The Gate...

To the married ones, what I am about to say will make sense, to the single ones...not so much.
My wife looked me in the eye and said, "The gate needs to be built before we leave for Nebraska." Being the man I am, understanding the way things need to be in a family, stood my ground and looked her in the eye and said, "Okay." To anyone wondering, yes I still have my man card.
We started looking around at prices, new and used, and being the good with money guy I am, (broke is more like it), I decided we couldn't afford new or used, so I built one instead.
Before anything started we had to walk out the front door and pick fresh blackberries for our morning smoothie. That's got to be one of my favorite parts about living in Oregon. We have berries all over. Oh yeah, the smoothie was excellent.
We started off with a picture in my head, and transferred it to a piece of paper for Jami to see what I had planned. Either something was lost in translation or I am just a bad sketch artist. Either way, she said the finished product was better looking than my spaghetti bowl thing I drew and I am assuming that was a compliment. I only colored out of the lines a few times...pasta?
Dad came over and we went down to drop a few small trees in the field for the rails. It was good we waited until almost ten o'clock to get started, as the cool of the day would have been to easy to work in. Who in their right mind would make the project go easy when they can be a martyr later on by working in the hottest part of the day?
We only had one tree that stuck in the branches of an adjacent tree when we were cutting them down. After that we threw a chain around the trunks and drug them up to the front to cut them to length, notch, and peel the bark. We then assembled them by bolting them together, and then made a trip to town to buy a cattle panel for the backside of the gate.
Dad and I had too long of a break in town and when we got home we had to eat some lunch kill some time chatting about whatever, all the while waiting for it to either get cooler outside or the gate to magically put itself together. I have heard tales of things like happening to those in the favor the gate gnomes, but I think we must have ticked them off by not starting this project earlier in the cool of the day. At any rate, we decided that it was time to finish putting the thing together and our long days work out in the hot, hot sun was finally done and all we had was the gate assembled. Honestly I think we were only at it half a day, ALL day sounds better. It may have only gotten to 80 degrees too, but it FELT like more.
Over the next few days I worked on getting the holes dug, and some power poles put in place. I didn't have my tape measure handy, so I thought a "kids depth" should be deep enough. See the pics and you will understand. It works great. I think I need to patent it somehow.
We got the poles in and some friends came over and helped lift the gate into place. green timber is full of water, so it was a little heavy. The extra hands made easy work of it though. We worked until dark, getting the chain set and some final things done. All in all it turned out pretty good. Cheap...under a $100. I like that. I still have to make the man gate next to it and finish tying in the fence line around the gate, but that won't be nearly as much work.
I am just glad Jami didn't say the gate AND the man gate. Otherwise I would have had to bribe the gate gnomes with something and let them go to work. I wonder if I leave a drawing and some cookies out by my fence...hmmm. Nope. They may have a hard time deciphering what colors are inside the lines and which are out. I may end up with a spaghetti bowl in my front yard.