Friday - Saturday, Aug, 6-7, 2010 Lots of stuff...

Huckleberry pancakes ...

With Susan getting the first one of the morning. 

Our refrigerator is a blend of the commercial and home-grown.  The jar on the left is goat milk from our neighbor.

These are bunching onions we started from seed this spring.

Susan cut them and is ...

Cutting them up to dehydrate for use later in the year.

Celery from the garden being cut up for drying as well.

Our first ripe tomato.

Before and after pictures of Basil.  The leaves will be dried for later use.

We left the cat unattended one day (we were gone) and it got bored.  These were thriving pepper plants before we left that day.

The cat "guarding" the chickens.

We have peas coming out our ears.

I'm peeling carrots while Susan is cutting up the celery.  The carrots are the last batch from the root cellar.  Tomorrow morning (Saturday) Susan and I will dice and cook them prior to dehydrating them.  We need to get last year's harvest cleared out of the root cellar to make room for this year's harvest.

The cat looking over the seed catalogue.  "Any Catnip sold here!"

The cat brought her little firend into the house this morning.  We took this just before we evicted the (now dead) mouse.

This is a soft shelled egg.  The outside is soft membrane material instead of the hard shell you'd normally expect.  The egg is safe to eat as long as you eat it soon.  It won't keep long.  You'll never see these in the grocery store!

Susan made muffins with the raspberries we picked when going after huckleberries.

It's bath time.  First pour the water into the kettle. 

Now heat it up on the stove.  In winter we have a water kettle on the wood stove at all times.

Shower time!  We stand in the shower and pour the water over us with the cup.  Lather up then rinse.  Usually takes about 2 1/2 to 3 gallons.

We had clouds and rain on Friday so decided to not go berry picking.  I had an article rejected by a magazine so I did revised it some and resubmitted it to a different magazine.  They accepted it.  After that I went down to the shack and  reloaded some ammo.  Susan jarred the dried parsley, celery, oregano, and carrots that were ready, cut more celery, chopped it, and got it drying. We finished up peeling carrots from last year that were still in the root cellar.  Susan picked more peas and I shelled them while she worked on carrots then I worked on carrots while she worked on celery.  We got quite a bit done.

This morning (Saturday) we diced the carrots and Susan boiled them in preparation for dehydrating them.  We got the motorcycle out of the shed so I can get some things done on it.  I have anew battery and front tire for it.  I also need to replace the shock seals on the front forks.  I have the seals, I just need to get it done.  We've been going through some of our excess stuff and separating it into "keep," "discard/trash," and "thrift store" piles.  The carburetor is leaking gasoline on the Dodge 1 ton so I'll need to get a kit for it.  It has a ThermoQuad carburetor which is a pile of junk on it's best day.  They have a hard plastic body that goes "boing" when you take it apart and it's difficult to get them to seal right afterwards.  Back when they were popular on Highway Patrol cars the shop I worked at used to just replace them with a Holley when they needed work.  Of course that was spending the State's money and they seem to have more of it than I do.  Oh well!  Susan made Spanish Rice for supper using the solar cooker.  She also made biscuits then raspberry muffins for desert.  After supper, Susan picked more peas and I worked on the Cherokee.  It developed a decidedly un-funny noise the last few days ... a rattling sound when we had a light load on the engine going in forward or reverse.  I thought it was the flex plate to torque converter bolts coming loose and I was correct.  I pulled the flywheel cover off and tightened the bolts.  If they don't hold I'll have to replace the bolts and apply lots of locktight.  If that doesn't work I'll need a new flexplate.  I hope tightening them back up is enough.  I've worked quite a few years as a mechanic and I truly destest working on cars anymore ... especially my own!  After that it was bath time to wash the dirt and grease off that I got working under the car.  Now, if I can get the computer to cooperate I'll get this post fnished up and go to bed.

Thursday, August 5, 2010 Reloading Ammo and Huckleberry Pie

The cat brushing it's teeth this morning with Tristan's toothbrush.

Tristan home from work eating the last piece of huckleberry pie with lots of vanilla ice cream.  Susan, did we remember to tell him that the cat borrowed his toothbrush?

The buffalo in their summer coats.  This is the bull and the head cow.  The youngsters are off to the left in the trees.

This is our second oldest daughter's husband.  He's new to reloading and bought a Lee hand press and dies to reload for his 45 auto.  He brought it up here so I could teach hime how to use it.  He reloaded 100 rounds and then we proceeded to shoot most of them.

These are the huckleberries after Susan washed them in preparation for drying.  She also made a huckleberry pie.  It was our son-in-law's first time eating huckleberry pie.

This is the first load of huckleberries in the dehydrator.  They smell soooo good when drying!  We also had huckleberries with our ice cream and will probably have some in our pancakes in the morning.  Unless the weather turns bad we plan on picking more tomorrow.

Susan watering the garden this afternoon.  I've got the tumbler going with more brass cases while the generator is running to power the water pump.

These are some of the peas we shelled yesterday.  We dry them on plastic screens bought at a craft shop.  We lay the screen on an old refrigerator rack and let the peas air dry. 

I did a little flint knapping before the mosquitoes drove me inside for the night.  I'm new at it so about all I've got to show so far is lots of broken pieces of obsidian.

I put a bunch of stuff away this morning. When I moved the dog food to it's storage area I found that a mouse had made a home there. I set some traps then moved the last bag of dog food and a bag of cat food in there to store them. I hope I catch the mouse before he gets into the dog food. I took a bunch of stuff down to the shack as well and took the goat out to roam while I checked my gopher traps. I then took the truck over to the neighbors to get water. On the way I stopped to feed a bale of hay to the buffalo. Our son-in-law was coming over today and met me at the hay stack. He went with me to fill barrels. When we finished with the barrels we went to reloading ammo for his 45 auto. He'd never reloaded ammo before and tried a few rounds using my equipment the last time he was here. He liked it but they don't have a lot of room so I had him order a Lee hand press and Lee dies with the powder measure included. It's enough to get him started. It's the first time I've ever used a hand press and I liked it. I don't think it would be much fun for my 338 but his worked well on the pistol cartridge.

While us guys were doing the gunpowder and bullet thing, Susan was washing huckleberries and drying them. She also made a venison pot pie for lunch and huckleberry pie for desert. She spent some time working in the garden then we fired up the generator and water pump and she watered the garden. Finally the mosquitoes drove her into the house too.

Wildflowers

I don't know what the top three flowers are called. The last picture is of huckleberries while they're still green.

Carrots, cut-up, cooked, and ready for the dehydrator.

Susan and I (with the cat's help) shelled peas this morning.  We set aside the best  and will save them for planting next year.

These are wild raspberries.  We stopped and picked a paper cup full of them (not counting those we ate while picking)  We also found some saskatoon berries and gooseberries growing nearby.

These are left and right views of the road where we parked to pick huckleberries. 

These are ripe huckleberries waiting to be picked!

Susan properly attired  for picking huckleberries.  Jeans, stout shoes, hydration pack, 357 magnum on belt and pepper spray on pack strap, sweatshirt tied around the waist to use if mosquitoes get bothersome, and bucket tied to her belt to leave both hands free for picking.

Prime huckleberry habitat. 

Proper evidence of huckleberry picking.  A purple tongue is evidence of huckleberry eating.

We met a black bear on the road about 3/4 mile from our house.  He's a fair size bear but not as big as the one I have hanging on the wall.  Bear season opens in about a month.

The goat thought he was starving when we got home.  Here he's climbed up on a stump to get at the leaves.

Susan and I shelled peas first thing this morning.  We saved some of the best for planting in next year's garden.  The others will be dehydrated for future use.  We planned on leaving right after that but had a neighbor stop in for a  short visit.  He was on his way to Eureka to get some things and wanted to know if we wanted to ride along or if we needed anything.  We gave him enough money to buy a couple of gallons of milk.  He got back before us and just left the milk in the refrigerator.  When he left I emptied water jugs into the barrel for the tank over the sink and we filled it up.  We loaded the water jugs in the car to fill at the church on our way home.  Susan put together some stuff to eat while we were there and we left to pick huckleberries.

We stopped at some wild raspberries alongside the road and picked some to use at home.  (Okay, to be honest we ate as many as we saved!)  Susan will use them in muffins tomorrow.  We parked at our favorite huckleberry location and had a very pleasant afternoon picking H-berries.  We ended up with a couple of gallons.  We'd like to have more so we'll probably go back on Friday.  We didn't see any bears there but the wild flowers are in full bloom.  Most of the berries near the road have been picked so we walked up the mountain a couple hundred yards before getting into many huckleberries.  There are still plenty of green ones so the picking should be good for a couple of weeks at least.  Not many people will venture that far from the road because it's too much work to climb the mountain through all the brush and blown-down trees.

We headed home around 5:00 pm, stopping at the church to fill the water jugs.  We saw the bear as we started up the fork going to our cabin. 

August 3, 2010 Continued...

We (Susan, me, the goat, the cat, and the dog) walked over to feed the buffalo this morning.  We're letting the goat run loose (we've got a long lead rope on it just in case) to get used to staying with us.

It seems to have developed a taste for hay now that I have a bale of it to feed the buffalo.

It followed me through the electric fence to help scatter the hay (and get some for itself).  You have to be kind of careful going through the fence.  When you're barefoot you get a real good ground!

Another gopher bites the dust.

I took some time to shoot a couple of rifles today so now it's cleaning time.  I picked this spot to keep an eye on the goat.  We let it range the yard the other day and it got into Susan's flowers.  Now we keep it under observation and out of the yard.  The cat likes to play with the goat's lead rope.

I'm almost finished with the SKS and will start on the MAK 90 next.

Susan did laundry this afternoon.  We kept kidding about how she was going to bring more rain.

The line is full and she's almost finished.

Afterwards she made supper.  Our son is running his generator so I have the brass tumbler going and Susan will have the dehydrator going soon as well.

Tomorrow we go to pick huckleberries.

This is the sunset from Sunday evening.

Yesterday we decided to ride bicycles into Eureka to get some bananas.  That's me in the distance on the first stretch of paved road coming down from our "mountain."

This is Susan on the old highway a few miles from Eureka.

There were a bunch of people with old cars in Eureka yesterday (Monday) so this was a common sight.  Note the block in front of the left rear wheel to keep it from rolling down the hill.

We went to the bank, the grocery store, and the health food store then headed home.  We thought we might make if out before the thunderstorm hit but we barely made it to the outer edge of town when the storm arrived.  It was a doozey!  Lots of thunder and lightening and hard rain. 

We took shelter under the canopy of a vacant building for about an hour while the storm passed through. 

After the rain stopped we headed on toward home.  This is leftover hail from the storm.  We were through here about 30 minutes after the storm passed through.  We rode on into Fortine and got our mail.  We stopped at the church to refill water bottles then rode the last seven miles home.  The total mileage round trip was about 39 miles.  We were gone most of the day.    When we got home we met some people who were looking at land for sale across the road from us.  They seemed like a decent family and might make good neighbors.  We filled them in on the local lore and showed them around our place.  

Sunrise this morning.  The sun was a deep red (the picture didn't really capture that) which means there's a forest fire going somewhere.  It's not too close or we'd have heard about it by now.  One of our son's is a local firefighter (both structure and wildland certified).  He keeps us updated on nearby fires and we listen in to local firefighting efforts on the scanner.

Susan is milking the neighbor's goat Saturday morning.  (At their place!)

A little buck we saw on the way home from milking the goat.

Checked my gopher traps this morning.  Had two gophers and one weasel.  I felt kind of bad about the weasel.  He was probably helping clear out the gophers.  Of course if he got in the chicken pen he'd have cleared it out of chickens too.

I took some time to do some shooting and reloading today.  I was shooting to see how the point of impact changed between different bullet wieghts.  After shooting I spent a few hours at the reloading bench sorting brass and loading 223 ammo.

Susan got out some carrots from the root cellar and began cutting them up into little pieces.  She'll cook them first then dehydrate them.

I put a strand of electric wire around the goat's pen.  The guy we got the goat from called to say that someone he gave some other goats to lost them to a mountain lion kill a couple of days ago.  I;m hoping the dog will keep the Mountain Lions out (we have a lot of them around here) but we added the electric wire just in case...

Sunday, August 1, 2010

We went to milk the goat Saturday morning. It worked out better because we were on the goat’s home turf. On the way home from there we saw a little buck alongside the road.

This morning I checked traps then did some shooting and reloading until about 2:00 pm. We got more rain and some hail this morning as well. It cleared off in mid-afternoon. The generator was running so I melted down some scrap lead. I dropped in a wheel weight that must have had some moisture in a crack somewhere. The lead erupted like a volcano and blew about two pounds of hot lead all over everything. I’ll be picking melted lead out of my clothes for a week. I always wear safety glasses and a hat for occasion like that although this was the worst one I’ve ever had happen to me. I melted down about 10 pounds of lead into ingots and called it a day.

Susan made a pie out of the service berries and goose berries we picked the other day. It was great. She picked a bunch of peas this evening and has been working on cutting up carrots to cook them then dehydrate them. These are last year’s crop and have been stored in the root cellar since last fall. They are still firm and in good shape. We need to get them out so we’ll have room for this year’s crop.

We took the goat and the dog over to feed the buffalo. The goat has learned to like our walks. It will stop to munch on something then run to catch up. It’s trying to play with the dog but the dog’s not too excited about that idea. On the way back from the buffalo the goat was running along and saw stump that had an outline similar to a bear. The goat came to a sliding stop then dashed around to the other side of Susan for protection. It was hilarious!

This evening the man we got he goat from called and said that another person he had given two goats to called to say that a mountain lion had killed both of them. We assured him ours was okay then I went out and put a strand of electric wire around the top of the goat’s pen.