Posts Tagged ‘trail’
Made It
Thursday’s goals have been achieved. I finished trimming the edges of our north loop trail.
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We made it to Mike and Barb’s lake place in time for dinner.
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[mic drop]
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Trail Bulge
For some reason, the heaving path down the middle of our trails fascinates me. Some days the bulge stands out dramatically. Yesterday, I tried to take pictures that would show how high it had risen, but the two-dimensional images just don’t do it justice.
First, I tried shooting from my eye height when standing. Then I crouched down and snapped a shot for comparison.
I’m not sure there is any difference between the two for revealing the surprising upheaval of earth compared to the ground on either side of it.
The hump is frozen solid, but the very top surface of leaves and dirt melt just enough to get slippery. It becomes a challenge of constantly choosing whether to step on the residual ice or the decaying leaves for the better footing, ever wary that either could result in a slip.
Add in the frequent jolts on the leash when Delilah wants to make haste after some critter ahead and it’s a wonder we ever make it back to the house clean and dry.
When the trail offers better all-snow footing, and during the summer when it’s not very wet, I occasionally allow Delilah to race as fast as she wants and run behind her, but that is chaos for planting my feet. It tends to be at a pace that I can’t maintain for very long, after which she willingly settles down to a brisk walk and I spend the rest of the jaunt gasping to recover my breath.
Over the weekend, I noticed that it is the corner fence posts that are all getting pushed up, despite my having released much of the tension from the wires.
It is easy to push the fence posts back down using the loader on the diesel tractor. Almost too easy. The first time I tried it, I was shocked over how little resistance there was to the hydraulic power and weight of the bucket. The complication is that the period of time when the ground is thawed enough to easily accept the posts being pushed down, the tires sink in and put me at risk of getting stuck and/or tearing up the surrounding turf something awful.
It becomes a classic case of timing being everything.
I’m not going to worry about the fence posts for now, but I will be anxiously awaiting the trails getting back to flat again as soon as the frost goes out of the ground.
Bring on the spring mud season!
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A Narration
One of our trails that DOESN’T need mowing.
While Cyndie was in the cities providing training for others this week, I was occupied with my usual duties at the day-job. Yesterday’s commute home was smoother than usual for me, probably related to the fact I’d left an hour early to get home and mow the lawn.
We are headed out-of-town again this weekend, only this time we will be visiting George and Anneliese in Princeton on the occasion of their matrimony. Have guitar, will travel.
That means I need to get the weekend projects done in advance.
The lawn was an interesting combination of shriveled brown remnants of grass and a thick green carpet of maturing crabgrass. More often that desirable, it was also a wicked source of dusty dirt sent airborne in an exploding cloud by the three spinning mower blades.
The weed growth sprouting from cracks in the old asphalt of the driveway had started to get annoyingly tall, so I even made a few passes down the middle of the pavement with the deck set as low as it would go.
At the same time, I had an insight that the miniature berms we built up around the uphill portions of the paddock fence line, do not need to be completely ignored by the tractor. With the deck lifted to the highest setting, I steered one wheel up on the high point of the ridge and rode along the length of it.
Whaalaa. It no longer looks entirely neglected. We usually use the power trimmer to cut those ridges, but over a long enough interval that the grass gets outrageously tall and looks absolutely neglected. Why didn’t I think of this before?
When all of our grass had been cut, I parked the tractor outside to be cleaned. A little compressed air did wonders on the layer of dusty dirt that was clinging to every surface. I blew it all airborne, one last time, where most of it had a final chance to end up clinging to my clothes and skin.
When I came in the house, Pequenita was so happy to see me, I thought she might give me a tongue bath.
It took a shower to scrub off the grimy silt that had coated my pores.
Cyndie arrived home with another glowing report of amazing experiences from her day. She was so amped up, especially for someone as fatigued as she was, her narration was delivered at top speed. It was cute.
Today, only two sessions to go for her, then we hit the road.
We are really looking forward to seeing George and Anneliese again, and we are excited to see their newly built home.
Walker Farms, here we come!
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Pallet Reuse
You may recall that I built our chicken coop using wood predominantly gathered from pallets I salvaged at my workplace. Even though our coop is complete, the pallets keep coming. At the day-job, equipment arrives mounted to brand new pallets that the manufacturer doesn’t want returned.
I hate to imagine the wood pallets getting discarded after just one short shipping journey, so I continue to look for ways we can use them on the ranch.
One immediate need is in improving the footing on our trails where the surface is frequently such a muddy mess that you could lose a shoe if not careful.
The pallets I bring home from work have four blocks nailed on top which make it difficult to stack things on them, like bales of hay. Since that is a primary use for the pallets, my first project in reuse involves removing the blocks.
The pallets almost always arrive in sets of three, and my knack for procrastination plays out in a tendency to wait to remove the top blocks until some later time. Yesterday, being warm and sunny, turned out to be one of those later times.
Turns out our collection of pallets had grown to 15. That just so happens to mean 60 blocks, all power-nailed to the planks on the pallets. My right arm got a decent workout swinging the 3-pound hammer against the pry bar.
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Today we hope to extend the “paved” portion of muddy trail with the newly harvested blocks.
After that, the plan is to put up the temporary protective fenced courtyard around the chicken coop in preparation for the chicks first ventures out on real earth.
I wonder if a certain fox will be spying on us while we work…
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Deer Crossing
Our latest positioning of the trail cam has proved successful in capturing some deer traffic on —or across— one of our pathways. Snapped ’em coming and going. Based on the hoof prints we have seen, it was obvious there are some youngsters hanging around. While this spot appears to be a crossing point, the little one had altered course toward the camera in the wee hours of the morning.
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Visiting Stray
We came upon a stranger on the perimeter trail through our woods yesterday morning. Cyndie and I were walking Delilah when I spotted a dog facing us on the trail ahead. We paused and started a dialogue with the mutt, but I got the feeling he wasn’t hearing us. He simply stood his ground, no matter what we did, so I decided we shouldn’t approach.
We turned around and headed back in the direction from which we had come, which pretty much involved dragging Delilah sideways, because she did not want to take her eyes off the stranger.
By removing the pressure of our presence, the stray was able to let its guard down enough to turn its back on us and head off in the direction from which he had come. With that, we reversed ourselves again and followed to observe where he would go.
At our southern border, the visiting dog crossed under the old barbed wire fence and kept going on our neighbors property. We finished out our walk and then got the wood chipper hooked up on the tractor to grind downed branches into wood chips for the labyrinth.
While we were working, the stray dog showed up again, this time exploring around our house. I headed after him, trying to sweet talk him into letting us check out his tag, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
I went back to work, but Cyndie continued to try making a connection, eventually succeeding in getting a leash attached. The dog’s tag included an ID number and contact info for a local veterinarian. They checked their records and provided the name and a phone number for the owner. Cyndie left messages and then put the dog into Delilah’s kennel.
Eventually we learned the dog’s name was, “Blue” and he was very old, and hard of hearing. He had been missing from home since Wednesday night’s “Flash-Boom” event of a thunderstorm. He ran off to catch that booming invader, and ended up in our neighborhood a day-and-a-half later, over 2 miles from home.
By the way, it wasn’t until yesterday that I checked our rain gauge and found 3 inches to add to the 1.5 that Cyndie had dumped out Wednesday night.
Maybe Blue just floated here on the runoff.
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New Incentive
This time of year, when trees and bushes drop their leaves and we can suddenly see things in the woods that were previously obscured by greenery during summer, the number of standing dead trees becomes much more evident.
Last week, just to make the point more dramatically clear, one of them gave in and toppled over before I could get around to cutting it down for firewood.
It is giving me new incentive to get out and prune the forest of these potential threats to the health and well-being of those who may be traversing the path at such an unfortunate time.
Cyndie says she didn’t hear it fall, but noticed the startled horses running away and Delilah’s barking in reaction. I’m particularly happy that she hadn’t been walking the trail at that particular moment…
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Enticing Trail
During the transition of seasons we are rewarded with a mix of lingering green complimented by the new colors of changing leaves.
Golden sunlight bathes the distant slope on the far side of the shadowed tunnel through a short section of woods between the back pasture and our house.
It beckons the curious soul to investigate.
Now multiply that by 10, because all of our trails are equally enticing right now.
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Finally Chipping
My plan was to get both the tractor and the ATV down the hill to the spot where I’m clearing trees to make space for a new fence that will enclose the back grazing area. I put a bundle of tools in the ATV trailer and drove it down, parking between two existing brush piles. Then I walked back up to get the diesel tractor with the wood chipper mounted on the back.
To my surprise, I found the front right tire was completely flat. That certainly wasn’t in my plan.
I pumped it up and verified the leak was serious enough to need attention. The morning agenda suddenly had a new priority. First order of business would involve getting the wheel off the tractor, no small task when you don’t have the proper tools. Five of the six bolts came loose with a reasonable amount of effort, leaving the one that was obligated not to budge, to keep the project from being too straight forward.
Patience —albeit thin— and fortitude, produced eventual results, leading to the second order of business: I needed to find out where to take the wheel for repair. A call to my neighbor produced a recommended service station in town, but that place turned out to be too busy to help me right away. They offered up an alternative. I called the second option and learned they could take a look at it right away.
Now, I definitely know better than to blindly rely on the results produced by a Google maps search, and I even commented to Cyndie that I was surprised it was that direction out-of-town, but nonetheless, I fell for it without a second thought.
After a pleasant drive to discover the error of my ways, which took me down into a beautiful valley where there is absolutely no cell signal, I turned around and drove back up to high ground so I could call for directions. Sure enough, I should have headed the other direction out-of-town. Ironically, this place is where I recently stopped to inquire about finding someone to bid improving the footing of our paddocks. Two businesses operate out of this one location.
They fixed my tire, patching a hole in the tube, and after I got it remounted on the tractor, I was back to my original plan. The rest of the afternoon involved chainsawing and wood chipping. Everything worked pretty well for the rest of the day. I took down some more trees, and created a pile of wood chips by the labyrinth, to be used as mulch.
Working through the dinner hour, and into the mosquito feeding frenzy of early evening, I cleared some of the nearby trail with the trimmer so I could dump a trailer-load of chips there. While doing that, I came to one of the fallen trees that has been blocking the trail since May. Not anymore. I cut it into logs to be split for firewood.
The flat tire was a hassle, but all’s well that ends well. I got a chance to test my ideas and it looks like things are going to work as well as we hoped. The chipper eats brush as fast as I can feed it and the wood chips look perfect for the trail and mulching around plants in the labyrinth.
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Relative Something 