What Do I Do With That?

I suspect many people can identify with what this blog post is going to cover at some level or another, but I suspect those of us who have a small (or maybe even a larger) farm might be able to relate to this even more readily.  When we walk around the farm during the Winter months, we often have a chance to look a little more closely at some of the things that are ignored by necessity during the growing season.  If you do not know what I mean by 'ignored by necessity' then perhaps you need to come out to our farm for a while and work with us for a few days.  You'll get it then, I suspect.

You see, we walk by things like the picture above on a daily basis during the growing season.  We have an old wood pile with a pick-up topper that was adapted to shelter chickens at one point in time.  Not far away are some large rocks and chunks of cement that have accumulated over the decades that this farm has existed.  Some few of them are the result of things we have done, but much was there when we first acquired the farm and became its new stewards.

It's the snowy February days that we stop and look at things like this because it is often a safe time to consider it.  Why?  Well, it is unlikely we'll be able to do much about it at this moment - for one.  And, we actually have the luxury of a few moments to even bother to consider doing something with it - for two.

We actually have designs on the topper, but that project never seems to make the top 100 for our projects list.  The rocks?  Well, they don't usually even make a list.  The wood appears now and again on our lists, but it rarely lasts for long.  Part of the reason for this is the uncertainty we have.  What exactly should we do with/about these things?  If you don't have a good direction, it's pretty unlikely that you'll go any further than look at it and say, "Hmm.  Might want to do something about that someday."  It gives us new perspective into the "Pa Kettle" attitude.  No reason to get uptight about it if it's not really causing a problem and it isn't critical to whatever else is going on.

The other thing to consider is that the wood pile and the rock pile both provide an area that we don't disturb often where some wildlife could reside.  We admit that we are picky about what tends to reside there since some are not the best of neighbors.  But, we do try to be understanding to the needs of nature.

There are moments, however, when I look around and hope that we're not getting too terribly close to the Pa Kettle philosophy of things.  This little tacked on walkway was built at the time the Harvestore went up (sometime in the 1970's?) as a shelter to cover the auger.  It hadn't been in use for some time prior to our moving to the farm and we've had no use for this area ourselves.  The roof was already mostly gone when we moved here and once a roof goes...

We had a couple of good poofs of wind this past Summer and one of them did its best to finish the job, so to speak.  I walked by it this Winter and wondered, what should I do with that?  Clean it up?  Sure.  But, then what?  It doesn't help that it is in a low-traffic part of our farm.  And, as I said, where do we put that on our list?  Number 214, I suspect.  Not good chances it will reach the actual, "it could get done" section.  Not that I am asking for something to occur that puts it up higher on the list.  That sort of thing is usually mildly catastrophic in nature and we really don't need to do that, thank you very much.

Then there are things like this.

We took this flair box off of a running gear so we could make our new portable hen building that has served us so well.  This box has plywood sides that were beginning to show their wear.  That, and we were moving away from using flair boxes for transporting things once we purchased Rosie the tractor with her bucket.  So, now what do we do with the flair box?  We can just keep letting it sit here until it looks like the lean-to I suppose.  But, despite the theme of this post, we really don't like to leave that many things lying around in a terrible state of repair.

Until next time, you will find us wandering around the farm asking - "What do I do with that?"