Farm Style Ingenuity

A week ago, we had trouble one morning with the phone and internet.  Called the local phone company which is a rural Co-op.  They sent a repair man out later that morning to see what he could find.  He discovered a gopher mound near/over where the cable runs underground between the road and the house.  Deducing that the gopher sharpened his teeth on the phone line, he decided we needed a new one.

 The local phone Co-op is in the process of installing fiber optic cable here in our area of North Dakota, but in the way of these things, one company will dig in the underground cables, one company will have the contract to hook up the houses, and the local repair person will finish the installation.  All this takes time.  The underground stuff has been done, and in fact was done last fall, they haven't come around and hooked up the wires into the new box they installed on the side of the house, and the interior wiring hasn't been done yet either.

So I thought I would show you how we do things out here on the farm  when you need an interim solution.

The box on the left is the original, the box on the right is for the fiber optic,  as you can see the fiber optic cable is coiled on the ground.  The wire you see coming out of the small box and heading up to the right is our jerry rigged phone line,  I thought you would be interested in seeing how this runs....

out of the box, up to the right and twice around the living room window. Then to the left ...

across the front of the house and on to the left across the yard...

to the apricot tree, can you see it??.....

another view as it goes....

twice around the trunk of the tree.....

and on across the yard to the pine....

wrapped around the branch on the pine and passed the trunk...

and headed across the yard to.....

the clothes line....

through the eye bolts that hold my clothes lines up.....

then once again across the yard to the box elder...

Through the branches of the box elder, I drew the line in red so you could find it easier....

continuing on between the trunks of the box elder....

further across the yard to the corner fence post. The post is a corner of the cow pasture, and  it is now getting closer to the ground....

around the fence post.  we will have to get this up on top of the post so the cows don't get a hold of it.  They like to lick and check things out, they are curious creatures so one of them is sure to take a bite....

I drew the line in red again, as you will not be able to see it in the grass as it goes down the driveway.  That is farmguy in the  tractor and corn planter on the road.  He was planting some late corn after baling the old alfalfa field.  We started a new alfalfa field last fall.  .......

A close up of the end of the driveway,  the dust cloud is from the tractor,  anyway, when the phone line gets to the end of the drive,  it heads to the right down the ditch to the phone hook up box further down the road.  

And there you have it,  the phone company doesn't want to take the time and expense to dig in a new phone cable when they would be replacing it soon anyway.  So far we have had good phone and internet connection so I have no complaints, but I get tickled anytime I think of it. To me this is hilarious.

I have been tatting, but it is testing someones pattern so can't show you.  I have also been working on the leaves for my Tishband. and I have a pattern swirling in my head I just have to get some time to deal with.  Also I still want to tat the dragons, and I have 6 more doilies to get done before Christmas.  I really need more tatting time. 

Hope you have had lots of time to tat.