We Have A Gate!

We get so excited about every step!  This is Jack's latest handiwork...I'm his gopher and post-holder.

It took two days because we schlep everything in the truck bed (no trailer) in small loads.  And because Jack does all the heavy labor and paces himself.

The gate had to be strapped to the top of my Jeep (thanks, Donna, for the DIY "Cliff's Notes" !)  Remind me to get Jack some ratchet straps for whatever special occasion is next...he tied that thing up there with bungee cords and what looked to me like boot laces, hmmm.

The weather was in the low 70s and surprisingly there was quite a wind blowing both days.  The swamp was singing again, as it does when there's any wind.  It makes the sound empty bottles make when you blow across the openings.  Some might thing it's eerie, but I think it's lovely.  The second day, as Jack had just gotten the equipment unloaded, I heard a decided squeal from up the road.  The wind was loud enough to obscure the sound near the running generator, but at my Jeep there was no mistaking it what it was...wild pigs!   Sure enough, just up the road, time and again, I kept hearing it and it was getting closer.  Of ALL those hundreds of undeveloped acres beyond our small property, they were headed straight down the road to us, ha!  So we came up with a "pig plan," which was just basically "get into the truck and stay out of the way till the herd passes," if need be.

I saw two boars in plain sight, and the others were in the thick palmetto scrub.  They were using the overgrown ditch on the other side of the street as their personal turnpike.  The first was a fine sized male, all black, trotting down the dirt road about a hundred feet away, towards us.  The second was even bigger, black with a ring of dirty gray hairs around his neck, really big boy, squealing and going back into the ditch.  They are so noisy and the squeals are so distinctively pig-like, there's no mistaking it.  Didn't manage to get any pics of them, though.  The squeals traveled gradually across from us, then down from us, then back into the swamp.   Didn't see any snakes this time.

It's so exciting when things align so that we have enough time together to get some work done!  Even though I can't  do nearly the labor Jack can (my knee still is our liability) I'm so far a decent gal Friday, and most of the tasks require two people. It was absolutely lovely the past two days, the skies overcast, the sun still strong enough to be warmish, the wind constant enough to warrant long sleeves.  My face is sunburnt tomato red...oops! 

The unseen players in the equation lately, and just as important to the farm endeavor, are the tools we've had to purchase.  Some of them are critical, others are Jack's choice for the long term.  We looked for a used generator, but Jack ended up buying a new one under warranty.  He could do a lot of the things by hand, but he has electric equipment for much of it, and so on.  The generator certainly came in handy this week, and operated right in the truck bed.  He used it for some drilling and for the saw that notched out spaces for the side posts to be attached.  The plug on the extension cord has a habit of falling out of the socket so he'll replace this hopefully before we're back out there again.

The road is still really un-level.  Thankfully it's still dry right now.  If we get neighbors down the street at the house that's for sale, I hope they can help maintain the road.  However, if there is no new neighbor, there will be hardly anyone using it besides us, so less wear and tear.  I guess we'll have to see how things work out.

Having the gate up feels like we're a farm now...funny, eh?  It's kind of an official threshold, and it's pretty hilarious seeing it there, locked up, with no fence attached yet, heh :)

Next up is to begin fencing the road frontage, or "the front."  We'll probably put middle support posts first and then all the regular ones.  Since we can't store any supplies out there yet without risking theft, we'll just do loads of posts in the truck, whatever it can hold each trip.  With no other laborers or means to hire them at this point, it will be just our speed anyway.

I'm so excited!!  Little steps that we can SEE...feel like big steps!
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