Brrrr

[linda/IL]

Brrr-so cold today.  Been snowing which is really unusual here for this time of year and the wind is blowing.  The rains have made HUGE ponds & lakes & washed out a lot of streets.  Yesterday when I took mom to early eye dr. appt. there were 3 cars in the median of I-80 in a big pond.  They were pumping out water & pulling out cars.  On the way home they were all gone.

Looking out my kitchen window we now have lake side property  but I doubt it will raise the value of our property-decrease most likely!  Certainly is crazy weather.   Hope that DGS's soccer game is cancelled tomorrow a.m. but I doubt I'd be so lucky.

[Ruby Lou]

Yesterday when I started out, it was decent.  Could run outside without a coat briefly.  By last night, two sweatshirts didn't cut the wind!  A little bit of freezing precipitation this morning on the vehicles outside.  Baby calf born, thank goodness in a shed, but even the sheds are a crappy mess from all the rain and the cattle wanting to be inside....wish they would be like a dog and not mess in their "cage"! so tonight I need to get help bedding sheds and haying cows even though the grass is starting to come. ...and take the wet/dry vac over to MIL's and work on her basement.

[Kay/NC]

Hope everything is dried out by now. We got about 3/4 inch Thursday night, both places. Cold air brought the rain, so boiler is back burning here at Jenna's, wind chimes ringing up a storm, and flags straight out unfurled today.

The good thing about a rain this time of year here is that Mike can more easily grade the long lane. He got the potholes out after the last storm, and is shaping ditchlines after this one. You cannot cut this packed clay and rock bed in dry summer, and it would turn into stone soup in the wintertime.

Turning all the surrounding fields into pasture years ago made the lane the only exposed soul...so, you can imagine it takes some maintenance. We decided to grade it up and see, before starting to haul in rock at $500 a load, with a mile-plus to get into shape. The path in NC is about two miles more.

I could have a nice house for what we have spent in crushed stone over the past 20 years...ditto for fuel to pump lagoons. Do you ever stop and think about what it costs you for " invisible" stuff like that?

[wt510151]

I call that plain old maintenance of an investment. You can either do it now or defer it to when it might cost more. If you don't do it. why should you expect it to increase in value? You can't use the property if you can't drive on it, right? We've got roads in this county that were deferred for maintenance and they really took a beating this year with the rain this spring. How much is it going to affect the road dept's budget?

[dairy mom]

we have fought and fought the mud on this place since we bought it.  The old man that used to live in the next place down the highway told me they cut the hill by his place and raise the roadbed going past our 7 times during his life time.  The roadbed is now about 3 ft higher than our yard in front of the house.  He said it was level when he was a kid.  You cannot imagine the water that runs through our place.

Then to top it off my husband always chose to just put gravel down.  Works for a while but always deteriorates.   Finally in the past couple of years we have put down crushed asphalt and or crushed cement in some  spots.  The milk tanker no longer will ever get stuck in front of the milk house.  But I'm afraid we're going to have to make a pretty hefty investment again this year in crushed stuff.  Right now we can't gas up the car here at the farm.  Need 4wheel drive to keep from getting stuck by the gas tanks.  But you have to spend the money cause you need to get around the place.

[Kay/NC]

Oh, I am glad for the $50,000 or so we initially poured in our roads for rock here in NC....it would be probably be triple that at least today. The lane in VA has had $1500 or so dropped since last fall, just to keep potholes filled, and pour some parking spots at the rentals and such.

Most of hat would not have been needed, if the grading could have been done in summertime. We keep stockpiles of different sizes of crushed granite on both places, grader blades, box blades, and wait for the right conditions to pull them up every year. It is as much art as science, to cut and pack them the right way.

Mike is very good at it, fortunately...we haven't had a semi stuck here, unless the driver left the path. The company has to pay for those tows, not us. In the path, it would be on our tab.