I'm just going to say it: This was a fairly tough week, and it started on Monday. . .
We had a coupon from Home Depot for ten percent off anything, so we decided to buy our roof shingles now, even if there isn't much time to put the roofing on, and saving a few hundred dollars. I have said this all before -If you do something unnecessary, you are inviting disaster. In this case the disaster was manageable and short lived.
On Monday I took our big trailer down to the Tigard Home Depot to pick up the ninety bundles of roofing we ordered. This was the closest store that had enough of the roofing to allow us to get it all in one place so this is where the whole story started. The crew loaded two palettes on the trailer and it was all going very well. . . I tied the load down with truck straps and began the trip back to Creekside Farm. . . I got the thing onto the highway and began accelerating to highway speed . . . And at about forty miles an hour one of the straps broke and the whole thing got really interesting for a few seconds.
The forward-most palette shifted to the right, at the front of the trailer, sending the trailer to the right and fish-tailing the truck because the truck itself is perhaps quite a bit too light for this much load. As I corrected the steering to the left the load shifted once more and the trailer began pushing the truck around.
I tried to steer toward the shoulder but the whole thing was out of whack, so the trailer pushed the the truck hit the guard rail. The entire load became airborne and nearly every bundle of roofing jumped over the guard rail. The trailer broke free and kept going down the highway, eventually stopping fifty feet ahead of where I had finally stopped, but the trailer crossed the highway and landed against the concrete barrier in the middle.
Needless to say it, but the whole thing shook me up a little. But my luck held out. Nobody got hurt, no other cars became entangled in my follies, the trailer landed right side up, and the truck was still running when I stopped.
I called 911 and they sent a Tigard cop out. He stopped traffic and I re-attached the trailer and pulled it across the highway and onto the shoulder. I called Ann and she arranged the rental of the big truck and trailer we had used to haul horse compost a few weeks back. Our son Jack jumped out of bed and drove the big truck to where I was sitting and the hard work of loading all of the roofing, much of which was now loose, into the new trailer. While we worked the project a few caring people pulled off the highway and helped out. All of them are appreciated, the Hispanic guy name Christian is especially worthy of praise because he really did a whole lot of work helping us pick all of the stuff up. Jack drove back to the Farm and I stayed behind, solving the problem of getting our trailer hooked to the truck. Eventually I got the truck back home and all of us allowed ourselves to decompress. It was a tough day.
We held off unloading the big trailer until the next morning. The load weighed about six thousand pounds, so moving the load from the highway embankment, over the guard rail, and into the big trailer was quite a lot of work. Moving it again the next morning was quicker work, but the weight was still significant. Eventually we got the load sorted out and back onto our flatbed trailer. We lost about six bundles of roofing in this, but saved enough of it to roof the house.
All in all it wasn't an especially expensive episode. The trailer wasn't hurt, the Truck wasn't hurt. All we lost was a day and a half and about a two hundred dollars in roofing and rentals. This is the end of the story, but the week didn't start off very well.
However, the week wasn't a complete washout. We finished closing up the stubborn leaks in our waste water system in the new Farmhouse, called for inspections of water, waste, and electrical rough ins. Got through the inspections with very little trouble and even less necessary changes, and began closing up all of the trenches we had crisscrossing the front of the house. So the week ended pretty well, all things considered. Though all of this was very stress filled, we find ourselves little worse for the wear on Saturday.
In other Farm news we decided to re-open the Rocketdog Wait List. Our new house will soon be livable (soon being a fairly malleable term) so we will once more commence our breeding business and trying to show a profit. We already have three people singed up for the List but expect we will have puppies again in the Spring of next year. Our Chickens have begun providing a dozen eggs a day, which is about right for the size of our flock in Winter. The eggs are beginning to increase in size as the hens get better at making them. We are selling eggs once more. The ducks are happily disturbing our newly planted Tulip and Narcissus bulb bed, but not giving eggs. And the dogs are having a very good time. The Farm looks Christmas-messy, more messy in the daylight, more Christmassy in the dark. All in all we are making good progress on the place.
The weather has been very cold and rainy, so pushing mud back onto the trenches is a bit of a hassle. It is hard to smooth out the mud and the tractor makes ruts more and more as you drive over the bare dirt. But PGE needed the trenches near the Utility Shed filled in so that they can hook power up to our newly approved electrical system in the new house. It will be nice to have water and power out there, but it will still be a little while before we can move into the place. There is still insulation, drywall, a few windows, and a long list of other things needed to make the place our home, so for now we live in the tiny home and look forward to the coming of Spring. But first . . . Winter@CreeksideFarmOregon.
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