On a daily occurrence I see something encouraging or helpful while looking for something unrelated. Part of me thanks God that His spirit is always around to give me some clues to this life. Of late I have been frustrated that working on my next shop space, it is either too low on my priority list or I just do not want to start on that big of a project. This morning I started out to do a top priority task, something that we were itching to do. Yes, literally itching! We had thought that it was great that the swallows had nested just above our bedroom window, it wasn’t! Ok for a time seeing them fly in and out of the nest will laying in bed had its perks, but then reality smacked us. We would lay in bed at night with the window open feeling the cool night air. Then once the young birds fledged that nest full mites was empty and the mites were still hungry. Kristine eradicated the buggers on the inside of the house and I went to the shop to find the ladders. When we arrived here most of my shop tools and assorted stuff needed to find somewhere to live temporarily. Hey the real truth is that I was driving an all terrain forklift trying to get three semi trailers unloaded as quickly as possible while watching dollar signs rushing away into the distance in my minds eye. Things got dropped into whatever space there was without much thought or planning.
The coming shop space is a mess, a dark hole of despair, breeding ground of rust and dirt. When I do have time to work on the shop it is a mental test of my resolve to venture into this mess. This morning I was motivated to wade into the piles of disorder in the dark cavern that will be the shop. Something about being bitten and waking up itching at night can motivational. These are creatures so small that they are nearly invisible, but the itch is intense. After a few days of not knowing whether that sensation on your back or leg or arm was just your clothes; or this army of mites I either had to overcome the dread of the shop or find a mental ward. It took some time to get the ladders out of the shop. When a thirty six foot extension ladder is buried in the haphazard pile of tools and boxes it takes some moving and maneuvering to free the beast. With all the moving I found that the space and its contents really aren’t that bad. There was the light of hope in the scourge of the mites. Today I gained not just a less infested home; possible a good night’s sleep, but hope that the shop can be conquered. I know that my dread of the shop is just a mental obstacle, a huge project to start, but getting in there to get the ladders broke another brick out of that wall that separated me from this project.
The next step in taming the shop is to move everything out of the space so that the dirt floor can be leveled to ready for pouring a concrete floor. Today I moved three ladders and our paint sprayer out to use in cleaning the exterior of the house. When we were done the ladders were stored in their new home outside of the shop. The paint sprayer was stored temporarily out in the carport for now. I think a lot of us have this threshold to get over when starting some projects. Hey large tasks are intimidating. I now have a start, a foot hold, in clearing out the shop space. Dang mites!
Part of the concept of this random written blog is to cover multitude of subjects, sort of a weekly shot gun blast sample life. So in a not so random continuation of the whole shop theme lets talk about electricity. Recently I have started two electrical of distinct different paths. One path is to provide electrical shocks to form a physiological prison, the other is to isolate the potential of accidental shocks while using the power for good. It is not quite the battle between good and evil, rather an example of using the same tool to vastly do different tasks. Hey, that sounds like a great shop topic, same tool different results. To keep the cattle in we put up and electric fence. The device I believe takes, the 110 volt alternating current and converts it to a pulse of higher voltage lower amperage direct current. Now we want to run the animals out across the creek back into the forest at times so I wanted a high powered fence charger, one that would make even the hairiest animal get a good jolt. I think that the fence charger is a great example of what you do not want to do for typical wiring, so lets look at the bad examples. One of the first requirements on the fence charger operating instructions is having a good ground. Not just your regular single ground rod, but two or three eight foot ground rods. They even suggest pouring water on the soil around the ground rods during drought times. Ok good grounding is usually a great safety item, but not here. The ground here is insure that when you run up against that bare, un-insulated fence wire it shocks the snot right out of you. Speaking of un-insulated conductors, it is a rare occurrence that you will find this in your home or shop. Ok, in your breaker box you will have bus bars without any insulation, but they are mounted on insulated posts and contained in a grounded steel box.
Typically in your shop you will be running things like romex, SO cord or conductors in metal or plastic conduit. All of these take isolating and insulating into consideration, usually individually insulated conductors inside of either more insulation or inside of a grounded cover. The wiring of the shop is started. Oh the pleasure of having lights in a steel building without any windows or sky lights. The addition of light has changed the mood of the space. Converting it from a dark clutter to a much more friendly space. I enjoy wiring buildings and machinery, it is a transition from in process to near completion. Wiring seems to bring order and has its rules to follow. I think that it brings order to chaos. I admit that the fence has worked fairly well in that most all of us here have felt it’s discipline. I wish that the little heifer could learn to respect it more. One of our daily tasks is to monitor and work in the garden. I am not sure why, but until recently I would not have included dirt in a discussion of raw materials. Over the past couple of month we have converted a section of overgrown pasture into our garden. I find that work in the garden is very peaceful and rewarding to my soul. I can not help but think about both the scriptural parables and the metaphors I see that explain our life in the garden. After reading, dreaming and planning for years there is still new observation to be had daily in the simple act of growing plants. There is much that I have wanted to do in the garden that has not happened yet. Building soil and growing in that soil will be a long term project and we have just started to scratch the surface. I am sure that some would say that our garden is much to traditional and conventional.
Kristine has done a wonderful job of designing and choosing the size of beds and the plant within them. For starting with soil that has not been tilled in decades I am very pleased with our starting foundation. I does work up nicely with a fairly deep layer of top soil for this area. It drain well and of late it has dried out with the heat. I love to take a garden fork and loosen up the soil in the beds. This simple act raises the level of the soil several inches. My biggest regret is in not having mulch and organic material to add to the garden. Where we have mulched the soil keeps it’s moisture and especially the seedling do much better. One goal I have for the future is to try to add as much good organic material to the soil as we can. I had planned to spend some of today collecting the left over hay that the baler missed. Even though it does have grass seed I think that using it for mulch would benefit more than some extra weeding. This may be one of those metaphors about life. 
