Moving Forward..

we started with our permanent fencing! That has been a long time coming.. tore out all the t-posts and field fencing (Thanks to Marc for taking all that off our hands!) We could have maybe sold a little of that for a few bucks, but oh well.. I just wanted it gone and he was happy to oblige.

This past weekend was Labor Day Weekend, I joked on FB that I didnt get the memo that you are supposed to rest over that weekend, not work harder than normal! Oh well... we had shit to get done. :) I always like to take Fridays off over holiday weekends so that I can get that extra day. Plus, we had originally hoped to be able to go camping, but that just was nowhere near a reality. I did manage to squeeze in a ride on Friday at Mann Rd with my friend Rachel and Wendy. I was not at all happy to feel that Edgar is "off" again! I'm fairly certain it is in his shoulder... He seemed to strain his shoulder/leg a few weeks back when Derek was riding him up the big hill at Lords Hill, then he seemed fine for the Ladies Ride, I didnt notice a limp and Shana didnt feel one.. but as I rode him 2 weeks after that he definately was limping.. GRRR! So he now has more time off to recover.. I am guessing he re-strained his shoulder out running in the pasture or maybe his leg got stuck in some muck or something.. there are some soft spots out in the pasture under all that new clearing that was done. I will be happy to get him back home so I can monitor him and ensure he is not out being a silly horse! :)

So that puts us back to the fencing.. Saturday we had set aside to get the fencelines cleared, get ready for Sunday & Monday when dad's fencemen would be there to set our wood posts. Marc came over to get the wire and he mentioned he had a chainsaw with him.. OH you dont say!! Well it clicked that we have quite a few trees that needed to come out before the fence or it would be too hard to drop them later.. So we spent the next 4.5 hours downing trees with the help of dad and the tractor! I didnt count, but I think we took out about 12 trees.. many of them were small leafy bundles of trees, so it's not like we took out 12 big Evergreens! But the entire pasture is riddled with branches and leaves and trunks.. Marc plans to come back in the future and cut it all up for wood. It was perfect getting them down though, a few leaned towards the neighbors quite badly and I always worried about the potential of having to utilize our homeowners insurance on someone else's home! Those particular neighbors never once came out to talk with us or see what was up, they just stood in the window (like we couldnt see them) and watched us.. very odd! Oh well, guess everyone cant love us! lol

We tried to watch a movie Saturday night, but we were so exhausted and the movie was super slow, we called it quits at about 9pm.. I do believe that is the earliest we've gone to bed in a VERY VERY long time.. I'm talking years! I also think the previous weekend hay-ordeal-lack-of-sleep had finally caught up to us.

Sunday morning the guys showed up bright and early at 8:30 am to start setting posts. We busted our asses all day.. all of us! My parents were there, dad on the tractor for most of the day.. mom and I never really stopped moving.. we didnt play the "oh we're just the weaker women" We filled in where necessary and the 6 of us finally stopped after the first half of posts were set. Quite a few neighbors stopped by to see what all the commossion was about.. we had chainsaw going all day Saturday, tractor all day Sunday, a big dumptruck was in the driveway that Derek had to paint for work, wood and flatbeds filled our driveway.. The company that provided the wood sent us some 10' posts instead of the 8' I ordered (no extra charge) so the privacy fence section looks like we are building a fortress! One of our horsey neighbors stopped by and said "Are you bringing a Stallion home?" LOL I think she was serious... It will all look normal once the posts are cut down to size.

On Saturday afternoon Derek had attempted to drive the dumptruck back to his work with me following, to get it out of the way instead of waiting for his co-worker to come on Tuesday to get it. As we left the driveway, I realized he was struggling with getting the truck into the higher gears and I could hear him grinding just a bit, then he'd come to an almost stop in the road to get it back into lower gears and start over.. we rounded that first corner on our road and as he again had to come to an almost stop, I was really glad to see him pull in a driveway, turn around and put the truck back in our own driveway! LOL Nice try... but we'll leave the dumptruck driving to the CDL pros...

Late afternoon on Sunday as we were finishing up, a little escavator showed up at the house and Derek/co-worker were able to finally pull up all that old concrete from our yard pile that I have been less than enthused about since it was placed there. The concrete was the old foundation strips from under the mobile and when they pulled the mobile out, needed somewhere to put the concrete and we didnt have a plan at the time for it so it went there.. Derek always wanted to create a raised flowerbed over the concrete, I was not a fan but we were kinda stuck with it.. so now that it's gone, we can tractor out the rest of the dirt and have a full yard again which eventually will turn into the garden area Derek plans to establish in the future. We joked this past weekend that projects always are classified as "eventually!"

Sunday evening we finally finished that slow movie.. The Soloist. Good movie but I was dissappointed.. didnt feel like it really went anywhere and just was hohum overall. The guys showed up Monday at 8:15 and we spent the rest of the day setting the other half of the posts.. that was A LOT of posts in 2 days! I paid them for 15 hours of work.. I think they were happy to be done, they worked really hard and I'm grateful to have gotten it all done. The rest of the fencing we can do on our own with my dad's assistance and guidance. Our concrete purchases were more than double what I had initially thought would be needed so that put a big dent in the pocketbook. BUT those posts are not going ANYWHERE!! lol

We were just exhausted Monday night, but so happy to have this phase of the fencing done! I'd ideally like to get the horses home in a week, but I dont see that happening just yet, we still have a lot to do plus we want to bring in another truck/trailer of gravel to expand the sacrifice area and plan to permanently fence that too, to match.

Ellie update: She is doing great! :) She can now jump onto the chairs (even though she sometimes whines like she cannot), she is sleeping great and finally goes in the crate w/o acting defiant about it.. lol She is still not up on the cuddling thing, but occassionally she'll slow down enough to snuggle up.. She is 15 weeks old today and now that she's had her full set of puppy shots, she'll start learning what a leash is and venturing out into the world. She 'sits' pretty darn well, she is learning 'wait' and 'stay', we still struggle some with 'come'. Might need obedience training classes to help me to teach her that. She comes running most times when we call her name, but other times she just looks at us and says "Yeah, I dont think so, I'm having too much fun on my own!" We call her our little "squeeky toy" because she squeeks a lot!

So whats up next? More fencing.. we need to nail in brackets to all the posts and then measure/cut every 2x6 for every opening between posts as they are not perfectly set at 8' lengths.. maybe get the boards up by the end of the weekend and wire to follow down the near road. We also have a couple guys interested in taking out our Black Walnut tree by the front yard.. we've listed it for free on CL to anyone that will take it down. It is a BEAUTIFUL tree!!! I really hate to take it down, even the neighbor is sad we are removing it, BUT it is more annoying than beautiful and I'm hoping someone can get out sooner than later to remove it.. Cant finish the sacrifice area until it is gone.. I will be sad when it is gone, but I will be happy knowing my flower beds are not being destroyed by leaves and I'm not out raking every day in the yard and in the corral.

Tootles for now.. I will try to remember to get some new batteries for the camera so I can start posting pictures. :)