(written on August 13th and 14th from notes taken previously)
Well, today was much more of a typical Arkansas Haven Hill day. 🙃
The day started off with me heading over to the hill early to meet up with Jim to help him get more wood chips with my dump trailer before I sell it.
Unfortunately, when we got back, the dump-trailer battery was so low, that it couldn’t raise the dump bed by itself. I ended up getting not just one jump box, but I think both jump boxes to be able to get the dump bed high enough to dump out all the wood chips. 😅
And as you can imagine, I subsequently placed the dump trailer battery and both jump boxes on chargers to hopefully be ready for the next load of wood chips. 🤞
I sent Jim out on his own to get the second one while I stayed behind, planning to start mowing fields that had overgrown massively since I last mowed them in May.
Before starting to mow, I spent a good long time with my grinder sharpening the blades on the mower deck. Generally, when everything gets this tall, I have to make two passes in order to get everything cut, because the blades are so darn dull.
Gratefully, after sharpening the blades, I was able to cut the really long stuff with only one pass, at least in most places. 🙏
I ended up spending hours on the tractor today, mowing the hill pasture just east of Liz’s place, mowing the “road” to the greenhouse and my storage shed in the lower-back pasture, and spending a good little while unburying and emptying one of the main drainage culverts that had been nearly completely buried by wash.
I had to excavate extensively both to unbury the pipe and to get the drainage slope where I wanted it to be.
I moved all the excavated fill, putting the the gravelly wash back on the road to try to fill in the washed out spots, and putting bucket-loads that were mostly dirt in the bottom of the ravine where large volumes of water had dug little mini trenches at the bottom of the ravine between the two hills.
Culvert had been buried for long enough that there were tall weeds growing through the gravelly wash, so I ended up with tons of plant matter mixed in with the wash I was returning to the road.
Don’t know if you’ve ever had experience trying to level a road, but when you add lots of plant matter to the road base, you can’t smooth that out very well, so I ended up spending a whole bunch of time removing all the plant matter by hand and moving the wash material around with a rake, because it was more effective (although much more exhausting) that way given the nature of the material I was messing with.
Mucho trabajo. 👷🚜
And after spending a whole bunch of time on that, I went back to mowing, mowing until rather late until the Landon invited me over for pizza with the family, which I graciously accepted, though I arrived after they’d finished eating.
I was very grateful for the pizza, I horking down several slices. 🙃
I don’t think I’d eaten yet today? 😅
Oh, I forgot to mention that I also dealt with the tractor overheating, because the screen in front of the radiator had completely filled up with plant particles from mowing.
I did remember not to take a deep breath after blowing the plant matter out of the screen this time. No swollen throat for me this time. 🙃
I ended up using Jim’s hose to rinse all the plant matter out of the radiator and screen, which took a heck of a lot more time than I expected.
That was all before dinner, I think? After dinner, I went out and continued mowing. I mowed the rest of the main hill, and I even mowed part of the pond hill, probably 2/3 of it. 🎉
After it was dark, I headed over to the neighborhood market in Pea Ridge and then to my mom’s, I think hanging out with my mom for a bit, then veging, then crashing for the night.
Typical Haven Hill work day. 🙃
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 