3 posts tagged “pasture”
How about run 500 miles? I forgot to mention that back on April 25 I ran my 500th mile and on May 3 I went for my 100th run of the year. Just 500 more until 1000... "I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more..."
Today was a 9.8 mile long run - I ran to Meijer where Amanda met me and we went grocery shopping afterwards. Before and after the run I felt really good and somehow managed a 9:17 pace despite thinking that I was taking it easy - walking up a half-dozen hills, stopping to enjoy a couple scenic views along the river, etc.
Later today we took all three dogs - Haven, Beacon and foster dog Honey - to my Grandma's pasture to run around. We spent two hours hiking around and the dogs are completely worn out now! They got to have a ton of fun - they chased a rabbit, two nesting turkeys, a ruffed grouse, a deer, and a pheasant! Amanda will post the pictures as part of her DITL for today.
Yesterday I put a nifty new post on Why Run? about the physics of speed, pace and energy. I started thinking about it when Katiebell described some frustration when treadmilling recently:
"I was shocked to find that the difference between 5.4 miles per hour and 5.7 was negligible, but bump it to 6.0 (a mere ten min mile) and I could barely keep on pace...6.5 and I was struggling."
Thursday I was on the treadmill doing speedwork and it dawned on me how explain the physics of this phenomenon. If you're curious then check out my Why Run? article which even has a couple of cool graphs!
Saturday my parents drove out from Ann Arbor to take Amanda out for her birthday dinner. We did far more than that, however! A little after 9am we meet them at Grandma's pasture to go hiking. Dad brought along Uncle Bob, Amanda and I brought along the dogs. There wasn't any real purpose to the hike - we just started walking and whenever we thought of something interesting to check out, we headed in that direction.
First was passed through Tarzan's Jungle (named by all the grandkids when we were very little), a dark, tree-lined stretch of two-track with a mucky stream beside it. As we exited the "jungle" Beacon spotted three deer about 200 yards away and he took off like a Navy jet launched off an aircraft carrier! Haven didn't notice and by the time I got her attention pointed in the right direction, she was 100 yards behind.
Those three deer saw Beacon coming and bounded away easily, but out of sight to the right were five more deer that neither saw Beacon, nor did Beacon see them until he was right upon them! The deer bolted in the direction of their herd-mates and Beacon was right in the middle, getting within five feet of one deer with two more behind Beacon! Alas, poor Beaks, the deer were too fast. Haven got there just in time to make a show of giving chase. After making sure no more deer were hiding nearby, Haven and Beacon returned to us - very tired and very happy.
We hiked past our woodpiles from last week's lumberjacking then maneuvered among the long rows of pine trees, following the many highways paved by deer hooves. There were plenty of turkey tracks to be found as well, and finally we caught up to them after about 90 minutes. Haven and Beacon ran in pursuit as we watched the clumsy birds crash among the tree branches trying to fly away. The dogs were so tired by now that their chase only lasted about a minute!
Lastly we trekked through a marshy area of the property that we usually don't venture into because it's usually rather wet and ill-suited for vehicles. It's a nice setting back there with occasional clearings and stands of thornapple trees - quite different than other parts of the pasture. After chatting briefly with Bob and Therese (and Gabe) we headed over to Grandma's (dad's mom) house to go over some WWII information about Grandpa.
Dad and Mom are compiling some info about Grandpa's military service for a local historical group and they wanted to let Grandma check it over for accuracy, etc. They also wrote up stories for Grandma's four brothers, each of whom served in WWII with a different branch of the military: one each in the Army (Air Corps), the Marines, the Navy, and the Coast Guard. Grandpa himself was in the Navy as a mechanic, and Grandma worked at a factory building ailerons for aircraft. As Grandma put it: "After Pearl Harbor, everybody supported the war effort. You didn't worry much about how it affected your life. We just did what needed to be done."
We continued to discuss life during a war, then and now. Mom asked how 9/11 compared to Pearl Harbor. Grandma explained that they were similar, but noted that "nothing really changed" in our quality of life after 9/11. During WWII there were gas rations; for example if Grandma and her friends wanted to go hang out, they had to find someone with enough extra gas rations and pile into her car. There were collections of surplus metal, war bonds to purchase, and everyone's job converted to supporting the war. Grandma's factory where she worked stopped making springs and started making ailerons. Grandpa joined the Navy.
Speaking of which, Grandma noted that her parents were unable to attend ANY of their five children's weddings! She took the train to San Diego to marry Grandpa while he was stationed out there. Her four brothers also married far from home; the closest was a few hundred miles away and her parents didn't have the gas rations available to attend "so they just couldn't go - that's the way it was" says Grandma.
As we found out later, that's the way it was for my other grandma, Grammy. Kinda spur of the moment we decided to pay a visit to my mom's mom following lunch at a deli in Ada. It didn't take long to start looking through old photos and we soon found a wedding photo of Grammy and Grampy. She also traveled west, to Los Angeles, to marry my grandfather while he was on duty out there. Ironically, both sets of my grandparents got married in California despite living in Michigan all their lives! That was life during WWII. They also directly supported the war - Grampy taught navigation using Link Trainers while Grammy installed hydraulic lines in bomber cockpits. Was anyone not involved with WWII during that era?
Grammy also showed us a photo of her grandparents and other relatives of similar age! I don't remember when it was taken but those people were probably all born between 1850 and 1875! One of them is related to Commodore Matthew Perry, but I forget exactly the relation; I do know that I'm not a direct descendant of him, but he's somewhere in my family tree.
I forgot to mention that on the way to Grammy's house we took a little tour of Grand Rapids, driving by: a house that Amanda and I almost bought; the first house I lived in, also the first house my parents bought together; the first house my dad lived in after college, right on the Grand River; and a few other curiosities.
Finally we made it back home where we played a few rounds of a board game called Compatibility, where each player has a deck of cards with photos on them. A word is read (e.g. "retirement") and then you have to select, in secret, 2-5 photos that you feel best represent that word. You play with a partner, so the object is to pick the same photos as they do. So for "retirement" do you pick the photo of the old man, or the dollar sign, or the sunset, or the card that simply contains the word "happy"? Very fun game. Amanda and I managed to win both rounds by just one space on the game board!
My parents left to go home around 9:30 at night (for a 2-hour drive!), making it 12 hours that we spent hanging out with them!
Saturday Amanda and I joined some of my relatives out in Grandma's pasture to chop up some trees. Grandma owns 200 acres and we call it "the pasture" because it used to be a cow pasture about 50 years ago. My dad can remember when there used to be very few trees out there; now, it's mostly wooded. A few large oak trees had fallen and a bunch of us trekked out to saw, split, and stack the wood.
Besides Amanda and myself, the crew consisted of my dad Dan, brothers Eric and Ryan, uncle Bob, cousins Kevin and Gabe, and Eric's friends Kenny and Chris. My mom was there for a bit and later on brought us hot cocoa.
Before we could get to cutting, we had to get Bob's 2WD compact truck with the splitter into position - no easy task with all the snow on the ground. A little bit of pushing by Kevin and Gabe solved the problem; luckily the rest of us had AWD/4WD and had little trouble driving back there.
First up were three large oak trees that had fallen. Uncle Bob had earlier trimmed off some of the limbs and cleared a path to tow the splitter back there. Dad, Kenny and Chris each had a chainsaw and they immediately set to work making the sawdust fly. Bob fired up the splitter and Gabe, using a log as his "throne", split logs into firewood. Soon Ryan joined him and they had a rapid production line going! Eric, Amanda and I hauled logs into either the splitter staging area for big logs, or directly to the woodpile for smaller ones. Kevin and Bob worked to stack wood on the pile, which grew quickly.
It was a crisp, cold day but at least the sun was out with blue skies. Soon we were warming up and jackets began to appear hanging on nearby branches. Amanda and I started clearing away the smaller branches and tossed them onto an ever-growing brushpile. Then a few of us starting pondering a problem: when one of the trees fell, three large limbs had lodged themselves in the fork of another nearby oak tree, about 20 feet off the ground. How do we get those limbs down? Then Kenny walks up and says "Hey, I have this chain in the back of my truck..."
Not just any chain... a HUGE chain, like the kind whalers would use to tie whales to the side of a ship, I imagine. This sucker was heavy! After a few tries, I finally got it looped around the end of one limb and four of us played tug-o-war with a tree. We lost round one, but won the second try so suddenly the Kenny had to dodge a falling limb! Then we tied to the second limb and once again were stymied, but a second effort brought the limb down, this time with much better control. The third stuck limb was out of reach for the chain, so we left it alone for the time being since my mom had just arrived with some hot cocoa and coffee.
Everyone welcomed the warm drinks; however, I've never been a big fan of hot cocoa. As a kid after a day of sledding or other snow games, I would make cold chocolate milk while my buddies drank hot cocoa. Being very thirsty, I took my cup of hot cocoa and put a few handfuls of snow into it to cool it off and it hit the spot! Cocoa-slush. Two cups of that and a couple handfuls of marshmallows later, I was ready to get back to work.
The others had written off the last hanging limb but I really wanted to get it down. I was able to grab one end of it but there was no pulling it from that direction as some branches were firmly blocking it's passage. Eric and I worked it for a while, pushing, rotating, and pulling, trying to work it free. No dice. Finally I got creative and asked Dad to fashion me a 10-foot long gaff out of one of the branches, kinda like a long shepherd's hook. I reached it up to grab the high end of the limb and after some tugging, I was finally able to bring the limb down!
Now it was chow time. We drove back to Bob and Therese's house, where Therese had prepared a complete taco buffet! Tortillas, beef or chicken, lettuce, cheese, salsa, chips, guacamole, and veggies & dip were all set out and we enjoyed a great meal. Grandma made it over to join us for lunch, where she watched her grandkids still making messes when trying to eat tacos! Gabe's girlfriend was also there for dinner.
When somebody asked "What time is sunset?" we realized we better get back to work. Soon we had most of those three trees cleaned up and a very large pile of wood to show for it. The woodpile was about eight feet long, six feet wide, and over five feet high! With all of the sawing done and just some splitting left to do, several of us drove to another part of the pasture to tackle a standing tree.
A large three-trunked oak was about to lose a trunk, the one that was dead and rotting. It was oddly shaped in that the trunk arched out far in one direction, a direction different than the one we wanted it to fall. Kenny and Chris devised a strategy for notching and back-cutting that hopefully would make it fall where we wanted. It worked! Amanda caught the whole thing on video. We got the tree all cut up and ready for splitting, but we ran out of daylight for that job. Eric, Ryan and I nevertheless had time to build a 10-foot tall totem pole!
The coolest sight of the day was as the sun was setting when a flock of swans flew overhead in a "V" formation just about about 200 feet above us. They were flying low enough to see them in good detail but the setting sun was even lower, casting a beautiful orange light to illuminate the swans from below against a blue sky! Very neat.
The day wasn't over yet! As we drove back to Bob and Therese's house, Kenny had the alternator on his truck fail! Gabe drove Eric, Kenny and Chris over to the nearest AutoZone (about 20 minutes away) to get spare parts while the rest of us sat around and talked, although Dad drove over to Grandma's house (just a minute away) to look over some of Grandpa's WWII records for a history group that's gathering information. Therese fully pampered Amanda - she surrendered "the best chair in the house", put up Amanda's frozen feet and wrapped them in a down blanket, and then poured her a glass of wine! I was content to munch on some Fritos.
We had just wondered what was taking the AutoZone boys so long when they called to ask the size of Kenny's windshield wipers! When you put some mechanically inclined folks in a parts store, they'll often buy more than they came for. Eventually they made it back, repaired the truck, and then we were on our separate ways back home. It was a 10-hour day!
