I started Saturday morning by going out to the freezer to get butter, we were out and I had said I was going to do that the day before.  More importantly, one of the horses was laying down in the ram pasture, I walked out and she let me pet her while she stayed laying down.  Most of the time the horses will not allow this, they stand when you approach them.  I did get the butter this time!  I had a slow start, had breakfast with my mother at our house and then headed out to work on fencing.  I need to get the animals off of the fields.  As I was headed out to the fields I stopped at the culvert and scooped out most of the gravel from the back of the pickup.  This lightened the pickup and the culvert crossing needed it.  I like to do little parts at a time on projects, some would even say I flit from project to project but it works if you keep after it.  Unfortunately its not very timely.

I ended up pulling most of the T posts from the first section of fence, splicing in an old section and then tightening the whole thing.  This sounds fairly straightforward, but I had to remove all the clips from the broken T-posts and pull them out of the ground by hand.  I finally got it all up and then decided to stretch a single row of smooth wire on the top.  The horses keep leaning over the fence and bending the woven wire I am hoping the top strand will stop that or at least lessen its impact.  I then installed cable and a 16’ brake away section to the middle of the fence.  If it floods again I want the fence to give!   I went over to the front spring and worked on tightening H braces and putting in cross boards.  I was going to reuse the old fence but I was going to have to splice in 2-3 sections and it is just not worth the time necessary to accomplish the task, I will use all new.  While I was working on that I decided that the ditch needed to be dug out as it still has flood mud and cut grass piled up in it.  I stepped down and the bottom of the ditch was firm.  I just need to drive the tractor into the ditch and I can reach up with my fancy new manure fork and get the junk away from the fence.  I went down to the machine shed and put the box blade on the tractor then went in for dinner.  I had a plan and after dinner it would be executed.

Annmarie was headed into the hospital for rounds and it had just started to rain slightly and she questioned my wisdom in going back out to dig in the ditch.  It’s fine, I just put on a neck warmer and a jacket.  First thing I did was dive right into the ditch with all four tires, within 10 seconds I realized that this was not the smartest move I had made.  Unfortunately, I seem to have these thoughts on a fairly regular basis.  It took me about 20 minutes to get out and I had to use the bucket to pull myself out of the ditch.  I then ditched the manure forks and started to dig out the ditch with tractor bucket.  I had a neighbor offer their small backhoe to help clean up the flooding problems.  I am going to have to take them up on it later in the summer to dig out the ditch and silt and grass that has piled up. I am going to use the mud and weeds to create a berm on the North side of the ditch.  This way if the upper creek jumps its bank again it will flood out the upper two fields but protect the 1.75 fields.  It will also create a boundary so we don’t fall in the ditch with the tractor (done that already this year).  I am going to widen the ditch slightly and dig it down another foot.  While digging out the ditch in the rain I spotted the double rainbow and took a picture, it was beautiful!!