Improving our properties

[heavyhitterokra]

That reminds me ... Our neighbor cut some large oak trees a few years ago and has had stumps in his yard ever since. This summer, we cut both ends out of a 55-gallon barrel and placed it over one of the stumps. we placed a few bricks under the edges to let in more air. We built a fire inside the barrel and kept it going for several days, until the stump was burned down below the surface of the soil. That worked really well and kept the fire hazards to a minimum. 55 -gallon barrels are great!

[Deleted]

That's a job well done right there. 

[Deleted]

For five years the driver for republic services has conditioned me.  The lower front lip on my trash dumpster must be touching the asphalt or atop the asphalt.  Otherwise, they won't pick it up.  if it sits on the ground away from the asphalt (even an inch), no go.  Oh well.  So yeah...

Because I've been burning brush starting at the crack of dawn, I was outside when the truck came by this morning.  Ours picks up between 6am and 7-am.  I heard him pull up into the front of the house (while I was out back).  I heard the hydraulics and then I heard him gear up and take off.  The sound is distinctive and I was assured that my dumpsters were empty.  Saw him at the neighbor's picking up trash after that. 

20 minutes later I headed out the front to retrieve the empty dumpsters.  They were full.   Dude literally stopped at the house, picked up both dumpsters (they were sitting askew from where I had placed them confirming the hydraulic lifts) but he did not empty them. 

Called the city, got the # from someone to the company in Stillwater.   No one calls back.  We have it on camera, but I don't think it's gonna matter.

SO  what are my alternatives?  I think I'm done with the local service.  Unless I want to stand out there and confront the truck once a week.  I'm liable to yank him out of the cab and beat him senseless for years of misery.  

 

[heavyhitterokra]

Maybe, he's operating on auto-pilot and never looked up to see if the cans went all the way to the top of the lift cycle?  I've had my turn on more than one trash route, it's a brainless task.  It's easy get into that auto-pilot mode.

[Deleted]

Plus they didn't run yesterday, a holiday, so they're a day behind. Maybe he was saving time.  My bins are not topped off.  

I need to put my compost bin back.  Reduces any trash stress for me.  When I had that, I'd just leave until the following week as it was never full and never putrid. 

He, literally, just picked up the trash 5 minutes ago.  Prolly was prompted. 

I'm no longer going to go to extra lengths when I put the cans out, but just call the city every Wednesday to tell them it got missed.  Shoulda been doing that for a long time.  After they tire of me calling, they might figure something else out. 

*shrugs* 

[heavyhitterokra]

Many years ago, we lived on a dirt road that was a County section line. One side of the road was a separate voting district from the other. Grandma lived on one side of the road and had to go to Hulbert to vote. We lived on the other side of the road and had to go to Lost City to vote (Leon White's house) on another dirt road.

Since our dirt road section line was the border between the two voting districts, neither district maintained it. It was terrible. There was a wet weather spring about halfway up the hill that would pop up, right in the road, so we'd have to zig-zag around the deep spots to make it home in winter.

It was half a mile from our house to the highway on a dirt road that was little more than a cow trail. We'd have to haul gravels from the creek in a wheelbarrow and spread them in the muddy places with a shovel. When it rained, people would become stuck in the mire and I'd have to go pull them out with our tractor. We had little survey flags stuck in the mud in a zig-zag pattern to mark the high spots where it was safe to drive, but visitors wouldn't know what the flags meant and would try to drive in a straight line, getting stuck in the mud between piles of hand-laid gravel.

As grandma got older, her aging kids started moving back home to live on the farm, so by the mid-70s I had Aunts and Uncles of retirement age living very near. Between us and them, there were now 5 households on the farm.

We finally all got together and decided that we'd call the County offices every day of the week until someone brought us some gravel. We told them, we didn't even care if they brought a road grader, we'd just be happy to have some gravel to work with. About a month went by with no discernable results, but we kept calling daily... Then, one afternoon, I drove home to find that our road was impassible, as the County workers had dumped about 50 or 60 tons of gravel on our road in 10-ton piles, starting at grandma's house and ending about a quarter mile South at the head of the spring. (When it rains it pours).

We had to park at the bottom of the hill and walk home that day and the next few days after that.

We all spent the next several days hauling gravel down the road in pickup trucks and spreading them with rakes and shovels and with the box blade on our '53 Ford tractor. From that point onward, we never had to drive in the mud again. To this day, the road along there is a foot higher than the surrounding landscape. (Be careful what you wish for).

[Deleted]

That is some seriously back (shovel) breaking work.  The fact that ya'll were anticipating that hard work is evident to how awful that road was for ya.  Whew.  

I once suggested Bill fill in his driveway at the old house with gravel.  I've never seen the look of fear on his face but that one time.  Apparently, he's done that before.  I didn't press him about it and never mentioned it again.

[heavyhitterokra]

We've had a long, dry, hot spell here, but I think it might finally be over now that frost is right around the corner.  The garden is toast.  Now that I've got all my okra harvested, I've just been staying busy out in the woods, working on our campgrounds, oiling the zipline pulley, driving horseshoe stakes, building a Ladder Ball set out of 1" inch PVC and old golfballs, making a set of six giant Yard Yahtzee dice out of 4x4s, making a giant domino set out of 1x4s, inventing a game similar to yard darts that uses water noodles weighted with wooden dowel inserts for darts, and some old Hoola-Hoops.  Basically, I've just been messing around making up things to do.

We cleaned up a couple of acres of woods over the decades and made a miniature 9 hole golf course out there, using trees for targets instead of holes in the ground.  I hung a queen size sheet between two trees as a make-shift movie screen.  I strung power out there from 600' feet away and built a stand to hold a projector.  I have a couple of benches built out there to sit on for movie nights (When mosquitoes aren't quite as bad as they are right now).

I built a zip line out there for the kids, years ago.  Now, that the kids are all grown, hardly anyone ever uses it anymore, so I decided to oil it up this week and try it out for old times sake.   I took a couple two or three runs down it yesterday after I oiled the pulley really good.  It's about 175' feet long, strung between a big oak tree and a big hickory. We have a 16' foot ladder at one end, so you climb to the top of it, grab the rope and jump off the ladder. 

Just for fun, I built a scarecrow about 2/3 of the way toward one end, so you can take a club in your hand when you jump off the ladder, lean way out, and try to lop off the scarecrow's head as you go zinging by, then you drag your feet like crazy before you crash into the tree at the other end.  It's a really good way to relieve stress.

I was so sore from doing that yesterday, that I hardly even got out of bed this morning. All I did today was lay around in the hammock and watch the geese chase grasshoppers.  Getting old sucks!

[Deleted]

Been working on the rabbit hutch. Wired the bottom of a large dog crate and put the old docile retired doe in it. She's such a monster size. We enjoy spoiling her but her cage was high inside the hutch. Now she is easily accessible for pets and spoilage.

I know what I need to do to the hutch but haven't wanted to do it.

I'm sure the scrap yard is muddy but ready to haul tin soon.

I'm going to abandon my small corn plot and have the soil tested before messing with it again. Sunchokes are in the mow zone. Easy to clear.

I quickly burned and revealed l the bottom of the wood pile and what remains is woody compost. Not certain what to do with it. I normally shovel this up and put it in the trash or gently toss into the fir and at the time hesitated to a better purpose before doing so. But this time there is too much if it. I could slowly burn most of it but I don't think I have enough fuel to burn that long.

Perhaps I'll find a way to turn it, rid it of bugs and put it in the walkway of the gardens.

We put the latest fire pit aside the garden so I can burn randomly and not let the tree trash build up. We piled it on mostly as we were mowing the yard and as trees die and after a couple seasons it looks pathetic.

The ground is soaked the rabbits are dry and comfy and the weather is beautiful.

[heavyhitterokra]

Bon, that was very informative. I enjoyed that. Did you know that pecan is probably the very best smoker wood there is? It tastes like hickory but is a lot more subtle. Hickory can leave a bitter taste that will make your tongue feel numb if you overuse it. Pecan doesn't do that. We cherish pecan wood for smoking all our meats. Since it doesn't grow around here, we take trips over to Hulbert once a year to pick up pecan limbs under old trees and bring them home to cut them into smoker wood.

Pecan wood doesn't last in storage very long though, as bugs love to eat it too. So we have to replenish our supply each year before time to smoke our Thanksgiving turkey.

what kind of chopsaw did you get?

[macmex]

That's a lot of work there! You have a chainsaw, right?

[heavyhitterokra]

Nice video, Bon. Thanks, for sharing that! I enjoyed watching it a lot. That downed tree will give your garden a lot more Southern light. You sure have good-looking soil there. That would be a happy-making thing.  Your soil there is much darker than our soil is here. I can see by the types of trees around there that your soil's pH is higher than ours too. You must be near a Limestone outcrop somewhere.

Our soil is so acidic here that pecan trees are very rare. Most of our native trees are either oak or hickory. Very few elms, pecans, hackberries, mulberries, or other sweet, soil, loving trees live here.

I've planted several pecan trees since we moved here back in 2004 but at the rate they are growing, I'll probably not see them bearing nuts in my lifetime. Back in Hulbert, pecan trees were so thick that they were almost a nuisance. I remember my Uncle Otis telling me once, back in the mid '70s while I was brush hogging for my Grandma, "Leave some of those pecan seedlings when you see them coming up.  Don't mow all of them down, and by the time you're my age there will be a pecan orchard back here where no one can even see it."

Well, I did what he suggested and now there is a stand of 45-year old pecan trees on the backside of my grandma's old place, over the crest of the hill where no one can even see them. Grandma always kept her 40 acres cleared with a grubbing hoe so smoothly that there were no sprouts left on it. She didn't know that I left those pecan seedlings that day instead of mowing them over with the brush hog. Too bad I moved away long before they began to bear. Someone has about 20 or 30 mature pecan trees now, because of my Uncle Otis.

[heavyhitterokra]

Bon, we've had pretty good luck stopping erosion in a few small spots by planting Iris root sections crosswise to the flow of water. They are kind of aggressive here and tend to spread fairly fast, but Who cares? They are pretty to look at when they bloom in Spring and if they get too thick, you can always dig them in the Fall and gift the roots to neighbors and friends.

They don't do much as far as stopping any flow of water per se, but they hold the soil together and the leaf spikes catch and hold Autumn leaf fall, so soil slowly builds around them as they form a winter wind-break. Jerusalem Artichokes work well too if you don't mind the taller foliage. Plus, you can eat the roots when they get too aggressive. Mowing will contain them for the most part if they get out of hand.

[macmex]

Jerusalem artichokes will pretty well self perpetuate, though occasionally I've had "rodent blooms" which wiped out a lot of them (never all). I can't recall seeing rodent damage on an iris root.

I have some jchokes on the outside of my garden fence, now growing along the roadside. They've been there and spreading for about 4 years. I like them.

[macmex]

A load of wood chips?