Back to the Trenches

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Brother Tom came up this morning and dug a trench to take a large electrical cable to the greenhouse.  This means that I can have 240 volt power in the green house. Right now it's running on a 110 volt extension cord, not the most electrically efficient method.  A small baseboard heater on a thermostat will prevent any freezing disasters.  I have a conduit run to the green house from the main house but the armored and waterproof Teck cable was too big to pull down the 50 meters of  1 1/2"  poly.  Instead we direct buried the cable and will reserve the conduit for some Cat V cable to take data and internet out to the green house.  What would a green house be without WWW and control signals?


Doesn't matter how much earth moving machinery is used, you still need someone wielding a shovel.

I kinda look like one of the Sand People on Tatooine 
The after picture.  Thanks to the excavator, skid-steer and pre-positioned back fill sand, the job only took an hour and a half.  I know it's going to take the electrician longer than that to connect both ends of the cable..
Just admiring our handiwork
That walkway to the green house looks rough but its six inches of crushed gravel on a geotextile bed.  No mud on the walk!

Now to freeze proof the waterline at the Animal Shed ( the shed formerly known as the Blue Shed) Call the electrician in to connect the cable ( and we know how slow he can be - almost as bad as the painter), Insulate the windows in the house and green house and get another three cords of wood and we're in great shape for winter.  Won't happen today.  Progress not perfection.

Comments

Carol Browne said…
I love that you do such huge projects. It's like you don't worry about the size of what needs to be done. You can do ANYTHING!!

Power to the people! *fist raise*
12:45 PM
Art Blomquist said…
Well, anything is kinda stretching it. But Thanks! More than I think tho, sometimes..
2:10 PM
Donna OShaughnessy said…
Art, anytime I feel overwhelmed by the number of projects we have here on South Pork Ranch I just read your blog and feel like...putting my head in the oven. Does the work ever end ? Is the apocalypse loooking good to anyone else but me ?
6:42 AM
Art Blomquist said…
Donna,

It's easy to fall into the trap of a human doing instead of a human being. I think I get there several times a day. I do get balance by contemplating what the work represents, a journey and not just another tick mark on the to do list.

With fresh snow on the fields the outlines of old fence lines appear. It was a lot of work for the people who worked this land before me. And yet just ghost lines now. I wonder if he had a sense that what he was building was larger than his time, that some one he would never meet would think of him and admire his efforts to live and dream in this place. Would find art in a door handle that was hand forged in his own smithy that he probably salvaged from some predecessor's dream. The power of cumulative dreams. How lucky we are, the people who get to live their dreams.
10:44 AM
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