Beaver, rain and crazy time

This afternoon I added a board to a railroad tie.  The hayfield/north south pasture gate's bolt slides into the railroad tie to hold the gate shut. After I rebuilt the hayfield/south pasture fence I went back and redid the wires that attached to the railroad ties to loosen them.  Well... after all the irrigating the fence still slightly pulled the railroad tie away from the gate.  The bolt only went into the tie a half inch or so.  So I added a two by six board to provide more of an area to hold the gate's bolt.

In the evening I had a little time before I would move my irrigation pipes so I walked to the river to check on the willow trees on the river bank.  Yup.  The beaver was at it again.  Last month the beaver dug under the wire protecting a large willow and decimated it.

The willow - having been eaten in past years by the beaver - had multiple tree 'trunks' growing. Only one 'trunk' was left and below you can see where the beaver climbed up on the 'trunk' to eat the 'trunk' down from the top.

I had put some extra wire to block the beaver from totally eating the 'trunk'.  It seemed to work as the 'trunk' was still there today.  Still, I added even more wire for protection.

Since the beaver couldn't get to that tree, the beaver then pulled down the wire fencing around three other largish willow trees and climbed over the fencing.  As you can see below not much is left of those trees.  After I protected those trees last Fall with wire fencing the willows grew to over 10 feet tall this year.

I added more fencing, and rods as posts, to protect those three trees so they can grow back.


This last willow is still protected from the beaver.  However the cattle lean through the barb wire fence to eat what they can reach.   Beavers... Cattle... they all love willow trees and work hard to eat them.  It amazing they can grow.

The willow protection work took longer than I expected.  I was 25 minutes late to moving the irrigation pipes this evening.  While the cattle all (except Mama's calf) walked the river this afternoon to go from the south pasture to the middle pasture they still found time to knock over the third irrigation line before they went.  So I had to stand the risers up before completely turning the line on.  A line of clouds was approaching with lightning and thunderstorms.  As I moved the last ten pipes of the first line I kept one eye out for lightning as I could see it in the distance.  I don't want to be holding a 40 foot metal pipe if lightning is nearby. The wind was blowing hard and it was raining by the time I moved the last pipe.  As I bent over the valve opener and turned it I could see light on the ground from lightning.

I was soaked by now and decided not to move the second irrigation line.  That area could have 24 hours of water.  After I closed the valve opener for the third line the last pipe in the mainline - two pipes from the valve opener - popped out a bit and leaked water.  It appeared the wire holding the last pipe to the line of pipes broke.

All that effort, getting soaked and dodging lightning was for nothing.  I went and turned off the irrigation pump.  I'll fix the loose pipe tomorrow.  The rain was much colder than the water coming out of the irrigation sprinklers and I was getting cold.

As I walked home I debated my usual habit of climbing over the metal gates instead of opening and closing them.  I did climb over the gates but I did it quickly as I could still see some major lightning in the distance.