Posts Tagged ‘shelter in place’
File Transfered
Without further delay, I now present the first recorded audio of one of Rocky’s early crowing practices:
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Cyndie reported that this was his third of three calls he made on Tuesday morning.
You gotta agree, that sounds pretty cute, eh?
It’s going to be interesting getting used to having a rooster for the first time. Seems like not a day goes by that we don’t learn something new living in the country.
Yesterday, Cyndie reported that she hand-delivered our completed ballots for the November election to our town clerk at her home. We have successfully voted! Glad to have that civic duty completed early. In so doing, Cyndie met our town clerk for the first time. It’s only been 8-years since we moved here.
I guess it could be seen in a good light that we haven’t had much need to be interacting with local officials for any reasons.
With the pandemic looming large throughout the entire summer, we have seen very little of any nearby neighbors.
Wintervale Ranch may not be receiving a lot of visitors lately but soon the neighbors will be hearing a lot of crowing coming from our little patch of paradise.
I look forward to learning what winter has in store for us. I suspect many hours will be spent sheltering in place.
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Breaking Point
How far can things stretch before they break? The one sure way to find out is when the “thing” in question actually breaks. I’m inclined toward not discovering this in most cases, and as a result, try not to stretch the limits of unknowns that could involve harm.
It’s weird to watch the number of people who are choosing to march together in protest over having businesses forced to shut down and people commanded to shelter in place. Have they honestly reached their breaking point? Something tells me that would be a poor use of the descriptor.
For the most part, I avoided breaking anything I didn’t intend to break yesterday while pretending to be a lumberjack, although I did suffer a significant contusion just above my right knee. Wood is really heavy. Really, really heavy. A tree that didn’t seem all that large tipped precisely in the direction I intended, but at the last moment when the upper branches reached the ground, it caused the trunk to swiftly roll back toward me and smack my leg.
I was able to cut the smaller trees straight through with a single swipe, such that I am right beside them as they respond. Sometimes they lay down on their own, other times the trunk shifts and lands upright on the ground with the high branches held up by surrounding limbs. The tree that got me was just a bit bigger, so I smartly cut a notch on the front side and made a slot on the backside for the hinge technique of felling trees.
There was one important next step I forgot where I’m to swiftly move away when the tree starts to tip.
I stretched the safety rules, but luckily this time, not to a breaking point.
Out of the many trees toppled yesterday, I only had one get hung up on a nearby three so solidly that we couldn’t pull it down. I cut the leaning trunk to separate the upper portion from the base but that didn’t do anything about the limb that was tightly nestled deep in the “Y” of the standing tree.
Using the skills I learned from my brother, Elliott, I tossed a weighted line into the branches in order to pull a rope through. Cyndie and I took turns trying to pull in every direction, but nothing was going to change that perfect catch-point of the two trees. I headed back to the shop for the pole-chainsaw.
It wasn’t long enough to reach the critical point from the ground, but I was able to trim and bring down the bulk of the tree.
I was reaching the breaking point of my tolerance for dealing with that blasted tangle of branches and called it a day.
There is a terrace wall construction project that is in need of attention.
Counting my blessings that sheltering at home for us does not mean staying inside an apartment or our house…
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Unforeseen Complications
Far be it from me to point out another problem during this pandemic shelter-in-place directive, but I can’t be the only one facing this new dilemma. While people are panicking over the possibility they don’t have three months’ worth of toilet paper stashed somewhere in their homes, a whole nother kitchen calamity is looming large on the horizon for those not cooking new meals every day.
The Tupperware storage cupboard.
With trips to the store now a risky health hazard, I have taken to mining the depths of our freezer for containers of home-cooked meals put up in the recent past for just such occasions. Although, I don’t think Cyndie ever expected I would be dipping into these delicacies every single night for 4-weeks in a row.
After a couple of weeks of finishing each meal and washing the containers, I became aware of a growing challenge. I was starting to run out of space where the plastic containers are stored.
There’s probably never been this long a period of time where we only emptied containers without also putting some back into service again, storing leftovers.
Luckily, I quickly figured out a temporary solution until Cyndie gets home.
I don’t drink coffee, so the cupboard directly to the right where she keeps coffee mugs isn’t getting much attention. There was plenty of open space up above the coffee cups.
Overflow!
This only needs to work for six more days. Soon after, with a real chef back in the kitchen, we’ll be putting many of those stashed containers back into service again.
Last night’s dinner: Parmesan Chicken with pea pods and long rice. It was as tasty as the original night Cyndie made it and packaged up the leftovers for later.
I have been surviving this shut-in period with no other people in my home but that hasn’t been all bad. In particular, it’s allowed me to develop a great new appreciation for our freezer.
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Gettin’ Out
It is very easy to be out and about on 20 acres while maintaining appropriate social distance from other people, especially when our property is surrounded by fields and forest. Yesterday afternoon when the sun warmed things up a bit, I took a crack at a few chores in the great outdoors.
My first order of business was to do something about the increasingly dilapidated ramp to the chicken door. I don’t know whether the main culprit is the hens or some other critter, but somebody doesn’t like my weaving of willow branches.
I tried monitoring the ramp with the trail cam, but there is so much chicken activity that I get a couple of hundred photos during the day while capturing nothing after dark. I haven’t had the patience to keep trying long enough to see what animals are nosing around during the nighttime.
I think part of me doesn’t want to know and part of me doesn’t really care. My fix will be the same, regardless of whoever is messing with it.
I had collected a bag full of downed branches beneath the willow tree with a plan to redo the bad parts of the ramp but ended up having a change of heart. I decided to try cutting some finger-sized trees from our forest to weave bigger green wood through the existing frame.
A lot of the willow branches I originally used were dead, so they just dried out more and got brittle, making them easy to break. I think the thicker and greener sticks will stand up much better to abuse.
Around the shop garage, I chopped down the dried shoots of tall ornamental grass, pulled out the failed sheet of plastic water barrier that was supposed to redirect drainage, and then detangled the broken cedar post and bird feeder from the cage of vines that covered it.
It felt a lot like warm weather yard work, which was strange just a day and a half after the blast of snow we had received. At the same time, it was a glorious distraction from the mindset of sheltering in place and the unending gloom and doom news that is the other hard to avoid attention-getter of the moment.
My health is still good, my hands are washed, and I’m physically isolated all weekend at home. Today, I return to the day-job and will strive to avoid infectious invisible droplets.
I hope you all find an opportunity to get out wherever you are to spend some time beneath the open sky. It’s good medicine for long-term in-place sheltering.
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Relative Something 