What in Spring Creek Basin have our wily and handy BLM’ers been up to lately?
I’d been out of the valley for a little while, visiting my folks for the first time since the pandemic started (they had visited me just *before* the pandemic started), and I came back to find two of my favorite BLM guys wandering toward the basin one morning with a little tractor in tow! I had some chores to catch up on, so I didn’t meet up with them until their last day of work last week. There was a little crowding of tools and things in the bed of their pickup.
After stretching a string from one end of the roof structure to the other (new horizontal steel-pipe post pieces had appeared since I’d been there last!), Daniel Chavez (pictured) and Garth Nelson got to work welding purlins to those pipes.
They welded three purlins over the three sections of roof structure over the four tanks. As they said, that line of purlins was critical to get straight because the gutter will go under the roof under those purlins. Into that gutter will go the rainwater and melted snow … life-giving water from heaven … into pipes into the tanks into the trough for the mustangs!
Because of my slow-Internet issues that make drafting blog posts a long-term commitment these days (!), this is a short teaser post about what they’ve been doing. I do promise at least another post to show the progression of purlin welding (because it’s fascinating and shows how handy our guys are!)! This last-for-now pic shows water dripping out of the steel pipe at one end of the roof structure after Garth poured some of his water in from the top end. When the project is all done and the roof is on, water will NOT flow through these steel-pipe posts; it’ll hit the roof and flow to the gutter and thus to the tanks. But he and Daniel illustrated that there IS a slope to the roof (though it deceivingly looks fairly flat), and you can see the now-welded-in-place purlins across this section of roof structure and Garth grinning in the background, and it’s never a bad sight to see water dripping from above in the desert. 🙂
More to come. Promise.
Another highlight of note: Did you notice the cloudy sky in some of the pix? Thankfully for Daniel and Garth, it was cloudy and relatively cool most of the day while they were in their welding jacket and Nomex (?) shirt for welding. I wore my headnet to keep the gnats at bay (they were worse some times than other times) while I helped hold purlins in place with my great and amazing strength (!) until the welds held (!). The previous two days – and the whole of the previous week! – had been HOT (like, 100-degrees hot). … And at the end of this day and the evening after the next day, we got some sprinkles from Mother Nature. Welcome relief. 🙂
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 
Thanks for the hard work,
!
Please thank them from me too. I’m one of many who are thankful for water tor our mustangs.
Sent from my iPhone
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Thanks to all the hard workers.
Having seen pictures of Black Hills Sanctuary & the dry dry dry – your mustangs are so fortunate to have the help they do.
Grateful to these guys for all their hard work! And just look at that stream of water already on its way to storage. This is so cool.
Here’s hoping that Spring Creek Basin becomes the standard for ethical, consciencious, thoughtful care for these wild and wonderful horses. Love your constant enthusism TJ, gnats and all !!
Just a tip from a website provider/blogger, etc., for slow internet – RESIZE and OPTIMIZE your pictures – while there are free options to try, I HEARTILY recommend Affinity Photo for Windows/Mac (they did 50% off during the year of COVID and sadly that is over…..) BUT – it is onetime purchase of $49.99 and WORTH EVERY PENNY!
I purchased long, long ago, when they were just ‘seriff photo” for Windows – then purchased Designer for windows – then moved to a Mac in 2015, reached out and they gave me ‘coupon’ to purchase the Mac equivalents – and well – in Photo?
If you purchase? Check out the “Batch” option – simply set up one ‘new photos’ folder on your desk top, have another folder named “Optimized” and set your Batch resize/optimize options – for me? I resize to 1600 (landscape) or 1200 (portrait) width, set my optimize factor to 80% and walla! Instead of waiting to ‘upload over slow internet connection!) 1-2 MB sized pictures?
You’re uploading 100kb – 300kb sized pictures, and they will load faster online for your Fans who, also STRUGGLE with slow internet service – –
I’m including a link for you to check it out – which is NOT an affiliate link, I’m a hardcore fan and for anyone who hasn’t professionally invested in Adobe Photoshop (big bucks for years and years!) and just wants control to crop/resize/optimize, etc., ?
THIS investment, right here will save ya $, frustration, time, etc. BEST investment in software I made long ago and use extensively today and I’m not even a professional photographer, graphic artist or marketing guru – I just know, it works! :D.
Also? one of my clients who maintains her own site? and is ‘self-labled’ as not computer literate? “please make it easy?” – Resizes all her own pdf scans/photos to upload to her site, except when she’s overloaded, at which point, she sends me the ‘zip file’ of items and says, “Can you batch run for me?” – and 2-5 minutes later, I’m returning a zip file titled, “Optimized for website” – 🙂
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
Thanks for this info … though I’m not sure I understood half of what you wrote. 🙂 I use Photoshop Elements and have for the last 20-plus years. I learned photo “tweaking” as a journalist, and my process and how I save images comes from that period, too. Sadly (!?), I’m not good with change! 🙂 The photos used to attach just fine; just in the last few months has it been giving me fits, so I think it’s my “lightning fast” (not) satellite Internet. I’m guessing this Affinity is akin to Photoshop? I did look at the website … too bad there’s not a trial? I’m loathe to give up what I know for something completely new? Also, surely PS has some option like you’re talking about? I do resize my pix, and I select each individually; I don’t “batch” anything. Also, I use the pix for other purposes, too, and don’t want to have to tweak them multiple times at different sizes.
Yes, if you’ve been using Photoshop that long, I would stick with it, for I fully believe it best to leverage as much as possible off our ‘already familiar, know my way around’ skills when it comes to software!! :D).
That said, after spot checking in your blog and images, many of them are 1MB+ in size –
I get around my ‘rural internet’ and optimize websites to load fast, simply by ‘batch resizing and optimizing for website/online” which creates a nice picture, that doesn’t blur or look bad regardless of device size, BUT is much smaller in file size (usually 100KB-300KB is my rule of thumb to strive for! LOL).
It also helps me to quickly batch resize/crop/etc., to size things right for the various social media accounts my clients use in addition to their website – 🙂
The needs for print photos to ‘print pretty’ and the needs for ‘looks nice online’ are very different as what is needed in total pixel count/file size, DPI (dots per inch of the file…).
TO GET an idea of what I was suggesting as a possible workaround for slow internet, especially for uploads, I did a quick search for batch resizing/optimizing in Photoshop and ran across this article, https://enviragallery.com/how-to-batch-resize-images-in-photoshop/
which may help explain better?
I cannot attest to the veracity of the information, as I haven’t used Photoshop since 2008, BUT, at least a read through would help you know what to search in your Photoshop help files!
Happy optimizing and hopefully, fewer woes on uploading/posting your Lovely, LOVELY pictures!! 🙂
Thanks for the additional info, and I will look at that link you shared! Basically, I love the process of *photographing* … but then processing them tends to make me a bit weary. Ha! I love being out with the horses and can’t help but photograph them, but I take SO many pix, and then I’m kinda daunted by the task of selecting and processing. The joys and ills of digital!? 🙂
To everyone who commented thanking our BLM guys for their work, I did pass on your gratitude, and the guys very much appreciate your kudos! 🙂