Motivation

Sunday was cold and windy. I had so much to get done in the morning which included electric fence repairs. 

My Grand Plan was to head out early to the Reserve and see if I could spot red wing black birds and maybe check out the ponds to see if any geese or swans had arrived.

All that went ka-put. After lunch I had to call my elder friend in Alabama. She was having a bad day so we talked for an hour. She is in her mid 80's and was telling me that she had not gone out to do anything in weeks. She forgets to eat, she is isolated she says, and depressed. She used to be a librarian, so I asked her where the nearest library was. Her answer was 3 blocks. I asked her if she'd go to the library and just go find a book and sit at a table and read. 
Why? She asked me. I told her...so she could be around other humans. 

I asked her to visit her meal site once this week and text me what she had to eat. I gave her two assignments or as I called them: Challenges for Motivation. 

I had to agree to let her set a Challenge for me too. She wanted me to send her a photo of me in Mobility Class. 

So today I was at CF and did Mobility Class afterwards. My coach Angie took these photos for me.
Mobility Class:

Shoulder Rotations

After class. 

One of my little pals, 
coach's daughter.

Am I going to be successful in helping someone a long distance away get Motivated? I sure don't know, but I like my Alabama friend. It is unfortunate that she has no immediate relatives to help her look out for herself. She is also fiercely independent so it is hard for her to ask for help.

This is the woman who was Captain of an Oil Rig in the Gulf when she was in her 30's. Mind you, that was over 50 years ago!

So. After my motivational talk. I packed my camera bag and headed out the door in the late afternoon to get myself moving.

I knocked off another section of the KVR Trail Challenge and enjoyed fresh cold air. I took what I think is a boring trail. It was so far from boring!

I will let these photos speak for themselves. This is along what is called the Old Harrison Trail. It leaves the Visitor Center and heads down towards the valley. It was a road once upon a time. On one side, it is marshy and wet, on the other side there are rocks and trees.
The huge surprise was the icicles on the rocks.

With the recent alternating snows and rains water has been seeping from the rocks around pines clinging to the rocks...

I found two pairs of Canada Geese:

I saw red dogwood, the pussy willows are starting to blossom, and there were some other trees budding that I couldn't ID.

I even took a photo of myself next to the Kickapoo River and sent it to my friend to make her day a little happier?

I do wonder how I can help my friend and motivate her to go to the meal site and interact with others. 

I know motivation has to come from within and cannot be forced. 

Sigh.

I am a curious person who likes to explore and be social too. I cannot imagine losing something so precious as motivation. It would crush my life.

Master of invention or?

...am I just strange?

The day started out beautifully.

A wonderful Sunrise shared with Charlie on the ridge.

It was warm and muggy at dawn so the day promised to be ... hot.

Charlie enjoyed his new car seat.

See?
I guess he can see where we are going!

He was subdued but didn't act sick at all.
Slow and steady improvement!

On to getting the hot stuff out of the way right after chores.
Blanching carrots, corn, and green beans.

I gave away a bucket of green beans to the neighbor just because.

Mid morning found me putting up fence posts and wire to make an electric lane to move our Bull named Bart from one area to another. He is getting shipped on Monday to become our winter meat and hamburger. My good neighbor Jeff the dozer man will take him for us.

Justin came down and worked on the ash trees to cut them up for his winter wood.

I worked on the 'electric lane'. The challenge is to walk a bull from his paddock to another paddock that has a paneled 'catch pen' and a gate in it. He will be loaded from the catch pen into a trailer this evening and Jeff will take him to the processor. I guess process is the politically correct term.
I look at it this way. Bart has done his job and now it is time for him to complete his task and feed us through the next year. I cannot go back to grocery store burger for the life of me.

Anway, I ran into a problem. I have to run the lane across a portion of the driveway and door yard. It has a hardpack gravel and sandstone base and unless you have a drill, there is no way a post will go into it.

Remember the glider I took apart? Well, I haven't gotten to the dump yet, and I pulled a heavy piece of 'something' out of the weeds and used that also.

The frame of the old slider acts as a post, I added those brown insulators to run the fence through.
As of Monday morning, one less Dexter to feed.

I am leaning towards shipping the rest too. I'm not sure how the hay situation will be if Rich isn't able to drive to get round bales. I'm having an internal discussion as to whether the cost of the cattles' feed all winter justifies keeping them just for whatever break on taxes we get.

After the fencing job was done and tested, I moved on to mowing.
Over the years I've had a pony who is very good at doing trimming in some of the areas of our farm. The problem is, he poops and unless I rake it out, it just sits there and eventually dries out. However if I rake it, it dries out quickly and fertilizes.

So I came up with a plan.
I found a chunk of cattle fence in the junk pile.
I used a rope to tie it to the back of the 4 wheeler and then I put a weight on the fence and used the 4 wheeler to drag over the areas of manure. It did a fair job, but the weight kept rolling off.

I've gone back to the drawing board on this and I think I can use a bit more rope to keep the weights on.
I told my neighbor what I was doing and he kindly smiled and mentioned that they 'made' drags for just that purpose.
I smiled back and said I was having fun by doing it with materials I could find.

A chainlink fence chunk would work even better than what I am using now.

However, it worked pretty well!

I don't know if I am inventive or just odd.

But I think I am on to something. Now to get at the poo piles in the meadow.
Hey, at least I am having fun on the 4 wheeler. I'm am making it into a useful tool for my farm work!