Life's Messy - Clean it Up

That was the slogan of some paper towel brand many years ago.  If only some messes were that easily taken care of.

The pillars of silage left behind when the Mennonite folks took down two of our silos were still here this spring - sadly, no magic snow fairies whisked them away during the winter.  Andy was able to remove some of it with the tractor bucket last year but the concrete staves still embedded in the ground were reinforced with metal rods which would puncture a tractor tire faster than you could say "Oh, $*%&$!" if you ventured over them.  We needed something with a longer reach.

Thankfully, the neighbor who installs fence also does backhoe work and was available (due to heavy rain making a swamp of the fence job he was working) to come and dig the old silage out and load it on the dump wagon so Andy could then discard it at the edge of the woods. It will rot down quickly - the loads he took there last summer were already hardly noticeable.  What a pleasure to see the big job be done so quickly and with such a masterful hand!



There was two days worth of digging here.  It was amazing that the silage in the very bottom was still pleasant to smell.  I don't know if animals would have wanted it but it was a nice surprise to us that it wasn't foul to work around.   You can see how far down he was reaching - that void will have to be filled and the ground graded and seeded. 
When he was done he loaded himself back on the trailer.  It made me think of a hen settling herself down on a nest - careful approach, shimmy a little to get just right, settle down.... ahhhh.  (I have no idea what those buzzing sounds partway through are - maybe that mothership trying to contact me again.)

Better...... I guess.  It looks pretty naked and shabby with circa 1964 sheet metal and unpainted wood exposed for the world to see.  

Eeesh, it doesn't exactly enhance the look of the place but at least now Andy can reach the building to start to dismantle it.  First though he has to fill those craters left by the removal of the spoiled silage.  We have a very large mound of mixed stone left from the reclamation of the gas well drilling area and that will be put to good use here.  (Well, some of it - it's a very large pile).  But the silage is gone and that's a good thing.

One more chunk of a very big job done!