, despite some of the minor undulations that concerned me, the water appeared to make a nicely controlled flow the full length across the pasture into the ditch on our south border.
I declare that we successfully passed the first test!
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Small Steps
There was a surprise rain shower yesterday morning that saved me from watering the newly seeded drainage swale across the south pasture. It was a little victory for me. I checked the weather radar and spotted the small band of precipitation sliding across the region, but it was not clear that it would pass over us, and didn’t reveal how much rain would fall. In the end, it was more than I expected, after I reconciled the fact it was going to rain on us at all.
I turned over a couple piles of composting manure under the cover of trees until the rain started to fall in earnest. Then I puttered in the shop, putting a new blade on the trimmer in preparation for work clearing growth along the hay-field south fence. That is one of the projects that is currently a priority. I spent a little time in the barn, methodically dumping bags of feed into the bin as the ebb and flow of the varying rainfall rattled the metal roof.
The morning just seemed to disappear. I contacted the fence installer and the landscaper in hopes of initiating their work for us. Both hope to start on Wednesday, but only one said, “Rain or shine.” Another little victory, because the forecast is for rain.
After lunch, some sunshine started to break through, and I headed down with the trimmer to clear along that fence. It wasn’t a big victory, because I only got a short distance, but the progress was worth claiming as a little victory. The going was slow. There are a fair number of downed branches that lie out of sight beneath the tall grass and weeds.
It is surprising how much strength it takes to pull a branch from the grip of blades of grass. It’s like velcro times a thousand. For that matter, pulling an entangled branch from among others is like separating super-strength velcro. When I look back to see what is stopping progress, and it turns out to be the simplest of angled growth hooked on another branch, it seems so unlikely. In this case, it is the branches that seemed to be enjoying little victories at my expense.
The work becomes exhausting. Progress is slowed because it must be made in smaller doses. By taking extra time to cut branches where they “Y” out, I will end up pulling shorter pieces with less entanglements. By cutting smaller strokes with the trimmer, I can reduce the number of times I hit wood or dirt and extend the life of the blade.
When we had the brown-post/4-wire fence installed initially, we stopped short of replacing that existing fence along the southern run. Now we intend to extend that portion. For a variety of reasons, it makes sense to make the improvement complete, not the least of which is, Legacy messes with that section when we let the horses out there because it is not electrified.
If I am able to get the full length of that southern run cleared today, and ready for removal by the fence contractor, I will be happy to claim a BIG victory. It just takes a compilation of many small steps.
Small steps, I can do.
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Weather Weary
The first full week with Cyndie working her new job and me working at home as full-time ranch manager is behind us. She came home and went to bed with a headache and I am physically exhausted from working 14-hour days. Will the weekend offer us a chance to relax? I’m not sure.
I wasn’t able to get out and test the new wood chipper yesterday, after a morning of rain and an afternoon of hauling hay. I stacked 80 more bales in the hay shed. It’s beginning to look respectable.
I wish I could say the same about our uncut field. As feared, the weeds are maturing and weather hasn’t offered us much chance for enticing any willing neighbors to help turn it into bales.
I take some solace in the fact we are not alone in being unable to cut. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the tribulations hay growers are facing this year. We are lucky to have found a supplier who has some high ground, though he still battles the frustration of squeezing the process of cutting and baling into the short number of days between deluges.
Ideally, the process involves at least 3 dry days in a row, but we’ve been hard pressed to get 2, and the rain amounts have continued to be significant. That means the next sunny day or two after a rain event are often lost to waiting for the ground to dry up again. It just doesn’t seem to happen.
This also impacts my plan to do some wood chipping. One of the first areas with cut branches that I am hoping to grind into chips is at the bottom of a hill in a very wet spot. Getting down there with my tractor holds the potential of becoming a muddy, messy affair.
No matter how much control we pretend to have about eventual outcomes, the days will always be a delicate balance, subject to whatever nature chooses to offer or inhibit.
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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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Back Live
I am back with live posts today —not pre-written and scheduled— having successfully survived and returned from the most challenging of bike camping adventures that I have ever done. We made plenty of jokes about planning a bicycle trip in a region that has been selected as a good place to have a wind turbine farm.
The challenge of riding daily into unrelenting gale-force headwinds was compounded by the addition of a surprising wave-after-wave of severe thunderstorms, drenching this region that was previously enduring a drought. The unprecedented amount of rain in that short time seriously flooded farm fields, creating flash floods that over-ran banks, flooded homes and washed out roads.
For some reason that I don’t understand, I had the unfortunate luck of adding to the misery by getting sick with a sore throat, stuffy head, and congested lungs. I don’t know if it was just a bad coincidence of timing or whether the weather conditions and close proximity to a large group of people happened to be the trigger.
Last week was one tough vacation. At the same time, it was as fun as ever. I hope to tell you more about it in the days ahead. Right now I am faced with the burden of deciding if I can go back to bed to repair my ailing health or get after the mowing and manure management chores that are in dire need of attention.
The same storms that dominated our bike week moved across the state and soaked Wintervale Ranch. We’ve got additional trees tipped over that I will need to cut up and move, just to get to the manure pile.
The bed is looking more and more enticing as my current preferred option.
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Relative Something 