Gophers and Mud

 

First the gophers. I think my high school days are coming back to haunt me. You see, my high school’s mascot was the Gophers. Yeh. Really. I know. Who in their right mind names their sports teams’ mascot after a small, shy, burrowing pest?

Apparently my high school. sigh.

We’d try to make the best of it by chanting things like, “Gophers Go For it!”.

I know……..Lame. haha! 

I’ve known we had gophers here since we moved into this house, but didn’t think much of ‘em, as long as they didn’t eat my peach and apple trees or destroy anything important.

Well. they. have. crossed. the. line! Damn gophers!

Guess who has no electricity to their barn now? And guess why.

Gophers! That’s why.

We had an electrician out the other day and he said because the ground is thawing out with our 40-50F temps, the gophers are active. He’s been getting calls about chewed electric lines for years out here in our mountains, due to gophers. And it’s really the homeowner’s fault for not encasing the electric lines in flexible, metal or PVC conduit properly, and then burying it safely and deeply.

Clueless people really are burying their ‘bare’ electric lines to their garages and barns in shallow trenches. I suppose they believe it’s cheaper not to buy protective conduit, but it ends up being very expensive in the long run when a stupid gopher comes along, bites through the electric line, and moisture gets to the exposed wires. The Electrician disconnected the electric wires for us. And now, to fix the problem that the previous owner caused, we’ve got to rewire the entire line from the house, all the way up to the barn, and encase it in the conduit (like it should have been done in the first place. grrr!), and then bury it in a deep trench.

What a pain! We had similar problems when our water pipes to the barn froze and burst two winters ago, in the middle of winter. That was fun hauling water up the steep, slippery hill the rest of winter. Not!

Wanna know why those water pipes burst? The same homeowner never took it into consideration that water pipes in these mountains must be buried BELOW the frost/freeze line, which is at least 18” deep. Yeh, our water pipes were only buried about 8” deep. We had to wait until Spring and it cost a couple hundred dollars to get that problem fixed with a backhoe. Bleh! People really annoy me!

And so do gophers. This photo was taken underneath my peach tree today. Mr, Gopher better leave my peach tree alone or he’s going to be taking his last breath when a water hose is plugged into his burrow!

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Mud. I know there are many of my readers who deal with mud all Winter long and even during the Spring, but here in New Mexico, it’s rare to have mud except after it rains…which is rare. We usually have rain during our monsoon season in July and August, but this past summer we only received 3 good rains and the mud dried up the same day.

But we are making up for that lack of moisture this winter and now that our snows are beginning to melt, it will all be replaced by mud. Greasy, slimy, sloppy, boot-sucking, slippery mud.

I took this photo today. This is the view up the hill from our house, to the barn.

It’s not easy walking uphill in this slick swamp. I’ve been letting Ranchman John take over the animal care during the worst of this. My gimpy knee easily gets torqued when I’m slipping and sliding and I’d rather not risk getting hurt if I can avoid it.

This is the view looking down the hill from the barn towards the house.

But I did take a video this evening when Jenna and I went up to the barn to feed the animals because John was busy on the phone. I don’t think I’ll be going up there until things dry out some.

                                Nasty!

I can almost trick myself into imagining the slop as being chocolate pudding with cherries on top.

Almost. But not quite.

(Edited and removed part of this post because it was too lengthy.)

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

 

But it turned out not to be such a great idea after all.

Yep. That’s my GMC Van. Stuck in the mud. In a ditch. I always drive this way home, but never after a heavy rain. Except we rarely get heavy rains, and so….I never had the opportunity before to drive this road after a heavy rain. hah!

I was driving home from taking my daughter to her T-Ball game. (I’ll post about that soon. It was a fun game….and her team, The Pink Ponies won!) We had not one lick o’ rain out on the eastern plains, but once we drove into the mountains, I could see that the roads were wet with even a few puddles here and there. But it didn’t occur to me that my short-cut road could be dangerously slippery. And I often forget that my van doesn’t have 4-wheel drive. hah!

The drive started out smooth enough…and then…….SLIP…..SLIDE……and WHOMP! I fell into the ditch.

     

As we slid into the ditch, the vision of my van flipping over flashed into my head, as the van rocked to a final stop. The thought crossed my mind that I’d land on my left side, the same side as my injured knee. Would this be my ‘Third Strike’? Thankfully, a vehicle proved safer for me, than my horse, and the van stayed upright.

I called Ranchman John, whose truck does have 4-wheel drive, and because I was only 5 minutes from home, he was there quickly. My heart sunk, though, when I first saw him at the top of the hill, as he slid right off the road and into a ditch.

I grabbed my camera, thinking, well, if anything this could be kind of exciting, and maybe even blog worthy! hah!

(Those tire tracks you see on the road above, aren’t from my hubby, but from someone else who tried driving on this road before I did. You can see that they zigged and zagged quite a bit, too!)

Once Ranchman John switched on his 4-wheel drive, he did much better on the slippery road. But there were still a few zigs.

  

(That road up the hill, with the two cars, is a paved road. Those people in those cars…….they were probably laughing at us, calling us crazy, for even trying to drive on that road after it rained. Or maybe they were watching and learning. Hey! Maybe I saved someone else from making the same mistake. hah! Makes me feel a little better believing they weren’t laughing at me.)

Oh! I was so happy when he finally made it to where I was, still stuck in the ditch. ‘A sight for sore eyes’ is an understatement!

Ranchman John was originally thinking about pulling my van out of the ditch from the front. I didn’t think that would be such a good idea….thanks to my ‘visions of doom’ that flashed through my head…..oh…..and physics.

 

(Oh yeh. I bet you’re wondering why I’m on the hill and not helping? Well, I was a wee bit traumatized. And my twinlings were there, too, and very eager to help out. What big little men, eh? I will tell you that it was quite a struggle to get up there on that muddy hill, using a crutch and a bionic leg brace, with 3” of thick mud on my sandles…and squishing between my toes, trying to help my 6 yr old daughter, who was very upset about getting her shiny white sneakers covered in mud.)

But we cowgirled up and stood up there on that muddy hill, while it started to sprinkle, and watched the story unfold. Jem, my other twinling son, even gave his hoodie to his sister because the rain was so cold and all she had on was a short sleeve shirt. He’s a sweet boy and a wonderful big brother. *grin*

 

(Oh. Did I forget to mention that my twinling, Jax was behind the wheel. And he’s only 12? And he doesn’t know how to drive…..unless you count driving a John Deere tractor. But you gotta start ‘em out with Driver’s Ed sometime, right? He had a ‘crash’ course…….get it?….crash……uh, I know that was bad. lol!)

But except for a few tense moments where Jax kept turning the wheel in the wrong direction or not straight, which caused the van to slip deeper into the ditch, he did a stellar job, and he was a huge help in getting the van unstuck. Jax even learned how to operate the brakes……all on his own. (or there may have been some bumper-to-bumper contact, too. gah!)

(Yep. Jax stopped just in time, but unfortunately the back tire drove over the tow rope. But they got unstuck with no problems, except for getting themselves all muddy, that is.)

Then they drove Jenna and I to the other end of the road, in the truck, while they walked back to the van.

They did get the van backed all the way up (It’s a rear wheel drive and does better in reverse) to the end of that road. And Ranchman John was kind enough to drive my van back home, while I drove the truck. (I love me a good truck! A 4-wheel drive is definitely on my wish-list. hah!)

Well after the craziness of my last 6 months, I think Train Wreck may have to let me borrow her nickname. Sheesh! Ok. I’ve had enough ‘excitement’ to last me a very long, long, long time. gah!

I don’t think any of you will mind if I partake of a little ‘liquid courage’ or ‘liquid calm’ right about now. Because this glass of Sangria sure looks good, don’t you agree?

    

(A glass of wine followed by a cup-of-tea shooter……..bliss.) 

From the Tower of,