apparently there is a trick the people in california don't know about how to make it raIN... you go out and spread grass seed and it draws a huge gully washing storm right to the spot of your grass seed and takes it all down hill ... where it germinates into lush green swamp..
i knew that storm was coming-- every alert system was 100%-- people love to pass around disaster information... so even thne guy at the gas station warned us...
so i went home and got down on my knees with my screwdrever and soup spoon and tried to redirect teh stream that the last storm had defined-- all i needed was about a 6 inch barrier to get the water on down the driveway and not across was was to be the new lawn... i don't know if i was succdessful-- stay tuned...
alot of my existance has been water related -- especially the downhill kind of water-- after my house burned down i couldn't leave the property because i had a barn full of animals-- so i moved in a house trailer and connected it to the water source which had been to the house ...-- being january first, we could not immediately dig the 4' hole to run the water--- so we laid it on the ground and burried it in 2 feet of horse manure-- which had enough heat in it to keep it from freezing if we left it dripping. the pipe to the barnh was ok .. and down 4 feet to a "gate valve" dowwn 4 feet that waS ON-OFF and drained the pipe below frost level.. GWEN AND JANINE- AGED NOT TOO OLD.(6 AND 4?) ... WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR WATERING AT NIGHT ..
the only problem was... ocasionally one or two drops of water would freeze the handle- and it was sometimes possibel for 2 children to cup their hands and breathe on it to loosen it... it was discovered that every small child has about 1/2 cup of warm fluid which can be used to loosen the handle. PROBLEM SOLVEDD.
an error of construction of the" new house" meant the upstairs "deck" tipped slightly toward the house which collected considerable water and sent it down into teh "sitting room" - sometimes a trash can would hold the deluge... but if a large overnight storm was predicted i found i could fill two trash cans at once with careful siphoning. that lasted for a while til i finally realized i could drill a 1/2 inch hole in the floor and put a funnel in it to run the water down into the garage. this took up alot less room - and didn't seem to bother th horse we had in the garage- but that is another story .
we did try and fix it, but it was a huge lesson in "water will do whatever it wants to do"I AM TOLD THERE IS MORE WAter due here today.
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now about this soup spoon and screw driver for digging devices... i have all manner of post hole diggers- most notably 2 hinged shovel thyp things you pound down into t he proposed hole and lift and separate which removes a shovel full of dirt-- that is in the pictures of the ads that sell the things... however... this is new england-- and all you need is one pebble to hold those shovel things apart, and you will remove only the pebble and leave the dirt in th hole.
i know a bit about post hole digging... object is to make the hole as small as possible--- put in th e post-- stuff rocks in next to the post with handfulls of dirt-- an d it will stay there --- alot around here were done by me in the 1980's the spoon and screw driver worked as well as anything... til i got a tractor with a back hoe.
the hole with a back hoe is easily 2 feet wide so teh rock wedging process is out- the object became ---mix concrete and pour it right around the post .
and as i got older and older-- i got wiser and wiser and lazier and lazier--- i found if i got the bottomn of the post solidified the fence would hold teh top steady and with time.. and rain dirt would get packed in all the vacancies.
and i got even lazier... i found -- dig the hole-- stick the post in- tie some hay strings to keep it verticle break open a bag or two of cement-- throw the torn bag and contents in the hole-- add a bucket of water-- cover with dirt--- and go to the next.
it seems to work... all the posts around the pond are done that way,.
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the fence that needs attention is the split rail stuff.. the 30 year old posts have finally rotted. has to be done "commercially" and is awfully expensive- i honestly don't know what is keeping the donkeys from pushing that fence flat... prayer???
