Knocking the Rust Off

This week on  Strive Seek Find , I find myself knocking the rust off some old farming relating skills while teaching them to my kids.  We had a week that ranged from fencing to gun safety  with many things in between. 
With  special shout out to Grand Teton Distillery,

Transcript

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Hello there friends, both old and new. Welcome to the strive seek find podcast, I'm your host chance Whitmore home to bite sized lifestyle advice from a fellow traveler on the road to a better life. Brought to you by someone who is a longtime educator, writer, parent, and an outdoor enthusiast, who may just may like a good DRAM because our future is set not just through our choices, but by our willingness to explore and find a better way. Welcome back friends. It's been a good week, an exhausting one, but a good one nonetheless. And as I record this, I find myself wishing that I had saved a title I use several weeks ago. Because it fits, again, on what happened. Now let's get started. This week, my family and I were a visiting, visiting the old family homestead, the family farm, which it was founded by one of my ancestors in the year 1900. Which seems a lot more ancient than it did when I was in high school. Or Does that just mean, I'm more ancient than I was in high school. Let's put that thought aside for now. Slow place, I spent 10 years and some change living in a place that I learned to know like the back of my hand growing up. And sharing that with my kids is always interesting, because in some ways, I am less protective than my folks were. And in other ways I am so very much more. And a lot of that in the back of my head is because they don't have the same knowledge and skill set that I had, because they haven't had that opportunity. And this week, I had the chance to help them remedy some of those gaps, because they have skills that I couldn't have even imagined at 15 years old. And by the same token, they have never had the opportunity to wander up and down the old family farm with a 22 strapped to their back and just go where they will, because they'd been up and down in herding cattle herding sheep. And they been shooting in some way or another. As long as you could remember, obviously, guided protected, but that was how I grew up. But those aren't the only skills we're going to talk about today. So I'm a little bit sore tonight. Because a couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to do something I hadn't done since I was in my 20s At least with any sort of regularity. Growing up a big part of what we did, because we did run animals was fixing barbed wire fence. And when you grew up in a place that is near Yellowstone, and for those who don't know, that means there's a lot of old, leftover lava rock around which made building fences somewhat of an adventure. You've got great soil for growing, but you also get some special treats along the way. Specifically, you got to figure out how to get fence posts at times deep enough in the ground that they'll stay. And that was really challenging with wooden posts. So we I can remember when I was a teenager, we replaced all the rotting out wooden posts that we could with steel posts. And if you've ever had the opportunity to use a steel post driver, it's simple as all get out. It provides you with great leverage. So you can deliver a lot of force to a steel post and in just a few hits drive it deep enough into the ground that it is a stable place to hang chicken wire, not often. Barbed wire, hog wire, whatever you need to keep the animals in. And I could remember being amazed at my father being able to drive him in in just two or three hits and then trying to replicate that as a early teenager and trying to to do it faster when I was getting older and stronger. They will add that there is a special level of pain when you are hitting those posts as hard as you can When you hit a rock square on underground, your teeth ring, your elbows, ring, your knees even ring, you feel it through your entire body. It's a special kind of pain, it goes away fairly quickly. But then you have to pull the post and do it all over again and hopefully get past the rock the next time. So all this to say, a fence that my father, my brother, and I had rebuilt when I was in late high school, I think were some of those posts were still some that we'd put in, probably when I was in middle school. But we pulled a great deal of the rotten ones and pounded a bunch of steel posts in. And since that time, Dad had just kept updating it kept updating as long as he cut. But eventually, it was let go. And that wasn't helped by the people farming the next ground over who kept hitting it. So the wires down, I thought the wire was gone, I discovered that it was most definitely not. And a lot of the posts had rotted out or been knocked down. So I got the opportunity to, to relearn how to do that. And my girls got the chance to learn how to do it, how to repair a fence with 40 year old wire, while pounding steel posts. More than anything, we just got the posts in place to mark the property line. And a couple of places we stuck the wire back up. It's a simplified version of what I used to do on the weekends and evenings with my father with my brother, but it was good learning. For one thing, I was once again reminded, I'm not 18 anymore. Consequently, the soreness, my six year old got to learn that wild fit is sitting in the back of the truck. So the issue is fun. Picking up and carrying steel posts to dad to keep him working is not as much fun. The other two, well, one was driving. And the other one was making sure I had what I needed to get things done. It was really efficient. And we all learn something from it. Because I'd never organized fence building with kids who had never done it before. And my girls, the two oldest, I needed a marker put it ahead gate. So they took another old steel post and the post driver and went up themselves and did it themselves. Which is something that the day before, they would have had no idea how to do even though it is probably as simple as it will come. The next of my really outdated rusty skills that I got to practice this week was something that most of you probably have not even heard of flood irrigation. I have a picture up on the strife seek find page on Facebook right now that kind of shows some of what you do. Growing up flood irrigation is how we watered our pasture. And it's the cheapest way to do irrigation. It is definitely not the most water efficient, but it is the cheapest way to do it. You don't need a pump, you don't need pipes, you need a chunk of plastic tarp, with a board stuck through it. And if it's a really deep ditch some extra supports to block the water so that you can send water across the pasture, or in this case, the ark. Once you forget, after not doing it for 20 something years, possibly more on an irregular basis is how long it takes to do it. Because it's not turn on the sprinkler for an hour. And walk away it is get it going double check it monitor adjust constantly. It's very user intense. And on top of that, you have to know the ground you're doing it on really well. You have to know where the ground slopes where it's high so that you set the dam up in the right place. So it breaks and covers the maximum amount of pasture lawn you can. And if you haven't done it for a long time, you make a lot of mistakes. And that's fine. I will say when I was in expertly doing this at age 910 11 It seemed a lot more fun. Because dad had it all mapped out where he put it he just put it in and you found some reason to dink around and play in the water and throw some mud at each other. What could be better after all, when you haven't done it for a while, and you're up to your ankles or more in mud, or standing in water, and it's 12 hours later, it's not as much fun as when you did it 1011 12. But there is an element of nostalgia and good new learning to go along with my simplified remembrance of it. And I will admit, I was not as expert at it, as my father. And my brother has kept up on it. And I am sure that he could have done a much better job than I, but I got it done. The last bit of learning is something that I have been meaning to get to for a long time. When I was I think 12, maybe 13 years old, I'd have to look back because I have the notes still someplace. My father gave me the family 22 which had come from his father. And he'd gotten it if the story goes correctly from his father. So old bolt action, external firing pin that you have to set by hand. It is a great starter 22 Long Rifle to learn shooter. And yet, I have failed to teach my kids how to safely use it. I kept it under lock and key. But I don't think I've even had it out to maybe three. Now, it's longer than three years. So we took the opportunity, since we're on the farm, to do some basic gun safety, and allow them to shoot a little bit. I had the 15 year old, the 12 year old and even the six year old working with me. And we did a run through on the rules of gun safety. We modeled them, we talked about them, we practice them. We all before we shot. And once we had shot, I made them go in and write them all down. And I'll be honest, I went full teacher on this. And I went through and graded them on what they remembered and what they did not. They had a great experience with it. And because it was scaffolded and protected, it was really safe. My big regret is I hadn't done this a long time ago with the older two. Because knowing how to be around and be safe with firearms was just a part of how I grew up. And sharing that with them in a safe protected manner was impactful for me. And it has my daughter's asking questions about how it works and why it works. Not just the rules by rote, but trying to seeking to understand and at least one of them wanting to get out and shoot again. For me it brought the rules back because I had to think of the why that dad had taught me growing up. Eventually you do something, it becomes rote. And having to break it down and teach it to somebody else brings it back to life for you. And without too many more details. I'm going to say it was an incredible week. Not only did we do those things, but we had time to do more board games than we've done in a long time. My two younger daughters learn the basics of knitting and are working on it because they see their grandmother doing it all the time. And she helped guide them. And my oldest learns the basics of crocheting and is currently working on a beanie for me. I'll throw up a picture when she finishes. And the one thing I keep coming back to is that learning wouldn't have happened if we had been at home operated at our normal pace of play. But because we were operating in a different environment and slowing down, not much you were still running to get things done. But different things. There was the opportunity to either enhance or learn new skills. And while the likelihood of my daughter's needing to learn how to build a barbed wire fence or pound of steel post in in the future. Outside of that environment is fairly low. They still can do it if called upon. And for some reason that really matters to me tonight. One final thing. I was going to do a full episode on this, but this seems more appropriate I'd wanted to shout out Grand Teton distillery in Driggs, Idaho. They are a small batch distillery that had been open since I believe 2011 putting out their vodkas and their whiskies in 2014. I'd wanted to go by there for a long time, stop and check it out. We took Amy and my mother, we went up there, we did a tasting did the tour. I've had a few of their their whiskies, their cultures run and their Catamount. But I've tried their whole lineup now and came home with a bottle of the private reserved. It's an impressive setup, because four people are putting out their entire production line. Just want you to take a second Think about that for full time people, which includes their distiller distilling, bottling, labeling, boxing, and getting out the door. Some high quality spirits, because I'm going to tell you folks, Grand Teton distillery is without a doubt, the best distillery currently operating in the state of Idaho. If you ever have the opportunity to drop by, go check it out. Well, friends, that's it for this week's edition of strive seek find. Thank you again for listening. If you'd like to join the discussion, or have ideas for future episodes, hop on over to the strife seek find podcast group on Facebook. Alternatively, if Facebook's not your thing, you can find me on Instagram at strife seek find podcast on Twitter. As at chance Whitmore five. We're even on email. Links for all those are in the show notes below. Until next time, my friends, keep seeking your own brilliant future