Crop Circles and Other Hieroglyphs, Part 1

So we hired the Boring Man (no real reflection on his personality) and a plumber. Off we went. The first two hours of wash rack plumbing went like clockwork. It was after that we started to develop more Trouble than River City. The Boring was quiet and uneventful, boring even. We had to recalibrate when we hit the foundation, but no biggie--we popped up in the barn exactly where the frost free hydrant would go. Then we ran our new water pipe and hooked it in to the old one. And BAM, the fantasy construction job went up in flames faster than a Southern plumber can say,"Ma'am, there's no water in this pipe."

Thus 2010: the Odyssey of the Search for a Functioning Water Supply began. I called the original architect, who is now basking in the Florida sun. He previously had assured me that if we just replaced the hydrant, then we should have water. He then remembered that maybe the next owner possibly cut the barn supply when they did some drainage work, 15'ish from the house. We dug a trench, found a pipe. YAY! Started to trace the pipe; found many, many more pipes. Then the beaucoup pipe and catch basin bonanza. But all of these were part of the long lost Sahara irrigation system. This over 2 days. I had nearly every plumber in the Tri-State area through on Thursday, as we foolishly tried to stay on schedule. They were plumbing; I was digging. They did bring some unbelievably good diggers in when they finished the other jobs they were on. So it turns out "Ditch Digger" is a very skilled profession; shining with precision, and frighteningly fast. Now they call them Outside Plumbers, I guess, but the alliteration of the oldest title is alluring.

On Friday, covered with dirt, very sore from learning how to dig effectively from the best, I gave up and called Duane at the Equipment Rental place. I explained that I was tired and I wanted to rent a ditch witch for the weekend to find the cursed water line. We learned (and by we, I mean Old Man (mostly) got a new Saturday job) that if you want to find anything in the ground, a ditch witch is hands down the way to go. I said, "Honey, this is the electrical line. Don't hit it." He was trying to avoid the phone line, inexplicably buried 24 inches deep, when he hit the electric line, I yelled STOP, and water spewed everywhere.

The Prequel: Crop Circles and Other Hieroglyphs

We started on the barn plumbing a few weeks ago because I had started the new barn doors. Which I wanted to hang on the shiny new round track installed way back on Labor Day.  The hanging would have gone flawlessly except for that pesky non-functional hydrant just to the left of the main door, directly in the path of the new sliding door.

I was perhaps more sensitive to non-functioning plumbing since Old Man didn't drain the 200' long hose completely that day in January when he left town for a week and the bottom actually fell off the thermometer and shattered on the 6 degree F ground. It took me a LONG time to get water down to the barn. We have one water trough heater (for our only electrical outlet), but for reasons that elude me now, we needed more. It was probably hailing, sleeting, snowing, or raining. Or not. It was definitely below freezing.

When attempting to break the ice on the main pasture trough I discovered its perfect ice sculpture self portrait 12" thick. I tried to take it to a wedding. I couldn't lift it, but I did flip it out of the trough. I could not get the 200' hose popsicle thawed, even on the asphalt. It was then I became cranky.

After talking to a plumber and a borer, the course of action became clear: Bore a new water line under the drive and the barn to a new frost-free hydrant location conveniently located in the barn; attach it to the old water line. Add a sink with stainless steel counter, a drain down valve, a laundry faucet, and a cut off in heavy duty cast iron for sub freezing weather --a perfect wash rack for horses. Max 25' hose required for any task, any weather.  How hard could it be?

Fashion Victim

It happened again yesterday. This time it was a perfectly clean cashmere sweater.  As usual, I didn't even consider, let alone think through, the consequences of farm/barn/horse/dog related activity on a decent working wardrobe.

Yesterday I picked up three bales of wheat straw from the co-op to make a puppy chew-proof bed.  The puppy's real name is Indy, but the nickname should be "El Destructo", with apologies to my Texan roots.  We had thought the king of destruction was foxhound Rutherford, but there has been a coup. The nice man at the co-op loaded the bales in my car.  I got them out at home. You can guess what the sweater looked like afterwards.

Many horse people are aware that it is not the best idea to wear your nice work clothes into a boarding barn where others keep your horse for you.  It should come as a warning label--like those pre-made horse liability law signs-- on every property sold to a person about take care of horses on their own land "DO NOT WEAR NICE CLOTHES OR SHOES  TO DO ANY BARN/FARM CHORE--EVER".  And it should be posted prominently in Hunters Orange above the clothes closet hanging rack, the back door, over the shoe rack, on the coat closet door, and on the barn door, in addition to over the stall(s) and hay for at least the first year of ownership.

Rules of engagement so far:

1. Under NO circumstances should polar fleece ever be worn to clip or shave any dog or horse. The hair penetrates the fleece at a 90 degree angle; this results in wearing a porcupine around.  The same can be said for spring shedding season grooming. Summer tank tops are worse than t-shirts because horse grooming always winds up going down the front somehow, chafing the unmentionables.  This also happens if attempting to fill a hayrack hung higher on the wall than you are tall.
2. NEVER enter a stall in nice work shoes. You WILL manage to get manure on them, whether you clean the stall or not. It will harden before you get around to cleaning them off. They will join the pile of nice shoes you can't wear. Eventually, you will give up an afternoon to clean them off.  Repeat.
3. NEVER wear pants you really like to walk a fence line, or check fence work you're having done. You will find the only remaining piece of barbed wire and snag a hole in the pants.

Curse of weather events plus chores brings excitement too. Because there is now so much more to do on the daily routine, and the place is likely bigger than the last place occupied, everyday items get lost or misplaced regularly. About two weeks ago,  I used a very short window between rain and appointments to mulch leaves in the side pasture in order to put out more grass seed. I naturally could not find my watch, resorting instead to a wind up pocketwatch on a chain around my neck.

This look was originally popularized by Ice Cube ca. 1987, but is currently being revived by Flava Flav. Neither one of them were also wearing rolled up jeans over chartreuse rubber boots and ear protectors while covered in a light film of leaf mulch and dirt, but I prefer to contribute my own fashion interpretation instead of just copying the famous.

Hot Pursuit of Smokin' Grass

Pasture renovation on a horse farm is serious business. It is seriously yawn inducing in those who don't have horses, or own a yard yet. I remember a conversation in late college with a friend who had gone to her first party with People Who Now Had Property And/Or Children. It was the maiden voyage of conversation tag lines not being some variation on "So, what's your major?" She was both horrified and stultifyingly bored at the main topics: prices of heads of lettuce and kinds of lawn grass. I don't know how she survived long enough to tell me about it.

I began to grasp how difficult grass growing in the shade can be on Prescott Street's vast quarter acre (including house). Two enormous oak trees, a holly, a black walnut, a pecan, a dogwood, assorted other trees, heavy acid compacted clay soil, and Western exposure on the front yard, combine to make getting a stand of grass similar to winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning.  Now that I have more experience on Fat Pony Farms, I think I finally know how to fix it.

Here, the land was allowed to lie fallow and unmolested for at least 10, possibly more like 15- 20 years, if the size of the poison ivy is anything to go by. As a result, old aerial photos of open pasture are now shade forest, with some spectacularly large trees. The back had a small pine plantation coming up. And we had lots and lots of invasive 30' tall Chinese Privet (aka Ligustrum) and several acres of vibrant poison ivy. Plus some 8'w x6'h x40' long junk piles. Not much in the way of grass. Which is only important if you happen to be a hungry horse.

Adding to the complexity, we wanted to preserve and increase native wildlife habitat, and we had the two horse extremes:  one very hard keeper ("This food doesn't agree with my sensitive palette" Miss Charlotte) and one extremely easy keeper ("So are you gonna eat that?" Mr. Dublin).  I began to research grass varieties and forage management in earnest while we worked hard on landscape removal to gain area in which to grow pasture.

Emotions: We were happily surprised when bush hogging with the generous loan of a friend's tractor resulted in latent grass popping up. YAY!  Grossed out with the sheer quantity of ticks the privet hosted.  Elated when our experimental first pass with endophyte-free fescue with our itty-bitty spreader produced a two foot wide green ribbon of grass meandering through the property.  Grimly determined to mix Round Up at a concentration high enough for jurassic poison ivy removal. (Some of those vines had to be cut with a chain saw. No mere loppers were big enough.) Delight that landscape removal and tree pruning were actually going to WORK. Exultation at the incredible quantity of wildlife and grass increase this year over when we got here in 2007.

There will be more on pasture later, but that will have to wait for when the intended audience snaps out of the coma induced by this episode.

Present Status

Today we continued this summer's epic saga of bridge rebuilding. Or more precisely, shoveling limestone road base to finish the abutment on the barn side of the newly reconstructed bridge. Other people will refer to this as "Working on Your Abs".  Our tool of choice is a shovel given to us around 14.5ish years ago at our "couples" wedding shower. The Best Man attched a note saying that it might be useful for digging graves. He was right. But mostly, we use it to shovel thousands of pounds of bulky HEAVY limestone. Since we wore the point off some years ago, a new spade has been employed for planting escapades. 

Another shower gift still in use is the Blue Wheelbarrow. Repainted once, then rebuilt with new handles when we cracked one on the first major limestone moving project (shed floor at Prescott House). It moves plants, mulch, manure, and lately has also been a rain gauge. Unfortunately the water pressure here blew all four of the hoses (11years used at a gentler property) from the shower stash, and forced us to buy a giant 500' roll of industrial 200 psi rated agriculture hose from Temco, Ag supplier to the stars. That was cheaper than plumbing the pasture water troughs by a longshot.

Roof Party!

Today we had a contractor party: a framer, a G.C., and a good metal roofer came out together to have a second look at the mess most people would call a roof on both the barn and the house. The sticking point is the framing on the "kennel room".  My main methodology is fix things so that we not only cure the current problems, but also reduce maintenance. Thus, if we just fixed the soggy framing and sheathing and put it back the way it was originally constructed, sans skylights; there is still too much water flowing down valleys that never should have been on the roof, overhangs are too short, and I'd be in a bad mood about foundation erosion permanently.

So, I wanted to look at framing it in properly--integrating it with the garage to make a hip roof wing. It will also make the space inside much nicer. The new space will then be more like a party/workshop space. As opposed to that moldy nasty room where Rutherford (hound) likes to tear the fiberglass insulation out of the wall. Good news: the GC agreed that the framing was a wash either way, so we might as well frame it like we mean it. No more accidental roofing allowed.

Almost all the barn eaves will be extended to 2' instead of 8".  Ridge vents will be going in everywhere. Extra satellite dishes will be going away. Fewer Penetrations equals fewer leaks. And I found we will not use the plumber who installed the water heater again. Really bad job on the roof plumbing vent--BAD man!

Hopefully this time next week will reveal how in or out of budget we are. Keep your fingers crossed!

How to Tone Those Abs

When moving to a horse place, the very first thing is to get the horses in so one can stop paying horse board, no matter what people tell you needs to be done in the kitchen.

The barn originally housed miniature horses in Western platform framing-- all 2x4s; the largest stalls were 12'x8'. Horses require at least 10'x10'. Our remodeled stalls are 12'x24', because of the thin framing. If we had divided it there would just be giant holes everywhere the horses kicked through. The larger stall has proved to be great for bad weather weeks, and was extra roomy for our geriatric, Miss Charlotte.

Demolishing the old stall partitions was no biggie. Putting in stall mats to reduce stall maintenance and the gradual "pit" horses make proved to be more exciting. First the strange nationwide run on stall mats in fall of 2007 meant that I couldn't get all of them at once. So I settled for a heavy 12x12 set that could deliver before Christmas--trying to get Dublin in at least the run-in for the opening of the new far away hunt territory January 1st. Linear Rubber took the order for the custom cut mats for the run-in, but we would see them in February. Around March, I finally found Mighty Light mats for a 12x12 stall through Smart Pak because of their flat rate ship-all-you-can policy. All the other vendors were out.

The thing about stall mats is that they work best if they have a really level base. 1/4"minus limestone works quite well. What no one shares is that it's really heavy if you are shoveling it all by hand. It took 4000 lbs of limestone to do the dry indoor 12x24 stall. By the time we had all the materials in place, after March's record 21" of rain and one bad horse fight, the atmosphere was 89 degrees F. And humid. Did I tell you it was humid?

Miller and I shoveled until the sweat came down like rain.  We found out gravel was really good for the abs. I offered the workout to friends. Sadly, we had no takers. Even the screeding proved to be great for the hamstrings. These are hard to target muscle groups.

Eventually we succeeded in getting it all into the stall and then laying mats. The run-in was next, only now it was hotter. When I called for gravel delivery, I asked for 3500 lbs, since the stall was 21' x 11'8". They said they would do their best, but normally went by the ton.  About two hours later the same driver as last time appeared with a large truck. He was smiling broadly. He said " I knew it was the same place where this gravel went last time for horse stalls, so I made sure the Loader guy gave you extra gravel!"

I said thank you just like my Mom taught me. I was crying inside.