This is long and it's about my job, so you may want to just skip over it and come back later.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that my previous job was as an arborist; specifically, a 'climber' for a local arborist company. It was outdoor work, hot and often uncomfortable, strenuous most of the time; often it involved working at heights and it required a heavy harness/belt on which not only hung my tools of the trade but my life as well.

I have now been at my new job since the beginning of April. This job, an apprentice glazier, is quite different from my last one: it's outside work which is usually hot and uncomfortable (see below,) it involves heavy lifting and I often have to work at heights with a heavy tool belt and a harness that keeps me from falling.

When I started with this company, we were working at a school, ripping out the old frames and glass and replacing these with new glass and frames. Since then, I have had the opportunity to remove and reinstall new curtain wall systems. Curtain wall is the glass fronting that covers some large buildings, as well as making up the entrance ways to most malls, office buildings and the like. I have also worked on a skylight at the Sudbury Cancer Treatment Center. That was interesting, both for us and the folks below who, when they looked up at our bodies laying prostrate on the angled skylight, seemed to have the startled look of someone who realizes almost too late that something is about to fall on them. We were only replacing the outside trim, so there was no danger, but still, it was funny.

Lately, however, I have been working at Xstrata, or the old Falconbridge (the other nickel company) to those who don't follow mining company mergers and take-overs -- I have to: I live in Sudbury. They are putting in a new smelter and calciner plant. Before it starts to sound like I know what these are, let me just say that I don't. I have no idea, except that the new plant involves miles and miles of piping, from the small, quarter inch lines that feed the controls, dials and moniters, to the huge, 10-foot diameter pipes that must feed (or be fed by) the monstrous hoppers and vats inside the building. It is industry at its' finest.

It is this building that houses the hoppers, vats and such, that we were working on. All week, at our other job site, the talk was of how we were going to install the massive windows. The smallest unit was ten feet by six feet, so when I say they were big, I'm not exaggerating; in fact, I know people with smaller decks. So far, the style of glass that we had been installing is one sheet of quarter-inch tempered glass with a half-inch rubberized band in the middle to seal in the argon, and then another sheet of quarter inch glass on the other side of the band, making a unit thickness of one inch in total. For an estimate on weight, this is the formula: quarter-inch, tempered glass (two sides) plus a half-inch rubberized band weighs 7.1 pounds per square foot. Go ahead and do the math, or take my word for it: glass is heavy.

As I was saying, the topic of how to move these units of glass into the openings at Xstrata was quite thoroughly discussed. The more experienced glaziers decided that the best way would be to use a boom truck with this electric suction cup device that our company has. Normally, to fit the unit of glass into an opening, we use a suction cup with a handle on it so that we can lift the glass easily and safely. The electric one that was going to be used is just like our little ones, only a lot bigger and instead of one cup, it has four, which are able to be extended on movable arms for extra large glass.

What you can't see in this picture is how the wind is making this unit spin. It was spinning so fast that the swivel on the boom trucks' ball couldn't keep up and it ended up twisting the sling that held the electric cups on. We were close to the unit and if it had nicked us in the basket or the corner of the building, there would be glass everywhere.

I finally managed to get the glass under control. The round disks on the bottom corners are our suction cups, to which we have tied a small rope to help in controlling the unit until we can reach the cups.

Installation day came and the electric cups were taken out, fully charged and hooked onto the boom trucks' ball with a sling. The day previous, when we went to size up the situation and plan how we would work things, Rob, one of the glaziers, noticed that the glass was not the quarter-inch, tempered style that we had been installing, but rather a much weaker, eighth-inch plate glass with a half inch rubberized banding. Immediately, he was concerned that the glass was not strong enough to be lifted by the boom truck and electric cups. He decided to chance it, anyway, since we had no other way of getting the glass to where it needed to be.

Normally, when we install the glass from the outside, we use our snorkle-lift machine (like the blue one in the pictures) to lift the person in the bucket and the unit of glass on specially designed skis on the outside of the basket, even though it may be over the recommended weight capacity of the machine. At Xstrata, however, they are so safety conscious that they employ a person to oversee all the trades people who are working on the site. In fact, he is the one who these pictures are from. He makes sure that we are wearing our gloves and long sleeves (even in +33 degree heat), that we are harnessed and tied in to our machine and that we are following site-specific indoctrination rules. He takes his job seriously and kicked off one worker while we were there. My point in all of this is that with our tools and myself and Don, the other glazier I'd be working in the basket with, we were almost at the machine's capacity, and we still had a 300+ pound unit of glass to consider, if we were going to forego the boom truck route. The safety guy would never accept that. So, boom truck it was.

This is one side of the building. The Genie Lift (or Snorkle lift) has a 65 foot reach, and when it is fully extended, there is about two, maybe three feet of vertical play because of the flex in the boom. It doesn't sound like much, but when you're at the machine's maximum reach, it feels as though the whole thing is going to tip over.

I can say that the glass went in smoothly and the boom truck worked extremely well, as did the electric cups. No glass was broken, we violated no Xstrata safety concerns, except perhaps, rolling up our sleeves and taking off our gloves but if we were noticed, nothing was said.

Don and I guiding another unit into place.

So there it is: my new job.

"When the chicken comes home to roost."

With a brain the size of a pea, or to be generous, a Lima bean, you wouldn't necessarily expect chickens to be all that bright; and they're not, really, but they do manage to prove the old adage right by showing up at the coop in the evening ready to roost for the night.

Free Range Biddies

Jenn lets the chickens out to roam around and forage during the day where they typically wander all over the yard eating weeds, bugs and grasses. Although we usually herd them into the coop in the evening, if we are home late, the chickens will have done it themselves. I have wondered, too, what this must look like, this self-imposed curfew: does each chicken decide when it is time to head home, like a good party guest, or; do they participate in a mini-migration, en masse, to the coop? And if it is a migration, who instigates it? What if the instigator is lazy and is just looking for an excuse to sleep? Would all the chickens follow if it were mid-afternoon?

One day, Jenn let the chickens out and thought she saw her favourite chicken, called "Fuzzy-Head", take off toward our lower field. Since the strawberries were out, Jenn thought that the chicken was off eating them and paid no attention to her day long absence. It was only when the chickens were to be corralled and put in the coop for the night that Jenn noticed she was short a chicken. Her favourite one, too. And so began "The Lament for Fuzzy-Head: a tragedy in two parts." (Part One was Jenn losing her favourite chicken; Part Two was having to tell Hunter, who also claimed Fuzzy-Head as her favourite.)

Fuzzy-Head

Jenn waited for Fuzzy-Head to come to roost that night and we looked for Fuzzy-Head the next day. I expect Jenn was looking for the bird; I was, however, looking for a pile of feathers since we have foxes and weasles, not to mention hawks around. Neither of us found any sign of the chicken. It was probably day three or four that Jenn finally gave up on ever seeing Fuzzy-Head again however, if you ask her, she'll tell you that she didn't expect to see the bird from the night it didn't come home.

It was this past Friday that I found the bird, though, a whole twelve days later. Intact, even. She was sitting on a nest of eleven eggs, under a hawthorn shrub not ten feet from the back of the chicken area fenceline. I guess I should cut the grass more often. She was well disguised and I don't understand how she'd been able to go unseen for so long. It was only because I was out gathering the chickens to put them away for the night that I found her; and even then, it was only because there were a few chickens in her vicinity clucking away. She was thirsty and she went straight for the feed trough after (do chickens bloat, I wonder?) but other than that, she was fine. She had gone 'broody' on us and I guess she was looking for a quiet place to hatch her eggs, even though they were unfertilized, and I expect she'd have been there a long time if I hadn't found her.

The next day, Jenn let the chickens out as usual and Fuzzy-Head made for the same nesting spot where I had found her the day before. Jenn put one of Fuzzy-Head's eggs in a nesting box in the chicken coop and that seemed to keep her around for the day. Now she is roaming with the rest of them again, so I guess it's all back to normal around here.

Here are the variety of colours of eggs we get from the chickens. I would have a white one, too, but Fuzzy-Head was not around to donate for the photo.

New blog title being considered: The Biddy Blog, on account of us having almost as many chickens as dogs now.

Since we are new to the world of chicken raising and egg production, it should come as no surpise that we are learning new things just about daily. I mean, I knew there were 'fancy' chickens out there; I've gone to a few agricultural fairs in my day, but I didn't know that there were a group of fancy chickens that are called 'easter-eggers' as a result of their laying coloured eggs. Although they are called 'easter-eggers' however, they don't lay the eggs with stripes and zig-zags. They do, however, lay mottled eggs and so far with us at least, eggs that are blue and eggs that are pink. Neither of these colours are vibrant, being more muted and pastelle-like, but still, a pink egg from a chicken? I didn't know it was possible. It would seem like a good spot to post a picture of the eggs but I haven't taken any yet. Maybe next post.

At first, we thought the colour of the eggs was a result of them free ranging around our property and eating all the grass, clover and insects. Jenn did some research, though, and discovered this whole sub-culture of chicken folks and immediately decided that we needed to get our own flock of easter-eggers and so, Saturday we went to a local chicken raising guy (what do you call them, anyway?) to buy five more birds. These ones are extremely fancy: two have feathered feet, like a ptarmigan, some are mottled and most look more pheasant like than chicken like. I think that they have been crossed with some sort of game bird becasue their eggs are smaller, considerably so, and they can really fly. This new batch is fairly shy and skittish, though, so it was hard to get a picture of them. Below is the only good one I managed to get.

The new biddies.

Today was the go-get-fish day and since Jenn was not scheduled to work, the three of us went down to Killarney. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, having stopped to get a coffee, we noticed this one-of-a-kind motorcycle/car thingy. I said to Jenn that she had to get a picture of it so over she went. I could see in the mirror that she was talking to the driver, then I saw her taking a picture and heading back to the truck. "I sat on it!" she said before she was even in the truck. She was excited enough to have managed to forget to ask the name of the driver, who, she found out, built the thing himself.

The cool rig.

Jenn sitting on the cool rig.

Just to finish off: a few people have asked me what sort of fish we get when we go to Killarney. It's the pin bone fillet that comes off the regular fillet. Even though it is considered 'bone' it is still mostly meat, just annoying enough for people to eat so it's discarded. Herbert Fisheries gives it to us and our dog love it. We pick up two packers at a time, since I don't have enough freezer space to freeze more. This is what it looks like:

Fish in Packer.

Then, I transfer it to the cut-off bottom of a Rubbermaid container, freeze it and then cut it into dog-sized chunks.

Fish in the Rubbermaid flats.

Little, tiny work gloves.

When I woke up this morning, it looked a lot like rain. Even the weather from Environment Canada seemed to be calling for some showers. Nevertheless, I sped into town to get my roofing screws; I ran out yesterday and being so close to finishing the roof, I was not going to have the rain slow my progress today. I made the mistake of buying inch-and-a-half screws, instead of the two inch that I would need later, when it came time to put on the ridge cap. Of course, I didn't realize this until it was time to put the cap on, by which time I had used nearly half of the box of the shorter screws, so it was back into town -- half an hour each way -- for a ten dollar box of screws.

With the last screw in the ridge cap, the major construction phase of the chicken coop came to an end. The door is on, the window is in, which now leaves the insulating; the interior finishing: panelling, nesting boxes, electrical and a roost; the fence and related gates. Not much, really.

The chicken coop, minus the door:

I can't leave Jenn alone for a second. The other day, I turned my back for an instant and when I turned back, we were the owners of a new bunny. I had made the mistake of agreeing to let Hunter go to PetsMart to play with the kittens through the glass; sometimes, if we are close by and Hunter has been good, this is her treat. She pulls out the long feather-duster-looking toys from the display and waves them at the cats in the store. They bat at the air, follow the toy with their jerky head movements and generally entertain her. This day, Hunter was the distraction while Jenn went and adopted a bunny. I think the pair of them had it planned for a while because it was pulled off with such ease and subtlety. However, the two bunnies seem to be getting along, once the chasing, stamping and kicking fits ended.

The new bunny: ('Peter' to any who need to know it's name.)

Lately, Hunter has been helping me feed the dogs. She really likes to come out and put on her little work gloves, which I didn't even know existed. They are hilarious: wee little work gloves. Anyway, since we feed fish to the dogs, it is nice to have a pair of gloves so that we are not going through a tube of toothpaste every week. Yes, I said toothpaste. I have found out that it is the only thing that gets the smell of fish off your hands. One of the employees at Herbert Fisheries told me this, and I guess he'd know.

When Hunter helps me feed the dogs, I don't have to do a thing, except carry the fish bucket and feed Dart and Horton; even Horton could be fed by her. Hunter likes to root around in the bucket and then make sure she has the perfect piece for each dog, which she'll double check with me. Then, she'll walk through the dogs' area and put the chunk of fish on their house. I find the whole thing rather funny and I am really happy that she likes to do this.

Rooting around for that 'perfect' piece:

Feeding

Proud of herself and happy to have helped.

It seems that we have a bear around our property. We had a mother and a cub last year and I think that this is the same pair this year. I have already seen them together earlier this spring and then last week the yearling cub was in the lower dog run; the one we don't use anymore, thankfully.

The local Ministry of Natural Resources has published a guide to being 'Bear Aware' and I think that we violate almost all of their recommendations. We have dog food stored outside, we have two freezers full of fish and we have so many fruiting trees around the property that it would be impossible to pick up the fruit. So far, the bears have stayed away from anything important.

The bear.

As it would happen, the photos are rather dark, so really, all there is to see is a black blob. It's a bear. I swear.

Progress has been made on the chicken coop, althought I haven't taken any pictures lately. We picked up our roofing metal the other day and I should be able to get it installed tomorrow if things go well; I have fish to cut, a trip to Killarney again, for more fish, and the other half of the roof to strap before the metal can go on.

Another week has passed and what have I done?

Another twenty-eight degree day has come and gone and I find myself a little afraid of what the summer -- the actual summer -- has in store if the end of May and early part of June are any indication. Already, we have June bugs flying around and berries on the Hawthorns; perhaps at this accelerated rate, we'll get snow in September, although I somehow doubt it.

The stray dog that was around our place for the past few weeks has been successfully adopted. After a week of posting his picture with a 'found dog' label on the internet and looking around for 'lost dog' posters we decided it was time to put him up for adoption. We have been quite busy taking calls and emails and it looks as though he has found a new home. A couple came by on Friday to try him out for the weekend and I have just heard from them that they would like to keep him.

This past week has more or less been taken up by my construction of the chicken coop; the Chateau Frontenac of the chicken world as it is slowly becoming. Day one saw me leveling the floor with the help of a string line. Once that was done, I built the frame for the floor of the thing: 12 feet by 8 feet. Jenn has read that chickens need a certain amount of square footage, so these are her dimensions. In fact, the whole design is Jenn's basically: I am just the contractor. I managed to get the floor sheathing on on day one, also.

Day 1

Once I had re-laid the floor sheathing -- I realised that I had it on sideways: basically, the longitudinal strength was running horizontally -- I started to frame the sides. Jenn does not want any windows on the West or North side, so I was able to complete those for day two. I suppose I could have managed to get one, if not both of the remaining walls done, but we didn't have the door and window yet so I couldn't make the openings in the framing. Instead, I took the last bit of the day off for a (self described) well deserved beer.

Day 2

The coop stayed as it looked in day two for a few days while we waited for Uncle Rick, this crazy pack rat of a man who collects junk and then sells it to people at slightly elevated prices to open. He's only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and if people look hard enough, they can find something worthwhile. We knew he had a bunch of windows and we were dreading how much he'd try to charge for them; he's not above haggling, but he approaches it as a cat does a mouse: eventually, the mouse loses. It is almost as though he doesn't want to sell the stuff. However, he is going out of business at the end of the year and we were able to get our windows for a great price. He even threw in the matching one (with a broken pane) for free. Not something he is known to do. The window that we are going to use is rather large for a chicken coop. It measures 47.5 inches by 41.5 inches which is large for a bunch of chickens, I think. The picture below is of the window; a 4-pane plus screen unit, all of which slides and I have left it in the back of the truck to show the dimensions of it.

The window.

Now with a window and a door to measure, I set to making the remaining two walls. Once they were up, I checked everything for square and was only an inch out on the diagonals, so I was happy with that. A few taps with the hammer and I was able to get the whole thing one eighth of an inch out of square. I can live with that; let's hope the chickens can.

Day 3

After getting the walls up, I realized that a half-dozen nails were likely not going to be enough to finish the job, so I compiled a materials list for the next phase, making sure nails were on it, and Jenn and I headed into town. Let me say here that, with the exception of Chapters, I don't like big box stores. Even Chapters manages to not carry what I am looking for, so it would be fair to say that I don't like big box stores, which is why we found ourselves in the parking lot of Home Depot. Materials list in hand, Jenn and I go in to find, buy and load what we need as fast as possible and get home. Home Depot was not only a nuthouse of activity, being a Saturday, but it was full of helpfull staff who were no help at all. How someone can be that stunned at work and still retain a job is beyond me. On top of everything else, Home Depot, 'the contractors choice' didn't have what we were looking for, namely: lumber. We decided instead to go to a local lumberyard and buy what we needed there and it is a good thing we did because they were .30 cents cheaper per board and the lumber was nicer than any of the stock Home Depot normally carries, which just goes to confirm my dislike of big box, small brain stores.

Today was roof day. I spliced together two eight foot two by sixes to make a sixteen foot ridge board. Once I had it in place and secured, I measured the angle for my rafters and proceeded to cut them all, then I nailed them all in place. I expect that I would have had more done today, but it was go get fish day, so the three of us drove down to Killarney again, ate lunch and picked up our fish. The chicken coop sits as below, awaiting eave ladders and roof strapping. The rafters will be cut shorter as soon as I find out the measurements of our roofing metal.

Day 4

A short post with sub-par pictures.

This past weekend was a busy one. I helped shingle a roof, which seemed simple enough at the outset: there were supposed to be many hands to make light work, it was a small roof comparitively speaking and, it wasn't supposed to rain. However, some of the volunteers didn't show, the roof stayed small, but there were -- wait for it -- FOUR(!) layers of shingles to be stripped and the previous owner had cheated with his fascia flashing, so I had to cut off the little lip he'd fashioned, which went all the way around the eaves, and then put on a new edge. Add to this the unexpected removal of an old, brick chimney and you have a long day of roofing in store.

It actually took two days to complete the roof. All of Saturday and most of Sunday, even though we started at five thirty in the morning to try and beat the rain, which didn't happen.

Aside from all of this, Jenn and I bought most of the materials for the chicken coop, we went out to a fantastic dinner at the home of some friends and I went to Killarney again to get some fish on Sunday.

Yes. The stray is still here. And getting a little to comfortable, at that.

Where there was once a shed, now there is nothing. I tried to move it because we had wanted to use it for a chicken coop, but it fell over twenty feet into the move, so I guess it wasn't as sturdy as it should have been. I salvaged what lumber I could and carted the rest off to the dump.

Before:

After:

Here is what I have managed to get done as far as my own chores go. Note the string layout in the foreground. It is the outline of the chicken coop. The patch of dirt at the front corner is where I had started to level out the ground for the blocks we will use to set the coop on.

Hunter is standing inside for a size comparison.

Bunnies, Chicken and Fish oh my!

A few days ago, when Jenn and I were actually home together and preparing to have dinner, there was a knock at our door. We knew it wouldn't be our neighbours as they call before they come over, or at the very least, they ride over, very slowly, on their 4-wheeler as a means of announcing their arrival. I highly doubted it would be any of our friends stopping in, and besides, it didn't sound like a knock my friends would make: it was tentative, as though the knocker were unsure at the last second if this was such a good idea, after all. I went to the door and there was a lady standing there, very apologetic looking, and before I could say anything, she said "You have dogs, right?" The humour of her question was not apparent to her, but to me, looking out over her shoulder and into my dog yard, not a hundred yards beyond our house, I couldn't help but smile. I thought to myself that she was either here to ask about buying a dog or to complain and although we don't sell dogs routinely, I would have rather dealt with that question than a complaint. However, she had driven into the yard in an unfamiliar car and had walked, in plain view of the dogs, to the house and yet, not one dog barked. I don't even think that she saw the dog yard. So I doubted she was here to complain.

"Is one of your dogs missing?" she asked. I had, minutes before, just come in from feeding the dogs and I knew that they were all there, so I said that no, we were not missing a dog but thanks for asking. Jenn, by this point, had come to the door and she and the lady, Diane, as we later were introduced, began to discuss this loose dog that had been dropped off at her place. She was pretty sure that someone had come out and dumped their dog; "it happens all the time." she claimed. Before I could wish her luck finding the owners of the dog or suggesting that she call the shelter, Jenn had offered for us to go over and pick up the dog because we have the room for him. So, now we have eighteen dogs and a stray who has made it pretty clear that he has no intention of leaving. He has more than ingratiated himself to Hunter and Jenn; he has a tendancy to come when called, even though we haven't a clue as to his name and he is by far the 'lickiest' dog I have ever encountered. Non-stop, in fact. The only thing that goes more than his tounge is his tail which can sweep a mug of coffee off the table, a bowl of soup, and pots with plants in them off the windowsill. I think that his tounge and tail are somehow connected for they seem to work in concert: the harder the tail wagging, the more furious the tounge licking. If you are somehow missing a dog, or know who this guy belongs to, please, come and get him! I don't think I can take much more slurping. Here he is, just in case you might recognize him.

The stray dog we have somehow adopted.

This weekend, I managed to complete the bunny pen. It was more than past due. Certainly the rabbit must be happy. When we got him, he was in a rabbit cage that was pretty small and he stayed there until Jenn started leaving the door open so he could have the run of the back hall and bathroom. The rabbit patrolled this area faithfully and would chase Molly, the cat; a cat, I might add, that not only will not back down from a dog, but who also killed a weasle a few winters ago with a single, well placed bite on the neck.

It was while I was in the midst of putting up the fence that my friend dropped by. He was in to show me his new truck, but when he saw the fence going up he wandered over, curious as to what I was doing. "It's a bunny pen." I said by way of explanation. He asked how big the bunny was. I guess the pen is a bit large: it is 24 feet by 24 feet in dimension. There is only one bunny in it right now.

The Bunny and the Bunny Pen:

I told my friend that it could also hold a goat, should Jenn see a kid that she wanted. Maybe even chickens, I continued. At this, my friend mentioned that his brother was selling a few of his chickens and he asked if I wanted any. I said that I wasn't really ready for them as I have no place to house them yet but I'd ask Jenn and get back to him. I really ought to know by now that to ask Jenn about getting animals is useless. Of course we have room. And, so, this morning found me barely finished my coffee, still bleary-eyed from a short nights sleep, ripping two by fours into two by twos and building a chicken tractor.

A bit about chicken tractors, which, unlike the name suggests, is not a wee piece of farm machinery suitable for a chicken. It is, rather, a portable chicken coop with no floor. It is a great idea, actually, and allows one to move the chickens from spot to spot so they have a clean area as well as fresh grass and weeds to eat. This chicken tractor is only a temporary measure until the larger area is built. Mine, which is a fine example of carpentry, was cobbled together quickly out of scrap lumber, an old tarp and just about every screw I could find. I was even reduced to using roofing screws for part of it. I shouldn't complain: it cost me absolutely nothing to build it. It measures 8' long by 4' wide by 3' high.

Chicken Tractor and Chickens:

Chicken Tractor and the Bunny Run - for size comparison.

Not only did I build the chicken tractor today, but I was in a rush because it was our first run of the season down to Killarney for fish. I had hoped that we could all go, the three of us, and have lunch at the fish and chip stand but I took a lot longer to finish my little construction project and Jenn had to leave for work so it was just Hunter and I who went down. Hunter likes going to Killarney to see the big boats that come in. There have been, in the past, some fairly impressive yachts, catamarans and sailboats in the harbour but there were none today. The fisheries people had saved us two and half packers of fish though so as far as I was concerned, the trip was worth it. Hunter was a little disappointed at not seeing the big boats: she had dreamt of them last night, even, but she got over it. I had the camera with me in case we saw moose or bear or other wildlife, but there was nothing other than the palest, slinkiest, skittish-est fox I have ever seen. It was the color of tea with milk in it, not the usual red and it ran in such a manner that it looked like a weasle. I did get a good look at it on the side of the road where it stopped, so I knew it was a fox but it didn't hang around for a picture.

Even though we were in a rush today and there were no boats to look at, apart from a locals twelve footer with a kicker on it, Hunter and I got out for a bit of a walk down to the water.

Blackflies. I had forgotten about them.

It was inevitable that with the warming days and flushing buds would come the blackfly. One day, there were none, the next there were several million of the tiny little vampires buzzing around our heads and the heads of the dogs. The dog run has started to dry up nicely, but there are still a few wet spots here and there.

The title of this entry could well have been "Yep. Still too wet, Part 2" or "The Tractor and I: How I managed to bury it, yet again, to the axles." I was trying to bring some sand and gravel in to Horton, the last dog who has a wet area, and I was using the tractor because it sure beats pushing a wheelbarrow. Because Horton's area is still spongey and wet, I had to more or less pirouette the tractor into position to dump the bucket in Horton's area. I had successfully managed to bring, deposit and leave three times, but on the fourth, as I was reversing, the tractor began to roll down the slightest of inclines and in doing so, sink in sloppy, soupy muck. I tried to go forward, I tried to go backward; I put the tractor in high range and low range. I piled logs (yes, actual logs. In a pile, as in several layers of logs, so deep was I stuck) under the tires but none of this gained me any ground whatsoever. It was so bad that I contemplated cutting down a few trees, cutting the fence of the dogrun and pushing myself out with the bucket, like last time. Fortunately, only one tree had to come down and no fence. I finally got out, parked the tractor and went about my day doing other non-tractor things.

For the first part of the week, Taiga was in the house for a few days. She noticed herself in the window one night, so Jenn went and brought her the mirror. That was entertainment, pure and simple, for all of us. We need to get out more, perhaps.

Much of my time this week has been spent constructing some sort of contraption that allows me to more easily remove the dogbox from the truck. I made it from timbers and wood that I milled last week and the week before. It is fairly large; the four timbers that make up the 'A' part of the frame are 14 foot long 4x4's. I have a pulley at the mid-point on the horizontal beam which allows me to use a wire cable and my come-along to lift the box off the truck. Once off, the box sits on a frame, also constructed from my own lumber.

While I was out building this thing, Hunter snuck out of the house while Jenn was napping. I heard the door close and out came Hunter, wearing only her pink camo boots. It wasn't long before she was in the mud and water and it wasn't long after that that the boots came off, too. I was watching her, but I was also working and as long as she didn't come near my tools or the wood, she was okay I said. I suppose I should have watched her more because she paraded into the house to show Jenn the worm she had found. I guess Jenn wasn't too upset; at least she managed to get a few photos of the kid.

Yep. Still too wet for the tractor.

If I have to live with no snow for part of the year, I'd like to put my request in now for all the days to be like today: mild temperatures that are around 14 degrees, brilliant sunshine and a slight breeze. It is the perfect kind of day, as far as I am concerned, because it is a great temperature to work in, but it is also the sort of day that begs for a coffee, a comfortable chair and area to enjoy both that preferably faces southeast. Unfortunately for me, I was only able to work today; the coffee will have to wait.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I have been planning on hauling and milling some of the blow-down and wind-thrown trees that are around the property. Today was that day. A chainsaw in one hand and the keys to the tractor in the other, I set out to salvage some wood.

Things looked promising as I bolted the radiator shroud back on to the tractor: I actually had bolts that fit. My good luck continued as I tried to turn over the tractor. The battery hadn't drained itself of its charge in a week or so of disuse. Imagine my delight as the tractor coughed and wheezed itself to life (with an encouraging spritz or two of ether) like an old man arising from a deep sleep. I was off and trotting.

The tractor:

My first tree was one that was on the edge of an open field. It had blown over and the roots had pulled themselves out of the ground. I put the chain around the soon-to-be log and cut it free. Then I went to the top of the tree and cut it free of the crown. I now had a 42-foot log to drag out of the bush. My original plan was to haul the log whole to the area where I do my milling, but it was soon pretty obvious that I was going to have to revise my plan. I couldn't get the log high enough off the ground using the 3-point hitch on the back of the tractor. Although the tractor is more than capable of hauling such a log, it would have hauled it down our gravel road and I don't want dirt, much less gravel, sticking to the logs because it will dull my chain on the chainsaw and sharpening a chain every two or three cuts is really, really tedious. Instead, I decided to cut the log into three 14-foot sections and chain them to the bucket on the front so that I could carry them to my log pile. Once I had decided to do this, things went rather smoothly. I cut down a second tree that had had its top snapped off about 35 feet up. I dragged this out of the bush and carried it to the log pile, as well.

It was at this point in my day, when things were going so well, that the level of production ground to a halt, or, more truthfully, became bogged down. To a standstill, in fact. There was a monster tree that I have had my eye on for months now. It was rotten for about ten feet up and when the winds came, it just collapsed. It fell across a gully and was easily two feet in diameter. Learning from my previous experience that cutting it into sections before trying to drag it out was easier, I proceeded to do so. Once I had it cut into what I thought were manageable sections, it took me about half an hour to drag the butt-section out of the gully. I had cut this particular section extra long because I noticed it was hollow through the middle for a ways up. I measured fourteen feet from the top of the log and cut off the hollow, rotten part. It was still hollow. I measured twelve feet from the top: still rotten. Ten feet: rotten. Eight feet: worse, if you can believe it. Six: the same and I gave up after that. If I ever need a four foot log, I know where I can get one.

Running adjacent to the gully is one of our trails. It looked as though it would be much easier if I dragged out the remaining two sections of the tree from the trail, so I drove down it, hooked on to the first section and slowly worked it up the bank. That is as far as I managed to get. Jenn, if you are reading this, please don't go any further. Really. Stop reading now. Please. For the rest of you, this is where I buried the tractor. In the middle of the trail and on a slight downhill slope: so slight it is barely noticeable, but it was enough. The ground being wet, soaked really, and the weight of the tractor had me making huge ruts in the trail. I tried to reverse back the way I had come, but I just spun the tires. Then, I made the mistake of deciding I should go ahead, find an opening and turn around and drive out. I had planned on using the lowest gear since it would be less likely to spin: reverse is a faster gear than the tractors low gear. This was a bad idea. I sank the tractor about a foot and a half into the soft, mucky ground and all I could do, both in forward and reverse, was spin the tires. My only option at this point was to use my bucket to push myself backwards, which I did, for roughly three hundred feet, gaining a foot to two feet at a time. I made a huge mess of the trail (see, Jenn, I told you to stop reading) and I never did managed to get the rest of the tree out.

I think I'll wait until the ground dries out and hardens up until I drive back there again.

This is what I managed to get hauled to the log pile:

Don't do a musher any favours.

First of all: if you are ever thinking about offering a favour to a musher, or anyone that has a few dogs, be careful. Us mushers are a tied-to-the-house lot and when an opportunity arises to spend some time away from the house and have our dogs taken care of, we tend to take it. Secondly: be careful what you volunteer to do for said musher or dog owner, because we don't generally ask our friends to help us move or to help build a shed or even help cut our firewood. We ask them to scoop poop.

A while ago, during the winter, a musher friend of mine offered to look after my dogs for the weekend, while Jenn, Hunter and I went down south to visit my parents. So when he asked me if I would be able to help him out while he went on a vacation, I was happy to return the favour. Since my friend already had somebody arranged to feed his dogs, and this is someone who has been looking after these dogs for many years so the feeding method doesn't have to be explained to me (we are also a fussy lot) I get to make sure they all have water and a poop-free area. It's nice though, to be able to see someone elses dogs in their yard and compare similarities and contrast the differences. It is also a good way to get another perspective on things, like better tie outs (more on this later) or ground cover and things that probably don't interest anybody but the mushers I know. In fact, I have discussed at length about water pails/cans/buckets and the merits of each with my dogsledding friends. "At length" read: over an hour. Most people would perhaps tend to think "It's a container. With water in it. End of discussion... what's for lunch?" but there are many nuances that escape the non-doggie set and so, to finally conclude my thought, it is nice to see how other people do things.

Lou's Dog yard:

It is also nice to spy. My friend has a dog (Boris) in his yard that is a pretty much a 'who's-who' of sled dogs. He has both Pluto and Burner in his pedigree, which, trust me, are great dogs. There are many, successful mushers who agree that any winning teams in either sprint or mid- to long distance have these two dogs in their bloodlines. I am keeping my eye on him because he is going to be the father of our next one, possibly two litters. The spying comes into play because my friend already has two litters of puppies from Boris and a female of great athleticism and intelligence and I want to more or less gauge their growth and development. This way, Jenn and I can choose who best to breed Boris to when next spring rolls around. We have a few dogs in mind, but with my new position on the inside, perhaps we will be able to control the results more. Boris is a larger dog than I like to have in the yard, but all his offspring seem to be fairly small, due to the size of the mother. If this is the case and his pups stay small, then we will for sure choose one of our better, smaller females to breed.

Boris

Boris, again.

Some of Boris' pups

I guess that is enough of the future plans for the kennel: any further writing and I'll start talking about coat, feet and genetics, so it's best left where it is, for the sake of any readers who are still here and for the sake of brevity.

Jenn and Hunter came with me to my friends place this morning. I will be doing this for a week and since I start work in the afternoons, I wanted to make sure I left myself enough time to get to work. In all, it takes me about an hour and half to do the rounds. This includes watering the dogs, as well. Hunter was pretty excited to see all the new dogs; my friend has about forty currently, having sold a few after the racing season was over. This friend is a very good racer and his dogs are sought internationally. How sought after? He sold a lead dog for $10, 000 (!) Once Hunter and Jenn had said hello to all the dogs, they went to look for frogs down the trail while I finished.

Looking for Frogs

I mentioned earlier in this post that I would expand on tie-outs and a better system. Here goes: I finish work at around 23h00 and get home half an hour later. Since I am away in the evening, but Jenn isn't, she feeds the dogs their evening meal. This particular night, she was expecting to be late and so when I arrived home and saw the truck parked all funny, with the lights facing the dog run, I just figured that she had arrived home later than expected and wanted the lights of the truck to shine so she could go to the run and feed the dogs. Odd, though, I thought, because I have lights in the dog yard for just this reason and I know Jenn knows this. Oh well. I went in the house and Jenn met me with the whole story. Dart (is it ever anyone else?) got loose that afternoon and was running around the yard until Jenn came home. He had actually pulled his post out of the ground (I buried them three feet deep) and was dragging it all over the place: in the dog yard and out. She wasn't sure what to do with him, so for lack of any better ideas, she put him in the free run for the night. That held him until about 01h30 in the morning when I heard the dogs barking and went outside to find Dart, loose again. This time, I untied one of our pensioners, Bug, and put Dart at her spot and brought Bug in the house for the night. It was now 02h00. Hunter woke up at 06h00 so I had a short night. I went outside to feed the dogs and to fix Darts area by driving a six foot long, 2 5/8" around, nearly solid steel section of drill-rod in to the ground and hooking his chain in a loop around the base. In just over four hours, Dart had nearly pulled Bugs post out of the ground as well, and he might have succeeded had it not been for his misfortune of wrapping himself around a tree. He has been at his newly improved tie out for almost a week now and it seems to be holding. For now.

Jenn and I finished off the day by worming our dogs. That was a chore and a half to be sure. Our wormer is a liquid and has to be fed to the dogs directly; it can't go on their food, so imagine holding a dog with one hand, trying to put a syringe in it's mouth with the other and all the while the dog is squirming like a stoker with a hot coal in his pants. The dogs don't get much of the liquid, either, so it is important to make sure they get it all. We were covered in mud at the end of it, but it was more or less a success.

I drove the new to me, old to the world tractor for the first time today, but since there are no pictures I think I'll leave that for another post.

One last shot of Hunter, looking around the corner of the dog barn: