I turned the sprinklers off two weeks ago with our first hard freeze. It has rained twice since; about an inch each week. About 15% of total annual rainfall.
Coral Bells
3 new mini-roses from a big-box store fall clearance.
Our Daffodils are making questionable decisions. Pasque flowers are blooming around the neighborhood as well. (clues to disaster)
Pond water is mid-40’s and switched over to winter system. The fish will go unfed til Spring when the water temps rise back above 50 degrees.
A sea of super-tall grasses.
The “Yucca” Dasylirion Wheeleri (Desert Spoon) is nearly as tall as the “weather vane” tail. One more year and I’ll have to reconfigure the lower plates.
The Service Berry went in two years ago. So far so good.
Xander’s winter arborium.
The deck’s plants moved back in to the sunroom back before the freeze…
Xander inspects my work at “mouse corner”; well packed with rockwool.
Then dressed up with corner-round. And the same for the S wall and the E wall to the front door.
The boss and I discuss saw safety when up on the mountain.
The boss is still in-frame as I start to unload.
A 3rd 1/3 of a cord.
A deeper load than it looks from the front.
Full cord in round-stack.
Might as well dig out the waterline.
Two old rusted out steel waterlines ran parallel; one from the house springbox, and the geysering one from up the hillside to run the yard water / corral trough. A bit bent up and cut loose. They leaked and sweated like sprinkler hoses.
I wouldn’t want you to think I dug it out by hand. No. Here is our local WaterWitch, Dan (no relation), using his telekinetic tractor (backhoe).
He started adding the body gesture for the kids at the local expos. It does add to the drama!
The springbox to the house and the torn out waterlines. Prior to this E filled every container in the house with water.
O.K. Maybe I didn’t dig it out by hand. And maybe Dan’s telekinetic skills don’t have any practical applications. It was all Dave and his amazing skills with a backhoe. The green shovel is mostly for leaning on.
Two 50′ lengths of pex-line is laid in. One connects the springbox above to the corral; the connection is against the house springbox and is white pvc with the same still-good compression connection my Dad had put in at some point, on the other end we add a compression connection to the good steel pipe near the road that runs higher than the house-water and to the south. A filter and shut-off valve is added to the house springbox, and connects to good steel pipe just as it dives deep under the road. The pipe is like new where is hasn’t lain in the spring bog for 70 years or more.
This is about where the upper line nests up against the springbox to the house. It took us awhile to find it…
Dan with waterlines and Dan with the leaning shovel.
Dave and the working shovel.
Leaning shovel and working shovel.
Water through a waterline!
I zip-tie the lines together.
Now we just have to reveal the steel lines and make our connections.
A huge dirt covered boulder is mid frame, marking where the new line ties onto the old, about 3′ deep.
Dave pulled back-hoe loads of heavy clay and we packed it around the water tank that I had wrapped with pond lining, as the metal is getting a bit porous. Dave then brought in clean fill-dirt from a sidehill road-cut near the corral. One more trip will cover it all.
The water is slowly filling back in, and has just covered the new shutoff valve (yellow) and screen filter (blue).
We try to squeeze the springbox back to round with a pair of wire stretchers after a little bump from the back-hoe.
All the previous waterline work was done from 5pm til dusk. Now we’ll tidy things up, and Dave and Dan will head up to fix two pasture spring-box issues up on the West side.
Dave carefully makes a half-moon in the marsh above the springbox, redirecting the spring to pool directly above the box, then percolate through the soil and into the box. It works perfectly.
Nora does her inspections from the road.
Old waterline bent up from the backhoe, and the big pipe is the old overflow line (now white pvc).
Next Dave positions old concrete slab around the springbox, now opening the box no longer means standing in a bog.
Dave and Dan head out for much more straight-forward jerbs.
Concrete slab around the springbox. This glass beer bottle magically emerged from the ground, unbroken by the backhoe as it pulled out a long-buried wooden springbox for the house water. Other beer cans emerged from different era’s: an old triangle push-cut beer can (’50s), and few pull-tab beer cans (’60/’70s). Many eras of beer-hydration, as there were no leaning-shovels back then.
The overflow needs me to cut a little trench, but all I have is a stick…maybe I could get the leaning shovel and… Nope. Stick.
A group of deer are in the Aspen, another group is ahead of us. Nora’s predatory strategy is to ignore them.
The severe drought left this stand of Aspen desiccated.
Aspen border the forest along an entire ridge, and the 1/2 mile stretch is tonight’s sunset hike.
These dwarf Aspen are the low end.
A panorama; the pine tree from the prior image gives some scale. This is just the lower stretch of twisty dwarfs.
Over the edge of the Aspen glen is this good old Ent.
The ladies stick together.
Elizabeth leads the way through.
The bear has been through…
Back at the top.
The sun is heading over the ridge.
Twilight is Elk hour, and a few fields down from the house we see this familiar Bull Elk near a group of deer and a cow.
Unzoomed. Even this far away he knows I’m looking at him and heads to cross the road and into the forest and cliffs.
I speed up to cut him off, and tell E to be ready with the camera as we head into a blind corner: he erupts from below just as we round the bend, then wheels and leaps back the way he came- clearing the fence and landing at a run.
Here he is speeding along with all feet off the ground, and his rack held steady.
Unzoomed. He got this far away in the time it took E to line up the camera from the last shot.
He keeps an eye on us as we head back up the valley.
A cold front is arriving, it should be in the high 20’s at night for a few nights.
The hot South breezes gave way to a cold North wind, at last!
Frost on the grass and frozen sprinkler hoses in the morning.
Mornings are spent up on the hill brining in more firewood. This is 1/3 cord tossed from the back of the truck.
1/3 cord stacked. 900 pounds or more.
Another morning of bringing down trees and bucking them. 2/3 of a cord. The middle of the circle holds wood as well.
Fixing the springbox up top that brings water to the corral and the yard put more pressure on the old waterline. I started hearing a burbling hissing Yellowstone geyser/mudpot from across the road when running the sprinkler. I put some compressed air in the line and headed over to look at the fizzing burbler. Here I’ve sawzalled the bush to a tame state, and cut back a passel of the bramblewood laid over the spring-fed creek that flows through.
The house spring is the metal circle at the top L, with the drainage behind the white rocks. The wetland spring flow comes from around the backside of the tamed bush, and the burble is rising behind the mossy logs center R in the center of the “crick”.
This is an intentional bramble to keep the cattle off the water.
I’ll try digging down a bit.
A steady upwelling flow, the Yellowstone geyser effect has faded out.
Next day running clear. I talk with Dave and ranch-wide this makes 3 water issues that need a little excavator, which is the magic number. A few minute with an excavator is an ideal solution- to reveal the level of fix required.
The fall light at this latitude magically backlights everything all day long.
The Ash was mostly green when we arrived, then we had a frost and she got things changing.
A few days later and her green is nearly gone for gold.
The hillsides are putting on a sunset show under a cloudless sky.
We head up the hillside to shift more water to the corral/yard, and continue on for a little hike.
This is the head of the coulee for the house spring. The bear has been living here all fall with a bumper-crop of choke-cherries, old logs to grub, and a springbox full of cold clear water. At the top of the forest there is a shady glade of sweet bright grasses, a sign of the spring water beneath. The bear has decorated the green carpet with a random and thorough design of novelty-large berry-scat.
Nora takes the lead upon spotting the ranch house down the valley.
The ladies make long afternoon shadows in the glowing landscape.
E has to get back to the virtual office.
It has been July/Aug temps of 75+ for nearly two weeks, with dry winds; and mystery smoke probably from one of the summers nearby fires which are officially out, though still smoldering.
I got around to cleaning out this center bay of the garage and discovered that the support pillar at left was rotten.
The wooden framing on the concrete slab has rotted away, and the bottoms of the support pillars are rotten as well. This is why none of the doors have ever worked quite right; it has been on the path to ruin for at least 30 years.
I’ve gathered all the pressure treated wood remnants, and am pretty sure I can come up with a solution without having to drive the 80 mile trip to town.
Pretty good.
The door swings up and is in the way, so I can’t lift straight up. I come up with this wrong answer. The wall lifts and travels toward the jack binding the jack in place when lowered.
At least it settled part way onto the new wooden support, though it is part way off the concrete and far out of position.
I rig up the come-a-long and pull the wall back to position.
Under tension and the jack can come free.
I remove my bad idea, and realize I’ll have to span a 2×4 on the inside across the wall to hold a ratchet strap that will tie to the truck to pull the wall back out. Then I’ll set the jack under the opening for the rolling door next to the column. This should float everything up and allow me to adjust position before lowering down onto the new support structure.
Worked.
The concrete has a scrim of dirt, but the board is set clean to the concrete.
The third layer of thick old salvage plank was needed to make up for more rot in the uprights. They split, but are toed in place and sturdy.
After our singular run to town for all things; there are blue-screws for pinning it to the concrete, more rot and part of the split support salvage are replaced with 2×4 at R, the board at L helps hold the old upright together as it was compromised by the spring tension.
Also, a faceplate of pressure treated 1×6.
The door opens easily and square, and the big rolling door to L is a breeze to manage now as well.
All this cleaning and fixing was to make a spot to bring in log sections for future firewood-
An old wagon axle/wheels are under the tarp, with a welder and odds and ends. Bisecting the two bays of the garage is a stash of old salvage lumber.
The big bay can fit a full size truck, or hang all of Rodney’s game during hunting season.
All good from the inside.
I scraped and painted this a few years back. It could use some redux- but there are 3 other sides…
A wall length of wild rosebush leads to a bundle of wire anchored by the biggest rosebush of the lot. I have to use the come-a-long to pull the ball of fencing wire til I can cut away the roots of the bush.
Then the pickaxe clears down to the cement footing. And take note of the scrub tree at the corner.
The sawzall and I decide the rangy scrub has overgrown the corner for too long.
Plus, it is one less place for errant cows to hide.
I have a length of webbing under the stack, and once it is about 3x this big I’ll put a towing chain over the top and fix it to the truck and drag it over the spent woodpile in a near pasture.
If E and Nora were cows, we could easily push them sans bushes.
The garage is feeling much better, inside and out.
Ash leaves burrowing into the long grass. Time to mow.
A short mow for fall.
Now all the leaves sit on top.
E and I set up lawn chairs and keep the tree company.
I start the short fall mow out front.
This bit was all scarified with the Sun Joe three weeks ago- it was as far as the extension cord would reach.
Even cut short, it is looking good!
Here is three weeks of growth, and the short cut line.
Out beyond the cord reach, here is the same cut line. Not so good.
Looking straight down at the unscarified lawn.
I brought up a 50 foot 10amp cord as a first leg to the 100 foot 12 amp cord, and could finish scarifying the entire yard. I removed hundreds of pounds of bound up mulch.
Short mowed and scarified.
The boss makes a close inspection. Good enough to poop on.
We drove through 200 miles of rain!, with fresh snow on all the peaks. It rained here for a day after we arrived. Can that please be it for the fires this season?
The yard is still looking great. The scarification really took, and it is a heathy deep green.
The front is looking nice as well.
The creek is at a trickle, but still flowing.
One of my feller jerbs is bringing in firewood. I didn’t have to fell these three trees, just needed to buck them.
The feller felled these 4. The R bottom just touched, then spun into, a large dead tree: and there it will stay. It was my prep cut to get to the other two clones, felled directly opposite of each other, and falling perfectly clean of other trees.
This is a map of a good clean fall- to the L in the image above. 1/8 deep front bite with a flat bottom (and an 80 degree cut down to meet it on the felled tree), a mid-cut slipped in through the middle of the tree leaving a line about 3x sawblade width, then back-cut from inside leaving a tab holding it all together, then the tab is cut away and down she goes. The V’s are from resting my axe here after delimbing.
This is a variation on the cut on one of the clones above- helping it to fall about 45 degrees off of its lean. Same sequence as before, but I cut straight in from behind (no slip-in cut), left a fatter tab to the R on my hold line, pounded in a wedge, then did a neat trick I just learned- plunging the tip of the saw through the middle of the line to release it. Then gave the wedge a few taps and she fell just right. (The line across the middle is adjusting the back-cut, as it was on track to dive below the face cut.)
There are old stumps from putting in the power lines back in the ’50’s, and from a logging operation in the late ’70s. They all show the basic cuts of that era, or an interpretation of them. This is similar to the cuts I learned in my late teens. Cutting flat to the middle (or past middle), with the wedge cut on the tree dropping down to the first cut (the wedge was also cut down into the stump from the flat line- and is more common in amature cuts), then the back cut was a steep angle to keep the tree from jumping backwards. These cuts are all part of why logging is often done by big tree-gripping machines now- lots of guys died making cuts like these in bigger trees, or trees with internal rot.
Flat cut at top, release cut at bottom, and a center pie wedge with a cut a few inches in leaving a stable center. I think this was done to direct the fall to the Right corner. So many things could go so so wrong.
A big triple stump! The first cut was likely the leaner facing R, done from the other side, felled away from the other clones.
Next was another leaner also to R, then they took the vertical clone. As long as the trees are 18-24 inches, everyone probably went home every night with a lot of confidence in their woodsmanship.
A load yesterday afternoon, a load at lunch, and E & Nora came back up to help me lay in the last load.
A cord is 4 x 4 x 8- so this is just over a cord.
The first split is the hardest, so on to splitting them all in half with the “Chopper 1”.
An hour or so later and they are all popped open for aging.
The ladies come out to have a look.
Nora asks if I plan to clean this up today, and will I need her supervision to get it stacked in the Ice-House? She recommends I leave it for tomorrow’s jerb, and I agree.
The edges have all deteriorated, so they were all chipped off exposing the bracing for the porch and the railings. Here I have the form for the top section and have just poured new cement. The old mix was made with river rock, sand, and lime- with a bare minimum of cement. It tends to go soft after 60 years.
The forms are held with clamps and bar bells.
Forms are removed and all the structural elements are secure. I add a skim layer, which mostly works.The steps have new noses and I ground things down a bit with a diamond wheel. Cement is 25$ per 50lb bag right now, so I stretched that with a few bags of concrete I had in storage. Safe for walking up and down, I’ll get to pretty someday…
The heifers come in first, and get lost at the last second and “escape” to a box-end bog at the springbox to the house.
They nearly tear out the Z corner fence I fixed after the bulls tore it out awhile back, but heifers are a friendly sort and let us help them.
They had turned right instead of left, a simple mistake we’ve all made. Now they are all set and we can get on to the rest of the herd.
Cows come from all directions, as cowboys bring them down the mountain. I open an extra gate and help them find it.
Other cattle see the gate and begin pouring across the hillside to pass through.
I keep them from bottlenecking at the bottom of the z, they head over and down and out the gate.
Elizabeth is in the blue hat at L, keeping cattle headed into the corral.
And scooting to keep them from taking the route up the waterline the heifers carved out earlier.
Then strolling back to position at the unassuming pace that lets her walk ahead of the cows, then turn them through the gate.
The bellowing of cattle resounds through the valley.
A sizeable group still needs to come out of the valley to the L of the road, around the back of the forest. This group is being moved over the hill to join the larger group.
Riders converge on the hilltop, the cattle are down below driven by another pair of horsemen and a 4wheeler.
They head back to meet the oncoming herd.
They pace themselves to the sound of the herd on the road below.
They’ll hit just the right pace to be invisible to the cattle, and converge on them in time to block an open gate- then bring them in.
Here come the stragglers. The horsemen are up on the near hillside with cattle split above the fenceline. Down on the road the group is moved with a 4wheeler.
The gate is at the right, the other riders are out of frame- all the cattle should join up on the road.
The plan comes together.
The entire herd is corralled!
The game-plan is sketched out.
Time to move the herd from inside the corral.
It looks like it will only take one cowpoke for this part.
Cleared from one corral to the next with a few graceful sweeps.
Joining the traffic to find a gate out.
The rider heads out of the corral, and all the horses are done for the day.
It is a steep series of corrals to get up to the main flat at the barn.
Found this Alpine Meadows girl of my father’s in the herd.
Calm yard and milling corral.
Now weighing and vaccinating the calves will go on for the rest of the day.
Dusk, and the gate is open for the cows to reunite with their calves. The bellowing calms as everyone finds each other and night falls.
The horses unearthed this out in the pasture and brought it near the gate for me to find.
“You like it, it likes you” was original to the brand from 1934. “Fresh Up” refers to curative properties for a hangover.
The bottle date is 1960.
The big storm window in the bee bedroom went back up today, waiting since last summer.
This section of the front of the house is as finished up as it gets.
We’ve had more than 3 inches of rain in the past week, and she is holding up nicely.
To the far L are the kitchen windows. I removed the summer screens and hung the storm windows again.
The storm windows are heading into their second winter since refurbishing.
Big afternoon thunderstorms brought pea hail.
With nighttime lows dipping into the 30’s, a reminder that the first snows of fall are just weeks away.
Evening view out the kitchen window.
E and I went on an early evening tour around the W side of the land on the 4Wheeler. Lots of antelope and deer. On the E side last night we were joined by a flock of at least 30 Bluebirds.
Tomorrow is a big roundup, so get ready for noisy cows!
Peaceful twilight.
Quiddler Poem: This Toy Guy
IF a GUN is a LIE / then a PITHY CLIP is ME. / and if a hermit crab is a DREDGY CLAW HUT, / is HE able TO be RUDE about those BODY JAGS / and offer IT a TANNIN RARER even than LIFES CODE / GROVE within his triggered SON / THIS TOY GUY / so WHEATY he must be TRUE.
This gizmo has been on my radar for awhile. They were unavailable for most of the summer, but finally I could order one from the Big-Box store while in SLC. I had it sent to the Great Falls Big-Box a week before we headed back up, and it picked it up after a week here.
It is a SunJoe scarifier and dethatcher. I’m using the scarifier blades, which cuts through the thick layer of thatch/moss/detritus all the way to soil. This spring I dethatched with the mower springbar (going through 5 springs), pulling vast amounts of old lawn/leaves- that was good prep for this next step of penetrating the surface.
Setup is idiot proof. Lucky me.
The essential factor is the extension cord. For 100 feet of cord, it must be a 12 gauge cord as it runs at 1500 watts. 100 feet the maximum range, but the yard is bigger than that. Legging another cord drops the amperage by 50% and fries the motor/overheats the cord/ruins the plug/throws the breaker. 150 feet of 10 gauge cord might work, but costs nearly double the unit itself.
The little bag fills up with heavy debris in no time at all, and I dump it into the yard wagon. The wagon fills quickly and E trundles it off for dumping. I scarify the front, back, and can reach half way to the lilacs to the South. Then I overseed with a drought tolerant mix, lay on a fertilizer mix, then head up for a day’s work of improving the springbox up the mountain that feeds the yard water for the waterbirds.
Cows on the mooooooove. Dave brings up mash from the local brewery, and the cows know it is beer-thirty.
last night’s Quiddler Poem: Your Covid Quota
It was as DEATH TO LET HER WED / that USER, that TOE ROT / that GAZE into the LOO and never AIR IT / THINEACE lost to class FEES for CLAY / as one might sip LAWN DRINK by the PINT / using a HAIRY GRATER to strain out the FLIES / your MOOD-CUBE could not MOP up the RUN / the over-run on your COVID QUOTA.
