This is Ike taking a reading from one of the rain guages. I think we had two of them at opposite ends of the property. These had a revolving drum and a roll of paper that took readings all the time and recorded it as a graph. I think the paper had to be changed once a month. Don't take me to task if you know a lot about these and I haven't remembered perfectly. It was a long time ago, and I didn't really do much with it. I think maybe I changed the roll one time.
I showed you on an earlier day that Ike took the readings from the weather station. But I knew how to do this too. It really was just a matter of plugging that handheld unit in to the feed from the station on top of the tower and making sure the numbers came through right and not just gobbledegook.
Doing all these things took time. It's a 500 acre site, and mostly I walked to the locations. They are still in operation. Their website says they have 4 ponds, so either they removed two or my memory is bad. Could be either. This was 31 years ago, and I didn't keep a journal.
Ike's top priority was to check on the main pump that drew water from the river. But he had to teach me what to do if it quit, which occasionally happened. I think something had to be reset every few days. Looks pretty compicated, right?
Well, it was pretty complicated, and I knew nothing except how to punch in the reset codes. However, it did go down late one evening when I was there alone, so they were extra glad someone was on site that day! If that hadn't worked, I would have needed to call Ike.
Ike's other primary duty, and he HATED it because it kept happening over and over, was to deal with this. Where the water went back into the river, in other words, at the far end of the property, was a small double culvert where the water flowed out. Well, you can sort of see where two holes are supposed to be at the bottom of that pile of cattails.
Yes, there were beaver, and it was their great burning desire in life to keep the water in the pond. Every couple of days, Ike had to go back there and clear the culverts. I often helped him.
It was amazing how quickly the beavers (whom I NEVER saw) would plug things back up. Sometimes they got really serious and used more mud than vegetation. This isn't the exit culvert. I'm no longer sure where this went, but they did a fine job. Ike was not pleased.
And how about that Chips? He was having a grand time learning about the world. Like how wind makes waves on the water and they require barking. He was still pretty little in this picture. He hadn't yet turned into the dog that could not be kept out of the water. That didn't really happen until he was maybe 6 months old. Before that, he wasn't afraid of it (Maggie hated the water), but at this he stage he would not yet jump into anything wet.
There was no particular amount of time I was required to spend working. I just had to complete all the tasks, which wasn't much of a problem as long as I wasn't a slacker. The inside jobs took a huge amount of time. We'll visit them tomorrow. But I'll say again that this "job" was heaven on earth for an outdoor-loving human and a puppy.
In other news: I'm almost done with the big editing job I've had for a while, and I'm working on formatting my own book, and played with the cover a bit. I've spent all day working with fonts and graphics and my head is spinning. Still no car.
 | See Regular Outside Duties |
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