Monday, November 28, 2011

Setting the Light Pole Rivir Ranch Style

On Thursday night/Friday morning, Spencer and his buddy Grant came over to go Black Friday shopping with us. When we came home from shopping on Friday afternoon, Spencer and Grant offered to help Carl set the light pole. So here are a bunch of pictures show you how the guys set the light pole....

First up was to hook up the post hole digger to the tractor. Of course it takes three guys to do this task.
 They got the post hole digger hooked to the tractor but the auger didn't want to attach very easily. There solution...

Spencer stood on top of it while Carl beat the auger with a hammer. They eventually got it attached.

The post hole digger was bent so it wouldn't dig a hole straight into the ground. After deciding that they couldn't bend the post hole digger, Spencer thought to just shim up the tractor a few inches to straighten it out.


It still wasn't perfectly straight so Carl and Grant had to put a little muscle on it and that worked well enough.


They finally got the hole dug, next was putting the 30+ foot telephone pole into the hole.


The pole was big and very heavy. The placed the telephone pole into the hole 'Iwo Jima' style.


They crept their way closer to the end and got it in the hole.


But it was really crooked.


Again, their solution to get the pole straight...


Once they got the pole set straight the packed the dirt all around it. It's not going anywhere now.


When we built the house we knew we wanted a pole light so the electricians left a roll of cable for us on the side of the house to use for the pole light. Spencer and Grant trenched in the cable for us. You can't even see the trench, they did a nice job.


So they got the pole set and the electrical cable trenched up now they need to get the light and cable attached to the pole. Again, their solution....use the deer stand.


Carl harnessed himself to the pole and climbed his way to the top. It was really windy that day so he was a little wobbly up there and the pole isn't really wide enough for the deer stand to grip really well but he made it up there.


He didn't take any tools up with him while climbing so the guys sent up a box with the light and some other parts.


Carl did a little work up there but still needed the drill. Send it up...


Carl got the light hooked up.


And just as he was about to install the light in it, I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking and stepped on the one and only light bulb. Needless to say he wasn't very happy with me then.


So we are almost done, we still need to get a new light bulb, install the the electrical box to the base of the pole and attach the cable to the pole. Carl gets to make another trip up the light pole in the deer stand this week.


We borrowed Carl's Dad's trailer to haul the pole over to our house and when we were taking the trailer back to him on Saturday we blew a tire on the trailer about 8-10 miles from their house. We stopped and called his Dad to see what he wanted us to do but he said that we would be ok and just keep on going. We took it slow and made it to their house eventually.


It's always an adventure when working on the Rivir Ranch and setting up the light pole was no exception.


Monday, November 7, 2011

Crafting

This is my second year of setting up a display at various craft shows in the area. So far I've set up at three craft shows this year and all of them were pretty successful. I really enjoy making all of these little treats so that makes it even more fun. Here was my display this year and some of the little things that I made.




Gardening Season is Over

Our first garden on the Rivir Ranch was quite a sucess. We harvested alot of vegetables this year and were able to preserve alot of them too. But all good things must come to an end, so Carl ripped out the tomato and pepper cages and cleared off all the dead plants. Then plowed over the whole garden to get it ready for next year. He also plowed up an additional 20-30 feet on the end to make our 2012 garden even bigger.


Carl's New Truck

Carl has been eyeing a new truck for awhile and on Saturday he finally got it. He traded in the Trans Am and his old truck and got a 2008 Chevy Silverado z71 truck. It's an awesome ride!

On Saturday, I had a craft show so I had to use his truck to haul my display and items to the craft show. Carl came to the show with me to help me set up but later left to go to check out this truck that he had seen last week and checked out onlne. Well the craft show was open until 3:00 in the afternoon but the car lot was only open until 5:00 and I had the truck 40 minutes away.  So Carl text me and said that he was on his way to help tear down my craft show booth so that we could make it back up to the car lot with the old truck to trade it in for the new truck by 4:00 because it takes some time to process. And sure enough, we left the car lot at 5:00 with a new truck loaded down with all my craft show stuff.

Here is Carl driving his new truck off the lot.

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