Progress on Landlady’s new solar panel rack

S broke ground Friday morning, and poured the footings…

Then he finished it up yesterday morning. I was supposed to be involved in this – or at least I was available to be involved – but S works alone. So all I did was haul water for the concrete.

But there was still the matter of trenching from the rack to the powershed, and I did a big chunk of that this morning before breakfast. It mostly turned out to be easy: If the ground is just dirt, it’s easy as can be to trench but if it’s gravel and rocks, it’s the other thing. I got lucky…

…so the trenching went very quickly until I got to the big gate into the chicken yard. It’s wired shut, tied into chicken wire above and a concrete-filled trench below. Which is how you keep from feeding chickens to predators in the desert. I needed to cut all that wire, pry the big gate open for the first time in several years, and then pick away the concrete.

It would have been fairly straightforward, except when Ian and Landlady poured the concrete into the trench under the gate they first laid down a layer of chicken wire to further confound anything trying to tunnel under the gate. It worked just as well at confounding me. But humans have an advantage coyotes lack: Wire cutters! Once through, the hardest part of the trenching was done and I could go see about breakfast.

Little Bear, bless him, has matured into one of those dogs who’s content to keep you company without needing to be the center of attention. Unfortunately he’s also one of those dogs who’ll wander off and cause trouble if not tied down, but at least he doesn’t make a fuss about it. He’s content with company and a bit of shade.