Stump Farm

Another job I got some good stuff from was a re-lighting job at a Park and Ride in Redmond. The light poles in the parking lot medians were five inch square, thirty feet long, laminated and treated cedar. The shoe box fixtures were attached to the tops with cedar 2×6′s four feet long. The wood poles were replaced with thirty foot square concrete poles with two fixtures on top attached with short steel trunnions. I think there were thirty poles altogether. A couple of the wood ones had so many staples in them from people attaching garage sale signs to them, they looked like they were rusting.

I was going to bring all the wood poles out to the Stump Farm, but the shop estimator wanted his fair share. Thus I only got fifteen of them. He made a chicken coop out of his. I thought about making a gazebo out of mine, but couldn’t decide where to build it. They got stored under some black visqueen for a few years. They also got moved about three times. Seems like they were always in the way.

When my wife Diane decided that she needed my shop as her office, a few changes were made. My shop was at the back of the garage. There is a studio apartment above the garage, where we lived for about three years before the house was built. The only door into the shop was in the garage. Since she didn’t want clients walking through the garage to get to her office,  we put a door in the back wall of the shop. Then there was the problem of the clients walking through the grass to get to the new door. When it rained, they would get their shoes wet. If they went through the garage, they wouldn’t have that problem. That was not an option.

Anyway, she decided a raised wooden boardwalk would be just the thing to keep the clients feet dry. The thoughts of a gazebo were gone. So I sawed the poles into four foot lengths and then sawed those pieces down the middle to end up with two pieces. The end of the pole that had been in the ground had started to deteriorate, so I lost about five feet on each pole. I dug a swath through the grass to lay the pier blocks, geofabric and round rock. Set the treated 4×4′s, spread the round rock on the geofabric and stared screwing down the boards. The next thing you know, we had a boardwalk. So now the clients of White Raven Financial Services don’t get their feet wet or muddy.

The poles had vertical groves in them, so the boardwalk is more or less skid proof. The pieces with the staples are really skid proof.

Scavenging to going Green and everything in-between seems to be the norm here at the Stump Farm.

Scavenging, re-cycle,re-use and going Green. Funny how the terms change over time. Though they all mean the same thing to me. Save what you deem will be useful in the future, and then figure out how to put it to best use. Could this also be called hoarding? No.

I guess my scavenging started while I was in the Air Force. I still have an aluminum aircraft records chest, from a B-66, that followed all over Europe and then home. It is now used for storing chain saw oil and tools. When I became a electrician, the scavenging really went into hi gear. I work for one electrical contractor for thirty-four years. They did everything from high voltage power lines to traffic signals. In later years they were known as “Circus Electric, A new show every day”. You can’t begin to imagine the oppertunities to scavenge. Every thing from high voltage insulators from electrical sub-stations, used utility poles, pole cross arms, railroad rails and ties, indoor and outdoor lighting fixtures and all the old bottles I dug up while trenching and drilling holes to set poles.

One of the jobs we had was to install soccer field lighting across the street from the Seattle Arboretum. The site was over the top of a dump that was in use before and after the fire that burned most of downtown Seattle on the 6th of June, 1889. The dump site was a deep gully that opened to the North. They just kept dumping and pushing until most of the gully was full. One of my job was to auger the holes for the lighting poles. The holes were thirteen feet deep. The stuff that came out of those holes was unbelievable. Everything from cupie doll heads, porcelain salt shakers, perfume bottles with the glass stoppers still in place, Owl Drug Company bottles, liquor bottles and ten thousand pieces of broken dishes. I still have the salt shaker.

You can tell Fall is in the air. The Vine Maples are starting to change color. Some are in the red stage while others will just turn yellow before they drop their leaves.

It’s time to put the garden to bed. It shouldn’t take long. The critters didn’t leave much to harvest. The rabbits got the peas, Swiss chard, carrots and the first planting of the beets. The India Runner ducks got the Brussels sprouts, broccoli, squash blossoms and the potato leaves. The spuds had already started to grow, so no harm done. Planted corn two different times with no success. Finally planted some corn starts, and they only got eighteen inches tall. Couldn’t even get cucumbers or zucchini to grow. Miss the cucumbers but not the zucchini. Diane is the only one that ate the radishes. In fact, she had two plantings of them. Had to move the pepper plants into the greenhouse to keep the ducks from eating all the leaves off the plants. Might actually get a few peppers.

I was smart enough to fence the pole beans right from the start. Got enough to pickle a gallon of them. Next year the fence goes up around the whole garden after it’s planted.  All I have to worry about then is the dog. He will pull and eat carrots plus dig an occasional potato.

We got a fair amount of tomatoes. They are on the south side of the pumphouse and not bothered by any critters. Just picked all the green ones yesterday and moved them inside to rippen. They won’t be as tasty as the vine rippened ones, but still tasty.

The ducks do serve a purpose other than causing me grief. They eat every slug they can find. Four females and two males. They have free access to all of the yard, except the garden. If the females are laying eggs, I can’t find their nests. Pickled duck eggs are really tasty.