Off Grid, Self-Sufficient, Montana Homestead Life

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

1 September, 2010

Another cold morning so I got the wood stove going first thing. We usually sit near the stove for a few minutes when we first get up in the morning. The tea kettle is on the stove heating up the water for our morning cocoa. It's good time to get some reading in.

The cat was a little miffed that I took her chair.

Susan made biscuits and gravy with sausage for breakfast.

These are some wild grapes (Oregon Grapes) susan picked while we were gettring firewood yesterday. They're spead out on a cookie sheet to dry. She dries some and makes grape juice and grape jelly out of the rest.

The goat says, "good morning, now feed me!"

Time to unload the wood we cut yesterday. The pieces in the wheel barrow are green. They'll go to the back of the woodshed to season. By the time we get to them they'll be ready to burn.

Susan is digging up the garlic. The carrot is a volunteer from two-year-old carrots left in the ground the year before. We leave some first season carrots in the ground when we harvest carrots in the fall. These carrots will come back the second year in which they'll go to seed. You can shake the seeds out of the heads when they're ready or just let nature take it's course. (We do both.) We've had carrots coming up every year in this area for several years now. It's easy to tell the first year carrots from those in their second (seed) year. The tops are different and if you dig them up the bottom is smaller and woody on the second year plants.

The cat is helping.

Some of the garlic she dug up today.

Susan is loading the dehydrators with squash. We peeled and sliced these just before this picture was taken.

The cat with an attitude! (It's afraid someone else wants to use it's chair.)

It rained hard this morning and has been cloudy with intermittent rain all day. Susan took this picture about 30 minutes before I posted this. We have another front moving in from the north and as I write this it's pouring down rain again!.

This just looked like a cool photo so I'm posting it. Susan took it in the garden a little while ago.

31 August, 2010 - Firewood cutting...

We bought a firewood cutting permit to use on the state land south of us. It's being logged now so they ahve the barricades down that usually block access to some parts of it. They'll be finished logging this week and when they do, they'll put the barricades back so we're trying to get in there while we still can.

I hunt back in there all the time so I already had a few trees picked out to cut. This one is tall and I had my doubts the the wood would be any good. Usually trees in this shape are rotten on the inside. I figured I'd know when I went to cut it down. When you hit rotten sections the sawdust looks different and the saw cuts through very fast.

Here I'm cutting the notch. So far the tree is solid in the center.

Down it comes ...

The tree is solid all the way through and seasoned to perfection. It's an old larch tree and about the best firewood tree we have available here. It has splits through the entire length though wich will make it a little more difficult. As I cut the log the splits broke off so it was like the individual pieces had already been split. It also makes it a little more difficult to cut into firewood length since the slit portions often come apart before the chainsaw is all the way through. The good side is that I won't have to split them later. I'm making a cut up through the unsupported cenbter section here to make it easier to cut the log into firewood lengths safely. If I started at one end and worked toward the center the way the tree was supported It would have tried to squeze the saw's kerf shut on the saw. By cutting up here the log will lay flat and be easier to cut into small lengths.

I had a lot of problems with the chain coming off the bar on this saw yesterday. I put a new chain on part way through cutting and checked the bar over. The only thing I see wrong is that there's a lot of wear on the groove in the bar. I'll pick up a new bar next time we're in town. This is an old Craftsman saw that used to belong to Susan's dad. The saw runs great but uses a lot of gasoline. We have a newer Homelight that's nearly identical. It uses a lot of gas too so it must be inherent in the design of the saw. I need to order a coil for my Stihl and get it back into production. It's bigger and much, much faster...especially on the larger trees. This tre was about the biggest I'd want to take on with this saw.

This is the lower half of the log. It rolled into the ditch on the other side of the road when I cut the tree in half. (That's why I was standing on the uphill side when I cut through it.)

The second tree I cut down didn't cooperate as nicely. I had the notch cut but the weight was on the back side so It pinched the saw when it began to fall the wrong direction. Since I was so close to home I didn't pack an extra saw like I usually use when this happens. I used an axe to cut through and relieve the pressure on the saw to get it out. I was cutting into the notch I'd already cut with the chainsaw and the axe ricocheted (spelling?) off and ruined my shoe.

It came awful close to ruining my foot as well!!! I finished the cut with a 30 in. bow saw. The tree fell the wrong way as expected and got caught in the trees behind it. I backed the pickup to the base of it and hooked the chain onto it. I set the chain so it would twist the tree's base when I drove forward so the tree would slide to the side of the stump opposite the chainsaw's engine and ... hopefully!!! ... not land on my chainsaw. It worked and I used the saw to finish cutting the tree into firewood lengths.

We cut up some more trees to finish up the load and headed for home. Some of the wood is green stuff that was rejected by the loggers so it will be stacked in the back of the wood shed to season for a few months before we burn it. We don't get into the last half until late January so it should be seasoned by then.

The week in review ... August 30, 2010 continued ...

This is a continuation of the week Susan's sister was visiting.

Monday Morning began with huckleberry pancakes.

Breakfast time!! Huckleberry pancakes with home made huckleberry syrup.

We found time to just sit as lounge on the porch in addition to seeing the area.

The weather turned colder so we had to cover the garden every night. We also fired up the wood stove to chase the night's chill out of the cabin. The last two days it's been so cool we've kept the fire going all day.

I found some time to peel the bark off some of the poles I cut for various uses on the place.

We had one afternoon scheduled in the park in Kalspell to get everyone together for some family time. We had 20 there counting all the kids, grandkids, Susan and I and her sister. We picked up 1/2 dozen Little Ceaser's pizzas and everyone brought their own drinks. It gets more difficult as time passes to get everyone together at the same time due to their work schedules. In this picture we have a furry party crasher. A local resident decided that it needed to try out some pizza crust.

Our second youngest granddaughter.

Even at her age she likes to clown around to get people's attention!

This is our youngest grandchild (by a couple of weeks) knawing on some pizza crust.

Susan, Marjie and Hanna warming the bench.

This is the final set of photos from the week Marjie was here. We're getting back into our normal routine now.

Monday, August 30, 2010

The week in review ... August 30, 2010

The next section of pictures is from an area called Sunday Falls. It's a series of waterfalls on Sunday Creek near Trego, MT. There's a very nice trail almost good enough for handicapped use along the lower end. You can see two of the falls on it. This one is beyond the regular trail and requires some climbing to reach.

This is a second fall that's beyond the regular trail.

This is the first one you'll reach on the lower (easy) part of the trail.

This is the last fall at the end of the lower trail. You have to climb up the rocks along the left side to reach the upper trail the walk a ways to get to the final two.

Caught Susan taking a picture of the first falls.

Susan caught me taking a picture of her taking a picture of the first falls on the lower trail.

This is the bridge spanning the middle section of Lake Koocanusa. Susan and her sister are about half-way across (near the car on the bridge). I was up on some cliffs on the other side of the highway when I took these photos. That's our car in the parking lot.

This is a shot with the camera on telephoto.

This is the hydroelectric dam on Lake Koocanusa.

We went on down to Libby and took the Fisher River road back home. The road follows the train tracks (or maybe the tracks follow the road?). There's a seven mile long train tunnel that goes through a mountain that inconveniently planted itself in the way. This is the east entrance (or exit, depending upon which direction the train is going). It has two giant ventilation fans (shown here) to refresh the air and draw out engine exhaust when trains go through. It's about 11 miles from our cabin as the crow flies and we can often hear the fans when they are on.