Waste Not

I hate to waste living things. As we cleared the New land we did not have funds to build a conventional fence around the area that we were converting to pasture. With the help of the kids and a few adults we built a pole and post fence from the green timbers that was .64 miles around the land. As those posts and poles age out we are in a better financial position to replace them with conventional fence.

We have gotten nearly three years of pasture use out of that land that we would not have gotten had we waited to have the funds to put in a conventional fence. On the other hand, we could have put in a conventional fence at 5the time and forgone many other improvements made to the program, like the acquisition of  additional breeding stock for our livestock conservation programs.

I have begun another massive undertaking. Jacob's Woods is seventeen acres. I am intensively thinning it, leaving oaks, and large pines and hardwoods. I will be taking out several hundred maple and small pines. We have already begun the project and have builts a massive brush pile wind row from the tree tops that will wonderful wild life habitat. I hope to be able to get a stand of native warm season grasses growing where the sunlight will now find the ground. The area will, if everything  breaks right, become a silvopasture for multi species use and will also open up much more of our land to riding.

I can't abide the idea of letting all of these posts lay on the ground to rot. I have a design in my mind of the construction of a building frame of modern two by fours with the poles attached in the frame at six foot intervals. The walls would not be chinked. I would want a modern tin or tin substitute roof with enough over hang to keep the rain out of the structure.

It will be a lot of work, but it will be interesting work and will create great memories for the kids that help create the building.

I can already hear negative thoughts coming through this computer.  "Why not make it perfectly historically accurate if you want the kids to have a really first rate learning experience.?" Along with the constant refrain of "If you build it won't it eventually rot and fall in?"

The answer to the first is that I would prefer to build one historically accurate, using only historically accurate tools, but our program is multi faceted and we do many things at one time. Making a quality, 19th century small barn would require every minute of every day that we have music, horse training, riding lessons, soil and water conservation projects, programming for veterans with PTSD, livestock care, breed conservation, and everything else that we do.

The other negative thought has always perplexed me. "Well if you do that won't it just eventually decay and collapse?"  Of course it will, and so will I and so will you.

Only the rocks live forever. Not building a structure  because we cannot build a perfect structure makes as much sense as not living a life because we cannot live a perfect life.

More work to be done. Time to get up earlier out of bed!