Summer into Fall

 I had to FORCE myself to sit down and work on this and it has still taken almost a week of working on it here and there to get it done! There is always so much to do that I'm having to pick one thing over another anytime I am home. For as much as I love writing, and sharing our adventures with you, there just isn't enough time in a day to squeeze everything in. So let's get going on the past month or so!

The work on the second ditch has stopped completely since we were moving full tilt ahead on the barn. I am SO GLAD that Woodchuck hired that crew that he did, because they were at the land to receive the metal and man door delivery, and they knocked out the roof for us too!

The rest was now up to us! My previous maintenance manager, now my friend, came to help us and he has been invaluable. Having another set of hands, his strength, and input on things moved this project forward in ways it never could have with just myself and Woodchuck. And it has been so nice spending time with him in a way that I never have before. One day he hopes to put up a barn too, so he's learning a lot along the way on ours.

The mornings are chilly and we had a bit of a cold snap, but overall we have been VERY lucky to have a mild Fall and little rain to hold up the work. We start our work mornings with lots of layers! In these pictures they are installing what's called the Rat Guard. It's the ledge that the sheets of metal siding will rest on.

This will be the view in the early mornings from the house (that is yet to be built). Once that sun moves over the clearing, we will start to warm up as long the winds aren't strong and cold.

The first sheet of metal is up!

Down a layer of clothing now that the sun is above us, and we have a half a wall! In the moments that they didn't need me, I foraged and wandered on the forest edges. What kind of gifts will the forest and Mother E show me?

I'd go back anytime they called me to help, and we had a nice lunch break with sandwiches and chips, and before you knew it, the whole back side was done!

Woodchuck and I went back a couple of evenings during the week to cut the metal for the sides, and get them lined up and ready on the ground. I had to wear ear protection because using a saw to cut metal is LOUD, and getting hit with all of those little pieces of fire hot metal pieces flying off of it while it's being cut HURTS. But I survived, and during any metal cutting while my friend was there, he stood in my place to give me a break. What a guy!

We had a large and adorable jumping spider that likes Woodchucks tool bag and a grasshopper that didn't listen to me to move before the saw turned on. He got the scare of his life, most likely.

Once the weekend came again, our friend came to help put the sides up! When we start, we don't have a very good system, but as time goes on we work one out. The guys would stand the metal up and my friend and I would hold it in place while Woodchuck went up on the ladder to put some screws in at the top. Then my friend would go up another ladder while I still held the bottom against the barn and they'd put in some screws at the upper half portion. Then we'd move on to the next panel and do that all the way across. Once we saw that it worked out and nothing needed tweaking, we'd finish putting all of the screws in, with me doing the ones at the bottom since I'm the shortest. Then it would be time to put the trip at the top, between the roof line and wall where they meet.

For some reason, Woodchuck thought that putting that trim on from the roof was a good idea. I told him earlier that morning that it wasn't, but Aries going to do what Aries going to do. Long story short, he fell at the peak of the roof (it's a 4/12 pitch, metal roofing, no stop-toe guards), slid down the roof and nearly right off of the barn. He was bruised, sore, and cut up from hitting the screw heads on his slide down, but thank goodness he's okay and that my friend was there to help keep the situation from being worse!

That was it for this trip! We always think we can knock something out fast and that's just not the case. We have been SO lucky to have had a mild Fall so far, otherwise we'd be much farther behind. So Woodchuck and I made another trip to the land on an evening during the following week, armed with stand lights since it gets dark so much earlier now. Those didn't work out the way we needed them to, but mostly it's because of Woodchuck's eyesight now. Did I mention that before in any posts? I can't even remember.

 He's going blind in one eye, might eventually in the other. He's been getting injections in the really bad one, has what is called Wet Macular Degeneration and he was losing his sight FAST. He needs a lot of light, and some times a magnifying glass, to be able to see things even remotely better than without using those things. But the stand lights we took only created more shadows for him. So before we messed up cutting the metal, or one of us got hurt, we called it quits on the evening.

We got about halfway across! It should only take one more trip to finish the sheet metal.

So we went out one more evening and the siding is done....though screws are a bit out of line in some spots. After about 6 hours, our brains shut down and I was miscalculating where the wood beams were at and putting screws just into metal, and his eyes were not focusing at all and he couldn't get a straight line of screws across, lol. Our saw blade was going dull and the cuts aren't as clean and pretty as we would have liked and are only covered so much by the trim. Of course that all had to happen on the FRONT of the barn! He said if it all bothers him enough, we'll redo things.

The doors have been ordered and should be in in the next couple of weeks! Weather and temps are still mild and there's corner trim to put up and some metal overhangs to trim while we wait. We've been pulling up to turkeys playing on the rocks piles and walking the forest edges! Woodchuck said he doesn't mind if they use it as shelter right now.

We also got to the phragmite at the watershed pond and I was SO stoked to finally be getting this project started!!! There aren't many projects out there I expect help from Woodchuck on, but this was one where I made no exceptions to his participation. With the area leading up to the pond being so overgrown, it being so marshy, and this being my first time working with phragmite, I felt for safety's sake that it was best to have him there with me.

I was so worried that I had missed my window of opportunity to treat it. Late October is usually the cut off, and if the plant was brown, all bets were off. I had been formulating a plan in my head for weeks, probably months, on how to go about this, and of course once the moment came there were things that I forgot to do. Like dilute the herbicide. SMH.

We were surprised at green phragmite and a very low water level still! I got to cutting and treating the a$$hole plants right away. My injection tool of choice:

Woodchuck stood back, though was a little nervous about me getting hurt, and offered help along the way. He ended up having to go back by the barn to get a piece of sheet metal leftover so that I could stand on that because it was still so mucky even though the water levels had receded so far. I got my left boot stuck in the mud for a couple of moments and pulled that right groin/hip area again trying to get it out. I also fell a couple of inches on to my ass while squatting and was unharmed though I had a slightly damp ass thereafter. 

It took a bit to get the hang of it, as there is an internal disc layer that looks a lot like bone marrow that I would have to punch through on some of them depending on where I cut them down at. The water levels were so low though, that the root system was exposed on most plants! Fascinating!

Overall, I was really happy that I got to work on this stand at all, but was disappointed that I couldn't treat all of it. Woodchuck estimates that I got to about 30% of what we could see right in this spot and although he said he can see the difference, I really can't. Before and after.

So. Now that the barn is caught up until the doors come in, we are talking about what to work on the meantime. There are SO many options! Keep working on the front treeline between the front CRP forest and road? Keep working on cutting up the fallen maple and the piles of branches pushed off to the side of the driveway? (this seems like the best thing to do seeing as he wants to start building the house next year and we should probably make sure that the drive is free and clear), pull the cut trees out of the front ditch (that will depend how wet it is in there with the recent downpour we just got and possibly a light rain happening right before we make it out there again), keep working on invasive plants on the edge of the second CRP forest, keep clearing invasive plants on the West side of the pond, keep clearing the back ditch since we are barely halfway through that? And whatever else we haven't thought of yet!

Ok, I have to stop thinking about it all, I'm getting overwhelmed......whatever we decide to do, I'll post pictures next time and hope it doesn't take me months to do the next posting ;) I estimate that we will be taking about 5 years to get the land back to what it should be. We are about a year and a half in at this point. Stay tuned!!!