Another Seven Years

When I was a young man growing up on the farm, a guy named Joe worked for my Dad.  He was larger than life in so many ways.  He spoke Cajun French and taught me quite a few words - some I remember today and some of them he probably shouldn't have taught me and aren't fit for polite conversation.  He always had a big wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth.  He would mix Levi Garrett with Five Brothers Pipe Tobacco, stick it in his cheek until it was gone.  Serious.  I rarely saw him spit.  He would teach us things like how to be a man, how to be tough, how to work hard.  

He drove an old Ford pickup truck that had a big rusted spot on the door because he would drive with the windows down resting his wet, sweaty arm out the window.  His truck had a spare tire in the bed with a bunch of empty Dr. Pepper cans and assorted tools in the back.  Riding with him, you'd hear the crinkle of aluminum cans moving because he would pick up numerous turtles in the ditches and they would climb slowly around in the bed seeking to escape.  He'd drive to a country store and come out with a honey bun and a Dr. Pepper for us.  

We would laugh and joke throughout the day teasing each other, making a hot, miserable day bearable.  When we did something wrong, he wasn't afraid to give us a good cussing.  In the rare occasions when we did something right, he'd praise us and would be proud of us like we were his kids.  He was very good to us, and I remember him fondly.

I was thinking about him this weekend.  Russ and I were working on a project Saturday at the church that involved moving dirt and working with shovels.  Working on a rice farm, you use a shovel every day.  We would go walking through the fields and cut levees with Joe when it was almost time for harvest.  Cutting levees is a tough job.  Now tractors do it, but back then, we did it with shovels,  He would get on the top side and I'd get on the bottom side and we would cut a ditch in the levee to allow the water to flow from one cut down to the next lower one.  We would continue so on and so forth until we had cut all the levees and the water flowed on out of the field so that the land could dry for harvest.

Inevitably, working together with shovels, he on the top side and me on the bottom, facing each other, our shovels would hit.  "Oh, no!" he'd say, punctuated with a term of endearment that isn't appropriate to write in this day and time, "You know what it means when our shovels hit, don't you?"  "It means we're gonna work together for another seven years."  My son, Russ' shovel and mine hit this weekend.  I instantly thought of that, and I told him the story of what Joe said it meant.  (I hope Russ and I work together for much more that seven more years.)

The old Cajun Creole superstition about working together another seven years didn't turn out to be true for Joe and I, sadly.  It's been a number of years since Joe died.  Dad called me and told me that Joe was driving the tractor and had a stroke and died.  We miss Joe!  The lone shovel stuck in the dirt in the photo above is my memorial to him and his memory.  I still smile when I think of the good times we shared. 

A Good Test for the "Raised" Barn

Earlier in the spring, we had some fill dirt hauled in and Russ and I worked like pack mules to move it out to the barn.  I didn't do much planning back when we decided where to put the barn.  I ended up putting it in the lowest part of the property.  Not good.  It is always tough to slog out to the barn in rubber boots in deep mud every time it rains, which is often in south Louisiana.  The mud is so deep, sometimes you walk right out of your boots.

My plan was to raise the level of the barn after the fact.  Never too late, right?  So we used wagons to carry out 3 dump truck loads of dirt out to the barn, building up the areas all around it.  You might be wondering why we didn't just have the dump trucks deliver the dirt closer to the barn?  It was so wet this past fall, winter, and spring, that there was no way the truck could get near the barn without bogging down.

We got the dirt in place and we've had several rains on it, but the rain this last week was the test we were looking for.  We got eight inches of rain in less than 24 hours - a real gully washer. 

We even got a tornado that came through down the road.  It did some damage at our friend's home that gave us the quail eggs.  We had a lot of sticks that fell out of the trees that will take some work to pick up, but fortunately no major damage.  The garden really didn't need all this rain, but there's nothing we can do about it.  The green beans look sickly and yellow.

So it is time to check out the barn.  How did our new "raised barn" work out?  Ordinarily, the barn was in a low location, so the cows would find a high place from which to weather the storm.  Now, the barn IS the high place!  You can see the two little bulls, Aussie and Clarabull, as well as the baby goats and a few chickens seeking refuge under the new barn expansion atop the new dirt.

Here's from a different vantage point, looking out from within the barn.  Everything outside is muddy, but from here, we are high and dry!

It took a lot of dirt and a lot of work, but the cows and goats appreciate the effort.

I'd give the new raised barn a two thumbs up rating after passing the 8 inches in less than 24 hour rainfall test with flying colors.

Lord Plant My Feet On Higher Ground

I’m pressing on the upward way,

New heights I’m gaining every day;

Still praying as I’m onward bound,

“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground." 

Refrain:

Lord, lift me up and let me stand,

By faith, on Heaven’s tableland,

A higher plane than I have found;

Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

At our church, we often sing the hymn whose lyrics I've posted above.  It teaches that we are to aspire to be closer to God with no desire to stay living a "low" life, but a life that reaches above to new heights everyday to a place where God wants you to be - A life unencumbered with fear, doubt, temptation and sin.  Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

That has been a prayer in both the spiritual and secular sense this past few months with all the rain.  We have been slogging through mud for much longer than I would have liked.  To alleviate a portion of our struggle, we purchased 3 loads of dirt to build up the area around our barn.  Here is an update on our attempt to get out of the mud and "plant our feet on higher ground."

Between the rains we've attempted to build up the area around the barn with dirt.  It has been a slow and arduous process as we've done it with wagons and wheel barrows.  The piles of dirt are way over by the house and the barn is in the southeast corner of the property.  I installed a new garden gate and Russ and I labored to cart the dirt down the garden path and out the gate.  We learned quickly to latch the gate as chickens kept darting through to eat on the tender winter grass growing in the garden.

Immediately upon exiting the garden, we were mired deep in the mud.  Tricia and Russ suggested that we build a corduroy road but not with logs.  We made ours with leftover tin from the barn and landscape timbers and 2x4's.  This ended up being a great idea! We no longer sunk in the mud but were able to pull the wagon and push the wheel barrow right across to the ultimate destination.

After many trips the level of the dirt around the barn began to rise!  I estimate the soil level is 10 inches higher than it was previously.  The dirt is not quality topsoil, but is "fill dirt."  It has a high clay content and tends to pack down really tight.  We learned as the cows walk on it, they compress it.  As a result we've hauled more dirt as the cows compact it.  The cows and goats really like having a high place on which to stand, out of the muck and the mire. 

Once we finished with the north side of the barn, we began filling the south side of the barn.  We got that completed on Saturday.  In so doing, we eliminated two of the three piles of dirt.   Since rainwater flows from east to west on our land, the rainwater will run between the barn and the hen house.

With the one remaining pile of dirt, we'll build up the level a bit more on the south side and then fill in the east side.  If any dirt remains, I'll spread it out evenly in the barn in low spots against the eastern wall and southern wall.  It will be a happy day once we are done with this project!

I want to scale the utmost height
And catch a gleam of glory bright;
But still I’ll pray till heav’n I’ve found,
“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground." 

An On-going Project

When we built our barn, we went about it all wrong.  Don't get me wrong.  We LOVE our barn.  It's just that we didn't start things off right.  We didn't do our homework.  We decided where we wanted our barn and just began construction - without building up the level of the ground.  When you start with a poor foundation, well, trouble follows...

We noticed early on that we placed our barn in the lowest part of our property.  That's okay if you build up the area with dirt PRIOR to building.  Especially in the fall and winter, if rains fall, you have mud and lots of it.  This creates problems when your milk cows and goats have to walk through the muck and mire every single day.  The holes get bigger and deeper.  You can actually see that the cows DREAD walking through the muddy gauntlet. When you go to milk them, mud has splattered all over their bags, legs, and tail.  What a mess!

The north side of the barn is only slightly better, due to the fact that the walkway is spread out.  The whole area needs to be built up six inches or more with dirt.  If this can be done while leaving drainage for the rains, our barn can be rescued and both animal and human will be happier.

A couple of weeks ago I had 3 loads of dirt delivered to the house.  This isn't top soil.  It is mostly clay that will settle and form a hard base - a solid foundation that should have been done prior to the barn construction.  Better late than never, I guess.  The dirt was $90 per load.  Two loads were delivered right in front of the garden gate.

And a third pile was dropped about 30 feet away to the north and east.

Now the really labor intensive part of the job commences.  Since it is way too muddy to drive any sort of tractor or truck to the back, we'll have to move the dirt by hand.  We used a Gorilla Cart, which is simply a big wagon with big rubber tires and a dump bed.  We shovel loads of dirt into the wagon and pull it to the back and dump.  Then we repeat the process.  And again.  And again.  The progress is slow, but it is still progress.  We watch as the level around the north side of the barn rises.  (Compare the photo below to the second photo in this post.)  The cows and goats help to pack the dirt down.

If we could go back in time, we would have moved soil in from the beginning.  Speaking of going back in time, this post reminded me of another time we ordered loads of dirt.  The photo below was taken almost 11 years ago.  I ordered some topsoil to build up the level of the garden at the time and our boys discovered (as I did 40 years ago) that one of the best things in the world is a pile of dirt.  You can play king of the mountain!

King Russ watches as Benjamin rolls down the mountain.

You can dig tunnels, play with tractors and cars, and of course, wrestle and relish victory over your vanquished "foes."

"It's good to be da king!"

You can dig foxholes or pretend your pile of dirt is a volcano.  There's just no end to the fun that you can have with a pile of dirt!

Except 18 years later, our pile of dirt doesn't seem like it is as much fun as Russ' and Benjamin's pile of dirt!

Big Boy Does Not Like the Dog Days of Summer

We never quite get acclimated to July and August in South Louisiana.  It is hot and humid and those are just the facts.  We deal with it as best we can, often asking each other, "When do you think the first cold front will blow through?"  While we can go inside in the nice air conditioning and sit under a fan to cool off, the animals don't have that luxury.  Big Boy, our Great Pyrenees dog, loathes the summer.  With his big furry coat, he is not exactly cut out for this climate.  Great Pyrenees dogs come from a mountainous region bordering Spain and France.  Needless to say, the climate is a bit different in our lowland, swampy locale.

Big boy, however, has ways of trying to stay cool that doesn't include air conditioners or fans.  He digs holes.  Did I say holes?  I meant to say craters.  Although he has plenty of shade in his hangout in 'the grove' underneath the trampoline, Big Boy still seeks cooler temps.  Where does he find it?  In the cool dirt, of course.  A freshly dug hole unearths soft dirt untouched by the summer sun and heat.  I know it is hot and don't really begrudge his excavations as I know it cools him off.  He's a dog.  A Hot Dog.

It's just that it s never just one hole.  You see, that dirt he lays in doesn't stay cool.  It warms up due to Big Boy's body heat and the ambient temperature.  This provokes him to dig another hole...  And another and another.  I've gotten to the point where I have placed cinder blocks, ladders, wagons and all sorts of items around the base of a tangerine tree so he doesn't dig around it, expose its roots, and kill it.  This eyesore of a random assortment of digging barriers I've laid out would get us kicked out of a subdivision, if we lived in one.

The constant digging has loosened dirt and this is causing erosion problems during big rains.  This has caused me to use cinder blocks to build a retaining wall to keep Big Boy's dirt from washing down the ditch during big rains.  This was a lot of work and I'd be lying if I told you that I didn't look over indignantly at Big Boy while installing the erosion-slowing wall.

I just wish Big Boy would listen to the wise words of Will Rogers, who once said,

"If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging."

It's No Toil to Make Garden Soil

I'm not a shopper.  Doing the whole Black Friday thing is not my cup of tea.  However, Russ went to Wal Mart and came back with an amazing Black Friday special for me:  Seed Starting Mix.  Four bags for $1.  They are usually $5.99 per bag and he got a bag for $0.25.  Wow.  I was going to be purchasing some of this anyway as we're about a month away from when I normally start all my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant for the spring crop.  I use this exact seed starting mix to germinate and grow them until they put their first true leaves on.

Then I transplant them into bigger cups that have garden soil in them.  I'll have to buy the garden soil.  Or will I?  I searched around on the Internet and found a few tutorials on how to make your own.  We can do this!!  All you need are three ingredients:

1. An old rotten tree.  I walked into the woods behind the house and found the remains of a huge willow tree that has been rotting for years.

I could reach into the rotten tree and easily tear it apart.  Down on the lower portions, it was already essentially soil.  An old rotten tree is a perfect ingredient to build a medium in which to grow plants.

2. Composted manure.  Just over the fence from the rotten tree is our hen house.  Approximately half of our flock roosts in there at night, leaving their "calling cards" underneath the roosting bars.  Now I don't want to use any of the fresh "hot" chicken litter, so I used a shovel to dig about six inches below in order to get to some of the older, composted manure.

Here's a nice shovel full of it along with a photo of the producers of the stuff.  There is also an abundance of feathers in the mix.

3. Light Soil.  I found the third and final ingredient about 20 feet from the hen house.  When I roll round bales of hay out, the cows mash down a lot of the hay in the surrounding dirt while also pooping there.  Over the years, the hay/poop mix becomes a rich mix that I think would be perfect.  It is not compacted and easy to shovel.

So we have our 3 ingredients together.  Before we mix it, the rotten log needs a little bit of processing.  Using my hands, I rub the larger pieces of rotten wood over a screen, breaking up the wood into a coarse "soil" that is captured by a bucket placed beneath it.  Although I'm not concerned about leaving a few large chunks of wood in the mix.  It'll continue to rot in the garden and will sequester moisture during dry months.

This bucket of crumbled up stuff was a willow tree not too terribly long ago.  Now we've captured all the nutrients that the tree pulled out of the ground and we'll re-deposit it in the garden.

Looks like pretty good stuff, huh?

We're almost done.  Let's just mix it all up.  The blue bucket on the left is the rotten tree.  The blue bucket in the middle is the composted manure.  The brown bucket on the right is the dirt I rescued from beneath where an old hay bale was.  I simply take a shovel scoop of equal parts of each medium and mix it in the yellow bucket in the center.

I filled a Hen Scratch bag three quarters of the way full and a Dairy Ration bag three quarters of the way full and I'll store these bags in the garage until it is time to re-pot my spring starts.

This is just an experiment, but if the vegetables like this stuff, there is plenty more raw materials to make bag after bag of "free" garden soil. 

Go Dig in the Dirt

Back when I was a young boy, we would go over to my grandma's house and she would do something that I remember to this day.  She would hand us some silverware (not real silver, mind you, but still good eating utensils) and tell us to go dig in the dirt.  We would grab the spoons she gave us and we would go to a spot between her house and a few camellia bushes that grew beautiful pink and red blooms.  It was there that we would dig.

I can still remember the smell of the cool moist dirt that was in that shaded area.  It was almost black and was made up of years of decomposed leaves of live oak trees. Since there was tons of organic matter there, the soil was loose and easy to dig in and teeming with earthworms.  We would look for treasure in that soil and when we were done, we would go turn our spoons in to Grandma and go seek out another adventure.

Well 40-something years later and I still have a spoon that I like to dig with!  I don't think Tricia would appreciate me digging with one of the spoons we eat with, so I have an old spoon that I picked up somewhere.  I use it to dig holes for planting seedlings.  I also use a plastic fork for digging the seedlings out of the seed pots.

Armed with my spoon and fork, I pulled all of the tomato seedlings from the cold frame on the back porch and got them all planted in the ground.  It was nice to have that done.  Last week I had moved the peppers from the cold frame and transplanted them in the garden.  I did this at a time that coincided with about 3 cool nights.  This seemed to stress that peppers even though I had them hardening off on the back patio for a while.  They were looking a little rough and I may have even lost one of them.  Fortunately, the warmer temps lately revived the drooping peppers.

Once I had each hole dug with my spoon, I filled the hole with some organic soil, put a Tablespoon of organic vegetable fertilizer in the hole and then placed the seedling in the hole and covered it up.  I placed some compost around the little plant.  I'll keep my eye on all of our transplanted tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.  

Since this is my spoon, I don't have to turn it in to anyone at the end of my digging adventure.

Another Load of Topsoil

About a year and a half ago, we posted in THIS POST about higher ground about ordering a load of topsoil to raise the level in the garden.  The torrential rains we experienced in August 2016 reinforced the fact that we needed some more soil.  The rains soaked the garden and it seemed to never dry out. That resulted in sickly plants and even worse, a delayed fall garden.

I was determined to not fall prey to a low-lying garden area again, so I ordered a dump truck load of topsoil.  I thought it was a steep price at $220 for 14 yards of soil, but I talked to someone in Lafayette today that paid $275, so I guess it is all relative.  I moved the trampoline to the south and west and asked the dirt service guy to drop the load of soil on top of the craters that Big Boy dug underneath the trampoline.  He obliged and now I had my work cut out for me!

You move 16 tons and whaddaya get?  Another day older and deeper in debt...

Armed with a shovel and a gorilla cart and a hankering to do some good, honest physical labor, I began my task.  I wanted to get the job done before a rain came so that I could spread the soil easily throughout the garden.

My plan is to continue the job I started back in 2015 in the post I referenced in the first paragraph and that is to fill in the furrows between the rows.  I have an infestation of nutsedge or cocograss that keeps me busy in an endless weeding process.  I laid down some cardboard between the rows and began dumping the top soil on top of the cardboard, filling the furrows and then using my shovel to spread the dirt out evenly.  Perhaps the cardboard will frustrate the weeds to keep them from coming up, but I'll keep my expectations real low.  Nutsedge (cocograss) is a pernicious weed.

It took me a while, but I keep at it diligently and before you knew it, I was almost finished.  You can see the progress below.  In the garden where you can see Bull's Blood Beets and Chioggia Beets in the foreground and Swiss Chard on the next row, there aren't really rows anymore.  The ground level is all flat now.

Here is another shot looking straight down the row.  Now I ordered top soil and I must say that I was a little disappointed in this load.  If you look closely you can see dirt 'clods' and in chopping them up with a shovel, there was a bit of clay in my 'top soil.'  I wasn't real excited about putting any clay in the garden but most of the top soil was okay.

It will be beneficial to have the soil level raised by several inches.  Although drainage is certainly key, having a higher soil level will help to dry out the garden quicker.  I will say this - I was happy when the dirt pile was completely moved. Stay tuned as tomorrow, in a topic related to this post , I will give my nomination for the greatest invention ever made.

Better Late Than Never

Normally, in a building project, the first thing that is done after determining where your structure is going to be built is to haul dirt in and build the pad upon which the building will sit.  In building our barn, we went against conventional wisdom and erected our barn without bringing in dirt and building a pad.  I guess after milking in the open air in wind, rain, heat and cold for quite a while, we wanted to put up the barn quickly and omitted raising the level under the structure.  Hasty decisions are often poor ones, as I've come to learn.

Over the years, the hay/sawdust bedding we laid down in the barn, composted and raised the ground level.  In fact, it worked fine without dirt - until this year.  Above average rainfall amounts in the first five months of the year contributed to a very muddy barnyard area.  While the inside of the barn itself was high and dry due to the composted bedding, the area all around the barn was a muddy mess.  The cows and goat had to slog through ankle-deep mud to get to the barn.  It was a nasty mess for us too. The mud, on more than one occasion, caused our boots to stick and we stepped out of our boots in our sock-feet, wetting our socks.

As soon as the ground dried up, I had a load of fill-sand delivered to the house.  As it was still too wet around the barn to use a tractor to move the dirt, we did it the hard way - loading container after container with dirt by shovel, pulling the wagon to the barn, dumping it over and spreading it around the entire outer perimeter of the barn.

The Dirt Pile

It was high time (pardon the pun), to raise the ground level around the barn.  After a light rain, the dirt seemed to pack hard.  Because there was some clay in the pile, it was a little sticky, but there was a hard base as opposed to the ankle deep quicksand that was there previously.  You can view the built-up area around the north and west sides of the barn, providing a raised walkway and impeding rising water from entering the barn.

Raising the ground level around the barn

On the side of the barn with the gate, I raised the ground level about 8 feet out from the barn, providing firm footing for the animals coming inside for milking.  As with anything new, the animals were a little reluctant to walk on the dirt, wary of the change.  We stomped down the large 'clods' until they were compressed and are generally happy with the change.

Annie inspecting the new dirt pad

This shot gives you a "chicken's eye" perspective and I would estimate that the soil level was raised by about 4 or 5 inches around the outside of the barn and that should keep out the flowing rainwater that runs through the property during heavy rains.

We'll have to hold judgment until we get a big 'gully-washer to see if we'll need another load of dirt or not.  Regardless, it is much better than it was before.  If we ever have another construction project, we'll make sure to build a dirt pad at a sufficient height, especially if building at the lowest part of the property.

The Dirt Pile

A few weeks ago I wrote a post entitled, Building Forts in the Woods about our adventures growing up and building forts.  Several people commented to me about how they did the same thing when they were younger and fondly remembered the great memories they had building forts.  Benjamin was looking through old photos on our home computer and I happened to by passing by him when he was looking at the pictures below and it reminded me of more good memories.

There are a lot of expensive toys that you can buy for your kids.  Toys that require batteries, maintenance, additional investment.  Toys that break, toys that the kids quickly lose interest in, toys that you are throwing away or storing in the attic or closet before they are paid for.  As I look at the joy on my boys' faces in these pictures from back in 2008, I realized that one of their favorite toys was a pile of dirt!

I know that makes us sound like we've neglected them.  We've gotten them their fair share of cool stuff, but nothing can quite compete with having a pile of dirt delivered. We've bought a lot of LEGO mini figures, toy guns, NERF guns, etc. but none of that compares with a $75 load of dirt.  You'll note that our daughter, Laura Lee, is not playing on the dirt pile, though, so this might not be as much fun for girls, but I remember playing on dirt piles as a kid. Did you?

A dirt pile allows you to use your imagination.  You can dig a hole in the middle and pretend it is a volcano.

Up, Up, and Away!

You can storm the lines of your opponent in battle, breaking through his dug in position, hurdling the foxhole as the enemy cowers in defeat.

Surrender!

You can jump around victoriously as you reach the top of Mount Suribachi and raise the flag.  

Oh Yeah!

So who cares if you get a little dirty in the process?  That is part of the fun.  Just listen to Momma and undress at the back door.  You don't want to be dragging all that dirt in the house, not unless you want to sweep and mop.

The Thrill of Victory.  The Agony of Defeat.

Important life lessons can be learned on the dirt pile.  You learn that you don't stay on top of the mountain for long.  Pretty soon someone comes along and knocks you off your high position and you find yourself tumbling down to the valley below.

King of the Mountain

But you can't stay down for long.  Gotta get up, dust yourself off, and charge right back up to the summit!

Whoooo!

Boys will be boys and they'll get dirty and wrestle and laugh and generally have a great time.  There are plenty of dirt clods on the pile that are great fun to throw at one another.  I can remember making tunnels in dirt piles as a kid and making roads in the dirt that my Matchbox cars would drive on.  I also used my Tonka toy dump truck and toy farm equipment on my childhood dirt pile.

Looking at these pictures, I shake my head.  Russ is now a sophomore in college and Benjamin is a teenager!  It is hard to imagine how time flies by so quickly.

Come to think of it, as soon as it dries up after all this rain, I really need to get a few piles of dirt delivered to build up some low areas around the barn.  I'm sure Benjamin will get plenty of enjoyment out of it before I get a wheelbarrow and haul it off.