Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale Ranch’
New Insight
I awoke with a song in my head. It was a Roches song, but I didn’t know which one. I let the short snippet play round and round, over and over, enjoying it thoroughly, but that still left me wanting.
It took only a few tries to locate the right song, “The Scorpion Lament,” from their album, Keep On Doing. Ahhh. It’s like scratching an itch.
While processing all that, something else was revealed to me this morning. It is probably obvious that we would have a list of things demanding attention here on our new property. – I wonder how long I get to refer to this place as ‘new’ to us. I will probably use that term through the first year, since every day is still new to us, because we have not experienced spring or summer here before.
Anyway, regarding that list, …there are a couple of things that seem to me as though Cyndie should take the lead. When I don’t hear of any results on those, I toss out a few hints, occasional reminders and eventually realize I’m simply nagging.
“Yeah, I could do that.” she accommodates me.
With regard to one particular issue, last night I finally asked her if she needed something else to happen first, as if there was some step in a sequence that hadn’t yet occurred. That is a loaded question, in a way, because she is so classically random, …like the way she mows the lawn.
I was becoming confused with her choosing not to act in cases where it seemed to me it would be something that could be quickly knocked off our to-do list, or at least trigger action that can bring subsequent progress. What was holding her up from taking this step? If she was truly random, things should be able to happen at any time.
That’s it! This morning I realized that her not doing things isn’t the result of waiting on a sequence, it is the very manifestation of her randomness. That is why it doesn’t appear to bother her that a particular step gets done by a certain time. Meanwhile, I grow uncomfortable. I want it to happen in sequence, meaning, do this now, and then other things can follow.
It is why I am bugged by the fact that we suddenly find ourselves working on one thing, when I feel like we haven’t yet finished another. I also realized that after we accomplish some of the random tasks, I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction from having done so, as Cyndie does, because I’m still framing it as having been out of sequence.
Eventually, things work out for both of us, one way or another. We are invested in learning from our styles, and in achieving more together than would be possible, each on our own. I know that I have benefited greatly, over and over, as a result of her randomness through the years.
Our success is the reward that comes from the attraction of opposites, which is accomplished by overcoming the difficulties inherent in being so different from one another!
Got Power?
We’ve got auxiliary power. Wintervale Ranch now has an automatic backup generator that will provide power to our essential appliances/services during occasions when there is a loss of electricity from our energy co-op. That is one more piece of the puzzle now in place.
It is not easy to convince me to buy something that we don’t ever want to use, but the snowstorm we suffered early in the month of May this year, which left us without power for over 28-hours, helped me to feel this would be a smart purchase. At that time, we lost the ability to pump water from our well, and keep our furnace and refrigerator running. That will no longer be a concern.
I stayed home from the day-job yesterday to supervise the installation of a unit that will kick in automatically, and run off our propane. They had to work in the rain. (What a surprise that it rained here again!) Regardless, the job went relatively easy and by mid-afternoon, we had it running and successfully tested. I was a little leery about how noisy it would be, but it wasn’t too bad. It isn’t a desirable sound, but considering the service it will be providing in a time of need, I think we can tolerate the disturbance.
It feels a lot like buying insurance. We now have a backup generator, and we hope that we never need to use it.
Creative Solution
When I got home from work yesterday, I immediately changed into grubby clothes and headed toward the barn. It hadn’t rained at all since we started packing the new loop of driveway –by hand– on Sunday, and we got a peek at the sun toward the end of the day yesterday. I wanted to complete this phase of the project while conditions were good, and hopefully take advantage of a chance for more sunny days to come this week.
It was grueling work, but very rewarding. About the time I was running out of energy, Cyndie arrived home, with pizza! I invited her to park her car and join me for a picnic. We ate right there, seated on the lumber stacked up for the hay shed.
The part of the loop that remained to be raked was the wettest yet, and was going to be very difficult to pack. I seriously thought about getting a big piece of plywood to kneel on, and then finishing it like it was wet concrete. Before it came to that, Cyndie returned, now in her grubby clothes, carrying one of her heavy kitchen anti-fatigue mats. She intended to use it to spread her weight enough to pack it with her feet, without making deep foot prints in the wet mud. A wonderfully creative solution that turned out to be quite effective.
It allowed us to reach our goal of having the full length of the loop smoothed out in time for the promised sun and warm weather for the rest of the week. Hopefully, that will give me a chance to take it to the next level: driving across the loop with the garden tractor in a few days time. To be safe, I just might get out that big piece of plywood anyway, taking Cyndie’s example, and put it down where I will drive, to spread the weight of the 4 wheels.
Mud Management
Through the thick and thin of challenges we have faced since we moved to this beautiful place in the country, the one thing that remains solid for us is our foundation of friends and family, near and far. Yesterday was a priceless coincidence of hearing from many of them, all in a very short span of time –primarily because Cyndie happened to check her email, and found messages from both Portugal and Guatemala. We also enjoyed phone calls from family in Boston and on the road home from Hayward, from my friends on the bike trip, and we were blessed by a weekend visit of our son, Julian, and his girlfriend, Allison.
The folks on the bike trip did indeed get wet yesterday. That is one part of the trip that I don’t mind missing at all. I was able to enjoy the rain that fell at our place, in perfect amounts to water our freshly planted grass. Unfortunately, the rain also contributed to keeping the wet spots by the barn, extremely wet.
On Friday, when Cyndie was doing some mowing along the driveway, she got herself stuck, and called me to help get her out. When I arrived, she said the front wheel dropped into a hole. Sure enough, it did. To my surprise, when we backed the tractor out of the hole, I discovered the hole was full of water! It might be hard to discern from the picture on the right, but the spot where this hole full of water is located, is uphill from the barn.
It seems really strange to me how the ground at high spots around here, holds water which logic tells me should be draining downhill to the lowest areas. How can we expect the ground around the barn to dry out, if the areas uphill from there are still saturated?
Out of frustration for waiting to be able to make progress down by the barn, I decided to see if I could advance the project, working by hand. There is just no way they can bring any heavy equipment in to work on this new drive, that doesn’t end up just making it worse. While Julian mowed some of the extremely tall grass by the new driveway loop we are trying to create, I began to fill in the ruts left by the skid loader the last time the crew was here.
We figure that when this area finally begins to dry out, we’d rather have it drying in the condition we want to see, not the rutted mess it has been thus far. After I got about a third of it smoothed out with a rake, Julian and I tapped it down with our shoes. It was so spongy, we couldn’t use anything else. We tested running the garden tractor over it, but that was too much.
The best way to describe the condition of the dirt in the wettest spots is that it is like freshly poured concrete. I was basically troweling it with the rake. I could support my weight with one foot on a spot that was a bit firmer, and then just tap the surface with my other foot, to erase the rake marks.
When it gets dry enough, I’ll go to the next level by driving the garden tractor over it. With any luck, by the time the water is completely gone, we’ll have a foundation of driveway that is as hard as concrete.
More Rain
This morning, it is raining, …again. But that is okay. We got smart. We figured out a way to appreciate the excessive wetness. Yesterday we planted grass on the two scars left by the recent work in our yards. On the back hill, we are covering the dirt left from the geothermal project, and in the front, it was the septic drain lines that were dug up and repaired.
Let it rain.
It doesn’t seem to make any difference to the area down by the barn, because it has just stayed wet, no matter what. If it is already wet, I am losing my ability to care if it gets any wetter. For as soggy as it remains down there, I’m thinking we won’t be able to have the fence work done until fall. I honestly don’t know what to expect. Yesterday, before the current precipitation moved in, there was still standing water on the driveway in front of the barn.
The fence crew cannot bring in their equipment to do the work without creating a disaster of mud and ruts. We’ve already got enough of those ruts. We will wait. What else can we do?
The only problem with today’s band of precipitation moving across the state is that it is soaking and chilling my friends on the bike ride. This is obviously not the reason I didn’t go on the ride this year, but I will admit that it is one aspect of that adventure that I am very happy to be missing.
My friends have been generous in sharing photos from the trip, giving me the opportunity to see some of the smiling faces of a few of the wonderful people who I only get to see this one time of year. They are looking great, and it gives me good energy to see them, even if only through pictures.
They ride north out of Ashby, MN, this morning, pedaling through the rain to Frazee, which isn’t far from Detroit Lakes, MN, just east of Fargo, ND.
Since the precipitation appears to be moving from south-to-north, maybe the wind is at their backs.
As Planned
photo by Elysa Hays
With rain threatening for most of the morning, we stuck to our plan and started the day focusing on the landscape pond. We rearranged a lot of rocks, placed the pump, built a waterfall, and then stacked stones around the plastic tubes to make them less conspicuous.
Cyndie had purchased supplies to help keep the water clear, and set about tending to that. Elysa served as my consultant, giving me feedback on how my placement of stones looked from afar. Elysa also took a turn at capturing photos, and pruning dead growth from the few perennials growing out of the water.
Since we are experiencing problematic wetness around the property this spring, it feels nice to finally embrace water for once, as opposed to frowning over it, longing to see it gone. Cyndie wrapped the water line and power cord from the pump with some vine leaves, and after topping off the overall level with a bit of fresh water from the hose, we declared the pond complete and ready for the season.
We are lucky to have had the help of Elysa and Anne all weekend on the variety of things we chose to do. We didn’t make it to the work weekend up at the lake place, but having them here made it feel like a special weekend, and their efforts provided great gains and priceless company on the first Memorial “work-weekend” at Wintervale.
Stunted Progress
Despite our lofty intentions, the number of things that we filled our day with yesterday, were but a small portion of what is awaiting attention. Time just slips away. It is our normal mode of operation, it seems.
It was overcast and chilly in the morning, and Cyndie asked for a fire in the fireplace. Elysa and her friend, Anne, had spent the night, and Cyndie and Elysa were visiting in the kitchen, drinking Guatemalan coffee and chocolate. I noticed we hadn’t burned any wood since the power outage of the great snow storm of May 2nd, and the fireplace doors needed cleaning and the box was full of ash.
By the time I finished all the clean-up and preparation, the focus of activity had moved on to other things, so we dropped the plan of having a fire. Before making a visit to the local Ford dealership, to test drive a pickup truck, Cyndie said she was going to vacuum her car, in case it became a part of potential negotiations. That became a much more involved project than anticipated
If there was ever any doubt that Cyndie deserved to be driving a truck, instead of her little red Audi convertible, the sight of her back seats provided an excellent argument. I rushed to take a picture, and missed the focus, but maybe that softens the impact of how bad it looked. It was going to take more than a little vacuuming to spruce up her car. Cyndie has the ability to get the maximum use out of whatever she drives.
Our morning visit to the dealership for a test drive didn’t happen until around the time they close on Saturdays, in the early afternoon. As often happens with me, that visit left us with more questions than answers. We will be pondering our options for Cyndie’s future vehicle a while longer.
Before we finally ran out of day, the goal of working on the labyrinth became the next objective. I really want to position boulders in the middle to start the project, and Cyndie is anxious to begin planting some things she recently purchased (and hauled in the back seat of her car), to begin defining the pattern of the path. We decided to try bringing down the diesel tractor to see if we could figure out how to move big rocks using the loader bucket and hydraulic power.
The results of that experiment left us with one pinched finger on Cyndie’s hand, and some muddy ruts in the ground. It is still too wet to be able to drive around down there. We finished the day by hand-raking the area to groom it. I tried to fill in the muddy divots left by the tractor, with limited success.
We didn’t get any grass mowed on the rest of the property, so if the rain holds off, that is high on the list of priorities today. I’m hoping Cyndie is in the mood to play around on the tractor. I want her to be having fun, if I steal some time to get out on my bicycle to put in miles in preparation for the annual bike week that is only 12 days away.
Intermediate States
We have arrived at the U.S. holiday weekend of “Memorial Day.” For us, this usually means a trip to the vacation getaway of Cyndie’s family, in Hayward, WI, for “Work Weekend.” This is the time when the property gets a major cleaning, the beach gets raked, toys and floatation devices pulled from storage, and boats get scrubbed and hauled down to the lake. The work culminates in a spectacular community feast at the main lodge.
We aren’t there this year. It feels strange.
We have our new property to tend to this spring, and have been granted a pass from contributing our labor to the lake place.
It feels as though everything at our place is hanging in an intermediate state right now. The two biggest projects, the hay shed and paddock fencing, have been stuck in limbo for weeks, waiting for conditions to dry.
I think the geothermal furnace installation looks complete, but I don’t know the status of whether or not it is fully operational. Almost all the work of installation occurred while we weren’t home. Each day last week, I would check progress when I arrived home from the day-job, trying to discern what had been done, and why, and how. As of last night, it looks like everything is wired and plumbed, but we found no indication of the status, nor instructions on operation. They did leave manuals out. I suppose I could do some reading.
We finished digging up the drain line from the septic tank. It looks like the distribution box is disintegrating. It also looks like there are a lot of illogical twists and turns in the plumbing. I have no idea why they originally chose to do it the way they did, but it did work fine, as far as we can tell, for almost 25 years, so we won’t redo the whole thing. The septic professional I have been consulting has located a replacement distribution box, and will also replace the section of cast iron pipe originally used. It being a holiday weekend, that work will not happen until next week some time, weather permitting.
We need to do a lot of cutting of grass, as the growth is so rapid this time of year, it gets long on one end of the property before you finish cutting the other. Julian helped us greatly last weekend, by doing the first cut of the season, but he wasn’t able to mow the back hill, due to geothermal installation that was in process. It had time to grow doubly long, and we knew rain was coming, so we jumped on that chore late yesterday, before it could get any worse. I am happy to report that Cyndie was eager to have a lesson on the operation of the tractor, and then looked to be having so much fun, I might get away with doing a lot less of the grass cutting around here than I previously anticipated.
In a classic demonstration of our different modes of operation, Cyndie took off with glee, mowing around a tree and then wheeling off in any direction, haphazardly picking off areas of long grass wherever it appeared in her view. I am inclined to mow in a line, back and forth, very methodically. I am a bit more timid. She boldly devoured areas that deserved to be cut, but that I would have been hesitant to try with that mower. I was thinking it would require the brush hog attached to the large tractor. She demonstrated otherwise.
Cyndie and I are a great combination. She spotted some mushrooms growing under a dead pine tree in our front yard. I told her they tasted funny and she got all riled up, exclaiming that I shouldn’t eat them until I know what they are. I was teasing her, of course. Comparing images we found online, we are very confident that these are the very popular and definitely edible morel mushrooms.
We started tending to our little landscape pond with waterfall, but finally came to the full realization that they didn’t leave a pump behind when they moved out, so that project is awaiting a purchase. One more thing hanging in limbo. We also may try to test drive a pickup truck this weekend, a task we have been talking about accomplishing for months.
One last thing that has us feeling unsettled is how much we miss our friends, Alane, Dunia, and Marco. Cyndie has been working with Alane and Dunia for much of her Epona apprenticeship training. I met them and Marco last weekend, and in that short time, developed a deep feeling of connection with all of them. We feel a deep longing to have them here with us, and, in turn, they have indicated a desire to have us visit them in Guatemala and Australia. Long distance relationships can be hard, but we truly hope to make these connections flourish.
Our projects may hang in an intermediate state, but our friendships are definitely established.
Dug In
I did some trenching after I got home from work yesterday. To my surprise, I learned that the drain does not run in a straight line. I’m not sure why they did it this way, but one guess is to improve the position to the drain field.
So far, everything looks fine. I was looking for the junction where it splits and heads to the drain field, but I was running out of time, and the pipe was getting deeper and deeper. When I reached a joint that was covered by some sort of fabric, I stopped for the night. I suspect that is the spot I’m looking for, and will need to open up a larger area around it, to be able to adequately inspect it.
It struck me, as I was working, how much attention we put into assuring both our furnace and septic system were inspected and in working order when we made our offer to buy this place, eight months ago. Now we are totally replacing the furnace and digging up a portion of the septic drain system.
At the time, we were meaning to be diligent about pertinent details; prudently thorough about such a significant purchasing decision. Seems like maybe that wasn’t as important as it seemed to be.
We are getting this place ready for the long haul, and we have dug in with the intention of staying here for the rest of our lives. These things are just small steps toward the achievement of our overall goals of living with horses in this magical place we now call home.
Matched Set
It feels a little odd to be so pleased with my back yard being torn up, but it has me just tickled to see. The loop field is actually out to the left of this image, underneath the trees of that front section of forest. It is the ideal location, I have learned, as the tree roots draw moisture up, enhancing the effectiveness of the geothermal transfer.
Everything that grows green is bursting forth with gusto right now. I took a short walk in our woods, searching to see if we have any trillium growing, and hardly recognized our trail. I need to be careful about getting lost in there! Unfortunately, I spotted no trillium.
What I did find was, standing water in the ruts of the trail. I don’t think I’ll be driving through the woods for quite a while around here. It is wet, wet, wet.
Inside the house, they got the old furnace ripped out, and already replaced by the backup unit that will function for our new system. Today, they plan to pour the concrete to patch the floor where the lines come up from the loop manifold out in the back yard, and then set the heat pump and other unit side by side on top of that spot.
Meanwhile, I have received counsel on my septic situation that has me pondering doing the digging, myself, to expose the suspected problem area. If I can get it dug up, the guy that pumps it out told me he could make the repairs. The target zone is about 10 feet from the tank, along the pipe that leads to the drain field.
I’m not sure my back will be all that happy with me taking on that chore, but I won’t know until I try. I’ll be working slow, since there is a propane line buried in the area, so I don’t think over-exertion will be a problem.
When that gets completed, we should end up having matching dug-up front and back yards!
Relative Something 