The Bridge

Life has been crazy.  Our community has it’s houses far apart and so our community does a lot of activities for Halloween.  Instead of “Trick or Treating” we “Trunk or Treat”.  When you “Trunk or Treat” you park your cars in a circle and some of us decorate your cars or trucks just like some houses are more decorated.  The kids put on their costumes and go to the cars and say “Trunk or Treat” and we hand them candy.  Unlike towns that have Trick or Treating on Halloween, we seem to need to have Cub Scout Trunk or Treating, Girl Scout Trunk or Treating, Community Church Trunk or Treating, and so on.  We also have our schools largest fundraiser the Halloween Carnival; band, Boy Scouts, individual classes, and Girl Scouts all hope for volunteers.  It’s a crazy busy time of year.  So what does Darling Husband decide we need to do?  Build a bridge! 

The cattle have eaten all the grass in the pasture we made for them and we need to fence in another area of the property.  We have 2 more areas that will make nice pastures.  One is along the top of our property, we have 5 different neighbors up there with lots of different fencing most not in good condition, one neighbor with a beautiful expensive fence who will let us attach our electric fence to his, and the other neighbor will not allow us (or other neighbors) to touch their fencing.  We will need to install several gates up there.  The other section in a triangle shaped  area that we have never used and rarely even been on it is cut off from the rest of the property by a ditch that becomes a raging river when it rains, the bottom is along the street, and the other side is a neighbors fence that looks in good condition.  We decided this will be the easiest area to prepare for the cattle. 

Darling Husband decided building a bridge and taking the cattle across it will be better than putting a gate at the street.  He found an I beam and cut it in half and welded it so the bridge will be about 10 feet wide, 16 feet long, and strong enough to drive a Mack truck across.

Teen Boy is putting nuts on the bolts while DH drills the holes through the wood.  Then I pound the bolt through the hole.  

My Posers checking out the bridge!  

  Then he got a lot of reclaimed 4 x 6’s and 4 x 12’s and we bought a few also.  Then we use ½ inch bolts and drilled through the wood and beams and metal straps.   This bridge is massive. 

We also moved the sheep’s day time area up around a few of the citrus trees and oaks and ficus tree type trees that all need to be trimmed.  We will let the sheep trim the bottoms and fertilize the plants for a few weeks.  

When I am home we let the sheep roam around and mow the lawn and eat other weeds around the house and where ever they want.  This worked great at first!  They were afraid to come close to the house, now they are eating my flowers out of the planters around the house.  I may have to rethink things – letting the sheep roam, or what I plant hmmm.  

I asked Stick Boy to walk the dog and he comes back an hour later with a skate board and 10 sticks.