Tuesday, August 17, 2010 Huckleberries (again)

These are three of the bows I'm selling on Ebay.  The top one is a Bear Take-Down with the aluminum riser.  It 62 in. long and draws 46 lbs. at 28 in.  The next two are PSE take downs.  Both are 60 inches long.  The second one draws 50 lbs. and the bottom one draws 55 lbs.  All are in good shape.

A pile of bear scat where we were picking berries.  It was fairly fresh and smelled that way too!

Susan and I picking berries.

Susan picking self-heal near the car.

Our "sovenier" received on the way to pick berries.  (Like we really needed another rock chip in the windshield!)

Susan milking the goat.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

I made huckleberry pancakes for breakfast this morning. After breakfast I put seam sealer on one of our big tents. It’s the one we used at DT 10. We didn’t have any problems with it leaking but it was due for some seam sealer anyway. After that I took some pictures of stuff I’m going to put up for sale on Ebay. Susan put together a canner load of potatoes and set up the new dehydrator to dry the rest of them. She made huckleberry muffins to take with us berry picking. After lunch we headed out to pick huckleberries. This will probably be the last time for this year. We had to go about 400 feet up the mountain to get into the berries that were left. There were a lot of them but they get smaller as you go higher. We picked until the sun hit the western ridgeline. Once we were in the shade the flies started getting peskier and we headed back down to the Cherokee. Our take for the afternoon was about three gallons.

On the way home we stopped at the neighbor’s place to milk the goat. They were gone for the evening and had asked if we’d take care of it for them. The goat is usually pretty good but the flies were bothering her last night. Susan made a couple of good “saves” when the goat kicked at the flies nearly dumping the milk bucket. By the time we got home it was dark and nearly bed time. We had some ice cream for an evening snack.

Monday, August 16, 2010

We went yard saling Sturday morning.  One of the yard sales in town advertised a bunch of reloading stuff at a great price.  Right!  They wanted the same prices as the stores charged and didn't have anything I was looking for anyway.  The only thing we bought there was an electric fence charger.  Later on in the morning we bought the following items like the cast iron cookware, butcher knife, manual can opener and coffe percolator. 

One of the things we bought was Magic Chef electric dehydrator.  It's output is less than our other dehydrators but for five dollars we couldn't pass it up.  It was still in the original packaging and had never been used.  In this picture Susan is cutting  some plastic screen to put down on the trays.  The grid is so open that the huckelberries fall through.

I picked up some used archery equipment.  There were ten aluminum arrows, two bows (one PSE take-down, 60 in. long, 50 lb. draw weight, one Bear Grizzly, 58 in. long and a 45 lb draw weight), a three fingered shooting glove and a recurve bow case.  All were in excellent condition.  I plan on selling the bows on ebay and keeping the case, arrows and glove.  I should come out way ahead on the deal.  The Bear bow should bring as much as I paid for the entire package.

Saturday evening our son stopped at the post office and his pickup wouldn't start when he came back out.  He walked over to the Fortine Merchantile (one mile each way) and bought new battery cable ends and replaced them but it still wouldn't start.  I drove our Cherokee down there and we couldn't get it to start with jumper cables either.  We towed it over to the fire dept. parking lot and left it for the night.  We took another battery down on Sunday morning and installed it but the starter still wouldn't crank the engine over.  I had him take the starter off and we ran juper cables to it to bench test it.  It worked but sounded gritty like the bearing/bushings were shot.  We tried it several times and it worked every time.  I had him take a screwdriver and pry on the flexplate to turn the motor over to be sure it wasn't seized up.  It wasn't.  So ... we tried hooking the jumper cables to the starter again.  It worked fine the first time but the second time it didn't.  The jumper cables immediately got hot enough to melt the plastic insulation on the clamps.  We put everything away until we could take it back to the parts store on Monday.  He'd just bought the starter three months ago and it was still under warranty. 

It felt cold out Saturday night so Susan and I covered the garden up with tarps, old blankets. old sleeping bags and sheets.  It was good that we did.  It was 35 degrees on Sunday morning when the sun came up.  The lower picture is of Susan uncovering plants on Sunday morning.

I fed the buffalo and cut some poles in the buffalo pen on Sunday.  These are anywhere from 15 to 20 feet long.  We'll use them for various projects around the house.  There were a lot left so I'll probably cut more later.

This morning we (our son and I) took the starter in to the NAPA store in town.  They tested it on their machine and it passed.  I offered to take the back off of it and test the armature with an ohmeter to prove it had a bad bar on the commutator but they finally believed it was bad and gave him another starter.  We drove back to Fortine and he put it on the truck and it worked great.  This afternoon Susan and I went to check out another huckleberry patch.  It was pretty well picked clean.  We got enough huckleberries for a pie and that was about all.  The deer pictured above were about a mile from home.

We stopped at the county dump site Saturday and found some bed frames.  We're going to enlarge our solar array and I need the frames to make the frame larger.  I also changed the oil and filter on the motorcycle and the new generator.  We've been working on cleaning out storage space and cleaning out the U-haul truck so we can begin making it into a camper.  We caught another packrat this morning and reset the trap in a different building.  Susan peeled the last crate of last year's potatoes and I sliced them up.  She cooked the slices while we went to get the starter.  They're ready to be dehydrated now.

It's been one of those weeks when we were busy most of the time but looking back it's difficult to see a lot of progress!

This is what you'll find in our house this time of year...

Huckleberries in the oven to dry...

]

Huckleberries in the electric dehydrator...

Huckleberries on the floord drying (that screen measures about three feet square)...

The first squash harvested from the garden this year...

Celery leaves - when dried we'll crumble then up and add to soup, etc....

Mint...

More Mint...

Parsley, peas and basil drying on tip of the water reservior above the sink...

Peas drying...

Green onions drying...

Potatoes dried and ready to run through the blender to powder them...

Left from last year.  When we need some more to grind we grab however many we need then shell them and grind them into corn flour ...

Comfrey and Shepherds Purse ...

Arnica ...

Horsetail (AKA Equesita) ...

Self-Heal ...

Strawberry Blite, Mullein, Comfrey, and Yarrow ...

More peas ...

More mint...

Dried peas and huckleberries that are ready to be stored in jars.

Thursday ... It's been raining at times the last three days.  I've been reloading ammo in the early mornings (8:30 - 10:30) then doing stuff around the cabin.  I'm out of IMR 4064 and IMR 3031 powder so I'll have to get some more.  I'm thinking of switching to WW 760 and WW 748, mainly because it flows through the measure better.  I ordered a scope mount from B-Square for my MAK 90.  I installed it and did some shooting.  The mount works well.  The scope rings they sent with it are way to low.  I didn't have any high Weaver rings so I mounted a short (cheapie) scope on it that I had laying around.  It shot well even with the cheap scope.  Next time I'm in town I'll pick up a set of higher rings for it and put a better scope on it.  I've been taking the goatling down to the shack with me to browse while I reload ammo.  It gets him into some new areas to eat new stuff.  Haven't caught a gopher in several days.  They may be going into hibernation now.

We've been cleaning up around the place a bit. We brought an old pickup box trailer (used mostly for hauling wood) up and are going through some storage areas to get rid of some clutter. Susan's also been busy collecting and drying herbs in addition to the peas we've been shelling and drying and the huckleberries we're drying.  The pictures show better than words the drying racks all over the cabin.  The humidity has been high the last few days from all the rain and cloudy weather.  That means we can't run the electric dehydrator on solar power and the high humidity makes air drying them a slow process.  Susan puts some things in the oven to let the pilot light add a little heat to speed the drying but we still need to run the generator some.  We have some huckleberries in the refrigerator in addition to those on the drying racks.  The chickens are starting to molt but are still putting out about 5 eggs a day.  The goat is basically an eating machine.  He was playing around the other day and butted me in the back of the leg so we had to have an attitude adjustment.  I don't think he'll want to do that again.  It's not a big deal now but when he gets up over 200 pounds it will be a big deal.  Better for everyone that he learn his manners now.

Sunday - Monday August 8-9, 2010 Huckleberries and Mule Deer Bucks

I took a picture of Susan taking a picture of the goat.

The goat eating knapweed.

Anti-cat devices. The kitten decided that it's not only fun to play with Pepper plants, but Basil plants are fun too! In addition to the antlers and the metal pole Susan stuck bamboo skewers and chopsticks down into the dirt, sticking up among the foliage!

I got out the 45/70 and shot it a bit Sunday afternoon.  After 10 or so shots with 405 grain slugs that steel butt plate starts to hurt just a bit.

\

The road to our huckleberry patch.

The upper beginning of the Stillwater river.

Me picking huckleberries.

Susan and I stopped in a small clearing for a rest break after a few hours.  She's taking pictures of the scenery while I take a picture of her taking a picture of the scenery 

The "scenery."

A Mule Deer buck we saw on the way home.

Evidence of picking huckleberries.

The prize ... Huckleberries!

It rained off and on all day Sunday.  Tristan ran his generator so Susan spent most of Sunday drying food.  We have a whole cabin filled with herbs and vegetables drying on screens and herbs tied in bundles on the front porch.  I let the goat browse while I cast bullets for my 45/70 and 357 magnum.  I took advantage of some time when the sun was out to shoot the 45/70 a little.  The cat got into trouble for playing with the basil plants.  Last week it shredded the peppers we had growing in pots and was working to do the same thing to the Basil but Susan put up some "obstructions" to foil it's fun.

We went huckleberry picking Monday.  Susan made some mint tea to bring along then we forgot to fill the jar on the way past the church.  She also made some frosted muffins to eat for lunch.  They were great.  We stopped and picked up a neighbor who wanted to go along and pick berries too.  We ended up with about two gallons of berries each after about six hours of picking them.  We stopped at the Fortine Merchantile and bought a cake mix and hamburger for me to grill tomorrow.  We then filled water jugs at the church and headed home.  We picked up the mail on the way out so we didn't ned tostop at the post office on the way back home.  I let the goat out to browse and let the chickens out when we got home.  Later, I shut the chickens in but couldn't find the goat.  I'd seen a deer near him earlier and was concerned that he'd followed it on into the woods.  I got Susan and we got flashlights and FRS radios (it wasn't totally dark yet but it was getting close) and strapped on handguns and went looking.  Susan heard him baa'ing and he must have heard us about the same time because he came running from the direction of the shack.  He'd been doing his best distressed goat call to see if he could draw in any nearby coyotes, wolves, or (most likely) mountain lions.  I'm glad we found him before they did. By then it was nearly bedtime for us too.