Huntin’ season
Season opened a couple of days ago but what with vehicle maintenance and hurting my back, today was the first day we went out. I was laying awake in bed at dark thirty when my buddy D texts me that he’s sitting in his truck waiting for first light about a mile from my place. I look out the window and there has been a skiff of snow overnight….alright I’m talked into it at this point and go down and wake up The Boy. I send him up to the prime standing location, and I start out on the 3 mile loop to drive ‘em to him. After three hours I’ve looped back to when he was supposed to be but he’s gone. This isn’t a big surprise I had only told him to stay there at least an hour. I didn’t manage to jump anything except a handful of squirrels and a couple of red-headed woodpeckers. When I got back to the house The Boy told me he spotted 3 deer just 15 from the house and another 3 about five minutes after that, but there weren’t any bucks that he could see. It’s been snowing ever since I got back, there should be some really good hunting when this breaks. Hopefully this will also drive the elk down.
New catagory
Vintage goodness.
One of the places I go has all kinds of good old stuff that I’m going to start sharing.
Things I’ve Missed Sharing Lately
We got our first snow this year.
I’ve been keeping the pressure caner busy. (pickled beets/onions/turnips, apples, and chicken noodle soup less the noodles)
I’ve been baking once a week and I’m probably going to need to make it twice. Four loaves just aren’t lasting.
We’ve been putting up next years wood.
I got 15 laying hens, a waterer, a feeder and 75# of feed for free yesterday. The gal offered me a big roll of chicken wire on the phone and I forgot to get it, I guess I’m going back.
The boy and I harvested the carrots today, and turned the peas and carrots bed. The god damned gopher (GDG) managed to get about 7/8 of what had left. Today I also decided all gophers within 1 mile of the gardens will die come spring.
One Step Closer
Back in ‘99 when the lil’ lady and I bought our first house I bought an old military dodge and mounted a large Meyer’s plow on it to keep our short (compared to now) driveway open in the winter. I moved the whole rig up here and used it the first couple of winters when we were renting the place in town. A couple of years ago a guy was selling a 50’s model John Deere tractor with a loader and I traded him the ol’ dodge (without the plow) for the tractor and an International 4×4 with a huge PTO winch……That winch at idle ripped the front bumper right off The Dodge when it got stuck one winter………. I reasoned I’d use the tractor and the winch rig more. It didn’t really work out that way, but it’s looking like The Boy will be getting “Elmer” (the International) and I will get the Deere into service next year.
Last year my father-in-law gave me “The Kaiser” a ‘71 CJ5 with a Western plow already mounted. I was so pressed for time last year I couldn’t get the Meyer mounted on anything and with my fingers crossed resigned myself to keeping my road open with The Kaiser. He did really well even though that road really needs a rig that weighs more than 3000#. Mind you last winter was pretty mild, we never had more than three feet of snow on the roof at anytime, as compared to six feet on the ground the year before. But anyways today I mounted the big plow on the one ton Dodge. I spent yesterday doing my Annual Fall Plow Truck Maintenance Repairs on it, which included replacing the other axle lift block among the usual fluid changes and checks.
I don’t think I ever shared the corporate stupidity I ran across this summer with the Dodge, so here it is. Think about a super heavy duty truck with the most powerful (at the time) diesel engine available, the strongest (at the time) one ton axle available, same with springs and add air bags that have allowed me to pull loads that will make a “Super-Duty” squat like a 1/2 ton. Trust me I saw this this summer after I blew out the rear drive shaft. Anywho, those idiots replaced the almost solid cast iron axle spacer blocks with hollow aluminum blocks. Mind you people who don’t abuse……I mean haul as much as me up roads that are represented by two dashed lines on maps would probably never know. As for myself, I had one crumble and fall out this spring, and the one I replaced yesterday had chunks missing from the sides.
Enough for today.
No More Leaks….for real this time
We finished putting up the Frost Guard (self-adhesive, fiber reinforced, self sealing, tar paper) on the whole roof today. I can barely move my right arm, but I can check one more thing off the Must Do Before Snow Flies List.
Monster Power / New Neighbor
We got a new Gulch neighbor (one of ‘em pesky anarchists), and installed enough solar panels (with help from the new neighbor) to run the whole house. The first four from the left are mine, the other eight are his, which I was able to find a secure place to store them for him.
Speaking of solar we are picking up huge amounts of passive solar heat now that it is fall. This is what was planned except we are still getting daily highs near 90 degrees. Thanks god we have so much mass that the lows in the forties equal it out.
New Toy for the Backyard
I’m not sure if I have shared any pictures of our backyard yet. I know a lot of the land in front of the house has been shown in the home pics, but here are some of the other direction.
A friend of mine was hurting for money the other day and made me a deal on a new (for us) 4-wheeler that was too good to not grab. So we now have three, next year hopefully we can find another good deal so we will have one for everyone. The new one is pictured on the far right in the following pic.
I wrote about our early harvest of potatoes in the last post, here is what they look like closer up, and the fixings for that nights dinner. I need to thank bff for the seed for these wonderful spuds too.
The only thing we bought for that dinner was the beef, and come hunting season we won’t even need to buy that. Every year we provide more and more for ourselves. What a great feeling. Oh, the sherry was donated to us after J. left it at a friends house where it wasn’t loved.
Harvest time.
We had an early VERY light frost about four days ago. Everything made it through except for the potatoes, so we harvested them today. Next year we will be planting our spuds on May 1 instead of June 1 we ended up with only 6X our seed because most hadn’t gotten bigger than 1.5″.
We have been trying to run a full load through the pressure canner every week. Last week we did 31 pints of BBQ pork, pork broth, and hot dogs.
We have a raincheck for 60# of chicken that was on sale for .80/# this week that we are picking up tomorrow. This I will be canning as chicken and noodle and chicken and rice soup. I expect to get 74 pints of soup.
The Boy and I have been working on our root-cellar for over a month now. We have hand dug at least 30 YD3, but it’s almost done and right in time to start taking in our root crops.
This is what it looked like before we drained it.
Here are some pics from our summer party we had a few weeks ago.
This is why it is so unwise to fall asleep before 9PM at a party:
One last thing. We have lots of wonderful Morel mushrooms up here, but the Giant Puffballs that were fairly common where we use to live are much more rare. Lucky we have friends who know we like them and share.
A New Bad Comedy Fix
I love really bad (by popular standards) comedy. Monty Python, Keeping up Appearances, The Lair of the White Worm kind of stuff. I had never considered any country except the U.K. could really hook me up with my fix, until yesterday.
An old friend of mine kept going on about this band gone T.V. series I would like. Because my time on the net is so limited and we haven’t had T.V. in over a decade I never heard of them nor did I really give these guys a chance when she recommended them. I guess she figured that out, and decided to take matters into her own hands. So, yesterday I received a mailing envelope from her and inside was their CD and a DVD of their show. I watched most of the series last night and loved it. They are completely hilarious, even though they are from New Zealand the humor is among the best of the British.
Thanks S. I hope you weren’t planning on getting those back.
Here’s one more great scene from the show:
