Two walls. Start or Finish?
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Ranch
Through the Magic Door
She only warns you once…
Mo’ crowbars, mo’ problems.
Keeping the outside outside, and the inside inside.
This is a trail run / proof of concept for a “little improvement” that would be a game-changer for the house- for now it qualifies under focused triage. We’ll see where it goes…
Bee My Valentine!
Waterline Wrangling
The Ash clock is counting down. 
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.
Peeking at Peaking Aspen
One of zillions of deer gamboling about. 
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. 
Falling, Felling, Flowing (fellering)
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.
More whatevers, now in yellow and red, no pumpkin flavor available.
The backyard Ash Tree is popping gold. 
E’s shot here is swirling as a Van Gogh. 
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.
DangerHart 