Letters From The Boondocks (Chapter 2)

I’ve made a chronological change in format to place the oldest letter at the bottom, so that in the future, the last letter in the previous chapter will properly precede the oldest letter in the current chapter.

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Decks with stain:

David to Sharon, Wed, Jun 10, 2009, 6:06 PM
Dearest Wife,
 
Even with the rain I had enough dry time to apply two coats of stain to the back deck and to do half of the front one.



Tomorrow I'll finish the front and one more coat for each deck.
Then I'll start preparing the top of the back edge of the shack roof to support the rafters that will form the breeze-way roof. The first part is simply to add a layer of 3/4 inch plywood at a slight angle (for drainage) to the back one foot (low north side) of the shack roof for the breeze-way rafters to attach to. Then I paint and seal that strip of plywood to prevent any leakage. It's an all day job.
 
Tim got all his stuff moved over to his new place south of us. He used our tractor front loader and the help of his friend Jerry to move his heavy tools across the road, and then he brought the tractor home. He is able to handle the IH tractor with a precision that I am only just now beginning to understand. I have a lot of practicing to do.
 
The contractor, Albert Chavez, finally showed up at 6:30PM. He did keep me informed of his progress all day long though. We had a very good meeting and he promised his bid by email no later than noon on Friday, June 12th.
 
The horses and all three dogs hung around over here from before noon until 7:45PM (about 15 minutes ago). Then like at a signal they headed home to Tim's place at a very fast walk.
Love You
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Deck with Step installed

David to Sharon, Mon, Jun 8, 2009, 5:24 PM

Dearest Wife,
Some more deck pictures for you. The way I positioned, and dug in, and concreted the support posts makes
the deck look like it's floating just off the ground, but as you might suspect it is very rigid and it's guaranteed   not to blow away.
 


Tomorrow I'll apply the first protective Redwood stain coating to both the back and front decks and get ready to roof over the deck area. I'm pretty sure you will like how it's going to look.
At the same time I have been building the barn in my head, and I am pretty sure I have a foundation scheme that will be both inexpensive and easy; except for the guys I'll hire to dig the holes!!!
More pictures tomorrow.
Love you

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A nice sunset

David to Sharon, Fri, Jun 5, 2009, 6:41 PM

Some good sunset pictures taken from our south-east corner. I call the last one, “Tranquility”.
Wish you were here to enjoy the wonderful weather.
Love you, Wife

 

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Deck and Trusses

David to Sharon, Fri, Jun 5, 2009, 10:59 AM

Here's a few pictures of the deck and our trusses. Both look pretty good.
Love you




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The NW corner of the fence is complete


David to Sharon, Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:44 PM

Hi Sweet Wife,
Just a couple of pictures to show the last of the fence,

and to illustrate what a Cholla (pronounced Choy-Ya) Cactus looks like.
We have around a hundred of them. The one pictured is in the Green Shack circle drive.



(Note: This one later deteriorated to the point I had to remove it, but another one nearby flourished and produced beautiful purple flowers.)

Richard "Hogan" Falk  and I spent over two hours walking his and our properties looking at the various kinds of trees and the different grasses, and talking about how we can improve the growth of both. He has beautified his place considerably by taking out the underbrush around his Juniper and Pine trees and pruning them up to about six feet above the ground, so they look like umbrellas. They provide shade for the animals, and at the same time deny hiding places for the rattle snakes. That will be a good project for you: learning how to use a chainsaw, and catching rattlesnakes for the pot!! ;)
 
Tomorrow Hogan starts fixing and replacing the fence along FR-422 all the way down to the arroyo. South of the arroyo he will just tighten the fence wire and re-tie it to the posts. (Note: That plan later changed when we decided, because of erosion and the need to keep the range bulls out, to move and replace with all new posts and wire the entire east fence line along Forest Road-422 from the Cibola National Forest entry cattle guard down to Tim’s southeast corner; about half a mile).
 
Tomorrow also I'll start looking into finding the best barn for the money. I am still leaning toward a large “pole barn” that I can build myself.
Love you, Wife
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Computer Repair Done Here


David to Sharon, date Mon, Jun 1, 2009, 8:16 PM
Dearest Wife,
I fixed and restored to Like-New a computer last night,  in a little over 4 hours. It was six years old and was thoroughly full of errors, viruses and spyware crap, and had almost no space left on the C:\ drive. I thought at first it would be a waste of time, and that it would have to be formatted and reloaded (the owner needed her data, but had no backup, and the system disk was long gone. Not many options there.)  Little by little, in “Safe Mode”, using mostly free utility software I had burned to a CD, and Linux (in RAM), I cleaned out the junk files, and deleted a ton of obsolete programs, finally getting enough head room to defrag the boot drive, then defragged and repaired the registry. When I left at about 10:30pm, it was working like new, and she was a happy camper! Oh yeah, it was a win 98 SE desktop, just like we had at NET 10 when I was going to school.
You have only been gone a few days
and I miss you already.
Love you
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