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.

13-15 October, 2010 Harvest Time

The weather is getting colder so Susan has been putting in more time harvesting the garden and putting it to bed for the winter.  I've been working on the Uhaul primarily with a couple other minor tasks thrown in.

A friend took this picture with a timer.  He got it over in eastern Montana.  He didn't know about the cat that came to visit until he saw the picture at home.

Susan picked the last of the celery in the garden.  The cold weather kind of revitalized it.

We planted one small patch of beets.

Susan digging potatoes in one small patch.  The soil is loose enough here that she doesn't need a shovel.  She just pulls the plant up and startd digging around with her hands.

Potatoes curing in the house before she puts them in the root cellar.

Slow progress on the Uhaul.  The framing is braced up pretty tight to withstand the miles on the road.

One small patch of rutabagas next to the tomatoes.

We picked the last of the tomatoes and pulled the plants.

A turnip patch.

Our Pinto beans didn't do well.  Even those grown in the hoop house suffered from the cold summer.

The cat in another goofy sleeping position.

Celery leaves drying.  Once dry they'll be ground into powder and used in soups, etc.

Rose hips drying.

Potatoes and carrots.  The carrots came up volunteer in the potato patch and were pulled when the potatoes were harvested.  This had been a great year for carrots and rutabagas.  The potatoes did okay.  Anything growing above ground had to contend with early frosts and a cold summer.

Celery stalks cut into pieces and serving their time in the dehydrator.

When I was working on the Uhaul the dog brought her "toys" over so she could guard them and watch me work on the Uhaul.  She has a deer skull, tennis ball (she has me trained to throw it for her), a small block of wood and a small bone that's hard to see in the picture. 

The cat and dog playing in the Uhaul while I work.

The buffalo at feeding time.

Cloudy skies Monday morning.

When we were in Kalispell Saturday we bought some aluminum rivets so I finished

 riveting in all the windows in the Uhaul.

It was a cool morning!  Susan harvested more rutabagas and potatoes from the garden.  She brought the wheel barrow inside for the next step.

A chipmonk decided to take a look to make sure we weren't messing up his territory.

The squash plants are finished so she pulled them. They went to the compost pile.

The cat and dog can have gotten used to each other and took some time to play.

Our tomatoes stored in the house are ripening.  Susan cut up a bunch of them to dehydrate.

Some of the mushrooms I picked and dried.  These are a type of Bolete.

The chickens are getting used to the dog now.  Before they'd hang back until I called the dog somewhere else.  I let them out in the late afternoons to eat bucks or whatever else they can find.  I feed them chicken feed in the mornings.

Four eggs today.  They are slowing down on laying eggs as the days get shorter and colder.  Cloudy days slow down production too.

I'm cutting the rhubarb down for the winter.  We cut the stalks off at ground level.

Sunrise Tuesday morning.  It started off cloudy but cleared up during the day.

Susan is cutting the tops off the rutabagas.  Shell store the bottoms in the root cellar and dry the tops for use a goat food later.

I thought we had a bunch of 2X6's I could rip down for use in the Uhaul but after two hours of looking the pile was pretty pathetic.  We dipped into our stash and scrounged up some money to buy some supplies at Lowes and Home Depot in Kalispell.  There's almost $300.00 spent in these two carts.  We went through another hundred-plus at Home Depot.

We looked over panelling at both stores and decided on this.  It was a lot more than we planned to spend but we liked it better than the cheaper stuff.  Since we plan on spending several months a year in the Uhaul/camper we decided to bite the bullet and get what we liked.

We put the wood on the trailer and packed the insulation in the Cherokee and headed home.  We made it fine with the load but it was almost 9:00 pm when we pulled in the driveway.  Tomorrow I can start on the inside of the Uhaul.