Adventures In Homesteading (Day 40)

4 months ago

Hello Everyone!

Some sound sleep, Elusive dreams, My boy dog loves the ladies, Felling a troublesome poplar tree & Hanging the new gate for the dog yard!

Alright, I am running about an hour and a half behind schedule with my writing routine... because I prioritized taking care of some correspondences (that will hopefully help a dear friend) instead of sticking to my newly established timing. Then afterwards I belatedly realized that I had yet to put all my tools up... which of course put me even further behind... and since it was so close to feeding time for the critters... I went ahead and took care of that also.

No regrets there or anything because if I have learned nothing else during the last many days... it is that some things have to take precedent... and other things can be 'put on the back burner' (so to speak) so that said 'precedence' can be focused upon. As with much of my life of late... remaining flexible seems to be the key to not getting too stressed out over things not quite going according to plan.

Anyways, last night I slept like a stone... and although I had some vivid dreams none of them really stuck with me once my eyes were open and I got my very aching body out of bed. Amazingly, I did not even sleep in all that late... and got to sit in my chair outdoors quietly sipping my espresso as the sun made its way over the eastern horizon.

That frigging hike the other day sure wore on me... and I gotta say that I am almost afraid to take my socks off tonight and examine what kind of condition that my feet are in from it all. If I was not so worn out last night from everything... I probably would have peeled my socks off then and washed my feet... but whoa I was way too wiped out to even think straight at that point.

For anyone who is curious my boy dog is doing well... and although he is mildly dopey from the pain killers that I have been giving him twice a day... everything else seems fine. Something super odd is that not once has he tried to remove the big cone around his head... and I have a sneaking suspicion that it is because the ladies at the veterinarian office put it on him and if nothing else... he sure loves the ladies!

Early this morning I decided that it was time to finally continue working on the new gate for the temporary dog yard... but I did not want to grind the screws that I mentioned in a previous entry off in the driveway. So I moved both the sawhorses to near the bar where there is an extension cord... got my trusty angle grinder out... and knocked that task out in no time flat.

Given that the gate itself is rather heavy... and the temporary dog yard could neither support it nor had anywhere to attach it to... I had to put on my proverbial thinking cap... and figure out how to solve those problems. I have no idea how many times I measured things, thought of various solutions and configurations... but eventually I had an 'aha moment' and figured out what needed to be done.

As I have said before I do not have any pressure treated lumber... and the only black locust that I have is either in use already at the bar... or entirely too small for the task at hand. The wee bit of lumber that I have available was not well suited for the task either... so yeah I had to really think outside the box as to what to use because the idea of trimming up a bunch of cedar (to remove the multitude of knots it tends to have) was vastly unappealing.

After hiking around a bit and looking at a small standing dead cedar (that did not have too many knots but was literally shedding huge splinters) I noticed a big curved poplar with a bad trunk... that was leaning up against another tree to boot. Basically, the poplar was growing right up against another tree... and had been doing so for so long that the larger tree (whose species I am unclear on) had quit producing branches on that side long ago.

In other words the poplar had to be felled either way... and although I disliked the notion of using 'green' poplar (or poplar at all) for the task... I decided to break my own rules and use it anyways. To be clear using that sort of material is a bit of a waste... because I will be super lucky if it does not all rot away in less than six months.

Long story short I came up with a plan to make a square shape in front of where the old gate was (the one that the dog got cut on) so that I could use the remainder of my six foot (two meter) fencing to wrap around it. Doing so also made it where I could aim the new gate at the camping tent... instead of at the road... so that the next time the dogs heard me talking to folks near the road... they would put their weight on the strong fencing instead of the gate itself.

All in all the process was rather straight forward... and yet again my six inch landscape screws made the task super simple and the 'square' itself rather stout. I did wind up using a small cedar post to hang the actual gate on... and I even employed my usual tactic of utilizing gravity so that the gate would always swing itself closed when it is open.

Well, I am going to wrap this entry up because I am feeling incredibly fatigued... and it is now approaching my bed time and I still have all the editing and posting to do. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ta ta for now.