Here And There

I was absolutely thrilled during the summer months when Mike broke down (finally, after my yammering on about the need season after season) of getting the road out to the bull pen barn rocked properly.

It took several loads from the Big Red Beast farm truck to get enough rough rock to make a solid base and lots more time of working with the bulldozer and scoop bucket tractor to get the boulders mixed with small rocks and sand into the existing (or rather non-existing, it had disappeared under years of mud and muck) path.

We had over the years dumped and spread loads of rock on this path. I found a photo that I had taken in 2017 showing that exact thing, but we had let the path go too long without yearly maintenance. With the barn remodel, the need showed as soon as the first rains of fall began.

With a solid base down, we added several truckloads of 3/4 inch minus rock to ‘seal’ the top. With our wet weather a couple of sink holes have showed up where the deep tracks that were there previously gobbled up the base and top seal. It should not be too difficult to groom the spots into shape for a good road around the house and out to the bull pen barn.

Since I have temporarily moved the firewood bundling from the bull pen barn while the space is needed for the remodel, I now had a new problem. Mike had not firmed up the road out to the show barn where I had set up. At first it didn’t seem to be a big deal. The path out to the show barn is the exact opposite direction from the house as the bull barn but only half as far away. Driving the tractor with cribs of wood, or the pickup in and out for loading had buckets full of gloppy mud getting tracked into the barn. I became very worried that the pickup would get stuck in the middle of pasture when loaded heavy with bundles if I tried to power it through the increasing slop. After a few mornings of Mike needing to get up at 4am just to move the pickup from the dry barn to the driveway in pouring rain convinced him that the path to the show barn needed attention also.

Last week, just before our Atmospheric River rain system moved into the picture, we had a load of rock delivered and spread out from the driveway to the show barn. It is not as solid as the summer project out to the bull pen but at least now we can get the pickup back and forth without traumatic consequences.