Eef (rhymes with leaf), our 4 year old Friesian gelding made his Dressage competition debut at the Green Hill Schooling show on October 29th. He and Nancy rode training level tests 1 & 2. He and Nancy had a bit of a bumpy start while riding test 1 by getting a leg hung up for a moment in the dressage ring’s chain. Also, Nancy received a rider error when she proceeded to ride the obsolete version of test 1, haha! The USDA inexplicably changes each riding test pattern periodically. The only explanation that I can deduce is economic in that it compels members to buy new rulebook, reference guide editions and videos. Still, Eef garnered a score of 59 point something, enough for a 3rd place ribbon. In any case, we lauged it off and prepared for the next test of the day. The training level 2 test went off nicely, with Nancy and Eef riding beautifully. For this last test they received a score of 70.385, a great score by Dressage standards and more than enough for a blue ribbon. Congratulations Nancy and Eef!

We’ve decided to purchase Eef from Reesink Horses of Holland ourselves and compete him through the next two seasons while Nancy brings along a young Jazz mare from Reesink, due in the states by the end of the year.

If I remember correctly, those were the words made somewhat famous by the character Mr. Myagi from Karate Kid. Simply waxing a floor was intended to strengthen the upper body muscles of the “karate kid”, while giving Mr. Myagi’s floors an attractive sheen. Watching that movie as a pre-teen, I thought the idea was preposterous! Well, I stand here today as a thirty two year old man to say, Mr. Myagi, you spoke the truth! I’ve taken it upon myself to be the first person – in what I assume to have been many years – to strip and wax our hardwood floors.

We’ve lived under this roof for six months, and about once a day I’ve looked down and told myself, these floors need to be done soon…. these floors need to be done soon….. As you can see from the left side of the photo, the wax coverage was ancient and inconsistent. So, two weeks ago I bought some wax and began to teach myself how to maintain a waxed floor. I first learned that very few people in this fine country of ours still HAVE waxed floors. So few that it’s hard to find paste wax locally. I decided to save 40% and order online for $6 a can. Next I learned that for paste wax the best way to remove the old wax is by using mineral spirits. As you can see from the right side of the photo, the end result is astonishing! I’ve gone through ten (!) one pound cans of paste wax and I’m only one third complete. I’ve waxed the foyer (pictured in photo), the formal living room, the dining room, two long halls, and half of the famly room. One thing is for certain: I’ll be ordering a professional powered floor buffer to finish the rest of the house! Until then, here describes the method I employed to get this far:

Working in 3’x5’ sections, begin by pouring a modest amount of mineral spirits directly on the floor. Work the mineral spirits over the section with a #0 steel wool or equivalent pad attached to a plastic backing with a handle that can be found at any hardware store. The “sanding” motion should of course follow the grain, otherwise the residue is driven into the grain fissures. After “sanding” the entire section, grab a fresh disposable Scott shop towel – the kind found in a self contained box – and rub off the liquid. The liquid will be medium brown in color – a mixture of wax and sand driven into the wax over time. Regularly shift hand position to utilize a clean-ish section of the shop towel. When the shop towel is nearly saturated with browish goo, toss it aside and grab a fresh one. I went through about two shop towels in each section. For significant buildup, use a window scraping tool – the sort with a 3” razor blade – and carefully scrape in the direction of the grain to lift up high patches of built up wax. This won’t mar the wood if executed catiously. Use soiled shop towels to keep the blade clean. Let the floor dry overnight. When the floor is dry, it should have a matte finish. Often, people have certain pieces of furniture or area rugs that have little if any wax under them because for years they waxed around them. If those areas are still clearly noticeable consider then a second round of mineral spirits on those darker areas may be in order. Begin by spreading out the wax evenly and modestly. It will be easy to keep track of what sections have been waxed because the wax darkens the wood almost immediately. Wait 15–20 minutes and buff off the excess undried wax with a shop towel, again following the grain. Wait 1 hour or more. If the wax dries and there is little to no sheen on the wood, then the wood was mighty thirsty to begin with and absorbed nearly all of the wax like a sponge. Put another coat of wax down using the same method. Once there is a top coat of wax that stays on top of the wood, the stage is set for the final step. Wait 1–2 hours and then polish the floor using a clean shop towel. Significant pressure may be required to polish the wax since it is nearly dry, but when the entire area is polished you’ll be rewarded with a gorgeous floor!

All told I’ve spent 15 hours so far on my hands and knees toiling away. And Mr. Myagi was right, my arm and back muscles are much stronger  I may buy tools to make the process go faster in the future, but I’ll never, ever refinish the floors with poly. The sheen on a waxed floor is so organic and beautiful I couldn’t bear to go back to a poly coated floor. I’ve even learned you can have fun with the paste wax by cooking dyes into fresh wax to give floors a new color tint. Something to keep in mind!

My north pasture hardscaping project is complete as of this afternoon  Here is a project breakdown for the terminally curious!

Phase One: I built a slope in order to traverse the hilltop with my John Deere 3520. There was so much erosion that a limestone outcropping was completely exposed at the west topside of the hill. I hauled fill for an hour and built a slope I could safely climb with a loaded tractor. Next I spent four hours breaking out the slab from hell with a Jackhammer. That, and a half hour of rubble removal and I was ready to call it a day. Curiously, the only muscles that ached two days later were those attached to my Cro Magnon jaw. I had subconsciously pursed my lips and clamped my teeth down *hard* while I ran the hammer to help stablize my brainpan. Must have worked, my head is still attached, but just barely, haha.  

Phase Two: With the slab and the relic water trough removed, I carefully dug the water supply line and the electric supply line out until they were exposed back at the fenceline. While freeing the water supply line I found the source of a water leak – the chief reason the trough was inoperable. The leak was found in a cap on a “T” that in the past fed water to another line. With both supply lines coming up from the ground at the fenceline, installing a Nelson automatic waterer over the winter will be a no-brainer

Phase Three: I hauled to the hilltop +/– 80 tons of clay and sand mixed with a small amount of organic matter (read: horse manure). This was a 2,000 foot round trip for the 3520 but it handled the job very well. Hauling and grading took approximately eight hours. With its floating loader arms, the 3520 is a very capable grader. If you enlarge the photo you can see more clearly the change in grade. I’ve brought ground level at the fenceline up about eighteen inches and have graded the slope such that the erosion plateau is more of a gradual decline. The vinyl fenceline is leaning back due to slippage during erosion, but it’s not noticeable from the public roads below. Plus, come Spring, it will all be removed and replaced with a proper four rail wood fence.

Tomorrow I’ll be spreading a couple few hundred pounds of annual ryegrass seed and crossing my fingers that the cold snap goes straight back to Canada where it came from. If I pro-actively irrigate the hilltop I should start seeing grass in about four days. With any luck, by early November I’ll see a green hilltop for the first time since we’ve been here

As we neared the end of a truly enjoyable Saturday afternoon, I was fortunate to arrive home and catch what is surely the most beautiful sunset I’ve experienced in my modest lifespan. I’ve seen wonderful sunsets in many parts of the world, though they’ve never quite moved me so deeply. Perhaps it was that the setting of the October sun had uncovered secrets of a mountain that were, until that moment, entirely unknown to me. Often the wonderment of finding something new – in something so familiar – leaves me bound and in that fleeting moment, I cannot look away. I stand gazing, bearing witness to something that forever leaves its impression on me and, when that fleeting moment is gone, I’m left a ship sailing in a new direction, with a new and welcome breeze to guide me onward.

The concrete slab pictured in the “Red Claycrete” blog entry below has been turned to rubble, courtesy of a rented electric brake jackhammer. To my shock and amazement, the slab was MUCH thicker than was evident. About 8” of slab was exposed, but another 10” was hiding in the clay under the lip of a slightly wider section (visible in the photo). Why on earth an 18” thick slab was called for I have no idea. I suppose it was designed to handle the weight of several massive beef cows drinking at the waterer – with a substantial margin for error. It took me four *expletive removed* hours on the hammer, shaving off flakes at a 45 degree angle to work my way down through the slab. Just the waterer itself, plus the small slab underneath (visible in the photo below) weighed more than 900 pounds!  I didn’t weigh it, mind you, but it takes at least that much weight to start lifting up the ass end of a 3,000 pound tractor with the bucket about 6” off the ground, traveling down a slight incline. And after that experience, I now know what an older gent meant when he once described a hairy situation to me as a “Pucker Factor 9”. I had just such a moment  Fortunately I’ve had many similar albeit less potentially fatal moments and have pretty well intuited what seems the best thing to do: drop that bucket to the ground FAST. Then go change your underwear

I’ve moved the rubble and tomorrow will cut back the electric wiring and water supply line to the fenceline and safely cap both of them off. I’ll be installing a Nelson automatic frost free waterer in this field, and it looks like I will be able to re-use both supplies, which is a big plus!

Now, I’m off to eat a giant bowl of ice cream. I just weighed myself, and for the first time since High School I weigh 170 pounds! That is 25 pounds less than I weighed in Vermont two years ago. Oddly enough, according to my wife, I look larger, because my waist has shrunk to 30” while my back has expanded to 47”. Today without thinking I lifted two fifty pound bags of grain onto each of my shoulders when I was moving grain into a storage room. That’s twice what I could do comfortably prior to buying and tending our little farm. So screw gym memberships, if you really want to lose weight for good, buy yourself 40 acres and work the land! Haha.

Quick Update: I knocked a corner off the slab with my sledgehammer in 5 minutes. When I stopped to assess my progress, two of the five knuckles on my left hand were throbbing the throb of joints that were beginning to separate as the inertia of the hammer was at its maximum  That and the chunk of flying concrete that struck my shin gave me pause and I’m now planning on renting a jackhammer tomorrow to finish the job. A hydraulic splitter is out of the question – I don’t have an air compressor – so I’ll really be making some noise tomorrow

Okay, the annual ryegrass seed didn’t take on the top of our north pasture. I was hoping it would take hold so I could put off hardscaping this hill until Springtime. I’ve got 200 or so tons of clay/sand mix - which I previously removed from our indoor arena – stored behind the arena for just such a project. So, as a glorious October sun warmed me from within, I began hauling fill by the half ton with my John Deere’s 300CX loader. Two hours into the project and I’ve made noticeable progress. Another six hours tomorrow and I hope to have a neat After photo to acompany the Before photo at right.

The defunct waterer pictured at right is a relic from decades past. “Pride of the Ranch” is stamped on the side. Heh. Not according to me. I’m guessing the float valve failed and caused the significant erosion visible around the concrete. I’ve decided now is the time for it to be removed. It’s a danger to horses, and the pipe leading up to it that wasn’t buried below the frost line ruptured long ago. It’s a big chunk of concrete. About 6×6 feet wide and 1 foot thick. I guess-timate about 3 tons of concrete. I’m about to head out with a big mother truckin’ sledge hammer to see if I can get it broken up into smaller chunks. My goal is to have hardscaped this hillside by tomorrow at 5pm, in time for some welcome rain over Thursday evening and Friday.

Okay, I’m not so much injecting poison into the cheeks of our barn aisle as I am giving it dermabrasion and a butt-lift, so maybe that wasn’t such a great analogy   Pictured at right is two of our eleven stalls. The wood and metalwork has been scrubbed with an oxalic acid based cleaner. Oxalic Acid will eat your lunch so it requires either a) prudence or b) a high pain tolerance. What I lack in the former, I make up with the latter, so I’ve been having a blast watching the original luster of the wood and metal re-appear after 15+ years of dirt and dust accumulation. Oxalic Acid breaks down rust faster than you can say OH-MY-GOD-MY-EYES-ARE-ON-FIRE. We haven’t much rust on our metalwork, which after 20 years is in pretty fine shape thanks to the invention of galvanized steel. If you’re building stalls, go with galvanized! Aluminum metalwork is flimzy. No it won’t rust, but one kick or strong push from a horse and your pretty aluminum metalwork will buckle. I’m not just guessing, I’ve seen it. Also, horses are typically given salt blocks to lick when they’re standing in stalls. Salt corrodes aluminum. Horses lick stall bars. You do the math. I urge you to avoid non-galvanized steel metalwork because it will rust in only a handful of years. In Vermont we chose the cheaper route and went with non-galvanized and regretted it just three years later when rust was beginning to take hold! So, horse people, repeat after me, Galvanized Steel is Worth Every Penny.  ANYWAY, as I have mentioned, we don’t have much rust to speak of. However, those living in or on top of red clay may not be aware that Iron Oxide is the compound that is chiefly the source of the red color in the clay. Iron Oxide is more commonly known as Rust. So, Oxalic Acid does a nice job of breaking down the red film that attaches itself to… basically everything in areas where red clay is present. You can try a more diluted version of the solution I used by shopping for Oxy Clean / Orange Glo products. There is a small amount of Oxalic Acid in those products.

Also visible in the enlarged photo are 6×6 posts that I’ve set underneath the stalls. I’ve got 2 1/2 more stalls to go and I’m done this damnable project! Haha. This process goes like so: 1) Dig out densely packed clay. 2) Measure span between 4×6 support posts. 3) Cut 6×6x8 to size. 4a) Slide in, level and bracket 6×6 post in the case of a doorway or 4b) Slide in and mount 6×6 flush under stall wall. 5) Cut excess stall mat with a rip saw. 6) Replace excavated clay in voids created and pack. Now, doesn’t this sound like fun! Ah well, the end result is a superb edging for the concrete cobblestone pavers I’ll be putting in soon. I can’t wait! 

My farm facilities remodel continues at a steady pace. To the right is an updated before/after photo. Clearly visible is my alien green annual ryegrass growing like gangbusters. I’ve recently spread and mildly cultivated some seed around the front of the barns to provide a bit more ground stabilizer for the upcoming months. This After photo really shows how I opened up the lane down the right side of the storage barn and arena. This has allowed much more natural light to enter the indoor. I’ve still got a few mammoth Ailanthus trees to remove – they’re visible behind the large Sycamore – but I may wait until next Spring. They’re pretty large and are doing a passable job of stablizing my ridge, and I’ve not time left in the growing season to establish an alternative. That’s okay, their days are numbered, muah hah hah hah hah!

You can also see that the right portion of the left barn has taken on a bluish tint  After playing around in Photoshop with my original Before photo, I selected this flavor of blue because it complements the khaki (?) color of the other barns. It took me about 30 minutes to get that side painted, so I have another 8 hours before I have an all blue barn.

FYI, the color is a solid stain. Solid stain is a combination of traditional wood stain in addition to – in this case – oil alkyl paint. In my experience this is a much longer lived “paint” that holds up for many more years than straight paint. Yes, you’ll have fading – and what I would describe as microscopic flaking – but you won’t experience the sort of grotesque peeling that happens all too soon with straight paint. Semi-transparent stain holds up even better but you don’t completely mask the grain and therefore you cannot achieve a solid color.

Oil alkyl paint is tough as nails. You can’t order it anymore for “interior” colors but if you plan on painting the interior trim in your house, and you can find can oil alkyl exterior paint in a color that you like, then use it on your interior trim. Solvents in oil alkyl paint are a bit more toxic to humans so make sure you have proper ventilation. However, oil alkyl paint will hold up for DECADES. We have oil alkyl paint in a semi-gloss on our interior trimwork that looks as though it was painted last year – yet it is at least 15 years old and possibly as old as 27 years old in some rooms! Latex acrylic paint, on the other hand, will begin to noticeably loose its luster after five years, in my experience. I think there is a group of lobbyists somewhere funded by major paint manufacturers who are laughing their asses off, because by banning oil alkyl interior paint they effectively triple their interior paint sales over a 15 year period. Genius! Haha.

Lastly, quite noticeable is the mess I’ve made in front of the left horse barn during my excavation of the barn aisle. I’ve removed 8” of clay footing and added 1” of limestone screenings. More on that project in my next post. Time marches on!

As I’m affectionately called “Mr. ADD” by my treasured wife Nancy, it may not surprise you to learn that I’m at my most euphoric when I’m juggling a dozen projects. So, as some of my projects wind down, I wind up new ones to replace them. Luckily, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed the discipline to finish every project that I start. Well, nearly every project  Don’t get Nancy started on THAT one, haha!

So, with that said, I’ve begun to plan a fairly massive project for early next year. Pictured at right is the north side of our home. Another wing extends back at a 90 degree angle on the right side of the house. By my count we have fifty one windows with solid wood frames and casements. Well, mostly solid. After 27 years much of the wood on the bottom edge of the casements have begun to disintegrate. If this were an episode of This Old House, I’d be ripping out all of the windows and replacing them with $57,000 in replacement windows w/ casements. Since this is not This Old House, and I’m not a wealthy retired banking executive living somewhere in MA, with a bottomless mutual fund money account, I’ll be going a different route. For each of the window casements, I’ll be assessing their condition and replacing only the wood that has reached the end of it’s useful lifespan. I’ll be using the best hardwood for the job to ensure that the existing window frames last at least another 10 years. As I work on each window, I’ll be removing and renovating the surrounding solid wood shutters, if applicable. Some shutters will need to be re-glued before I sand and refinish them. If you enlarge the photo by clicking on it you’ll also notice that much of the wood lap siding is also in rough shape. As I work my way from window to window, I’ll be replacing every inch of wood siding. The siding will not be replaced by wood, but rather concrete plank lap siding. Concrete planks have really proven themselves out in the field. Finally, a product that can truly replace the aesthetic and function of wood on the exterior of a house!

The extent to which Colonial Williamsburg is honored within the design and construction of our home is really neat and I intend to keep the new colors true to the original owners’ intent. To that end I’ve ordered scads of books from Amazon.com that I hope will educate me on what my options are with regard to door, shutter and trim colors. From time to time I see a really stunning brick colonial with white window trim and deep black shutters. White may just be a bit too much because our dormers are oversized – over 60” wide – to accomodate 42” dormer hallways that end in a cedar lined window bench / chest. Most colonial dormers are very narrow so the white does not dominate the roof tone. Oh well. Perhaps this is a job for Photoshop  I may spend some time this evening and separate out the trim in the above photo and play with different color hues and intensities. Sometimes it helps being a DIY craftsman who is also a geek with computer graphic design expertise!