You might have noticed in the last few pictures, that posing with Ansel are a pair of crutches. About a week ago, he woke up with some equilibrium issues, and some pain in his right hip. He swears that he didn't fall and that it is an old injury that is flaring up.
He asked me to find the crutches right away and he started using them around the house. Then he asked me to feed for him. He wouldn't leave the house, except to get in the car. He had me do all the feeding for him and said he couldn't. For the first couple of days that was ok, I didn't mind, but then I knew it wasn't going to be good a sign, if he didn't get back out there, so this post is about my crusade to get him back to the barn and talking to and patting his horses again.
We go to Dr. McCleery for sort of a "well check" once a month, and he is noticing a definite decline in Ansel's mobility in the last year. (Ansel has been going to him for 20 years) Those of you who know our situation, I have done many things around the place to make it easier and safer for him to get around. The golf cart and the drive through gates to name a few. Any way Dr.'s biggest advice was to emphasise getting into "Fall Prevention Mode". Which actually I have been being thoughtful about since we got married.
I firmly believe that the fact that he keeps going and keeps feeding the horses every day is the reason he is so healthy at one month shy of 94 years old. The only prescription he has is eye drops for the glaucoma. Anyway, last week when he didn't want to feed or go see the horses, I got really worried. So I started trying to figure out what we needed to do, to make it safer for him in the barn, so that he would feel comfortable out there. In my mind it was imperative to get him back out there as soon as possible.
Two of the horses, Misty and the filly are in or at the wooden barn, he feeds them in their stalls from the inside of the barn. The walkway which was a dirt floor with misc boards put down for no rhyme or reason was covered with 18" to 2' of hay and that was very hard for him to navigate. So I felt like that was the biggest obstacle to his feeding and I came up with the idea to build a solid smooth wood floor with some hand rails, thinking that at a minimum he could at least still feed them their grain.
So I called Paul and he came over and figured out how we could build the floor mostly from materials from around the place. When I told Ansel what we were going to do, he said it had to be HORSE SOLID, meaning that it had to be built strong enough to hold an errant horse that might wander into that area of the barn even though they weren't supposed to.
The alley way floor now has a 4x4 and 2x6 frame with 18" runners, topped with double sheets of 1/2" plywood. Interestingly enough... the plywood has a story. It used to be the roof of the sawmill building at Edward Hines Logging in Hines, Oregon. Ansel bought several bundles of it as well as other misc used lumber when they tore down and salvaged the building. He tried to remember for me what year that he bought it, but he couldn't remember... The banded bundles of used lumber sat at their place in Burns for years and when they finally sold the home place in 1994 and moved everything to Bend, Ansel wanted that salvage lumber too. As a matter of fact, Ansel borrowed Will Brown's antique 1948 or 49 Chev 2 ton green antique truck to haul it from Burns to Bend... Will remembers warning Ansel that it was too big a load for the truck, and he should off load some of it... but Ansel said awe it'll make 'er and set out for Bend. Well he never made it, the truck broke down somewhere between Hampton and Millican in the heat of summer with that big load of lumber...
Anyway back to the barn floor; so this pile of used plywood has been in the Bend wooden barn since 1994, we guess that the sawmill building was torn down in late 70's or early 80's. The sawmill itself was built in 1930. So what we do know is that it's very old, technically antique... but still usable and did the job quite well by doubling it. The best part was that it gave Ansel a great sense of accomplishment, that we used the old plywood instead of buying new.
Interesting photo I found on the internet of Edward Hines Lumber Mill which was built in 1930. The photo is courtesy of the Harney Co Historical Society and Martin Morisette. The sawmill that the plywood came from is the building to the right of the wigwam burner and left of the iconic smokestack. (still standing all by itself as a monument of an era gone by)
I tripped across this really cool website called High Desert Rails, it had a section named Oregon & Northwestern Railroad, Edward Hines Lumber Company. It has some excellent history of the logging industry in Harney County. http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw.html
OK back to the barn floor project... so Paul and Robert Hirsch built the floor for me. Who's Robert?Robert was raised in Burns, and spent most of his working career in the woods logging in one form or the other. He said he remembered his grandfather telling him that he built the Edward Hines Sawmill building. Robert's mom Sharon is married to Bill Williams. Bill was a cousin to Martina and his family grew up in the Lone Pine area near the Wilkes too.
OK... back to the floor... here are some pictures of the before and after...
I really should have taken a picture with the 18" of hay floor before we started.
Paul on the left, Robert on the right...
Almost done... still a few more things like a railing down the alley way, and one to double as a saddle rack and keep him from falling off the raised floor.
I put an electric fence gate across the doorway for him to use to prevent the outside horses from going in the barn while the doors open and he's feeding.
Ansel was very pleased with our improvements... and has been going out to do the feeding again... I set the flakes of hay in front of the horses for him every morning and every night so he doesn't have to try and walk with it and that seems to work good for him. You can see I've moved the grain barrels where he has easy access to feed from, and he can walk down to the filly's stall holding on to the railings.
The finishing touch. Often the door often gets caught by the wind, and I came up with an idea to thwart that possibility. This piece of one inch pipe is attached by a ring to door, when it's dropped to the ground will jill-poke and not let the door come forward, it can be pushed back as far as he wants. Then in the up position, it is cradled by the upper bracket. Much more reliable than the shovel or ax that has traditionally been employed for holding the door open.
He's getting along very well with the improvements. He drives the cart from the front door of the house through the drive through gates, out to the barn, then parks next to the barn, and uses the wall to get to the door, and then uses the hand rails and walls to feed. He was very very complimentary of the door poke.
