The To-Did list.

Sometimes I hit the end of the day, and I think I didn't get anything done. So I make a "To-Did" list, as the closest approximation of the past tense of "To Do".

This is one of those days... so here's my To-Did:

1) 6:00 am: Got up. That's an achievement all on its own, because it was very windy here last night, and I have a hard time sleeping when it's windy.
2) Fed ponies and dogs.
3) Made breakfast (homegrown poached eggs, homemade biscuit with homemade strawberry-raspberry jam, fresh steamed asparagus). Ate delicious breakfast.
4) Mucked stalls, turned out ponies, fed chickens and baby chicks.
5) Put away all the tools we are done with for the run-in sheds, cleaned up painting stuff, washed dishes, general straightening.
6) 9:00 am: Made second cup of tea, started laundering the winter Carhartts, got to work on page proofs for Chapter 2.
7) 11:00 am: Finished laundry, went to FedEx to ship Chapter 1 and 2 page proofs.
8) Stopped at Utah Tea Room to discuss erroneous charge on University charge card. Back to accounting I go on Tuesday.
9) Stopped at C.A.L. Ranch to pick up: squeaky toy for Captain, new muck rake, new drill bit, rope clamps.
10) 12:00 pm: returned home, had lunch
11) Groomed and rode Trinket and Music Man, chatted with a visiting vet and Jo
12) 3:15 pm: Supervised Braxton (aka Bracken and Stockton) as they drilled, hammered, and bolted field shelter walls. My wrist is not exactly up to holding the cordless drill yet after yesterday.
13) 4:30 pm: got to work on Chapter 13 copyedits.
14) 6:30 pm: fed ponies and dogs, returned to Chapter 13.
15) 7:25 pm: finished Chapter 13 copyedits, except for writing more thought-provoking multiple choice questions, if I can think of any before I have to ship it tomorrow...
16) 7:30 pm: wrote To-Did list.
17) 7:40 pm: John called!
18) 8:30 pm: finishing To-Did list.

Do I know why I sometimes feel like I didn't get anything done? Because I'm insane, that's why. ; )

That's a typical day, more or less... I'll bring ponies in and shut up chickens at 9:30. Between now and then: shower time!

Maisy's Shelter

In case you were wondering what these things look like! They are 12x12, with a 2-foot overhang off the front. So, when you come to think of it, we've more or leas rebuilt the barn, in four separate pieces!

Surprises...

John left for Seattle on Sunday, and won't be back until June 22-ish. This means extra chores for me, but it also means I get to plan a surprise! We have an accidental tradition that every time he goes away for an extended period, I do some mammoth project, like replacing the floors in the kitchen (recall the $140 plywood floor that I drew on with a Sharpie to make it look like old barn floor) or build a tack room or repaint the bedroom renovate the cottage or... Well, the list goes on. What will it be this time? I'm not tellin'!

I have finally received page proofs for my book---this is where I get to see it all laid out, with pictures and everything, for the first time! It is so exhilarating to see itmlooking like an actual book! I finished corrections on chapter one yesterday, and will do chapter two today, and send them back together. Simultaneously, I'm finishing copyedits from the end of the book (in chapter 13 now), which is a little confusing.

On Satuday, before John left, we got the roofs and most of the walls on the field shelters. I spent the day up on the roofs with the drill, attaching aluminum roofing to steel beams with self-tapping screws that occasionally didn't 'tap'. Just today, I woke up without sore arms, which is good, because Jo is coming to help finish the up on this rare sunny day between rain storms!

I watched the most amazing movie yesterday, although i can't say quite why it was so great. It's called 'Grey Gardens', and builds on a documentary of the same name that came out in the 60s or 70s. It's about an aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy, who become completely non-functional, and live in a ramshackle mansion together. Just a riveting story, kind of about what happens to people when they spend too much time alone! Fortunately, I don't have to worry about that, even with J out of town! Between friends and neighbors and Smokey putting his nose in my face at 6 am, there's very little opportunity for me to go off the rails! Note to self: apparently cats actually encourage that kind of disengaged behavior---there always seem to be dozens of them in these kinds of stories.

Off to finish chores, and then chapter two before Jo gets here. Sunshine today-hooray!

And After

When it's raining, clean the garage! Especially of you've got two little boys hanging around wanting to help with any jobs you have to do! Welcome Stockton and Bracken, to the Bellwether Farm never-ending to-do list! Good thing you are a couple of horse-crazy little boys...

Oh, and by the way, we are ready, in case the rapture happens tomorrow, apparently at 6pm. Much room for loot in this newly-cleaned garage!

And we've finally got the garden in (everything but corn, pretty much), and went to a U-Pick place to get 18 pounds of asparagus for $1.50 a pound. All spring, I've been saying that I wonder what it would be like to get to have so much asparagus that you'd be sick of it, and WANT it to end until next spring. Maybe I'm about to find out...

Before

Unexpected Gratitude

Every once in a while, something happens that makes you realize that there was a fork in the road a while back. You took one road, but you might not have. And then you'd be over there, on that other road. And that would totally suck. I was standing in the shower after cleaning the garage today, when I realized all of the following:

1) it's been raining since February, with snow in the mountains reaching levels 400% above normal.
2) we are relatively dry here.
3) every boarding stable in Northen Utah is completely unprepared for rain---you're lucky if they will do turn out in the rain.
3) some people are worrying about moving their horses because of the flooding.
4) there is a serious outbreak of EHV-1 that started about a mile from here. This is the disease that nearly killed Trinket 6 years ago.
5) our last boarding barn is under quarantine, with no horses allowed in or OUT. This means that at least one of those horses was exposed.
6) Utah horse council is recommending all horses stay home. Shows and clinics are being cancelled all over the place.
7) There is nowhere for the people in 3 to take their horses.
8) I am so grateful. If we had not, more or less spontaneously, decided to buy a horse farm last year, I would be in a total panic, as I waited to see if any of our four-legged friends caught this deadly disease. As it is, I have complete control over whether or not my horses are exposed. So they won't be. We are above water and (mostly) dry. And I have dozens of people to thank for helping make this possible.

Thanks to Deonne, who helped us find this place. Mickey who helped us put the financing together. Adam and Colin and Dan and Deb and John and Sheri who helped us move in. Dale and Genie who repeatedly helped us in so many ways. Bill and Nancy who taught us how to run the ditch. Shawna, who helped with lots of things, from the tack room to the field shelters. But most especially, Jo-Ann, who has been here every day, rain or shine, always ready to help out, cheer up, listen, advise, and try something she's never done before, just because she loves it here. Thank you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It could be otherwise. But it's not. And I am endlessly grateful for that.

Run-in sheds 3

And here's one with the plywood sides installed. Roof material doesn't come until next week, but it should go quickly, since it's relatively light and doesn't take much but screwing it onto the cross-bars.

In other news, we are so happy to see the sun! We might get some actual planting done today!

Run-in Sheds 2

Dale brought the tractor and helped us move the frames back to the paddock. Then Jo and Shawna kicked butt and helped us put them up. You can see one on the right in this picture, and the rest down the fenceline. We assembled all four structures by 3:30, and then I went to Logan to give a talk to an amateur astronomer society. Fortunately, my host fed me, or I might have bitten some poor astronomer!

Run-in sheds 1

When we came back from vacation, we got word that the steel frames for our run-in sheds had arrived. A little help from our friends, and we had ~2400 pounds of tube steel in the yard!

Home again...

And this one looks East, the other way, towards the mountains. Our ridiculously beautiful and beautifully engineered arena, Trinket in the back field, Music Man in his paddock, a giant pile of wood chip mulch left over from last year's trees that came down... Home.

Home again...

While the tree guy was here, he ran his bucket all the way up as high as it would go, and used his phone to snap a couple of 'aerial' photos of the ol' homestead. Here you can see the garden beds going in, along with a tree that had to come down (at the center of the semi-circle, John working on his arbor, our neighbor Dale's house, and the last of the pile of bricks, etc. that Squirrely left us and we still haven't decided how to use. At the moment, they are stacked against the back of the house.

Valley of the Gods

After our big hike, we sat on the porch at Valley of the Gods for two days. I absolutely think everyone should go and stay there at least once while Gary and Claire are still willing to take visitors. Not only is it a gorgeously restored homestead in heartbreakingly beautiful country, but it's off the grid, and a wonderful demonstration of the power of renewables. We came home with a hundred ideas for how to push the envelope a little harder.

I was so lazy there that I didn't take a single picture! (What was I thinking?!) But the internet comes to the rescue, with photos, description and contact information:

http://www.zippitydodah.com/vog/

In one of those bizarre coincidences that always seem to be happening to us, our refrigerator is failing (bear with me...), and I've been shopping around for the most energy-efficient refrigerator that we can buy. Turns out SunFrost is the thing to get, but the capital cost is a little high, so I've been hemming and hawing. But Gary is a SunFrost distributor! So we bought one. It'll be shipped to us in a couple of weeks, hopefully before the compressor in our current fridge fails completely. (But WE are backpackers, and know how to live without a fridge for a while, if necessary!) How do these things happen to us? We don't know, but we like it!

I can also recommend a Navajo Taco for your first meal out after backpacking. I mean really, fried bread covered with meat and more fried bread? It's perfect for the stomach wearied by too much freeze-dried veg and minute rice...

The vehicle

We very cleverly rented this jeep for our tour. This saved our 10-year-old car from the trauma, even if it did use a lot more gas...

Grand Gulch

Climbing out on the last day, we ran into this crazy thing. Someday, this will be an exam question in statics for my physics kids. Because it really doesn't look like it should just sit there.

Natural Arch

There are more ruins off to the right of this arch in the Wingate. We think... But not being willing to climb up there, we aren't entirely sure!

Grand Gulch

Mouse footprints. So adorable. And we're so glad they are there to clean up our crumbs!

Grand Gulch

Near the intersection of Grand Gulch and Bullet Canyon, there are genuine trees, and path-finding requires actual bush-whacking. Who knew?

Grand Gulch

I couldn't decide: a hand? or Wilson from Castaway?

Grand Gulch

Another ruin, this one at gulch level, instead of up in the cliffs. There were several more ruins up above, but this one was in a huge natural amphitheater, and was accompanied by rock paintings of... llamas?

John thinks this was a retirement home, for the elders who couldn't make it up the ladders anymore. I think they probably also all got together here a couple of times a year to figure out who was going to take out the garbage.

Grand Gulch

Deep in the gulch, at this time of year, grass grows thigh-high. Springs are still running, so water is readily available, but the main wash is empty, so the walking is relatively easy. Sort of. Because it's sand. And we all know what four hours of walking in the sand feels like!

Grand Gulch

A broken piece of pottery. My thought? Clay was pressed into a basket, then the basket was burned away, both firing the clay and leaving this nifty pattern.

Grand Gulch

Can you spot the ruins?

Ha!

We were able to walk right up to this set of ruins, called 'Split-Level House Ruin', because it's sort of like a split-level house. These ruins are all over the place, and you really begin to understand that many hundreds of people lived in this canyon over a period of more than 500 years. I couldn't get good pictures of some of the higher ruins, on the tops of the cliffs, but one in particular was interesting, because it was built at the junction of Grand Gulch and Bullet Canyon. It faced down canyon, and opposite, much higher on the cliff was a second ruin. Our working theory is that the first ruin was the lookout---on the watch for invaders. On the top of the cliff was a fire tower, to alert all the folks upstream if they needed to retreat to the cliffs. Such a tower could also alert people if there was rain on the plateau (which would mean flashfloods down the canyon, again requiring a retreat to the cliffs). The marvelous thing about Grand Gulch is that you really begin to see how the civilization worked, and how all the ruins tie together to form a community. This is very different than anywhere else we've ever been.

Grand Gulch

A classic midden heap, with a 1,000 year old corn cob. Much smaller than modern corn, but you can imagine how proud they must have been as they figured out how to breed this up from ancient maize!

Grand Gulch

Where are the ruins? Can you find them? (This is kind of unfair, because my phone takes just... phone pictures...) But there are some there, I promise! After a while, you get really good at spotting the straight lines that mean 'a person did that'. This canyon was inhabited between 750 and 1250 AD, so the ruins are more or less 1,000 years old.

Grand Gulch

Thank goodness we don't have to climb out that way!

Grand Gulch

Night one campsite. You can see several meanders of the canyon in this picture. We are traveling down-canyon, to the left, then we will make a turn to the right, to cross behind the closest cliffs, then back to the left again in front of the rearmost cliffs in this picture. The whole canyon meanders like this. And on nearly every south-facing cliff full of Wingate sandstone, you find ruins.

Grand Gulch

Wingate sandstone shears off in slabs, leaving nearly vertical cliffs. Fortunately, we were not required to climb them, either up or down. The vertical drop from top to bottom of the canyon was 1,000 feet. If you've never done this, you'll be surprised to hear that going down is much harder than going up. It's so much harder to keep your weight over your feet on the way down...

Grand Gulch

John is ready for some serious backpacking! We never weighed his pack, but it sure seemed heavier than a feed sack (50 pounds). Either it would have been much less heavy than that (depressing in one way) or much more (depressing in another). I was clever, and opted to carry the food. By day four, my pack weighed less than half what it did on day one.

Fruita

When the Mormon pioneers arrived in Capitol Reef, they found irrigation ditches dug by the natives along this creek. So they made good use of them, establishing a homestead in this mostly ridiculously forbidding region.

Capitol Reef

If we just walk over this way, I'm sure we'll get to those distant, snow-capped peaks sooner or later!

Capitol Reef

John takes a look at the Chinle formation from the Reef...