Posts Tagged ‘shade sail’
Minor Victories
I monkeyed around with a lot of little issues yesterday, most of them related to tweaking the mounting points in the barn for my shade sail. Very few of the things I tried to accomplish were easy victories. When nothing is going smoothly, I am tempted to give up and try again some other time. I ended up doing just that.
The day started with my left foot giving me a weird feeling as I walked. It almost felt like one of the toes was missing, though I knew it wasn’t. By the end of the day, after standing on a ladder for much of the afternoon, I figured out that my foot was complaining about standing on the rung of a ladder. Maybe my foot was unhappy with my recent addition of extra weight around my middle. I had my annual physical on Tuesday and learned the actual number for my weight. We don’t have a scale at home.
I also received fresh readings for my fasting glucose and cholesterol numbers, which were both elevated compared to a year ago. It wasn’t an increase into scary territory, but since my numbers regularly fall just outside (above) the desired healthy range, they tend to get noticed by my doctor. This time, I was meeting a new doctor who agreed to take me on as a patient after my previous doctor retired. Luckily, they share very similar opinions and styles, and my elevated numbers didn’t cause him grave concern.
However, they do bother me a little bit. With Cyndie’s support, since she prepares our breakfasts and dinners, I am renewing an effort to control my blood test results by diet and exercise. We are targeting a cholesterol-lowering, heart-healthy menu. The challenge will be, as it has always been, maintaining this effort for longer than a week or two.
It is way too easy to fall back into old eating patterns.
For all the issues that put up a struggle the whole day through yesterday, there were a few others that went my way. For some reason, I couldn’t get a picture from our surveillance camera down at the barn. Simply cycling power to the camera was all that it took to remedy that situation. Also, while I was up on a ladder in the barn, I found myself in reach of an LED lightbulb that was failing.
During a trip to the house, I asked Cyndie if she remembered where we stowed the box of spare bulbs. She found it on the first try, and soon I had a good bulb installed in place of the old one.
Minor victories.
Barn Afternoon
We recently learned that the new liaison to This Old Horse was only fulfilling the role temporarily, and yesterday he showed up to introduce us to the person taking on the job in his place. While waiting for her to arrive, we puttered around the barn and talked about horses and my new shade sail project. I’m planning to put up a short temporary barrier to keep the horses away while work is underway, and Jeremy offered some good ideas on how to achieve that.
We put out a water trough as an alternative to their usual automatic waterer because that will be blocked by the temporary fence.
The horses were briefly disturbed when I brought it out, but quickly went back to their feed buckets and ignored me while I held the hose to fill the tub. Mix was a little jumpy about investigating it closer, but she soon dipped her snout and got a little drink. Later, I watched as Mia was eyeing the new feature in their space, and Mix walked right up to it and took another drink. That was fun to witness.
While Cyndie was introducing our newest liaison, Maddy, to the horses, I puttered about with changing my kludged rigging of the shade sail inside the barn. I’ve been trying to more closely position the anchor points to simulate the way we hope to mount it on new posts in the paddock.
I finally got frustrated as dinnertime approached and decided to stop and sleep on it. I’ll take another look today and see if a good solution materializes for my fresh eyes.
In the middle of moving around in the barn, I found that Asher was sitting on the cool dirt he had dug up without proper authorization. It’s hard to get upset with him when he is looking so damn regal and self-satisfied.
Cyndie had filled in the hole already once before I found him like this. Before I called it a day, I filled it in again, knowing full well he will likely dig it again next time he gets a chance.
Cyndie spent time installing new mesh curtains with magnetic closures in the frames of the barn doors so we will be able to leave doors open for air circulation without worrying about hordes of pigeons coming in.
With an enormous number of projects currently deserving springtime attention, it felt nice to get away with neglecting them for one afternoon while we busied ourselves in and around the barn.
All things in due time.
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Easter Feast
Cyndie performed her magic once again and produced a feast of epic proportions for members of her family and our kids, too. Like all good gatherings in a home, the kitchen was the primary hub of conversation at the start.
After they were kicked out in the direction of the seating around the fireplace, Cyndie set out the wide array of brunch choices she had prepared.
After the feast had a little time to settle in our stomachs and stories had been shared, a visit to the barn to see the horses was offered to anyone who hadn’t closed their eyes for a nap.
We brought a bag of carrots for the mares and found them to be wonderfully social and welcoming of our visit. The expected precipitation held off until everyone had departed for the afternoon with plenty of lovingly packaged leftovers.
As evening approached, I was able to spend a little extra time in the barn after feeding the horses to make some adjustments on the shade sail. In addition to tightening the tension to continue stretching out the creases from the folds of the shipped package, I changed the anchor points to better represent the way it will ultimately be hung.
I’m hoping we will be able to figure precise positioning of the four new posts based on measurements of the corner brackets of the sail in the way I have it suspended in the barn. The challenge I discovered while trying to remove ripples via the less-than-ideal anchor points tells me that exact post locations are something we don’t want to take lightly.
It will mean a lot to me to get it right on our first try.
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Everything Arrived
Thursday started with a morning delivery of the lumber I ordered for my shade sail project. The truck stopped on the road, and the driver used a three-wheeled forklift to move my posts and boards up the driveway.
Having never done anything like this before, I’m uncertain about a lot of the details. I’m feeling confident about the overall concept, and I have purchased everything I think I will need, but I’m haunted about how it will all work out in the end.
I have decided to install a header around the top of the posts to bolster the stability of the whole frame against the pull of the canopy hardware and the pushing guaranteed to happen from 1200-pound horses with an itch. Watching how the 24-foot-long 2 x 6 boards flopped like noodles, it occurred to me that those probably should have been a beefier dimension.
I’m not used to dealing with such long dimensions in lumber, or anything else, for that matter. It’s hard for me to visualize where 24 feet of something will fit. Even the forklift driver needed to make some tricky adjustments to barely fit between the hay shed and the wood fence with the boards balanced on the forks. There was a little squeaking as the boards rubbed against the metal shed as he eked his way through.
By noon, FedEx had delivered a box with the shade sail canopy on our front steps. Cyndie and I tried to unfold it in the loft, letting it drape over the railing to get a feel for the size. I didn’t realize how big 18 feet is. It doesn’t seem like that much out in the paddock, but in the house, we couldn’t find space to stretch it out.
I opted for the barn.
It took me several tries to rig up attachment points that worked, but we eventually got it stretched out enough to take up slack in the metal cable sewn into the outer edge all the way around.
There was no way we could have done this outside yesterday with gale-force wind gusts howling all afternoon, leading up to a robust thunderstorm just before sunset.
I’m aware that maximum tension is the key to getting the shade sail to perform optimally, but my initial rigging in the barn showed me there are a few little details to achieving my goal that make this project a lot more complicated than it seems like it should be at the start.
My new contractor friend, Justin, will stop by today to take exact measurements to determine where we will place the posts.
We are getting close to finding out how much the horses are going to freak out over the strange new feature appearing in their midst. So far, the flapping labels on the lumber outside their paddock kept them on edge for much of yesterday before I pulled everything off the wood.
If only they knew what was going to happen next.
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Mostly Clean
The problem with taking on a chore like picking up downed branches is that there is no end. Even though my focus was on the area beside the lane around the back pasture, as we made progress, just a few steps away lay another pile of branches equally deserving of attention. It is frustratingly difficult to just leave them be for now and stay focused on the limited original target area.
It has been three years since we paid professionals to cut off dead limbs around the two large maple trees. At the time, we had them leave all the cut chunks on the ground where they landed to reduce their time on scene and save us money. My plan was to clean it all up myself on my own time.
How’d that work out for you, John?
Yeah, I didn’t make much progress with that. Then, a large limb they didn’t cut snapped off in a storm. We cut some of that back, but the rest just added to the mess from before.
We haven’t removed every last chunk that was cut down three years ago, but we accomplished a heck of a lot in the last two days, pulling out what was most visible near the lane by the fence. I’m calling it mostly clean, which is good enough.
I’m exercising my ability to accept that perfection is not a requirement.
It was all rotting in place. Now it can continue to rot in the long, tangled pile of branches forming a border fence along our northern property line.
Late in the afternoon, I met the contractor who will be helping me with the shade sail project. Delivery of the canopy was pushed to today, same as the scheduled delivery of the lumber.
The contractor, Justin, will return on Friday to take precise measurements and provide a cost estimate for his services. He will find me a post-hole auger to rent, and he sounded very supportive of my plans. Looks like he will be available after next week to do the work.
I do believe a new source of shade for the horses will soon be achieved. I am excited to find out how it will look, and how different it will end up being from the images I’ve been creating in my head for the last few months.
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Topped Off
In preparation for the pending installation of a shade sail in the paddock, yesterday, Cyndie and I cut off the last of the big branches on the dying willow tree. This is what it looked like before I started cutting:
Despite a strong, gusting wind and ridiculous footing due to the saturated heavy clay mud all around the tree, all three large limbs came down without a disaster occurring.
If I had needed to make a hasty exit due to an unexpected twisting or a limb snapping where I didn’t intend, there is a good chance I would have needed to leave a boot behind, suctioned in the muck, to pull my foot out and dive clear. Thankfully, no evasive action was required.
I am very grateful that Cyndie was able to act as a spotter and offer smart advice to cut portions at a time but not make more cuts than necessary. She also carried more than her share of heavy loads in the clean-up work after the main cutting was done.
We made good use of all three of our Stihl chainsaw tools to complete this exercise. The little hand pruner is priceless for cutting all the small branches off the main trunks. I needed to use the big saw to cut the large limbs into pieces we could carry. It only required three trips with the trailer behind the ATV to haul away all the debris and leave the paddock and surrounding area looking better than it did before we started.
The result was more dramatic than I anticipated it would be. Removing all that height of branches towering over the small paddock created a startling difference in the ambiance of the entire area. My first impression is that I don’t like the change. However, it won’t be long until the next phase will happen in the form of the shade sail, and I think that will go a long way toward compensating for the loss of the tall willow tree branches.
We are expecting delivery of the canopy by the end of today and the lumber is due to be delivered on Thursday. I am meeting with a local contractor on Wednesday afternoon to negotiate his support to rent a post-hole auger and then supervise or assist as needed in getting the frame erected. I saw his company advertised on the Nextdoor app, offering professional help to lay people trying to accomplish DIY projects that stretch just a little beyond their abilities. It seemed like a perfect fit for this endeavor. It sounded like he felt the same way in our initial email exchanges.
By the end of this week, we should have a good idea of when the groundbreaking will occur. I can’t imagine the horses have any clue about what’s in store.
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Trigger Pulled
We had a full day yesterday with some rewarding outcomes, starting with a vision appointment for me where I learned my eyes are in very good shape for my age. Who wouldn’t be happy to hear their eye doctor offering admiration for the measurements resulting from tests? He probably says that to all his patients.
While I was in Hudson, I was able to pick up an online order that Cyndie had placed with Fleet Farm and then I made a stop at Menard’s to pull the trigger on buying posts and hardware for our shade sail project. I have settled on a supplier for the canopy but haven’t locked in which size I will order.
The first version of shade sail I was considering was a very expensive commercial grade, but further research uncovered a similar technology at a fraction of the cost that I am excited about. They provided a free sample of their corner hardware for attaching to anchor points and swathes of all their color options.
The new posts will be delivered next week but I plan to wait until I have the shade sail to lay on the ground for verification of post locations before digging holes.
Late in the day, we received notice that there would be a pallet of grain feed bags delivered which would be a first to our location from a different supplier than in the past. It was a BIG truck.
Sure beats tossing 28 bags by hand. Unfortunately, the temporary fill-in driver ended up spinning his tires when trying to back away from the pallet and got himself stuck in the barn. Between the two of us, we used a couple of tricks to get the rig unstuck with minor disruption to the dirt floor.
That delivery shenanigans happened just as our streaming program of “Boomers vs. Zoomers” by Jane Fonda’s Climate PAC and MoveOn was beginning. We donated money to their cause which provided a ticket to watch celebrities struggle for answers in a trivia contest.
I joined the program already in progress.
Their contest might have worked well enough as a fundraiser but it didn’t prove to be a knockout for entertainment value. The inspirational talks by a few key people, of which Jane Fonda was one, were another reason they were doing this program but I felt it was just more “preaching to the choir.”
It’s hard for me to feel the efforts of people and organizations trying to rally support against the ongoing destruction of our government are accomplishing anything that actually interrupts the nefarious activities underway. It seems like they are just collecting money, which is what the crooks currently in the White House are busy doing as well.
Bad air just keeps going into this balloon and all that happens is people talk about how bad it is and maybe we can slow things down or in a couple of years make it harder to inflate. I’d prefer someone just put a pin in it right now and pop the damn thing.
It is not crying wolf to say that there is a fox in the henhouse, the sky is falling, and the Emporer has no clothes.
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Relative Something 