3 - 4 July, 2011 Home from DT-11 ... lots of catching up to do.

We'll have a separate blog entry to cover our time at Dirttime so this will be about what happened after we got home.

We left a Nevada rest area at 7:00 am on the third and pulled into the driveway at home at 2:30 am on the fourth.  If I fugured that correctly it comes to 19 1/2 hours on the road.  We drove through some beautiful country on the way home but nothing was so welcome as our passage into Montana.  We hit the Montana line around 4:00 in the afternoon and stopped at a rest area to eat.  Then we headed north again on the final leg of our trip.  It was sure nice to be home again.

We stopped for lunch at Lost Trial Pass on Hwy 93 on the Montana/Idaho border.  They still have some snow there.

Our daughter came over about 9:30.  We'd left a note on the door taht we got in at 2:30 am and would be sleeping late.  Ha!  Susan was up and working in the garden at 6:00 am.  I slept until 8:30 then it was time to get to work.

We were given some of the left-over food from DT so after Susan spent a couple of hours weeding int he garden she got busy dehydrating the corn and onions we'd brought home.

She had to do some scrounging for suitable drying racks ...

... and more scrounging ...

Then we still had corn to dry.  (This is just the first rack of corn.  We have others not shown here.) The netting is to keep flies, etc. away from the food as it dries.  We're fortunate that the air is dry enough to dehydrate things outside without electricity.

The sun is shining full-bore so we also put one of the electric dehydrators to work. (We have three elelctric dehydrators.)

She took a short time to pick some clover blossoms before I mow that area.

We had more bananas than we could eat before they spoiled so she canned the extra ...

We've had people say that you can't can bananas but they're wrong.  These will make great banana bread and other treats for later in the winter.

Susan likes to work at different jobs througout the day but I like to get on a task and keep on it until it's finished. This is what I did all day long ...  The blade was dull so the first thing I did was sharpen and balance it.  After that it was just keep re-filling the gas tank and keep mowing.  The grass had gotten too tall to mow with our reel mowers.  The gas mower kicks up a lot of dust and pollen so I'm scarfing down allergy medicine.  I had to stop once for an allergy induced asthma attack.  A couple puffs on the inhaler took care of that problem.  I'll be trimming it tomorrow.  I may dig out a gas mask to keep the allergies to a minimum.

I had to dig out a small (eight-in diameter) stump in the yard after Susan stubbed and cut her toe on it.  I dug it out and filled the hole with pea-gravel then the dog dug up the pea-gravel.  I'm going to have a "talk" with the dog later.

The chickens have become too lazy to go to the nesting boxes to lay their eggs so we'll have to keep them shut in until afternoon.  Production is down and I found one egg in the grass while mowing.  I had no idea how old it was so I gave it to the dog who was quite pleased but we want the eggs for us so the chickens will stay in the pen until they're done laying for the day.

We ended the evening with a meal of mashed potatoes and gravy with roast beef while we watched a movie with our daughter and son-in-law.  After the movie we fired off a few fireworks to celebrate the 4th then went to bed.

14 - 22 June, 2011 Self-reliance expos and getting ready for DT-11

Not a lot of pictures or info for this section.  We were busy getting things ready before we left for DT-11.
We had a lot of packing to do as well as getting things in order around the homestead.  We both spent a lot of time outside mowing and trimming the yard and weeding the garden before we left because we knew that we'd be gone a couple of weeks for Dirttime in California.  I didn't even have time to do this section of the blog before we left so I apologize for the lack of pictures and info...

The goat loves to climb on things.  In this case he's using a stump to get at some pine branches.

One son is a volunteer fireman.  They have to replace their firehoses periodically so he saved a section for us.  They had to cut it so we'll need to patch it up but it will give us some added protection in case of fire.  These will put out a lot more water than our gatrden hose.

One of our compost piles was overtaken by weeds so I'll have to use a shovel to "turn" it.  I'll basically shovel it into a new pile with the weeds buried in the compost so that they'll die.  There's approximately a ton of compost in this pile.

The dog taking a breather to contemplate the deep things in life.  (Things like, "will there be any leftover sloppy joes to eat after dinner?")

We went to the first "annual" self-reliance expo in Kalispell.  It was small but they had some good stuff there and I got to talk to some people about hand pumps for deep water wells.  The most important lesson learned was that you better have a pile of money!

When the dog's away ... the cat will lay on the dog's blanket.  You can almost see the cat thinking, "yuch, smells like dog ... I can fix that though!"

On the road to Dirttime 2011!!!!!!

7-13 June, 2011 Rain, storage sheds and moving ...

It's definitely the monsoon season here.  We had two days of solid rain this week.  We didn't get much done outside but we've filled every barrel and tank with water from the rain gutters! 

Some of the aspargus is finally showing some growth.  I've tried several times to get some asparagus beds established and I think we've finally succeeded with two beds.

The rain helped a lot of new seeds sprout.  This is lettuce that Susan planted.

Our rhubarb is doing great.  We have three beds established now and will start some more outside of the garden this summer.

Susan potted some mint to sell at the farmer's market.

Our two surviving apple trees are in full bloom now.  So far it looks good.  Some years the blossoms get frosted off.

Went to a neighbor's to do some shooting and had to take some pictures of their baby goats.  They have three but the third one was out grazing with the nanny. 

This is our goat foraging on his tether.  He isn't a baby anymore but he's not yet full grown either.  Must be a teenager now ... which kind of lines up with his attitude at times also.

The cat decided to have a little fun with a Christmas decoration he found.

He's under the sink looking for a mouse.  There's one in the house but I can't set the trap when the cat's in and the times the cat caught it it played with it until the mouse escaped.  Now the hunt is on once again.

We have a daughter and son-in-law coming here to live.  They bought some lumber to build a shed with so we've (Susan and I) been putting it together.  There wasn't enough lumber to do it the way I wanted to so we put it together the best we could.  Some of the lumber was cut wrong as well which I didn't find out about until construction had begun.  About half the 2x4 "studs" were a full eight feet long while the other half was cut properly.

We can't get the rain to stop long enough to get it built so I finally put a tarp over the whole thing and worked under it.

The back and both sides finished.  We're going to add some more wall studs later along with beefing up the roof and possibly siding.  It'll have to wait though.  We need to get it together enough to store some things in for now.

Smile!  Yea, right!  Put the camera down and get this thing done before the rain and wind pick up!

Our "foundation" is shipping pallets and they're not quite level.  The front is going to need some "tweaking."

My "tweaker" in place.  In this case it's a rope/pulley type fence stretcher.  The rope and pulley system gives me precise options over a ratchet type set-up and with a  tug backwards on the rope the pulleys are locked into place at the perfect length.  And eveything is square.  How's that go ... "You might be a redneck if you square up a building with a fence stretcher?"

 

And the filling begins.  They have a storage unit so this one is to give them a place to keep the "must have" items close at hand.  I'll have to finish the door after they get up here.  It's a good thing we live in a very low crime district.

We spent a couple days helping with packing and transporting things to storage.  This is Hannah, one of our grandkids I mangaed to bore to sleep.  She'd been with her mother at the farmer's market and was completely worn out.  She slept for several hours.

This is Barbara (the one moving here) holding her nephew while Hannah plays.

Becky - The Mom!  Driven to drink!  Her hair hangs down to her waist making her easy to spot in a crowd.  I just look for the girl with hair hanging below her coat.

We borrowed an extra pet carrier from another daughter.  When I got there the kids wanted to show me what they'd learned how to do that week on their bicycles.  Jonathan also showed me the cracked helmet from his bike wreck.

And David, the middle boy ...

And Andrew, the youngest boy ...

And Anna, not to be outdone by the boys brought a skateboard to try out.  She's a little camera shy today.

3-6 June, 2011 Carpentry, horse shoes, shooting, bicycling and rain...

We've had some nice days and some rainy ones and since much of our work is done outside we try to get as much done then as we can.  Rainy days are good for working indoors.  I finally broke down and  began using mosquito repellent when I'm outside.  They simply love drawing blood from me.  They seldom bother Susan ... unless I'm around then they snack on both of us.  We have accomplished a bit the last couple of days though.

We sorted through the sawmill slabs to find wood suitable for the next building phase on the porch.  (The cat is, of course, supervising our board selections!)

Since these are the cast-offs from the sawmill we have a bunch of sides we can put to use.  They do not have straight edges so we use a chalk line and skilsaw to make our own.  I usually cut one side, leaving as little waste as possible.  Next we measure the narrowest point and use it for the next cut.  That way the board is as wide as we can make it.

This is what we did last year to get through the winter.

Here we've begun with the front.  I measured how long we wanted the slabs and set up a small steel square for a stop to slide the boards against on my radial arm saw.  That way I didn't have to measure each one prior to cutting it.  It also makes the lengths more consistent.  You can see what the slab profiles look like in the wheel barrow.

The completed front from the deck side...

And from the front side.  I'm driving in the final nails holding the top board in place.

I finally got a chance to shoot the muzzle loader I put together from a kit.  As you can see there're reason they call them "longrifles."

It's pleasant to shoot and the sights were nearly perfect when I installed them so I didn't have to waste time getting it sighted in.  I worked my way up to 70 grains of Pyrodex "P" for a maximum load.  I'll get the chronograph out before hunting season and measure the velocity using different loads and different sizes of powder.  I usually use 2F black powder for hunting loads.  It's a light rifle and I was surprised at the recoil.  The small, deeply curved buttplates are designed to fit against your arm instead of your shoulder as in modern rifles.

First shot at the 100 yard target.  I can kill a deer with that!

The mornings are still cold with about half of them below freezing so we've fired up the wood stove every morning except one.  When it's going we also cook breakfast on it.  In this case it's pancakes.

Susan's homemade french bread.  It is as good as it looks.

Thyme that Susan dried and is putting in a jar for storage.

We rode bicycles out to check the mail yesterday (the 6th).  On the way back we took a back road home and came in from the north end of the lake.  From this direction you can see about half of the cattail mats on the lake.  There's a National Forest access at the end of this road.  Very few people know about it.

More of the cattail matts.

Susan taking pictures.

Susan wasting film ... er ... storage space on the camera.

We like riding bikes into Fortine to check the mail but it's about 15 miles round trip and takes us longer than planned.  We always see people we haven't talked to in awhile and by the time we all get caught up on the news we've used up half the day.  It's nice though. 

While I was doing my laundry and Susan was working in the garden we stopped for an afternoon game of horseshoes.  I got tired of the stakes they send with the kits always working loose so I used a couple of steel weight training bars and drove them into the ground.  They haven't worked loose like the short bars do.

We try to keep up on the mowing by doing small parts daily.  If we stay caught up we won't need to use the power mower.  Neither of us like the noise or smell of gasoline fumes.  The longer we've been away from town the less we can tolerate noise and exhaust fumes.  It's amazing how it can often cause physical symptoms.  The first comment people make when they come here is how quiet it is. Our kids have difficulty sleeping when they visit because it's so quiet. 

We have a daughter and son-in-law moving onto the property.  They've grown tired of city life and want to give our lifestyle a try.  They parked their motorhome at the new homesite and a bird quicky moved into it by building a nest inside the grill.  She was quite adamant about remaining on the nest too so I guess it will stay in place until her eggs hatch and young ones leave.

We started building their storage shed but got rained out about the time we finished the first wall.  Our son-in-law will be here tomorrow (actually today now) and if the rain will let up we'll get more done.