Wednesday, August 30, 2006, 18:22
That Rustic Look. . .
You should see my new fence!
Well, it's not really *my* fence. Randy built it. But I've always wanted a wood plank fence around the horse pasture.
This fence doesn't go all the way around the horse pasture, though. Not enough material for that. It's just a short section of fence. That part of the fence used to be high tensile wire, but because the distance is so short it was difficult to keep enough tension on the wire to keep the fence tight without putting so much tension on the wire that it pulled the end post out of the ground.
The boards used to build the fence are oak planks. Very old oak planks. Antique oak planks.
A friend of ours who took over the farm from his mom and dad a few years ago tore down an old granary. The planks, we are thinking, are more than 50 years old.
But what I really like about the oak boards is that I have somewhat of an emotional attachment to them. Well, not necessarily to the boards themselves, but to the man who used to own the old granary. The man who used to own the granary -- our friend's dad, who has had a series of strokes and is now living in the nursing home -- went to school with my mother in a little one-room country school not from here. Every once in a while, before he went into the nursing home, he would talk to me about going to school with my mother and sharing a desk with her and how smart she was and how good she was with numbers. He is one of the few people around any more who remembers my mother as a young girl.
After our friend tore down the granary, he talked about burning the wood planks in his wood burner. He didn't really want to burn them up. But he didn't know what else to do with them. Randy told him I had always wanted a wood fence. And the deal was done.
Randy built the fence over a week and a couple of weekends. First he had to pull out all of the old nails. That was a job in itself. Then he sunk new posts and nailed on the boards, section by section, and when he was finished, he pulled out the old posts and the old wire, and presto, the fence was finished.
So far, Kajun has not yet figured out how to scratch his tail on the new fence. But he will, one of these days. Randy says he has a couple of spare boards, in case Kajun gets too vigorous in his scratching and breaks one of them.
Kajun did use the fence today, though. The gnats have been driving him crazy and have chewed him bloody on his belly where he can't reach with his nose and where he can't reach with his tail.
While I was putting antibiotic ointment on the gnat bites this morning, it felt so good, Kajun had to nibble along the top board, just to let me know he was appreciating the ointment. If I had been in a different position and closer to Kajun with my back to him, he would have turned his head and nibbled on the back seams of my pants. Horses like to scratch each other's backs, and Kajun will scratch my back for me sometimes.
Thank goodness Kajun has figured out that he is better off nipping at the seams of my pants rather than nipping at my skin. He tried it once, a long time ago, and I guess my gasp of pain was enough to convince him he ought to try the seams, instead.
Anyway, every time I sit out in the backyard, I see the new section of fence. Over the years, the boards have been weathered to perfection, so I'm not inclined to do anything else with them. Except enjoy that rustic look!
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, August 29, 2006, 21:42
Drought Conditions
The way things look around here now, with lots of bright green grass in the lawn and the hayfield starting to recover, it's difficult to tell that we really are suffering from drought conditions.
In the past month, we have gotten 7 inches of rain. That's as much rain as we got in the four-month period from the first of April until the end of July.
The rain came too late for much of the corn and soybean crop around here and for many of the gardens, although, if it doesn't freeze too early, my squash and Randy's pumpkins *might* make something of themselves.
A few areas of the county did get enough rain to help the corn pollinate and to set ears, but then last week, those areas got hit by thunderstorms with golf ball size to softball size hail.
It was the same line of storms that hit areas of Minnesota, including in and around Minneapolis and St. Paul, with grapefruit sized hail.
So much for the corn and soybeans that were managing to hang on. The stalks and bean plants are little more now than pulverized stumps.
Rural Route 2 News subscriber Deanna sent me this URL for a story about the drought in the plains states. The drought is so bad in South Dakota that the Corn Palace is not going to redecorate this year. There's not enough of a corn crop to allow for replacing the existing corn.
Around here, we can certainly relate to conditions where there's not enough rain one year and not enough snow the next year so that the following summer, the drought gets even worse. The drought in the plains states has been compared to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
And you know a drought is bad when a state's governor issues a proclamation for state residents to pray for rain as has South Dakota's governor.
But you know what? It doesn't matter whether we live in areas that are affected by drought, because in the long run, the drought IS going to affect us all -- higher prices for everything from cereal (Corn Flakes, for example) to cans of shortening (which usually have soybean oil listed among the ingredients) to the price for hamburger (seeing as farmers are selling off their cattle early because they won't have enough feed to get them through the winter; in a few years, when beef cattle are scarce, the price of beef will go up accordingly).
And not only that, but drought in the plains states and the Midwest is going to make it more difficult for us, as a nation, to work on producing ethanol as an alternative fuel to help reduce a little of that dependence on foreign oil.
I'm thinking maybe we ought to all pray for rain.
LeAnn R. Ralph
