In September, mom, dad, and Dave drove up from Colorado for a visit. We were having forest fires all over the place, but fortunately none too close by, so the air wasn't too ugly and we had a good visit.
Our first project was to make drawers for the rest of the kitchen cabinets. I had finally figured out what I wanted, and bought materials before they came. In short order I had a bunch of new drawers. Yippie! Places to store things so I don't have to paw through a pile or have a thousand tupperware containers cascade over me when I go to get my breakfast cereal.
We also put up a little fence, and hung my new bird feeder mom and dad had given me the year before. It sits outside the living room bay window. Dad and Dave put a sign on it that says "Bird Feeder," since apparently the birds initially didn't recognize it as one. After we put the sign up, they started using it, so I guess they can read.
A few weeks earlier, my friend Eduardo Ceballos and his family had visited, and one of the things we accomplished was tearing down the original shed we built way back when to house the tractor and backhoe, and which subsequently served as porch, additional storage, and workshop off the mobile home. I got rid of the mobile home the previous year, so all that was left now was a post with the electrical service panel on it.
In short order we disconnected the service panel and removed it and the posts it was mounted on, along with the short sections of conduit leading the cable out of the ground and into the panel. That left the wire -- rather expensive underground cable, running about a hundred feet from the panel in the barn, under a bunch of tree roots (now that was a pain to put in) over to where the mobile home had been. I wanted to salvage the cable, for future use if I ever built a garage and/or shop.
We disconnected the wires from the panel in the barn, but we couldn't get the conduit off the wire leading up to the panel in the barn, as the fit was too tight and the wire close to unbendable. We were just going to deal with some more friction, and pull the wires around the bend.
Then we dug down to where the wires came out of the long conduit leading from the barn. So now, a simple task. Hook up to the cables with the tractor, and pull them out.
Our first attempt was just that, simple. We took all four wires, looped them through a big shackle hooked on the tractor drawbar, and tied them in a knot. Put the tractor in four wheel low, first gear, and putt putt away until the wire pulls out... or breaks.
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| Broken wire from first attempt |
hmmmm... We can't do that too many times; there's only about four feet sticking out of the end of the conduit, and there used to be six... So we got a big stout pressure treated 4x4 post, carefully drilled holes a little bigger than each of the wires, and threaded the wires through the holes and back through another hole, then clamped them on the back side. We put wooden dowels (a.k.a. sticks) under the bends to keep the wire from being bent too sharply. Then hooked up to the tractor in four wheel low, first gear, and putt putt away until the wire pulls out... or the stout pressure treated 4x4 breaks.
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| Rigging the 4x4 | The wires looped back | Fully rigged pulling setup |
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| "Pull!" | "Oooooooopieeeesssss" |
hmmmmmmm... Green wood is denser and less likely to break than dry wood, so we found a good sized fir log and repeated the process. Hook up to the tractor in four wheel low, first gear, and putt putt away until the wire pulls out... or strips off its insulation.
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| "To heck with a piddly little stick, let's use a whole tree!" |
hmmmmmmmmmmm... Rig the whole thing up again, tighten the clamps extra carefully and extra tight. Hook up to the tractor in four wheel low, first gear, and putt putt away until THE WIRE PULLS OUT! Yippie! Who says perserverence doesn't pay off?
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| Fourth time's a... | Charm! |
After all that work, we needed some refreshment. Lynde was here and had brought a watermelon, so I had asked her to put it in the irrigation ditch to cool off. I had also started to tell her my ideas on how to do that. She informed me she thought she could figure it out all by her lonesome, so I shut up. But in my minds eye I saw something like sticks poking in the ditch bottom to make a fence to hold it, or a rock fence around it, or a mesh bag tied to something on the bank. So when I went down to get it, I was a little surprised to find... a piece of 3/8" all-thread stuck clear through it, a washer and nut on each end, the whole thing tied off to the bank. I thought maybe we should put it on a barbeque and roast it. Whatever works, I guess...
But to top it off, when I cut into the watermelon, it turned out to be YELLOW! Yikes! Luckily, it still tasted like watermelon ... good!
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| Lynde's instream cooler | "It's yellow!" |
One day, as we returned from dinner at Trixi's and it was just getting dark, mom looked out the sunroom and said, "There's a bear!" Sure enough, a small black bear was sniffing around. Despite the fact that there are quite a few bears around, I seldom see them, so I was delighted.
But the bear ambled over towards the manure pile, in which I had been burying the compost all summer. Lynde didn't want what she considered valuable compost messed up, so she grabbed a club and informed Mr./Ms. Bear that it was off limits.
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| Mr./Ms. Black Bear | Lynde defending the compost pile |
All in all a good visit. Mom and dad deserved a rest; they sure helped out a lot, and we got a lot accomplished.
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| Mom and Dad resting |
This page last updated on 2013-10-23.
