Mud and stuff

Here for your amusement is a picture of the large mud hole that formed just north of my mail box this spring. Please note that the dog is using all four feet to avoid being trapped in it.

The soil here in this part of northwest Missouri is pretty sticky when it forms mud, which it does at the slightest excuse. The road in front of my house first had gravel applied about 1955, when I was 9 years old. Previous to that time the road was raw dirt and the Frazier family simply stayed home for a while after rains fell and when the ground thawed in the winter. Even 4 wheel drive vehicles were soon brought to a stop as the mud stuck to and rolled up on the tires. Our rural mail carrier drove a military surplus Jeep of the type made famous during WWII and he tried to make the rounds as often as possible. Somewhere I have a picture of it sitting in the mud in front of our house. My mother took the picture after the Jeep suffered a broken axle due to mud rolling on the wheels and jamming inside the wheel wells.

In the early 1950’s a politician by the name of King sponsored a piece of legislation that allocated money to improve and spread gravel on a bunch of rural roads. These roads of course were called “King bill roads”, and it was big deal if one was going to be built past your farm. The original road came through the middle of the farmstead directly in front of the old house where Tickfest is held. It then proceeded down the hill, over the branch where the footbridge is currently located, then back east and south to the present road. The King bill road was built in the present location, a great blessing to our chickens as they didn’t wander that far from the house and thus suffered much lower mortality due to passing cars. It also eliminated one source of idle amusement for my brother and me. The road ditch south of our house was washed out deep enough that we could hide in it and throw dirt clods at passing cars without being seen. Overall, it was a great improvement.

A gravel road here in NW Missouri is a triumph of faith over nature, at least when it remains passable. Crushed rock is spread over the dirt, but a combination of rain and the passage of tires soon embed it in the underlying clay. More rock is then added and over time the road surface assumes a sort of uneasy equilibrium with a high enough rock content near the surface to resist the penetration of a tire under the normal weight of a car. Summer rains run off quickly and don’t do much damage. Winter moisture is another story, particularly when the surface thaws and absorbs water while the underlying dirt remains frozen to block any subsoil water from soaking down. Once the surface layer gets soft enough to allow the rock to be moved around by passing tires, all hell breaks loose and your car will sink nearly to that well known warm and unpopular location. When this happens, it is said by the locals that the “bottom went out” of the road. In truth the top is what goes out, the bottom is still there somewhere, but maybe quite a distance down.

That happened a lot this last winter, as it was a good deal colder and wetter than has been the norm lately. The south route remained barely passable, but a major mudhole formed just north of our drive. It perhaps was not the mother of all mudholes, but was at least the aunt of a couple. At least two 4 wheelers came to a dead stop in it before the local drivers learned not to trifle with it and found another way home. After a month or so the road dried enough for the township board to send out a couple of loads of large rock and return the road to passability. Tickfest attendees will note the location as they pass over about 40 yards of road that is rough enough to jar teeth and wreak havoc with front-end alignment. (Your car, not you.)

Last winter was another nail in the coffin of my faith in the whole global warming paradigm. I don’t have a researched opinion on the matter. I have on a couple of occasions in my life set about to reach an informed opinion on some topic or another, and it is quite an exercise in any slightly complex situation. I expect that I would have to work full time for 6 months to study a reasonably portion of the relevant information to form such an opinion on man-made climate change. I don’t care enough to invest that much effort in this case. I will state that my common sense opinion is that the theory is being advanced and promoted by a bunch of fools, liars, and scam artists. If anybody wants to discuss it further, feel free. I could very well be wrong.

Meantime, we got birds in the yard. The hummingbird feeder is quite busy these days. A pair of wrens has successfully raised and evicted a nest full of wrenlets, cleaned out the house and are starting over. The feeder and wren house are within 8 feet of where I sit to drink coffee in the morning.

I am seeing a lot more kinds of birds than I did a few years ago. I suppose I should get a book and keep track like the bird freaks do. Seems like a lot of trouble to find the book and look up every strange bird that stops for a minute or two. Besides I almost prefer to just think to myself, “Now that’s one weird-ass bird”, rather than knowing what to call all of them.

A pair of barn swallows started one of the mud and wattle nests on top of a 100 watt spotlight bulb at the other end of the porch a few days ago. I didn’t know what to do, as I sort of wanted to see them do their thing, but I was afraid that the bulb would cook eggs and maybe bird if it came on. It’s on a motion detector and the dogs set it off a lot. I tried to unscrew the bulb enough to prevent that, but couldn’t do that and keep the nest on top. Finally just decided to turn the light off until the birds got done, so we now have a swallow nest about 1 foot from the downstairs door. We need smarter birds.