Defensible Space

The other day I was browsing through the many photos that I have on my hard drive. I ran across several photos that suggested this blog post. It may not be of interest to most of you, but I am sure that it will interest one of my regular readers, Eric, a retired fire chief.

In the early 1990’s Evelyn and I purchased a five-acre plot in the mountains of southern Oregon: 5,000 feet elevation, 23 miles from the nearest grocery store or gasoline station, and 10 miles from the nearest mail delivery. We designed and built an 8,500 square-foot home. The home had a very large south-facing deck overlooking many pine and fir trees, Howard Prairie Lake, and the top of Mount Shasta.

It turned out that this property was in a “Fire Protection Class 10” area. That is, the only outfit who might respond to a fire was the forest service, and their job was to protect the forest and not structures. Only one outfit offered homeowners insurance.

There is not much an individual can do in the event of a forest fire. (We did have sprinklers on the roof, 1,700 gallons of water storage, and a diesel generator to run the pumps.) So the real leverage involved the creation and maintenance of a “defensible space” surrounding the structures. That is, removing all of the ground and ladder fuel for at least 100 feet (300 feet is better).

So, in the spring, after the snow had melted, I gathered all of the dead branches that had fallen to the ground and stacked them in clearings between the trees. (I think that “among” is more grammatically correct than “between”, but it just does not sound right.) Then, pole saw in hand, sometimes augmented with an extension ladder, I walked around under the trees and cut off all of the dead or broken branches, as well as any limbs that brushed my head as I walked by.

Then I covered each pile with black plastic, weighing down each corner of the plastic with rocks. After the first snow fall it was a simple matter of wiping the snow off a small area of the plastic, tearing a small hole in the plastic, and pouring a small amount of a mixture of gasoline and diesel oil into the brush pile. Dropping a match into the hole started the process of burning most of the brush. Usually there was left a few smoldering pieces around the periphery, which, upon raking them into the center, completed the burning process. (Now that is an awkward sentence that I do not intend to rewrite.)

And people ask me what kept me busy during the summers other than cutting, splitting, and stacking fire wood for the winter months.

And you, who teases me about my Ticonderoga #2, yes, I did draft this with a #2 pencil. Not a Ticonderoga, though.

Daisy, Sweet Pea, and Fluffy

Today I should like to introduce three new animal friends: Daisy, Sweet Pea, and Fluffy.

There is an interesting story leading to our introduction to these new friends. A few days ago we received a telephone call from our regular dog sitter, Melinda. She had received a distress call from one of our neighbors, Bill. (Bill is not a "next-door" neighbor. His place is a bit over two miles from our place. But since most of that distance is open desert, he qualifies as a neighbor.)

Bill's wife is in the hospital and will be for some time. The details of why she is in the hospital are interesting but unimportant to this tale. Bill is a truck driver for Walmart. He had been away from work for several weeks and had to return. He needed someone to look after his two dogs on a daily basis, but could not afford Malinda's regular fees. Melinda knows us as dog lovers and that we lived relatively close to Bill. Thus her call to us.

We met with Bill and discovered that he also had a cat in addition to the two dogs. We learned all about his wife's medical issues and his idea of what looking after his dogs entailed. Our idea was much more extensive than was Bill's.

Bill's working schedule involves going to Apple Valley and living in his RV for six days and returning home for two days, for an eight-day cycle.

We impressed upon Bill that this was obviously a long-term situation and urged him to line up a number of volunteers. We agreed to take the first six-day shift and could not commit beyond that other than to be on call for emergency back up, other commitments permitting. Today is the last day of this first shift. Bill expects to arrive home about 10:00 tonight.

Evelyn has fallen in love with Daisy and Sweet Pea. I need to be careful that we do not end up with two more dogs to add to the four we already have!

Thermodynamics and Politics

Today I shall stray from my ramblings about my childhood memories and discuss a comment recently made by Ben Bernanke. But first let me introduce you to the the laws of thermodynamics as defined by the Readers Digest years ago.


1st Law: Things are pretty bad.
2nd Law: Things are going to get worse before they get better.
3rd Law: Who said they are going to get better.

Bernanke's comment was something to the effect that the job situation was not going to get better any time soon and could get a bit worse before it got better. That sounds very much like the first two laws of thermodynamics in a single statement. What he failed to do was to follow up with the third law. In my opinion the evolution to the third law is inevitable unless we get rid of the politicians in Washington and put in some real business men and women.

While I don't much care for Donald Trump as a person, his ideas for improving the job situation make a lot more sense than the gutless utterances of the folks now in Washington. It's too bad that we cannot have a national referendum to recall all of the elected folks in Washington and start over.

Brooder House

The need to raise chickens to replace culled hens required a substantial facility. As I noted in an earlier post, when my grandfather was operating the ranch his foreman was a retired ships carpenter. It was he who was largely responsible for the construction of the brooder house.

The building was about twenty feet wide by two hundred and twenty feet long. It was built on a gradual slope so that the upper one hundred feet was about three feet higher than the lower one hundred and twenty feet. The upper section was divided into five brooder rooms, each about twenty feet square. The first portion of the lower section was a twenty foot square feed room. About which, more later. The remainder of the lower section was divided in the same manner as the upper section.

There was an ingenious trolley, hung from an overhead rail in each of the upper and lower sections. Each trolley allowed one to load the car with chicken feed and roll it the full length of the building, thus saving a great deal of physical effort. When not engaged in chores, Jerry and I would ride on the trolleys, just for fun.

Each of the twenty brooder rooms contained a gas-fired brooder stove and roosts for the chicks when they became old enough to roost. The roosts were hinged against the back wall and could be lowered when it came time to teach the chicks to roost. When the chicks were old enough to roost the brooder stove was turned off and could be raised via ropes and pulleys to allow easy access throughout the room. The floors were covered with wood shavings. The rooms were divided by swinging doors to allow easy passage for the trolleys.

It was necessary to teach the chicks to roost. Initially at night when it came time for the chicks to roost they had to be herded onto the roosts. Otherwise they would pile up in a corner and some would smother. Jerry and I found out about this possibility the hard way. One night we were late and we lost a couple of dozen chicks. That resulted in a sound belting.

Each of the brooder rooms had access to a small, fenced yard where the chicks were allowed to scratch; starting about the time they were taught to roost.

The feed room contained one-hundred pound sacks of various components of feed for the chicks. The proportions of each component changed as the chicks aged. The feed was mixed in a wooden box that was about four feet wide by six feet long. The box was about two feet off the floor to minimize stooping.

The mixed feed was loaded onto the trolleys in special containers. The containers were made from square five-gallon cans with the tops removed and a 2x2 wooden handle attached to the inside of a top edge. The form factor made it easy to scoop the feed from the mixing box and allowed compact loading onto the trolleys.

Another element of the feed room was a half-barrel. One of the by-products of our small dairy operation (more about that in a later post) was several gallons of skim milk every day. The skim milk was mixed with rolled oats in the half-barrel and allowed to ferment for a couple of days. It was then mixed with the chick feed.

Life on a Chicken Ranch

(My grandmother would never think of living on a chicken farm, it had to be a chicken ranch. It was just like she lived on Magnolia Heights, not Magnolia Avenue.)

There are a number of activities associated with life on a chicken ranch. Daily activities included feeding the chickens, gathering eggs (twice a day), cleaning and sorting eggs, and routine repairs and maintenance. Weekly chores included cleaning out the chicken manure under the roosts where the chickens slept (every Saturday) and scrubbing out the watering troughs.

Infrequent activities included replacing nest linings with wood shavings or rice hulls, driving the 1935 GMC flatbed with sideboards to the local lumber yard to pick up a load of shavings. (Today, about every five years, I request competitive quotations for auto insurance on the web. None of the insurance sites will allow an age of first license less than sixteen. In fact, I got my first license when I was fourteen. That allowed me to drive to town to pick up shavings as well as chickenfeed.) Occasionally there was a load of oyster shells to be dumped in the chicken yards. I do not recall the source of the oyster shells.

Chicken are not productive layers for more than about two or three years. So periodically the flock was culled and marginally productive hens were shipped off to slaughter. This required the regular replacement by raising chickens from day-old chicks. One of the steps in raising laying hens is vaccination. I do not recall what diseases the vaccinations were addressing, but there were two.

As I recall noting in an earlier posting, my grandfather was from Denmark. Therefore we did not vaccinate the chickens, we “waxinatted” them. My father, my brother, and I set some sort of record, vaccinating more than twice the number of chickens in one day than did a professional veterinarian crew of five.

As a sideline activity to egg production my brother and I raised five thousand broilers from day-old chicks. When they were ready for market we butchered them and sold them from the ranch for twenty-nine cents a pound. That was during WWII so at today’s dollar that was equivalent to about twenty-nine dollars a pound. We did not require ration stamps. I still know how to dismember a bird in short order.

Cordwood

As I think I mentioned in an earlier post my father owned a one-hundred acre parcel next to my Uncle Bob’s place in Oregon. The property was mostly covered with second growth Douglas fir. A very large pile of sawdust was the only reminder of a long-gone sawmill. There was a small spring that fed an elongated marshy area. Along this marshy area grew a stand of live oaks. Because this stand was surrounded by tall Douglas fir trees, the oak trees tended to grow very tall and slender, reaching for the sunlight. It was from this stand of oak trees that the family gathered firewood for their fireplaces and kitchen stoves.

(I pause in this narrative to explain the concept of cordwood. A cord is a stack of firewood four feet wide by four feet high by eight feet long. Cordwood is pieces of firewood four feet long. Cordwood was typically delivered to a wood shed or a basement where it was bucked into fireplace or stove lengths. It was then split and allowed to dry before burning. A rick is half a cord.)

Using two-man crosscut saws and axes the trees were felled and trimmed. (Remember this was before chainsaws.) To cut the oak logs into four foot lengths Uncle Bob had a buzz-saw with a blade about two feet in diameter. This saw was powered by Uncle Bob’s one-lung diesel tractor using a wide belt drive.

In addition to providing cordwood to family members, some of the wood was sold to folks in Oregon City. Aware as I am of the current price of firewood it is difficult for me to believe my memory, but I recall that cordwood was delivered to town for four dollars a cord.