(written on the 7th as if still the 6th)
After my complete and that are meltdown yesterday, I decided to change things up a little bit today.
Instead of working on the massive pile of things that I have to do, I… didn’t work on the “necessary” stuff all that much.
I spent a very large chunk of the day on my excavator and on my skid steer.
Once I had everything greased on my excavator and felt good about using it again, I proceeded over to the area next to the greenhouse where all the grow boxes used to be.
I had started digging up one of the stumps before I realized the issue with the excavator not being properly greased. So I started back working on that.
Once I dug that stump up, I went over and dug up another one, and then another one. 🙃
After digging up the stumps, I started working on grading the drop off next to the greenhouse. When the pad for the greenhouse was cut by the bulldozer, they left just a straight drop off between the level of the greenhouse and the higher elevation of the field on the west side.
They had intended to put a retaining wall in, but that’s been many many years ago, and it’s just been growing up as weeds ever since, and not just weeds, trees.
Of course that’s what ends up growing everywhere in Arkansas if you stop cutting things down. Trees just grow up everywhere.
It’s a lot to maintain, but it’s also something I love about Arkansas–stuff just grows everywhere.
So I set about grading that drop off, cutting it back so that it was a slope that could be mowed instead of a drop off that was super challenging to take care of.
So I cut and scraped and pushed dirt around, avoiding the obstacles of the greenhouse itself and the shed that we just put where it is now.
Not sure how long I spent doing it, but after however long it was, I now have Dad probably 50-yard long section that was just a straight drop off, now cut so that it’s a gentle slope from the upper pasture down to the greenhouse. Once the weeds and grass fill in the dirt, it’ll be easy to mow.
🥳
That’s one of the things that I’ve been trying to help with here on the property is to try and help things be easier to take care of, design things in such a way that they can be more effectively taken care of, so that more can be done in the amount of time that we have.
One of the casualties of cutting away and scraping down all that dirt was of probably 30- or 35-ft tall tree that was growing right out of the drop off.
Since I was drastically reducing the level of the dirt around it, I ended up exposing large chunks of the main root ball, and cutting off many of the very large roots coming off of that root ball.
I doubt the tree is going to survive very well without all those roots.
Honestly, it’s not much of a loss, in my opinion, as the tree itself was sort of a trash tree. Little teeny tiny leaves that don’t offer much shade at all. It’s nice aesthetically, but not very useful as a tree for shade in the middle of a field on a sunny day.
It also happens to be right next to where a second Greenhouse could go, and would shade that second Greenhouse from the afternoon sun, although not much shade. 😆
That tree also had another thing going against it, I think it was actually two trees that grew together into one, and the space between the two trees has been rotting. I cut off The smaller trunk, and found just a soggy mess inside with bugs.
Between having so many of its main roots cut And having the smaller of the two trunks cut, I don’t think the tree is going to survive, and I got permission from Jim to take it out. I haven’t cut it down yet, but I have permission to cut it down all the way, and then I can dig up the stump. It’ll be sad to lose the tree, because it is aesthetically nice sitting where it is. Maybe I won’t cut it down just yet. Maybe I’ll see how it reacts, see if it can miraculously survive.
I also spent some time sanding dan the rust spots on ET. I made some pretty good progress in that regard, and I’ll start painting tomorrow. I think I’ve got just about all the rust spots that I’m going to worry about sanded down.
It’s not perfect, but I also learned that the van itself has a lot more rust than I thought it did, so it is what it is, and I’m not going to worry about it.
I rotated between the different jobs. Sometimes I would be charging my Milwaukee batteries and not be working on sanding stuff while they charged and so I would be on the excavator or skid steer.
I also took the excavator down to the creek area, where the ramp is that goes down to the creek on the the east side of the greenhouse. It’s mostly just been a slope followed by a short drop off, but today I cut it so that it’s a slope all the way down to the creek instead of a drop off.
Then I grabbed my skid steer and headed down to the creek intent on scooping up Creek Rock and using it to dam up the creek a bit.
It wasn’t very long, though that my super heavy skid steer got itself stuck in the loose, deep Rock of the creek. As I would go to move the tires would just spin and spin and excavate the rocks as the wheels and tires spun.
Pretty soon, the rear end of the skid steer was partially underwater with me starting to get a little concerned about getting water in the engine. 😅
I worked and worked at trying to find a way to free the skid steer, to unbury itself, but it was not going so well. Eventually, though, I was able to use the bucket to pull myself forward tiny bit by tiny bit until I worked my way forward and on top of all the rocks.
I left that area immediately. 🙃
I went back to where the creek was basically flat all the way across with gravel. I started digging up the gravel and mounding it up as a dam at the end of the bedrock bank that borders the bathtub are that I cool off and bathe in.
It’s not holding water… yet. It’s just a bunch of rocks piled together without much effort to actually make it water tight, so yes, the water level is probably a few inches higher than it was before, but the water is just running out the bottom of the dam on the other side.
Still, it’s at least a little bit of progress.
It was super super hot. I think approaching 100°, , so after doing a lot of that work, I took some time to just cool off In the creek, taking some time to just walk up and down the creek.
I found where a large sycamore tree that had been growing on the edge of the drop off that is the creek Bank had fallen over, root ball and all across the creek. I think it took another dead tree with it, making The beginnings of a fairly decent and very large dam.
It’s been there at least since before the last huge rain, as the high water line, as evidenced by debris stuck in the fallen tree, was probably 8 or 10 ft high. That’s just a guess. I’d have to go back and measure, but it was pretty far up there.
Anyway that’s just going to keep collecting more and more debris until it becomes a full-on dam at some point, unless an absolutely massive storm comes through and breaks it apart, but the size of that tree…. I don’t think that’s going to happen. At least not for a very very long time.
Anyway, I finished off the day I think doing A bunch of sanding on ET after the sun went behind the trees. This time, instead of leaving the bare metal, each time I sanded, I spray painted some Rust-Oleum primer on the van.
Tomorrow, I’ll actually paint the van. And when I say paint, I mean with a roller and brush. 😆
Being a bit more relaxed because of the nature of the efforts of the day, I found myself a little motivated to go into Pea Ridge, grab some dinner at Wendy’s, and do some JustAnswer work.
Having that little spark of motivation, I jumped on it, and spent an hour at the Wendy’s answering people’s questions.
It was decently productive. I think I maybe answered… Five questions? Four questions? I don’t remember how many, but it was enough to have made the hour of work worth it, and I continued answering questions on the drive home and after I got home a little bit, such that I probably ended up spending about 2 hours working, and I think maybe answered a total of six questions? Six or eight, I think.
We’re going to call today a win. I didn’t meltdown… At least not in any large degree. I think I had some angry spats a couple of times? But I didn’t meltdown meltdown.
So that’s a win.
And it was a win to get the super troublesome wall of dirt without the retaining wall ever having been built carved back and in mowable shape once the weeds grow into it.
And it was a win to have been able to dig up all those dumps.
And it was a win to make a little progress with the ramp down to the creek and with damming up the creek a tiny bit.
And it was a win to actually do some work with JustAnswer.
Speaking of just answer, after the last round of feedback that I gave them that they solicited, they invited me to be on a panel for my thoughts and recommendations for future updates and upgrades and what not, so I went ahead and joined the panel. Hopefully that means I can be an even bigger help to the customers by helping to guide some of the things that I feel like are negatively impacting customers, guide them toward more customer-friendly things.
Anyway, that was the day.
We’ll call today a win. I didn’t make very much progress on the “necessary” list, but I made lots of progress on other things. I’m slowly making this area by the greenhouse into something that’s going to be a lot easier to take care of and a lot less likely to go wild again like it has.
Another win.
Shout out to a friend who has a special day today. I hope it was a beautiful day. 🙂
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 