Hillmomba Under Construction

Remember how the gas line guys were parking along our gravel road, and digging around with big machinery? Turns out they were not gas line guys at all!!! Farmer H stopped to talk to them one day, and found out they were installing COMMUNICATION equipment. 

What that entails, I don't exactly know. I thought everything was on the cloud these days. Magically transmitted through the nothingness of space. Like I get satellite internet from a DISH dish. And people (except for us sometimes) don't use landline phones anymore. So what, exactly, are these workers burying in trenches along the back roads of Hillmomba? Is it like cable TV or something? I surely don't know. Technology is not my forte.

Anyhoo... those workers have been done for a couple weeks now. They left behind bare patches of dug-up dirt, scattered with straw. So I'm guessing they put down some grass seed. Oh, and one driver, who was parked in a particularly annoying, vision-blocking place on the hill every day, left behind a flattened Gatorade bottle. Which means it was there on a day he was parking again. So presumably saw it, yet STILL didn't pick it up. Nincompoop.

In other news, our across-the-road neighbors are up to something. It's in one of their horse fields, across from our BARn field. They haven't had horses for a few years now. I noticed about a month or two ago that they'd taken down their fencing wire. The metal posts were still in the ground, but the wire was coiled up and hanging at the corner of the field.

A couple weeks ago, there were some piles of wood at the end of the field. Then some white cone-looking things spaced out widely, in rows. I hoped they would not be putting pigs or something in that field! And no way would chickens survive, with just little A-frame houses. It was a mystery. Then Farmer H told me they were putting in a DOG TRACK!

What in the Not-Heaven??? Did he mean a racing track? No way! That's gambling. Surely it's regulated by the state. I don't want a bunch of gamblers strangers coming up in here every weekend!

Well. Early last week, I saw some progress in that field. Either that neighbor, or the guy next to them, was using a little Bobcat to doze around in the field. THEN, some structures appeared.

It looks like they're building some kind of doggy steeplechase course! Maybe it's called something else. Perhaps dog obedience. Canine obstacle course. I don't know. I've seen competitions like that on TV. This could get interesting. 

That view is not much better, but maybe you can see the shape of the obstacles. The wire is still on the fence on this part of the field, except on the far right end by their driveway. The trucks and the bobcat went in down on the far left end.

Woman Neighbor has a grooming business, and takes in rescue dogs sometimes. So she knows her way around man's best friend. No ill will here. I doubt she's up to anything shifty.

That said, I'm worried that whatever venture this turns out to be might have an impact on my beloved fleabags and Copper Jack. You can bet they will be over there investigating any new dogs that show up. This has been their territory for eight years or more. They won't take kindly to trespassers. I can't imagine them sitting calmly in our BARn field, silently observing.