The BIG Clean!!!

Big  BIG  BIG!!!!!  It was the BIG CLEAN day at the ranch.  Big is putting it mildly.  Cinderella put on her jeans and boots, grabbed her gloves and was out the door by 7:00 am!!!  The tractor and truck met me at the gate, as we tried to squeeze them in to the yard between the eucalyptus trees.

This really big tree is over 200 years old, 4 feet deep in trash at the base.  On the far side, was the "post pile" my dad created over 40 years.  Anything that resembled or "could" resemble a post, was saved in this pile just in case we needed it down the road.

Telephone poles counted as posts too, but also count at the County Dump where most of this trash will end up.  They are like gold to the dump because they charged $459 to leave them there!!!  

I have to say these guys worked their butts off!!  One ran the tractor and the other a shovel.  By the way, Cinderella got a marriage proposal from the Cowboy Shovel Guy, right after he asked me if I owned the property!!  Might not have been a bad deal, since he never, and I mean NEVER quit working ALL day ... not even to take a lunch break!!  That's a pretty good recommendation in my book!!

It seemed like everything was in slow motion and we would never see the light of day.  After four loads, we were still cleaning up from the SAME tree!!

I'm sorry I didn't get a before picture ... but here's the after.  It hasn't been this clean since we bought the place in 1954!!!  (Not my horses by the way!)

Finally we finished maybe a quarter of the job and moved up to the pile of concrete pipe we've been trying to get rid of since the 70's.  That was before anyone even cared about recycling ... now a local business takes all the concrete you can haul to them ... and they DON'T charge for it!!  YAY!!!  Cinderella can just feel that glass slipper, covered in dirt and spiders at this point!!

At the end of the day, one of the Supervisors stopped by to check the progress.  He jumped on the tractor and in a matter of minutes, had another pile of tree trash to load ... then proceeded to load up the truck with the old irrigation pipes.

This area is pretty clean, but the entire right hand side of the property is still covered with dead tree limbs.  I sure hope we can finish up tomorrow.  Actually, we have no choice.  The cost of the truck and tractor, plus two men, is $4,000.  Heart attack time!!!  That's not counting the dump fees, which so far have exceeded $1,000.  I know it's tax deductible, but that doesn't hold much water when you have to write that BIG check!!

The time at the ranch did give me the opportunity to talk to my brother's renter who has four horses, two cows, a sheep, a pig, many dogs and this guy ... Mr. Goat.  That's a lot of poop to get rid of, all of which she's been dumping around the trees.  I'm pretty sure after our little talk that she won't do THAT any more!!  The goat is a cutie patootie, about 24" tall ... and he talked to me all day, probably because I stood there for an hour and scratched his neck!!  

All the while we're cleaning, the harvesters are running in the field, followed by 15 chop trucks hauling the silage to a local dairy.  It was literally a traffic jam on our little road all day!!

Cinderella is tired, filthy dirty, hungry and now needs to go figure out why her sprinklers aren't working.  A Princesses work is never done!!!