Trail maintenance

I heard cousin was retiring at the end of the year. Maybe he will have time to open up his section of trail along the riverbank. Pre-Micheal this half mile was walkable the whole way.

They did the land lines between Sister and the Cousins to the south, her and the Cousins to the east and between the two sets of Cousins themselves. All in all almost three miles of newly opened trail.

J&D's beach. This was open already, but now there are three options of getting there instead of one. When the river is low, there is a good drinking spring here.

I've been seeing a lot of deer on trail this past week. Like these two on the trail to the creek.

But this morning on the trail south of the riverhouse, I came across this doe. It looked like to me she had swam the river, then died. Gut shot with entry and exit wounds on the same side. Only a foot or so of guts hanging out. I got her in the river. but with the roots and her legs, it was a job of work. She was kind of stiff, but not completely.

I've been waiting on getting back to the slough for it to dry out (from the flood) enough to mow with the little tractor. We had an inch and a half this week, and there is standing water at both ends. With this being a rainy season, I don't think it going to get that dry anytime soon. So today I walked back there and got started moving some of the stuff that the flood floated off the brush piles. I was just killing time while doing laundry, so I didn't get a lot done.

It's not real bad. Most of what floated off the piles actually floated away from the slough because the river was so high. There are a few piles like this that got hung up.

The ends are the low spots. There are so many small cypress trees growing back here I won't be able to mow.

The slough is getting less dry. Might open up the valve this week and let it fill on up. There is going to be crap floating off the brush piles next flood anyway, so why wait to get it perfect?

On the sandhill end of the farm, the damn deer are not making me very happy with their choice of rubbing trees. Last week I found one of the blueberry bushes cut to shreds by the fuckers. It's behind the garden fence.

Back before Christmas, my helper and I tore the old deck off the north end of the riverhouse.




With holiday company and everything it was well into the new year before we got started putting it back up.

On Monday when we were working, we heard water running. The pump was spraying water. It being cold, I just tripped the breaker and waited a couple of days until it warmed up. One coupling and one roll of thread tape later I was back in business.

Since I needed to open up the big valve to lower the water pressure, I laid down a half assed sluice way. I need to clean up the area, put in some posts to hold the tin up and build a box for the first few feet. The valve is just barely cracked open here.

Sometimes I get sidetracked. The slough messed around and filled up before I got the last of the brush off the banks. So I've been using a hoe to drag as much as I can to the edge and get it out.

But the good news is the slough filled up in just a couple of weeks. The big valve was only opened two turns. Today I eased it back to a turn and a half. Will wait a while and see what the level does. May need to back off a little more.

I've spent a couple of hours a day working on the river trail the last week. Chainsaw, handsaw and weedeater. I'm down past the landline between the riverhouse land and the creek land. The picture was from daylight this morning, so my weak ass flash didn't do it justice.

Also got the first section of tin in the spillway attached with a splash guard. Still need to bring in one more sheet, trim up some of the worst spots and put in some posts to keep it from getting washed away in the next flood. But all in all, not too bad.

Tree fell across the road down at the creek. Will take the tractor to move it. I got a couple hundred yards of trail cleared, but no pictures of that.

I worked down at the creek land again. Bushwhacked across the narrow part of the peninsula and worked my way downriver towards where I had started the other day. Found a set of deck/dock steps, asphalt shingles and a ratchet set left from the flood. Speaking of flood, the river is forecast to rise 5-6 feet by Monday. I'm going to try to get back in there and get the tools before it gets that high.

I worked on the river trail again, going north from where I stopped at before. I made it to where I had got going south the other day (where the tool kit was). So now I just have one stretch left to clear. Looking on Google Maps it looks to be a couple hundred yards at the most.

The river is coming up pretty quick.