April 10, 2008

  • The Clean Up Has Begun

    Twenty-five years I have lived on this farm and I have silently struggled to clean up the messes that have sprung up around here.  It has been a constant tug of war with my father-in-law.  In the spring I would clean up the piles of lumber and scrap that would appear throughout the rest of the year as he went to auctions or made deals with people to haul away the bits and pieces that they no longer wanted but couldn’t throw away.  He was a packrat.  Now he has passed away and I have to struggle to clean up the mess that selling his house and our fire has left behind. 

    DSC08228

    So day before yesterday Ian and I made a great start.  Last summer we had made hay like there was no tomorrow and we thought that we were going to build a barn so the clean up got put on a back burner.  I think the fire damage was too raw for everyone too and we just weren’t ready for that big job.  But now everyone is ready to see that mess buried and gone.  So we used tractor buckets and started to put the mess into the hole left by the old loading dock.

     

    DSC08229

    This is the pile that resulted from selling grandpa’s house and the resulting cleanup of that.  We sorted out the scrap metal that could be sold and put it into a dumpster.  Then we sorted out what wouldn’t rot down such as plastic and put that into another dumpster.  Then we buried the rest.  We used the piles of dirt that the trackhoe man left from putting out the barn fire.

     

    DSC08230

    Many trips back and forth with the tractors sorting throughout the piles and then burying the pile.  Next Ian is going to order a couple of loads of gravel and there is going to be a driveway going through there to the back field that he is renting.

     

    DSC08231

    This very large pile of dirt was left after the fire.  They used it to cover the smoldering hay to finally get it to stop burning.  You can see that it is as tall as Matthew is.  The white barrel in the foreground is a catchbasin that Ian made to help drain the water away from the eventual driveway that will be there. 

     

    DSC08232

Comments (4)

  • Wow!  Looks like a lot of work.  I hope it moves along without incident. 

  • We’ve got over 80 acres in South Arkansas (owned by my father) that my 94 year old grandmother lives on. Mom swears she will have a big burning when grandma passes. She is a pack rat too.

  • @P_Obrien - We can’t help but get it done and do a good job, Ian is a slave driver!!!!  Beside that, I just found out that he has a bulldozer coming in on Saturday to make the driveway!  I thought we couldn’t afford that, so he’s paying for it!  What a guy.

Post a Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *