Out With The Old and In With The New

A common phrase for the new year, right? Well, this is even a little more literal. I finally got the new barn built and am in the process of tearing down the old one. Would it be prober to call it "De-constructing"?

I designed the barn last spring and had the plans made into construction prints. I decided I probably wouldn't live long enouth to build it myself, so I hired SMJ Homes to build it. Sounds kind of funny, but it is a home for our three horses. I think they did a great job and even ame in under budget!

After the barn was finished I started on attached corrals using old pipe that Dad had collected. I got enough done to put the horses in just in time to start feeding them around the first of December. There is still quite a bit to do on the corrals, but it can wait for spring.

My good friend Norm Kroh has joined the wrecking crew, and his wife has even helped out. They are new to this valley, they recently purchased Mervin's home and moved here from Idaho. They are great people and a good fit here I think, and they seem to like it so far.

I have to admit that this is all a little nostalgic, because I helped Dad build that barn when I was about ten I think. That would have been around 1957 0r 58. All the while I am working I wonder what Dad would have to say about the 'improvements'. I'm sure when he was a few years younger he would have loved it, but as he got older he really resisted change. I suppose that just goes with the territory.

Wildflowers of Little Mountain

Flowers are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. You don't have to get them to smile, they are always dressed up and they don't run away or hide their face.

A couple of days ago I took my camera and close up attachment for a little hike. within a quarter mile of my home I photographed the following wildflowers, and since then I have seen a couple that I missed. See how many you can identify. Answers are at the bottom.

If you think I have identified them wrong let me know.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

(14)

(15)

(16)

(17)

Here's how I have identified the flowers above. You may not consider some of them flowers and there may be different common names for some. I have also included the scientific name if I could find it.

1. Common Name: Shrubby Cinquefoil

Scientific Name: Potentilla fruitcosa

2. Common Name: Blue Lupine

Scientific Name: Lupinus Perennis

3. Common Name: Goldenpea

Scientific Name: Thermopsis montana

4. Common Name: Wild Rose

Scientific Name: Rosa acicularis

5. Common Name: Fleabane Daisy, Spreading Fleabane

Scientific Name: Erigeron divergens

6. Common Name: Wild Rose

Scientific Name: Rosa acicularis

7. Common Name: Beavertail Cactus Flower

Scientific Name: Opuntia basilaris

8. Common Name: Scented beardtongue, Palmer's penstemon, Lady Slipper (local name)

Scientific Name: Penstemon palmeri

9. Common Name: White pricklypoppy, Bluestem pricklypoppy

Scientific Name: Argemone albiflora

10. Common Name: Desert Globemallow

Scientific Name: Sphaeralcea ambigua

11. Common Name: Bananna Yucca, Blue Yucca, Datil Yucca

Scientific Name: Yucca Battica

12. Common Name: Desert Paintbrush
Scientific Name: Castilleja chromosa

13. Common Name: Wild Onion

Scientific Name: Allium acuminatum

14. Common Name: Brandgee Onion

Scientific Name: Allium brandegei

15. Common Name: Goldenrod

Scientific Name: Solidago canadensis

16. Common Name: Beardtongue, Scarlet Bugler

Scientific Name: Penstemon barbatus

17. Common Name: White Lupine

Scientific Name: Lupinus Perennis

Winter and More Winter

Winter In New Harmony

After the second winter here in New Harmony, I made the mistake of bragging to my friends up north that I had only had to shovel snow twice in two years. Big Mistake! The next winter (2008-2009) we had over 70 inches of snow in December, and this winter it seems has been even worse. The only good thing is that I finally got disgusted enough that I went out and bought a snow thrower. In defense of my physical ability, we added another parking pad and some additional concrete to the existing driveway, so there was about twice as much area to shovel and I just couldn't face it.

Birds freeloading at the public trough

We have been living under the threat of flooding since the fire last August. We had some minor stuff late in September, it brought down a lot of ash and debris, but no damage at our place. Some of the area nearer the canyons got a layer of thick black mud. Seems to me that it would make pretty good fertilizer. We had a winter storm watch a couple of weeks ago. Seems they thought it would rain to about 7,000 feet and melt the snow. Instead we got more snow. I hope it melts slowly when spring comes. Sawmill Creek runs about a hundred feet behind our house. It is dry most of the year except for during the spring run-off. If the snow melts fast this year it could easily jump its banks and come through our yard. I am particularly worried that the ash and mud might fill the channel, turning the water loose to find its own path. I sandbagged the window wells on the back side of the house just in case.

Snow melting on Cedars

It seems that we have two types of weather this winter. Either it is storming and blowing, or it is calm, clear and cold. It was clear and cold and 10 degrees this morning. Although I'm getting a little tired of the cold, snow and mud, I love the beauty of winter and am glad we live in an area where we can experience the changing seasons. Once January is over, things should start to warm a little and we know that spring is just weeks away. I haven't spent nearly as much time as I wanted to on winter projects, but then there is always next winter.

A Snowy Day In The Kolobs

This is the view of Kolob we see every time we look east, though not quite as close. I shot this photo at 200 mm from the front porch. I never get enough. It seems that every time you look the scene changes and you want to grab the camera.

A Halo of Fog on Pine Valley Mountain

Though this photo was taken from about a mile away, Pine Valley Mountain is essentially our back yard. It makes a good neighbor, except when the 'controlled burn' gets out of control. It will be really interesting to watch the new growth come back over the coming years.

Foggy Day on the Farm

Watching the horses through the fog makes me glad I have a warm home to live in, even if propane is $3.69 a gallon! The windmill sleeps, waiting for a breeze to blow away the fog and energize its blades. The ducks have had to abandon the pond, and hopefully life goes on under the ice.

Pine Valley Mountain from the back yard

All the area you see in this photo, and more, will drain through the creek hidden just behind the trees when the snow melts. It is somewhat worrisome, so I took out flood insurance. It won't stop mother nature, but it will help with the clean-up.

I Finally Get A Pond

I Finally Get A Pond

All the while I was growing up there was two things that I really wanted. One was a go-kart and the other was a pond. Dad kept telling me that when he had time he would help me build a go-kart, so I kept saving old lawn mower engines and tires and anything else I thought might work. Dad said we had to have pneumatic tires and a clutch, neither of which I could come up with. By the time I was old enough to earn money to buy such things, I wanted to save for a saddle, and a real car, and stuff like that. Dad never really had the time, and I don't think he really wanted me to be zooming around the streets of New Harmony, so the go-kart never got built.

Other people had ponds where we could swim and some even had fish, but I never could convince Dad that we really needed one. When I moved back to New Harmony and built our home on the farm, a pond was always back there in the recesses of my mind and I guess I was always looking for a place to build one.

This summer things kind of fell into place. (1)We divided the property so I knew exactly what I had to work with; (2) We installed a new pipeline in the meadow ditch that could provide water; (3) We had a humongous forest fire that increased the desire for water storage; (4) My neighbor Garth ave me some surplus felt under-liner and some rubber pond liner; and (5) We dug a pretty big hole where I wanted my pond built.

While putting in the new meadow pipeline a lot of fill was needed to build the dam and head gate at the Redd Creek diversion, so I offered the rock pile north and west of the old barn. We made a pretty good hole there, so when we were finished with the pipeline I took my skid steer loader and finished shaping the hole into a pond. I banked the downhill side using the rocks and dirt that were removed while shaping. It ended up being about 100 feet wide by 125 feet long and about 10' deep.

Once the shaping was complete I raked all the rocks and smoothed everything the best I could. There was an area where it was really muddy. Ross came over and helped me remove the rocks from that area with his big track hoe as it has a much longer reach than any of my equipment.

Once the raking and smoothing was done I built a spooling device to unroll the material and laid the felt under-layment. This material is quite light even though impregnated with tar. It comes in 15 foot wide rolls, about 300 ' long, and to connect it you overlap it a few inches, then heat it with a torch and the tar melts and forms a bond.

I dug a trench around the perimeter of the pond to lay the edges of the material in. Once it is all in place you fill the trench with dirt and that holds the material in place.

A 50' x 100' roll of rubber pond liner weighs around 1500 pounds. I needed a lot of help to spool it off and pull it across the pond. John Spevak, Dorian Page, Ray Taylor, Richard Jensen and Clair Hansen came and helped me. Even with six of us it was a struggle to get it in place. Once it was laid out we seamed it together with a contact cement and 6" wide rolls of mastic.

I put some pipe supports in place to build a catwalk and we sealed round them the best we could. I'm not sure it is 100% leak proof, but we did the best we could. Once the liner was in place and secured with dirt and rocks in the trench I decided to let some water in. I filled it a little too much and had to drain some back out the next day so I could finish the catwalk.

Once the catwalk was done I finished filling the pond. It took about three days, and the 6" fill pipe was running less than half full. the pipe will fill the pond to within about a foot of being full. Brent turned the upper ditch down so I could finish filling, which took another few days.

The next stage was to erect the windmill. I have always liked windmills, and found that you can aerate quite effectively with them. I ordered this one from a place in Ohio, put it together and after pouring concrete footings, stood it upright. It immediately caught some wind and started pumping air. I installed the pipe and diffusers, and when the wind blows we have pond aeration.

I think I am going to spend a lot of time just looking at this pond. I can go to the front window and just watch it from there, or I can go down and walk around it. Tonight at sunset I took the photos below. I think a pond brings a certain kind of serenity, and I know I am going to be a much more contented person now that I have a pond.

As I watched the sun go down tonight there was a beautiful reflection disturbed only occasionally by something breaking the mirror-like surface. If I didn't know better I would think it was a fish.

I now have plans for a grassy picnic area just south of the windmill, on the south west corner of the pond. I hope to have some trees, a picnic table and a fire ring, where all the family and friends will be welcome to come and share in the peace and beauty, perhaps even let the young ones try to catch a fish or play in the water.

The New Meadow Pipeline

The New Meadow Pipeline

The meadow ditch has always been in my nightmares! When I was growing up on the farm I hated cleaning the ditch more than just about anything. Unless it was milking the cows or hauling hay. The meadow ditch was always swampy, and the grass would grow in thick and tough. When you tried to clean it, you would just think you had a shovel full, and some roots would catch and pull your load off the shovel and back into the ditch where it would splash muddy water all over you. After a while of struggling with that you would look like you had been mud wrestling, and smell even worse.

Over the years Dad placed some pipe in the ditch to help transport the water, but he lacked the necessary resources to do a good job. Where he needed an outlet, he would leave a gap in the pipe, and that was where the cows would always choose to tromp and plug things up. There wasn't enough fall in the line to keep the water moving very fast anyway, and these "tromp points" introduced a lot of mud and silt into the pipe until it was nearly plugged in many places until you could hardly get any water at the downstream end.

Earlier this year I convinced my neighbor, Garth Frehner, that if we could replace the pipe, we would get plenty of water for both of us from Redd Creek through the meadow. He did some investigation and decided I was right. He purchased the materials and provided most of the equipment and labor. My meager assistance amounted to back-filling with my skid steer and connecting the valves.

The photos below show the work progressing. We waited until what we thought would be the driest time of the year, knowing that the meadow was quite swampy even then. We had trouble with water filling the trench and the trench caving in, and getting equipment stuck, but all in all we got the job done.

The photo below shows the completed project, with one of the valves cracked enough to let some water out for the livestock.

A new head gate was also installed in Redd Creek to provide a diversion point for the water. It was designed to collect water while keeping out trash and limbs. It will also collect sediment and silt (and ash) and keep them out of the pipeline.


In addition to providing a way to get the water across what has been a very wet and troublesome bog, It will provide me with a way to fill a pond I have been planning to build. That will be the subject of another blog when I get it finished.

It's Still Winter

We got another foot of snow yesterday. It seems like February wants to tell us that it is still winter. When it got light this morning it didn't look like very much, but it was still snowing and blowing and I didn't want to go outside. I worked in my den most of the morning and didn't realize it was still coming down until I looked out around 2:00pm and decided I better shovel some snow. Some places were deeper than others, but on my air conditioner units behind the house where it is kind of sheltered from the wind there was easily 12 inches. By the time I got the driveway shoveled it seemed like forty. It was wet and heavy.

I got on the skid steer and ploughed out the lane. It was hard because the ground is soft underneath and I kept taking gravel along with the snow. On the north side of the house is is really soggy. I would have been better off just to stay away from there but we have kids coming this weekend and they need their parking place cleaned. I hope it will dry out a little before they come.

It warmed up today and by this afternoon a lot has melted. I went out and took some photos. Every time I look at the Kolobs I want to take a picture. It seems like they change from moment to moment.