1-8 November, 2012 - Black Bears, Taters, Tires, Fires and Splitting Wood

We had a visitor last night.  The dog was barking her fool head off about 12:30 so I went to investigate.  I expected another skunk trying to get at the chickens but it was a large black bear that had dumped out the chicken feed and was enjoying his feast.  (At least he left the chickens alone.)  The dog was smart enough to just sound a warning and not engage him although the bear was pretty much just ignoring the dog.  When I arrived with the flashlight and shotgun the bear ran off about 30 feet and stopped to look me over.  I kept walking toward him and he took off for good. He was a pretty bear.  His back and front third were jet black and the middle section was chocoloate brown.  He was so fat he was almost as wide as he was long.  He'd better go find a place to den up before someone puts his hide on the wall and the meat in the freezer.  Maybe I should load one side of the shotgun with a slug from now on.

Winter is closing in and we've been playing catch-up since we got back home.  The weather has been overcast most of the time with some light rain so we had to run the generator once to fully charge the battery bank.  If you've never lived on solar power it's not good to run the batteries in a consistently undercharged state.  If the sun hasn't fully recharged them after a couple of days we run the generator to top them off. 

I called the Forest Service and we now have open burning so I torched three of our brush piles.  It was too wet the first time and I couldn't keep the fires going so I waited a couple of more days to try again.  They still didn't burn completely so I'll have to hit them again next spring.

The nice thing about winter weather is that we have the wood heating stove going and we can cook on it.  I just fried up some bacon and I'm now cooking eggs in that skillet while I make toast next to it.  When making toast we fold the aluminum foil over the top.  Otherwise the bread curls.

We finished digging potatoes in the garden.  We were fortunate that the ground hasn't frozen yet.  The harvest wasn't great this year.  We should have watered it a couple of times during the summer.

These are some of the spuds laid out in a storage room to cure a few days before being stored in the root cellar.

These are some that are sorted and ready to be placed in bins in the root cellar.

Susan's peeling potatoes for supper while I put a patch on a tube.  It was too cold outside to apply the rubber cement.

The patched tube, ready to re-install in the tire.  This is off one of the wheel barrows.  We have two wheel barrows and often consider buying a third one.  They are the workhorses of the homestead.  Garden carts are okay for many jobs but wheel barrows are more versatile.

It's time to get the winter tires on the Cherokee.  Usually we run studded snow tires in winter but this year they're just snow tires without studs.  We plan on spending a lot of the winter in places where there is no snow or ice!

I have my own tire machine (purchased from Harbor Freight Tools) so I mount/dismount our tires myself. These are used snow tires in almost new condition that we got for free (almost).

I had a fair sized stack of firewood from last year left over so I put most of it in the wood shed without splitting it (I didn't have room there last year).  I split this batch because it's what I call "trash wood" (it burns fast and not as hot as fir and larch).  I want to get it burned soon before it gets real cold.

Finished!

Each row is 2/3 of a cord of firewood.  I filled up one row and part of another then had enough left to fill a wheel barrow before I quit for the day.

These are from one of our kid's garden.  It was their first attempt at gardening and they had more than they knew what to do with so we brought these six pumpkins home with us.  They'll make great pies and pumpkin bars.  They had a good crop on everything that they planted but learned some important lessons as well.  The most important will be the new fence they'll put around it next year.  Deer are pretty to see but they love fresh garden produce.  It tkes a good fence to keep them out.  They estimate a 50 percent loss to deer over the summer.

5-13 September, 2012, Skunks in the henhouse, camper painting, wood cutting, new grandchildren

Right in the middle of catching up on the blog the dog began making a ruckus outside.  She'd been barking at something off to the south of the cabin last night and today but this time whatever it was was in the yard.  I grabbed the shotgun and went to investigate and found a skunk under the chicken house.  The chickens were gone (I hadn't shut them up for the night yet) so I hope they're roosting somewhere else.  I didn't see any excessive feathers strewn about so I don't think the skunk got them.  Anyway, I shot the skunk and have the bruised arm to prove it.  The shot was taken with me laying on the ground holding a flashlight in one hand and the shotgun in the other.  I lined the (12 gauge) shotgun up on the skunk and pulled the trigger.  The butt plate was resting against my biceps just above the elbow and I can sure feel it now!  I'll extract his smelly, mutilated body tomorrow when it's light out.  Hopefully the chickens are safe.  I put the dog in the house while this as going on so I wouldn't have to worry about the skunk spraying her.

It's just one more reason why you don't wander around in the dark here without a gun of some kind and a flashlight with you.  It also shows why a dog is an asset on the homestead.

Now, about the rest of the week...

I dug some of the rocks up out of the yard.  The ground seems to grow them naturally.  Those that stick their heads above the surface get dug up. 

But then you have to fill the holes in with more dirt so we go to our dirt pile and fill the wheel barrow with dirt to fill in the holes where the rocks used to live.

We (Susan) are repainting the camper.  Here Susan is spraying the brown that goes on the cab and along the bottom of the  box.  We're using an airless paint gun which is having issues.  There's a lot of "orange peel" in the finished product.

The final look after we're done!

Okay, Susan is finished.  I still need to clean the paint gun up (with Scott's help).

Scott is helping change the memory card in the game camera.  I went three days with no critters at this site so I moved it to another location the next day.  At least I know where to not put a tree stand.

Scott and I went to the shack to get a few things and on the way back he wanted to play on the snowmobiles.  I uncovered one of them and he spent a little time in the land of imagination where two-year-olds like to go.

Scott's dad and mom were up so his dad and I did a little shooting with 22's. 

Susan, Scott and I took a break on the work one afternoon to play a game of horseshoes.  I won but only by one point.  Scott had a pair of plastic shoes he used.

We still wash dishes.  One of the problems with doing a blog like this is that there's only so much "new" stuff you can put on it after awhile, so ... you get some re-runs!  We had plenty of rain water so I used that for the wash water and "town" water for the rinse.  We had the kettle heating on the wood stove so I had some hot water to mix with it.

The mornings and some evenings have been cold enough to need some heat so we've fired up the wood stove  several times.  The side benefit of this is having hot water. (We keep a kettle of water on the wood stove.)  So ... I used hot water when I washed the dishes and laundry.  It was nice to have hot water instead of the cold water we normally use.

We also got the sourdough out of the refrigerator and began using it again.  These are sourdough pancakes and we love eating them.

Susan made cookies and we caught Scott in the act of helping himself to a few.  He's like a bird and eats a bite out of each one.  We caught him before he got too many though.

Scott has a new cousin.  This little guy's name is Tommy.  His mom had some complications so they induced labor.  She was in labor almost two days before she had him.  Mom and baby are both home again and doing well.

Of course Scott loved the hospital.  Tommy was born in the same room as Scott used a couple of years ago.  They moved mom and baby to a recovery room while we were visiting and Scott discovered the running water in the bathroom.  We stripped him down to his diaper and let him have some fun.  (With grandpa staying very close.)

Here Scott is helping grandma put the dried mint in jars for storage.

Susan has been harvesting garden crops this week beginning with the onions.  Next will be the potatoes and carrots.

There were two large trees blown down that I was cutting up for firewood.  This is the last of the second one.  I couldn't get them all in two loads so I had to make another trip for this batch.  It's green so it will go to the back of the wood shed to cure until spring.

The wood shed is almost half full now.  I was getting too tired to throw the large rounds of green logs up on the top tiers so I split some of them into quarters.

Scott got the idea to re-arrange his cabinets and decided that the oven would be a great place to store what had been in them.  Unfortunately grandma needed that space for cooking dinner tonight so they all went back into their original home.

26 July - 4 August, 2012 - Kayaking, Dust and Camper Mods

It doesn't seem like we've accomplished much the last nine days but we've sure been busy.  There've been several trips to Eureka and Kalispell and we've both done quite a bit of writing.  We purchased/signed up for a jetpack so we're hoping to have internet access more often when we're out camping.  That should make it easier to keep up with our writing and blogs without needing to drive into the nearest town.  We expect it to be especially helpful when we head south for the winter.

We've had a couple of small thunderstorms move through which has helped keep the fire danger down (we actually got rain with them ... sometimes we get thunder and lightening and no rain!).  My book should be done in September.  The final editing on the galley is finished.  I like the way Paladin put it all together.  Susan added one more book to her Kindle books and her sales keep climbing.  The garden is doing well.  We had our first raspberries a couple of days ago and we have peas ready to pick.  We've had so much rain that we haven't needed to water the garden yet this summer.  That's a first in the nine years we've been here.  We had some problems when we were gone too which leads to the first photo. ...

We had an understanding with our neighbors that there'd be no road work done across our property without our permission.  This was hammered out in court after one of them widened the lower road one day while we were gone.  They are from California and seem to believe that they had/needed a 20 foot wide right-of-way through our property.  At one point we had a bit of a stand-off with me parked in the road at the corner of our property and the neighbor wanting to get through with a backhoe.  The sheriff's dept. finally arrived and told him to wait until we went through the court.  They lost.  We are not against them having a smooth road but we are against them widening it.  The agreement was that they could put down all the gravel they wanted but no blade was to be used on the roadway without our presence and permission.  While we were gone this last time the road was graded but no one is claiming responsibility.  The guy who did it was paid through a landowner on the other fork in the road and denies knowing who paid what.  We have one part time resident who was involved and I've talked to him and his story is that he only paid to have his driveway graded.  We're all going to get together next time he's up here and we're going to straighten things out.  To say we were a bit angry would be a huge understatement.

One of the problems we have with new out-of-state residents is that they think they need a wide, smooth road to travel on.  They buy their property knowing the road is bad then try to "improve" it  without regard to private property rights of the current landowners.  Most of us just drive slower.

To compound the problem they try to build roads like they do in the flat lands.  That doesn't work in the mountains.  The road itself needs three to six inches of crushed rock to make it gradable.  The rock that's on it is large so when they try to smooth the road they pull in dirt from the edges and fill in the holes.  Then we have both potholes and mud.  When it rains and the snow/ice melts in spring the mud washes down to the low spots then you drive through mud that may be 12 to 18 inches deep.  In the summer we end up with huge clouds of dust.  Plus the idiots drive faster and beat the potholes out larger than they were before.

It amazes me that people say they like the laid-back life out here then live it at the same intensity they had when in the city and drive like morons on the road.  Why didn't they just stay in the city.  I have a complete chapter in my book about this kind of garbage!

Rant off!

Our daughter driving behind us.  We came in at 5 mph and still had clouds of dust.

We had to run the river once more before the season ended (meaning the water level dropped) so we left Scott with his parents and Susan and I took the kayaks out again.  It had dropped about a foot but was still a lot of fun.

Some of the locals.  When we rounded the corner there were five deer (two were fawns) in the meadow but three ran off before we could get pictures.

When you have chickens you get some odd eggs now and then.  This one is large (jumbo size at the store) but the shell is wrinkled a bit.  It's still good eating though!

This one is small.  All of our chickens are full size (no bantams) and have never laid an egg this small.  Our little chicks are too young yet so I don't know if one of the older hens or one of the younger hens had this biological malfunction.

We spent some time in Kalispell visiting kids/grandkids.  Scott and his cousin Anna always get along great. They are about the same size even though Anna is older.     

We have the money so we bought some things to spruce up the U-Haul camper and complete a little more of it.

Susan has been in a painting mood and painted the front bumper with a coat of black paint.  It looks much better now.

She painted the roof white to keep it a little cooler inside.  It made quite a difference.

We bought some more lumber to complete some more of the inside.  I use a lot of 2x2's in the camper but they cost more than 2x4's so we buy 2x4's and rip them down to 2x2's.  It saves us a pile of money.  My table saw is better for ripping wood but it's down in the shack so I used the radial arm saw.

I'm marking one of the shelves to cut relief holes for the shelf framing.  I always unplug any tool I've been using in case Scott wants to try them out as he's doing here with the sabre saw.

Scott has been an active participant in the latest round of improvements.  Here he's making sure I have the screws driven in all the way in the shelves.

Here he's reminding me that I still have some paneling to install at the end.

Now he's checking my notes to see if I've forgotten anything.

Mission complete ... for now anyway.  We have more to do but we're doing this as we have money and time.  Susan put some shelves up this morning while I'm working on the blog.  She painted them yesterday.  The buckets you see contain a six (plus) month supply of food.  Should we ever need to leave in a hurry (probably due to a forest fire) the camper is completely stocked with food, clothing and other necessities, and ready to go.  Hopefully that won't ever happen.

1-8 April, 2012 - Tapping Birch Trees, Charging Batteries, Bicycle Rides,and ...

Susan has her first non-fiction book published on Kindle and it must have hit a niche because it's selling very well.  She sold 59 in the first four days.  It's outselling her fiction book "Tale of Two Preppers" which was her top seller (and is still going strong).  It's easy reading and doesn't overwhelm the person who is just beginning to store up extra food for emergencies.
 

It's beginning to look a lot like spring now.  Most of our snow is gone and we've had some absolutely beautiful days this week.  So we put them to use...

The infant seat and rack was given to us by one of our kids to pass on to the next person who needed it.  We never dreamed we'd be the next people needing it though.  The seat comes with a rear rack.  To use the seat you slide it onto the rack then lock it into place.  It works great.

We installed the bike seat on Susan's bicycle.  Since the seat wouldn't fit on her bike rack we had to switch them.  I've got the old one off so Scott and I are installing the new one.  I had to find some longer screws to hold it in place on Susan's bike.

All ready to go on our first test drive.

Scott is our test subject.  This is his very first ride on a bicycle and he loved it.  Scott is at the age when he mimics the sounds and words he hears so when some dogs began barking at us Scott barked back at them.  (And I had the pepper spray aiming toward them in case they wanted to do more than just bark.)  We rode in to Fortine to get the mail.  We drive down to the pavement so it was only about nine miles round trip.

I didn't start my S-10 at all last year so I expected problems when I tried to start it this spring.  I wasn't disappointed!  The battery was dead so I tried jump starting it from the Cherokee.  That didn't work, so ...

I took the battery out and started the generator and used the fast charger on it.  The battery was so dead that it took about an hour before the charger began showing any charge.  When a battery is that dead it takes a lot of voltage to overcome the resistance inside the battery.  Once it begin to take a charge the resistance decreases and it becomes easier to charge it all the way up.  I ran a load test the next morning and it passed so I put it back in the S-10.

But the truck still wouldn't start so I hooked up the Cherokee and we towed it to start it.  It still took a bit of towing to get it running but we did.  It acts like it has a carbon track in the distributor.  I just drove it back home and parked it in the driveway.  I'll check it out more in a couple of days.

I made a chicken feeder and attached it to the wall inside the chicken house.  I was feeding them in a bowl but they wasted so much of it that I made a feeder. 

Susan took advantage of the sunny weather to trim some trees.

Scott loves being outside and he did a bunch of it the last week.  Here he's posing with the dog (Odie).

Now he's tasting the wire around the old horse corral.

And now he's playing on the trailer.

...he's taking inventory of the cabinets.

He and Odie are plotting something.

I did some book swapping in my room and Scott helped there too (when he wasn't reading the books, that is).

He's been driving his car outside too.

And riding one of Grandpa's bicycles.  This is a Schwinn mountain bike I found at the dump.  It needed tires and shifter cable. 

He's now helping me do my Sudoku puzzles.

While the generator was running to charge the battery I plugged in the lead melter and melted a few pounds of scrap lead.

These are the steel bolts from telephone and power poles that hold the insulators for the power lines.

The insulators screw onto lead threads cast onto the top of the bolts.  I melt them down and use them to make bullets.  They're pure lead.

Bacon and eggs for breakfast.  The bacon is organic from a local farmer.  He's kind of famous in these parts for killing a grizzly bear with a .410 shotgun.  We buy sausage from him also.

The four eggs on the left are from our chickens. Not only are they larger, they're a deeper orange.

I tapped some Birch trees (eight) this afternoon.  I made the taps out of pieces of plastic pipe cut to about three inches long.  I cut one end at an angle to pound into the tree.  I drill a hole using a brace and bit then hammer the tap into the hole.  I go in until the cut-out just enters...

I then pound a nail into the tree and hang the jar under the spout.  I use a jar with a ring and screw the ring down on some baling twine used as a "bail."  Between 2:30 and 7:00 (pm) I got almost two gallons of sap off those eight trees.  We'll boil it down into syrup.

Had company over on Friday.  Note the ages and their occupations.  Each one had access to the Internet using their assorted electronics.