It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better...

Today's post is a series of before and after shots. This photo shows a shed attached to the barn on the right of the photo.


Shed gone. Imagine the little Tinkerbell ring they used to have with those Disney audio-assisted picture books. Yeah, the shed disappeared like turning the page on one of those books. That's right. No sweat or fiberglass slivers or convoys to the dump at all.


Here we have an array of graceful fencing. That fence in the middle distance is made of rusty old pipe. One chop saw and five blades later, it and the rest of the pipe fence from behind the barn were in manageable pieces that my helpers then loaded into a bin to go to the metal salvage place. I don't know how much it all weighed, but the bin was 18 feet by 7 feet by 4 feet, and it was full! I got cash for all that. It was kind of like logging my property.


Here's the same spot with most of the fence gone and the horses living in temporary electric fence set-ups, which they regularly escape from. There's a new ditch in the foreground. (I apologize for the poor photography. Most of these pictures are snapped with one hand while grasping muddy gloves, tools and lead ropes under an elbow at the same time as fending off two or three cats and a herd of contractors.)


This shows (sort of) the paddocks behind the barn. The ground here actually rises up above the floor level of the barn, so that all the spring melt ends up in the barn. The ground is higher than the barn on account of forty years of poo building up. The other phenomenon that occurs with that kind of poo accumulation is it acts like a sponge and water won't run off even if the ground is sloped. So the excavator guy spent a whole day scraping that layer of decomposed manure off until he got down to the actual ground level.


Here it is with the ground scraped. Uh, just ignore the scary-looking barn. We'll deal with that later. For now, the idea is to get the right ditching and the right slope on the ground to allow for proper drainage, and then when I actually do fix the barn, it'll stay fixed because the foundations will be dry. That's the theory.


Here's the excavator among its piles of forty-year-old manure. Most of the manure is being taken to a neighbour's place and I'll keep a small pile for future gardens or for putting into tiny bags and selling for $40/bag in downtown Vancouver.


Things are looking dreadful now after a week of rain, but at least the view from my little deck is relaxing, and will stay that way through all this destruction and rebuilding. Oh, except for a trench for the electrical upgrade from the house to the barn...

Gate Inventory

As I'm getting my plans organized for the new fence layout, I'm taking stock of what materials I have on the property. A previous owner must have been a metal-worker. The gates are a full curious range of lengths:

3ft9
6ft4
6ft10
7ft1
7ft7
7ft8
7ft10
9ft
9ft8
10ft
11ft5
13ft2
14ft

How do I plan standard gate openings with those kinds of sizes!?

Okay, don't despair. The gates are quite lovely and light and will last a long time yet, but I still need to plan for the day the gates will have to be replaced with the standard 6,8,10,12 or 14 foot gates. I plan to put in the gate posts so that the standard gates will fit. Which means some of the gates I have will extend past the gate post, and some will have a wee gap between the gate posts that I may fill with a 2x4. It has taken some figuring but I've got it working on paper. We'll see how it all turns out...

Some Ways to Get Your Cow Ready for the Parade

It's World Naked Gardening Day!

Sorry, no photos.

Art as the Illusion of Function

Here are some pieces of fence art I've found around the property. Sadly, the exhibits you see here will be dismantled as soon as the frost is out of the ground, so view them while you can!

This is a particularly fine piece of sculpting done by a series of horses over about two years. A group effort, but a cohesive one. They all had the same vision, obviously.


I especially like this piece, done in wood and metal, tied together nicely with the bright orange twine.


A fine antiquing effect was used on this linear piece.


One of my favourites, this piece gives the illusion of solidity with thick vertical lines, offset by the falling diagonal.


Septimus and his half brother, the newest patrons to the gallery.

Born Yesterday

One down, one to go! Connie had her calf last night (on her own birthday!) with a breezy three hours of labour. The calf was raring to go and was up drinking within an hour. His name is Septimus. Don't ask me why.

Here he is this morning.


I gave him his vitamin shots this morning (ouch), a one-time thing for calves. Tomorrow I'll put in his ear tags. As Corb Lund says, "Welcome to the world, little buddy."

Kasper

Kasper thinks cameras are for nibbling on.


I finally got organized enough to get him into the arena. He was a little nervous.


Noises outside the barn worried him.


But he settled down really well and we worked through a few of the easier Stage Three exercises (see previous blog entries) and he remembered all kinds of stuff that he hasn't done all winter. In this picture he's trotting circles around me. He stayed focussed on me in the arena even though he was off the lead rope the whole time, and he didn't seem worried that he'd left his friends behind. All very encouraging. A good start to the season.