Posts Tagged ‘wood shed’
Almost Done
We got close to finishing the woodshed project before calling it a day yesterday afternoon. All that remains is installing shingles on the roof. I plan to do that when we return next weekend.
Cyndie was an essential contributor to the progress achieved. We verbally sparred over the math to figure spacing as I wrestled with factoring in the number of spaces is one more than the number of boards.
She kept solving math calculations in her head before I could enter the numbers into the calculator on my phone. At one point, as I was cutting a spacer block to a dimension I calculated, she texted me the same spacer dimension she figured out while taking Delilah for a walk.
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With tools put away, I was able to grab the remains of the previous unprotected stack of firewood and move it into the new shed.
I look forward to seeing it filled with a couple of years worth of split firewood. We’ll need the first batch soon as cooling weather is about to bring on the days when comforting fires in the fireplace become de rigueur.
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Mostly Level
It is soaking wet this morning but the rain held off long enough yesterday to allow about a half-day’s worth of effort on my assembly project.
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I continue to be challenged with thinking I have one portion positioned correctly while neglecting to notice an opposite corner was torqued at an angle at the time. I needed to add a one-inch shim to compensate for one such mistake but ultimately achieved near-perfection on getting the base established.
The best part of working on things up here is the ability to dive into the lake just steps away to cool off after a sweaty effort. We had a nice swim and quick sandwich on the deck before the rain dampened things.
Next up is constructing the roof. I’m unsure what portion I will assemble on the ground before lifting it into place. With luck, I will figure that out before it becomes too heavy for Cyndie and me to lift over our heads and screw into place.
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Shed Kit
I loaded up the Crosstrek with more lumber and a few tools after work yesterday and headed north with the goal of finally beginning the assembly of the pieces cut at home to build a cute little firewood storage shed at the lake place.
Unfortunately, I will be up against mother nature’s decision to finally water the earth in this region for several days in a row. I am prepared for progress to be slow. I’ll take advantage of whatever breaks in the rain might happen in order to change this pile of boards into the structure I have been picturing in my mind for the last few months.
I look forward to finding out if the ideas I have been imagining will come together without a fuss. I want to stack some firewood!
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Cooking Compost
Does horse manure attract flies?
Yes, it does.
It also cooks at over 160°(F) given the right conditions. Just the right amount of moisture, air, and shape of the pile trigger the microorganisms to go wild. Unfortunately, at that temperature and above, the microbes start to die off and the pile can go inert.
I did a little cooking of my own in the hot sun yesterday, working in front of the hay shed. I’m cutting up old cedar boards ripped off our deck to make a small woodshed for up at the lake place.
I’m creating a kit of cut boards that I can fit in my car for transport up north where the plan is to assemble it in place. It’s a little tricky because I tend to make design decisions as I go on my building projects. I’m wrestling with the mental challenge of envisioning each step in advance and knowing what pieces and precise dimensions I need for each step in the process.
I anticipate the assembly will stretch over several different weekend visits up north. As if we need excuses to spend more time at the lake in the months ahead.
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Please No
Not again. This morning, we are wondering what we will find when the door to the chicken coop is opened. Yesterday, Delilah once again broke a hook holding her leash and this time attacked the Buff Orpington hen.
I was up on the other side of the house splitting wood when my phone rang. Cyndie’s voice immediately revealed something was wrong.
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Intent on making my way through the entire pile of logs stacked at the base of the big oak tree, which first required sledge-hammering them out of the frozen block they had become, I had already fought off several urges to take a break and do something else.
I couldn’t deny the urgency implied by Cyndie’s call.
Rushing down to the sunny southern end of the barn, I found Cyndie standing with the chicken in her arms. She wanted me to hold the bird so she could search for visible injury that would explain the blood on the ground. Finding nothing, she took the Buff back and asked me to look.
I suggested she give the hen a chance to stand on her own and we could watch her. The Buff stood just fine, but that is when I noticed blood on the beak. It appears the injury was internal.
We are hoping maybe she just bit her tongue. She was breathing and swallowing, with some effort, and the bleeding did not appear to be continuing more than the initial small amount.
If she survived the night, the next goal will be to witness her drinking water and eventually eating food.
As soon as Cyndie had reached the dog and saved the chicken, she marched Delilah up to the house and shut her inside. When we came in for lunch, it was pretty clear the fiercely carnivorous canine was aware she had displeased her master. Her body language was all about remorse.
It was hard to not continue being extremely mad with Delilah for hurting the chicken, but that moment was now in the past.
I decided to take her out for a heavy-duty workout. Strapping on snowshoes, I headed off to pack down a path on our trails that hadn’t received much attention since the last few snowfall events.
Since Delilah has a compulsion to be out in front and pull, that meant she was breaking trail most of the way and expending more energy than normal, which worked right into my plan.
Much to Delilah’s surprise, I also had a plan to double back in the direction from which we had just come, giving me a chance to pack several of our paths a second time.
Each time that happened, Delilah would race to come back toward me and then pass by to get out in front again, pulling against the leash to which I gladly added drag.
I’m pretty sure any energy she got from engaging in the attack was long gone after her unusually intense afternoon walkabout, but I doubt she fully grasps that our earlier displeasure was because the chickens hold protected status.
We’re not confident, but we hope we’ll still have three chickens to continue teaching Delilah to leave alone, despite her irresistible canine instincts.
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Lazy Day
I don’t drink alcohol, so I’m guessing my hangover yesterday was from the excessive consumption of calories. The day was uncharacteristically warm, so I nudged myself out the door in hopes of accomplishing some grand feat of property management.
The project requiring the least amount of mental or physical preparation awaits just a short distance beyond our bedroom window. I look at it almost every day, but it has been behind schedule for quite some time. I would like to have the wood shed filled by now, but it is barely over halfway.
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I was out there only a minute or two when the chickens popped in to join me. The climbing sun had me quickly down to a short-sleeved T-shirt while I split and stacked firewood. It was wonderfully satisfying… for about 30 minutes.
Maybe my precarious lumbar discs were a convenient excuse to take a break, but the truth is, it was the whole of me that felt out of gas.
As I pondered the situation while gliding back and forth on the double swing, the view of our horses in the sunshine of the pasture captured my attention.
When all else fails, standing among the horses is one of my favorite options. Joining the horses when I have no agenda other than being with them is so very different from visits to care for them or invite their cooperation for some task. They have total control on what happens, whether they choose to include me, or not.
I wasn’t there very long when my phone rang. Cyndie was wondering where I was and gladly chose to join me in a session of weather worship in the paddock with the herd.
In short order, with the chickens joining the party, we were all quietly communing in the spectacularly lazy November sunshine.
When I first arrived, the horses were actually spread far and wide. Cayenne was out in the front hay-field, Hunter and Dezirea were spread far apart in the middle field, and Legacy was in the middle of the paddock, eyeing the waterer.
As it became increasingly evident I was just hanging around with no agenda, the horses began to migrate back to the paddock, taking turns to greet me as they arrived.
The top of the slope, with the barn for a backdrop, is a prime spot to soak up midday sun. I noticed the two mares had positioned themselves precisely to sneak in a little nap with full broadside exposure to soak up the solar energy without blocking each other.
That was the kind of day my body was up for yesterday.
Filling the wood shed is going to happen in stages this season, it seems.
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Harsh Winds
It didn’t rain last night and we got away with leaving the horses outside. That makes clean up much simpler. However, we didn’t expect the degree of wild weather we are getting in place of rain this morning.
Overnight we got snow, and then in the wee hours of the morning, the wind hit with a vengeance. It is a gusting wind, around 40 mph according to reports, making the house audibly stress at every joint. I discovered a stack of wood in the woodshed had toppled over, and in my dismay, I didn’t even consider the more significant fact that the shed itself is still standing.
Apparently the anchors work. It helped to have the hands-on assistance of my friend Mike Wilkus, who happens to be an architect, to rebuild the shed after winds toppled my first version. I had tightly packed this first stack of new wood in hopes of keeping the pile up until the next one over was finished, but the wood shrinks as it dries, and I’m sure the shed was flexing in these gusts, so it isn’t a big surprise things tumbled.
As we turned the corner toward the paddock from our walk through the woods with Delilah, we could see the horses were calm and collected in the relative protection from the worst gusts of wind. I am so happy for the wise placement of our barn. While the house sits on the high point of our land, where it suffers the brunt of the worst weather that arrives from the west and north, the barn is located below enough that it is generally spared.
The horses perked up when we arrived and got a bit rambunctious to warm themselves up before we served their morning feed. While we were cleaning up manure prior to putting the feed pans down, the horses did a few rounds of running, kicking, and flailing about.
Cyndie warned me that she was uncomfortable about my proximity to Legacy’s hind end, in case he decided to kick. It wasn’t him I was concerned about. The others are a lot less predictable. In fact, as Hunter approached in a frenzy, Legacy adjusted his position to protect me from the antics. What I didn’t expect was for Dezirea to decide to bustle through the narrow space between Legacy and me from the other side, because we were by the fence.
She did it anyway and landed a glancing brush of her hoof on my side as she passed through. I’m hoping she kicked the shingles out of me.
Cyndie got her “told you so” moment, and I got my lesson without suffering seriously.
I endured a lot worse abuse when I walked Delilah down to the mailbox and had to face the wind over the first rise on the way back. I think I would rather have been kicked, than beat by these frigid gale force gusts.
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Frozen Season
The frozen season has finally arrived. It’s got me wanting to have a fire, and since we still aren’t able to have one indoors due to the cracks in the flue, I started one in our outdoor pit.
I was working nearby to change out the base of my Smart Splitter® log splitter. Having a fire nearby provided more than just a place to warm up, it created an ambiance of purpose and energy.
I get great pleasure from finally knocking off tasks that have lingered untended for far too long. The base of the splitter was a necessary project because the old one finally started to break up from the pounding that the old decaying wood was taking. In contrast, the task of adding boards to the pallets that form the floor of the wood shed was one of convenience which had been too easily postponed, again and again.
Yesterday became the day.
First, I needed to dismantle more of the spare pallets I had collected from work, just as I had done to build hay boxes recently. In previous years, the pallets I brought home from work had a full surface of boards, but the supplier figured out they could accomplish the same goal with less lumber. Now they come with half as many boards.
In July when we were stacking hay, I needed to steal some pallets from the wood shed. They were the old ones with a full surface of boards.
The next pallets that became available when I was seeking replacements, ended up being the ones with every other board. That became a real ankle twister when I was trying to stack wood.
Yesterday, I dismantled new pallets to get boards that I could use to create a complete deck on the ones already in the wood shed. My ankles are saved! Now it’s time to take advantage of the below freezing temperatures and split some logs.
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Side Yard
I was out trimming the grass beneath our double swing yesterday and paused to absorb the special space that is our side yard on the opposite end of the house from our driveway. It’s peaceful here all right. That is, when Delilah isn’t barking at the squirrel she imagines is ALWAYS taunting her from the tree above her kennel.
This is Cyndie’s swing that she calls her “Gramma swing” because it reminds her of one her grandmother had that was much-loved.
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Just beside the swing is Delilah’s home away from home, where she stays when we are away from home (or I am working on a tractor and can’t be watching her every move).
On the other side of the swing there is the wood shed, standing sturdy though several blustery storms since it was rebuilt.
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Looking toward the bright, hazy white sunny sky to the house, where you can see our outdoor fire pit and other swinging bench. Every time I find the opportunity to linger in the spaces back here I am consumed with feeling overwhelmingly blessed to have such a peaceful and enriching place to live. It is part of the whole that is Wintervale, but at the same time, it can feel so completely remote to the other areas. I almost forget there are horses living beyond the trees on the other side of the house.
It’s a place I hope many others will find an opportunity to visit in the years to come.
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Pesky Procrastination
Yesterday we finally got a break from the bitter cold. For two nights in a row now, we have been able to leave the horses outside all night. That means, I didn’t need to clean out their stalls during the day. Yahoo! They seemed to accept the return to their previous routine without concern, and I gained some flexibility in choosing what to do with the middle of my day.
I opted for splitting wood. I have been negligent in keeping after that chore. My goal was to have the wood shed filled to the brim this winter, but I’ve yet to make that happen. It’s just too easy to let it slide. Between the December and New Year holiday events, and the extreme cold, there have been plenty of reasons to delay working on it. Particularly, because the wood being stacked now is for burning next year and beyond. I probably already have more than enough for next winter, so some of what is stacked won’t get burned until a year after that.
It isn’t going to make a big difference whether I finish soon, or in another month or two. That is challenging for a person who is more than happy to procrastinate when opportunity allows.
I clipped Delilah’s leash to one of our glider swings while I worked and after thoroughly scouting her perimeter, she settled down to keep an eye on the horses barely visible through the trees. If your eyesight is good, you just might be able to make out the silhouette of one of the blanketed chestnuts in that image. Delilah certainly had a bead on them.
I wonder if she was pondering why they get to free-graze out there while she is stuck tethered by a leash. She is still a flight risk. She recently failed two brief tests when given freedom to meander.
On Tuesday, while I was clearing the drifted snow off our deck, she got out of sight around the house and set me to whistling and hollering for her. Happily, she returned after not too long, but she had taken advantage of her brief freedom to go find the nastiest velcro-like burrs possible and made sure they got well tangled into her thickest fur beneath the outer hairs of her coat.
I spent much of the rest of that day in damage control, pushing the limits of her tolerance while trying to get them all out. Makes me wish I hadn’t procrastinated pulling up all the weeds that grow burrs last summer.
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Relative Something 