Projects, projects and MORE projects

Howdy, long-suffering blog fans!  Please forgive me for not posting for several weeks. We've been so busy with different projects around the ranch that I haven't had time for writing! 

The first big undertaking was some demo work.

Remember this old pig pen? 

It's in our West pasture and is so ramshackle that it's unusable. It's a hazard with all that old wood, nails and wire and had to come down. 

Our friend Richard came up from Albuquerque for the week to help us with projects such as this. In addition to being an all-around nice guy, Richard has a very broad and useful skill set. If we had the means to do so, we'd try to hire him on full time as our ranch manager!  Even so, we're very grateful for his help this past week. He and G.W. got quite a bit done around here.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...Richard started on the pig pen by removing the woven wire fence that had been used to keep horses out of the pen. The wire is still good and worth saving, so staple by staple, Richard took it down. After taking apart the wood fence, he used the Bobcat to push over the posts.

 This was a full day's hard work! I sure am happy to see this thing apart. 

The wood from the pig pen is too far gone to be reused for anything structural. 

But we are going to save it for "artistic" projects....signs, picture frames, etc. G.W. has some good ideas for the wood. Nice winter time, indoor projects!

And here is all the woven wire that Richard so carefully saved for us.

While dismantling it, Richard found some old, hand-forged nails. 

We've used fence panels to block off the entire area until we can get the wood removed and go over the area with a metal detector and magnet. 

That's a project in and of itself. A project within a project!

This is just the first of a half dozen or so articles on all we've been working on here at Crossed Sabers. I'm burning the midnight oil to write the rest!