Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Checked the news first thing this morning to see if the election cycle was still completely insane.  Yup.  Tuning it out again...

My friend and neighbor Tim D. called yesterday morning.  We had a nice conversation (mostly about our tree-nesting goose!) and then he shyly revealed the real reason for his call: he needs my help digging another ditch.  Unbeknownst to us, on Tuesday he lost all water to his house.  After some troubleshooting with the help of an electrician, he determined that the wires powering the pump (running from his house to his well) were broken somewhere.  Somehow we must have done that when we replaced his water pipes last fall.  At the moment he's got a power line running over the ground so they have water, but we need to get that underground and protected (especially from his horses!).  So this morning I'm headed over there with my tractor, and we'll dig an 18" deep trench from his house to the well.  We're going to do it right in the top of the last (4' deep) trench we dug, to minimize the damage to his yard.

After Tim called, I headed out to my barn to do something I needed to do anyway: ready my tractor for some digging.  This coming Saturday I'm going over to another neighbor's (Alan L.) to help dig out some big shrubs (with my backhoe) that are impinging on his orchard.  I've had the backhoe dismounted all winter, to make snowplowing easier.  So I spent a couple hours putting it back on (pretty easy, actually) and then lubing it.  What a mess it is to lube that thing!  I didn't count them, but there are something like 50 zerk fittings (as at right).  I used my tractor a lot since the last time I lubed it, so every single one of these fittings was caked with greasy dirt.  That means I had to dig out the dirt around each one (with a stick), clean it with a rag, connect my grease gun, fill it with grease, disconnect the grease gun (sometimes a challenge!), and then repeat for the next one.  By the time I got finished with this, I was covered with grease from head to toe.  I had to strip, throw my clothes in the wash, and take a shower myself when I got done :)

Late yesterday we took a drive out to Porcupine Reservoir.  The main reason we went: we had spotted a paddock with a dozen or so very pregnant female goats late last week, and we figured by now they should have hatched.  They had!  I don't know why baby goats are so cute, but they sure are.  Too bad they don't stay that way :)  We didn't see much other wildlife, except for a rare sighting (our second time in two years) of a rabbit.  Yes, a rabbit.  For reasons we cannot fathom, rabbits are quite rare here.  The reservoir was not quite full, but it's level is only about 10' or so below the overflow point.  The irrigation water won't start being drawn until toward the end of April, so we've still got almost a month for it to fill those last few feet – and the snow in the high country has yet to melt...