Friday, March 8, 2013

Fence for the dogs

We've wanted a fence for Bailey since we moved in, but everything else seemed to take preference.  With the addition of the pups to our family, we felt we could no longer put it off.  The pups have been doing really well on the veranda and we take them out 2 or 3 times a day into the big yard.  By using bacon bits as a reward, they're getting good at coming when called, but still getting quite adventurous.

I bought two roles of field fencing and had planned to try to buy some sapodilla fence posts.  The problem was that there weren't any posts available, but I did find a pallet of various 8' long sapodilla pieces at Yalbac Lumber.  At a dollar a board foot, it was quite a bargain, but, how to get it home????  We tried to find a trailer to haul this load, but nothing was available.  The problem was two-fold.  First, with the butane tank in our 6' truck bed, our load length was diminished.  The second part is that, sapodilla is extremely heavy.  Some of these pieces were also ironwood or logwood. We struggled to find an option, but the only one that was available was for us to travel to Iguana Creek, making  as many trips as needed.  We were able to get almost half the pallet on the truck.  Praises to our valiant Toyota Tundra.  We decided to take the back road between Spanish Lookout and Bullet Tree.  That way we wouldn't be on the "highway" with our heavy load.  Sounded good until we got to the hill just past the turn to the ferry.  We heard and felt a whoosh and the whole load slipped onto the road.  Bummer!  The darned bed liner on the truck is slippery.  We had thought that the heaviness of the boards would keep them in place, but the hill and the bouncing proved us wrong.  We had to start reloading on that hill.  When we were part-way finished a van loaded with Mennonite tourists fro ng turned out to be fortuitous as they were aiming for Spanish Lookout without realizing that they were headed in the wrong direction.  By stopping to help us, we got them turned in the right direction. 

We limped towards Bullet Tree at about 15 miles per hour, stopping every couple of miles to be sure everything was still intact.  We were worried about the steep entrance to Paslow Falls Road and then up our road.  Even though ours is much improved, it's still steep.  Art had the great idea that we back up these steep parts.  At Paslow Falls he got out to stop any cars coming our way and I backed up the road.  Voila!  It worked.  I have to thank my training as a long-haul truck driver some years back, for my comfort in driving backwards.  The bumps and holes on Paslow Falls Rd., forced us to stop again to adjust the load and then our road up.  Art's strategy worked fine as I backed the quarter mile up our road without incident.  The really tough part was that we had to off-load the lumber and go back to get the second half.  Quite an undertaking for a couple of old duffers all in one day,   Before we made this trip we loaded up with all the rope, bungy cords and a come-along.  Roberto at Yalbac helped us tie it on and his experience did the trick.  I'll just say that, by the time this load was on, it didn't have a prayer of moving an inch. We were able to drive back on the highway, driving carefully, but taking all the hills straight on. 

We left this load on the truck and Rene and two of his boys came yesterday and built our fence.  What a thrill to be able to let our kids out and not worry that they'll head into the bush.  This is just one more job to thank Rene for. 


1 comment:

Emilio Fernandez said...

Good morning how are you?

My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.

I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.

For all this I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Belize? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Belize in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:

Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Calle Valencia, 39
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain

If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.

Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.

Yours Sincerely

Emilio Fernandez