Tree color west along driveway at sun up
Thursday morning I was up at 5AM and got my post up. I had some breakfast and sat down for a while after going to the barn to turn off the freezers and open them up to warm up. Then I got up, found four 5 gallon buckets and lids and got them washed up.
My #2 intern arrived early so I finished washing the buckets. I had also started to collect the supplies together for washing the barn freezers.
We went out and got our fencing supplies and got started up by the barn on the north middle pasture fence.
You can’t tell in the photo but someone who has weedwacked this fence line in the time since July 2025 wadded up loose wire instead of pulling it out and attaching it to an unbroken wire.
It took a very long time to straighten all that wire out so it could be used. Along tree lines we also have to walk out into the pastures as far as the tree drip lines to find downed branches. That’s about 20’ – 30’ multiple times for each section. So we really walk about 4 or 5X as far as the section of fence we do.
Once that was finished we headed out into the back 40 along the south side.
We did the walking for branches ahead of fence repair as I would be driving the truck down along the fence in the cleared out area as the truck had fence posts, etc we’d need and it was too far to walk back and forth.
The young man who did the weedwacking hadn’t been able to do the back of the fence well and I ended up cutting a ton of stuff back to keep the bittersweet vines from growing onto the fence next spring.
We were 1 section (of 6 posts) from reaching the top of the sandhill when we ran out of time.
Back at the house, my #2 intern went in to take her double soaping shower in hopes of not getting poison ivy. Then it was my turn.
My #4 helper had arrived early so she set about filling the buckets with hot water and getting them into the back of my car. She made me a lunch while I brushed out my newly washed hair. I ate and we headed up to the barn to start scrubbing the 2 freezers.
We each took a freezer. Hers was the one we thought might not work and wasn’t as dirty as the other one. I think the lid had been shut on the “good” one and it had started to mildew.
I got most of mine done except I couldn’t reach the bottom. I couldn’t breathe bent over like that. So she had to do that one’s bottom while I washed as much of the outsides as I could reach. It turned out we’d brought plenty of water so we were able to do a pretty good job.
We cleaned up and turned the freezers on. Back at the house we unloaded the car and I was totally wiped out. She had another hour of work and set to washing the freezer baskets and dividers. I couldn’t believe she got them all done!
I watched a documentary after supper and was in bed just after 7:30PM.
On Friday my #2 intern will be here. Back at fencing, we have to do over the sandhill and across the back around to the trees, of the back 40 project. I doubt we’ll make it farther than that.
More double soap showers and my #3 helper will arrive at 12:30PM. We have a lot of prep stuff to do for the freezer move and we need to get the fairy, birdbath, and rain gauge inside. I hope to see if the rosemary survived and dig up at least one to bring inside. If there’s still time I hope to get all the butternut and acorn squashes brought inside. I doubt we will have time to clean them for curing. That will have to happen next week.
I have an event in the evening. I had hoped to go tag saling with my #2 intern on Saturday morning, but I’ve not seen many tag sales listed. So we may just do more prep for the freezers.
