8-13 June, 2012 - Stove making, article writing and long bicycle rides

... and more rainy days.

The rain made it good for writing.  There's a new Prepper's magazine coming out soon.  It's a print magazine that's free for now as part of it's promotional phase.  You can read a little about it at
https://www.preppersmagazine.com/.

I'll have at least one article in it's first issue (possibly two).  Anyway, I wrote one article for them and will be finishing up another in the next couple of days. 

I also got a very nice letter from another magazine editor about an article I sent them.  He told me that by making a couple of changes he could pay about $100.00 more for the article.  I made the changes and he emailed me this afternoon accepting the article.  It's a fairly major outdoor magazine that has published a couple other articles of mine in the past.  I'll tell you which magazine when the article is published.

And I had an email from my book editor too.  He's going to start organizing it into it's final form and had some questions and instructions.  It's slated for printing this fall. This is all new territory for me.  I've had quite a few magazine articles published but this will be my first book.  I was surprised to learn that he's read my blog here.

Between all the rain, writing and running to Eureka I haven't accomplished much outside.  My potatoes all got frost bit and had to start over again.  They're coming back up though.  The peas are doing great as are the onions and garlic.  We haven't planted carrots yet but the volunteer carrots are coming up and looking good.  We still have plenty of things to plant but the ground it soaked.  We're hoping to get more in now that the ground is drying up a little.

The hen with her three little ones is still in the chicken house while the other three hens are in the dog kennel.  The rooster is no more.  He met up with a .177 cal. pellet around 5:30 am one morning after crowing at the top of his lungs on the front porch.  That was really bad judgment on his part.

The chicks are beginning to grow their real feathers now.  When they get a little bigger I'll put them in the kennel and let the hens have the chicken house back.  Right now the little ones could get through the chain link fence on the kennel and then the cat would eat them.

Scott learned that he could look in the hen house and watch the little chicks through the small door.  Now it's one of his favorite pasttimes when he's outside.  The problem is that he doesn't shut the door when he leaves.  Today one of the other hens got in while Scott was gone and a fight ensued between momma hen and the other chicken.  I heard the ruckus and opened the large door and almost got bowled over by the escaping hen.

Scott's turn to help do the dishes.  Of course he invited a few of his friends to play in the rinse water.  (I thought ducks could swim better than that.)

We finally got a nice day and decided to head for Eureka on bicycles.  Scott really likes my water bottle and once he gets it he wants to keep it.  We finally talked him out of it and we got to riding again. 

We stopped at the playground and had a couple of burritos and root beer for lunch while Scott played. For some reason he got a kick out of doing a roll-over at the bottom of the slide.  It was all controlled and he did it several times.

While we were there some city employees came and cut down the lion carving in the park.  It was rotten inside and a hazard to those in the playground.

It looked pretty ugly toward home when we left Eureka so we took the old highway back instead of the new highway.  We missed the heavy rain which was good but the hills are tougher so we got a heavy workout coming home.  We'd parked on the paved road which shaved 6 miles off our ride.  We still covered around 34 miles round trip.  Scott did very well on the ride.  When we got back to the car he put on his "professor" reading glasses and began reading one of his books.  We tied the bikes on and drove home on our dirt road.

The pine trees are pollinating now which leaves a yellow ring around puddles and standing water.  The pollen is oily and sticks to whatever it contacts.  Fortunately it hasn't affected my allergies too much yet.

Scott decided to take a break from playing in the sand to sit next to grandpa.

My project of the week is to make a heating stove for the camper.  This is the first model.  I used a 20 pound propane bottle for the stove (an idea I got from an article in Backwoodsman magazine).  The first problem was that the stove pipe was too small and causing a back draft.  I'd used three inch pipe but needed to go to four inch.  The second problem was that I'd put the air inlet under the door and it was too low.  Ashes and coals kept falling out of it.

While it was getting it's initiation we pulled up our folding chairs and had some family time.  It probably made a good red-neck scene.  All of us sitting around the stove in the yard.

One more trip to Eureka to buy four inch pipe.  The outlet on the stove is steel water pipe I purchased at Koocanusa Plumbing in Eureka.  I also got a four foot section of stove pipe from them.

I welded the old air inlet shut and cut a new one in the door.  I had to do some cutting and welding on the steel pipe to get the right angle but it works great.  The stove is a little slow to get going but once the fire's lit if puts out a lot of heat.  It should do a good job once it's inside the camper.  We finished burning off paint this evening and will paint the stove with high-temperature stove paint tomorrow.