16 - 17 October, 2010 More stuff!

Tristan and I spent part of Saturday cutting up some logs I'd cut down during the thinning process last spring.  We cut about a dozen into 10 and 15 foot poles to be used for various projects and cut the rest into firewood.  I needed his help because the poles were too heavy for me to lift alone.  Some were almost too heavy for both of us to lift together!  Susan had been busy in the garden digging carrots and pulling plants up to compost.  I helped with the last of the carrots when Tristan and I finished.  We still have a couple of carrot patches to dig yet and we want to transplant a bunch of raspberry plants yet this fall.  I went to church Sunday morning then Susan and I went kayaking on the local lake.  We had the entire lake to ourselves (except for a few ducks, muskrats and beaver).  We paddled around, did some scouting for muskrat and beaver sign and did a little fishing.  I have a new article (on magnetic declination) out in Modern Survival Magazine (online magazine).  Jim Benson, the editor of the former american Survival Guide magazine puts it out.

The top photo is of celery tops before dehydrating.  The bottom photo is after they are dried and stored in this 32 oz. orange juice bottle.  They will keep a long time this way.

Dried tomatoes.

We did a little kayaking on Marl Lake Sunday afternoon.  That's a beaver house on the other side of Susan.

The water in the lake is crystal clear and ice cold!

A muskrat dining room.

There was ice on one of the little inlets in the cattails.  It's possible the lake bill be frozen over by November and I'll have to go to a bigger lake to trap.

Muskrat house.

Another feeding area.

Another muskrat house.

Time to relax and do a little fishing.  We're in the "lagoon" here.  At this point the water is about forty feet deep.

Because of the rocks in the ground the carrots sometimes grow in unique shapes.  These two are just a few of the variations we've seen.  This plot is in a fairly new section of garden.  It takes about four years to work all of the rocks out of it.  It just seems to grow new ones for awhile.

Susan stood on the Cherokee to take this picture.  The lagoon in the foreground is where I took the picture of her fishing.  The cattails are all on floating mats.  When we get a lot of wind they rearrange themselves.  It's interesting trapping sometimes when you get out on the lake to check traps and everything is in a new place.

Fresh, home made bread Sunday evening.   We had French Toast for supper.

Onion tops ready to be cut up and dried.  (Susan cut them up while we watched a couple episodes of CSI on DVD.)

Mint drying on the racks Susan put up behind the wood stove.

Mini-greenhouses.

Sunrise this morning.