Racking at "The Property"

You will be seeing a lot of posts about "The Property" this summer. My grandpa John owns 2.5 acres of land in eastern Oregon, right on the Metolious river. This place is one of our favorites to camp, fish, and relax. Now that we live in the state we'll be able to visit the property during our family reunion (like usual) and any other time we want. On Saturday we paid our first visit of the year to The Property.

Grandpa John will be 85 this year and he is not as young as he used to be (obviously). When it comes to upkeep on The Property he appreciates some help every now and again.

Every spring my family makes the drive over and spends the day racking up pine needles that have fallen off the trees all winter long. It's a big project and if we let grandpa do it by himself it would take about a week. With 8 grown men it takes about 6 hours.

The big day of work starts by racking needles into big piles, like so.

Then the big strong men, rack the piles of needles onto a big blue tarp.

We actually don't limit the work to big strong men, we put the small weak boys to work as well.

Once the tarp is full the men drag it to the burn pile.

This is the burn pile. Full of pine needles and other forestry stuff. At the end of the day this pile was about 20 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 4 feet high. That's a lot of tree debris.

Robert worked really hard and got really dirty. He even grew a dirt/dust mustache. It was nasty.

His feet left something to be desired. But he took a shower and I allowed him to get into the car for the drive home.

Dan avoided the shower and opted for a bath in the river to get clean.

Good thing he practices hydrotherapy in the shower. The river water is pure snow melt right now and it's freezing cold.

*************

So you might be asking yourself, "I see the men working and getting dirty, but what did Emily do all day?"

PLENTY, I say, PLENTY. First I made lunch for all the boys. Look at Rob licking his chops, that just proves how hard I worked (in the kitchen).

They loved the spread and thought that I was very resourceful because we didn't have any tables. So I set out some storage bins and the food was served buffet style.

Caden and Bailey shared some Doritos. They were covered in orange dust. So I had to clean them and the other kids up all afternoon.

I helped Jackson catch a snake. Then we scared Grandma Sharon and Robert with it. We didn't do anything scary we just showed it to them and that was enough. Mom's jaw dropped as she gasped for air and Robert reached for a pitch fork.

I was lathering up babies with sunscreen left and right. One time I managed to get some into Bays eye and she complained that she had a hurty in her eye and requested a band-aid to help. I complied.

I helped Caden perfect his Heisman trophy pose (that took a lot of work). The final step will be raising his right leg up, but balancing on one leg is hard for a 21 month old.

We couldn't locate the kiddy pool so Bailey and Bennett cooled off in the storage tubs we had used to serve lunch on earlier in the day. We figured feeding them popcycles in the tubs was a win-win because we'd only have to clean them off once and no clothing would get dirty.

BAM-BAM loves popcycles and even asks for 'cycles' every time I open the freezer. A bath and a cycle at the same time, she was in heaven.

The big racking day was hot and long. The boys worked hard and I think that I did too. All of us were tired but proud of the end result. Now grandpa John can work a little, then relax, and work some more (if he wants too), but the big stuff is done. The Property looks great and we can't wait to visit again.