Predictions?

Every year end there are a lot of predictions about the end of the world or major catastrophes coming in the new year. They always get my attention. I'll be in line at a checkout counter and the headline will read "World to End Next Year". I don't know about you, but I have to read further. I want to know who says and why and what their batting average is on predictions. I find that the more dire the predictions, the more I tend to read on and sometimes to the point that the checkout girl has to bring me back to reality. The world may be going to end tonight, but I still have to pay for the groceries.

Nostradamus is the all time leader in the predicting industry. He was a French, Christian, Jew (liked to cover all the bases) and he lived in the 1500's. He wrote vague and mysterious quatrains loaded with strange symbolism that successfully predicted World War One and Two if you can believe his proponents. I have noticed in the predicting world you want to be as vague and mysterious as you can. This is good theater and allows a wide variety of interpretations. You can always claim that a prediction was misinterpreted if it doesn't to come true. It allows you to change dates or facts if you need to. Symbolism also allows you to apply your predition to a wide variety of disasters.

Lets look at the ever popular "End of the World Prediction". So far they have all been wrong or "misinterpreted". This is evidently a tough one for predicters to get right. If you are thinking about predicting this one yourself you should be very, very vague. Give yourself some wiggle room. I wouldn't try this one if you are just starting out. If you are right, you can't say I told you so, cause well, the world ended. If you can't be a bit smug about your predictions that come true, they just aren't as much fun.

In the last twenty years or so the poplular doom and gloom predictions have all come from the "global warming industry". This industry seems to be teetering on the edge of collapse. They have made two classic mistakes you should avoid. They have predicted things to happen in our life times so they are verifiable, and they weren't vague enough. Just for fun lets look at a few of their more notable failed predictions.

Prediction: Gobal warming is causing the polar ice to disappear the arctic ice cap will melt entirely by the year 2008.

Boy, oh boy. Never give a date and use symbolism. Two classic mistakes.
The polar ice caps grow and shrink all the time. The artic ice was actually increasing just when it was supposed to decrease and disappear. Actually in the summer 1958 the artic cap broke up enough for a US sub to surface at the North Pole. So by predicting something that was already proven to be historically possible, they expected a slam dunk and by adding a date, just got slammed instead.
Vague--you need to be vague.

Prediction: CO2 is causing global warming. This a perrenial favorite. It started in the 1890's and despite data contradicting it all through the last century and the inability of the top twenty computer models that are being used to predict global warming, to predict the recent past, it is still popular. So poplular, we have created an ethanol industry where we are now burning enough food to increase food prices world wide even though it is admittedly so inefficient a process it takes almost as much energy to make the ethanol as you get out of it.

This is a better effort at prediction. It is vague, it operates at the fringes of statistical error, it is almost impossible for the average person to prove or disprove, it is compellingly scary and it has no specific date. The best part (I saved this for last). They have created an argument that: global cooling, is in reality, part of global warming. That is just soooo good. No matter the data now, it is global warming! Brilliant

Here are my predictions for 2011:

1. Funding for global warming research will increase.

2. The number of Universities studying global warming will increase, increasing the competition for money.

3. The scientist making the most dire predictions will get the most money. (Desparate scientists do desparate things)

4. As a result, predictions about global warming will become more dire in the face of evermore inconclusive or completely contradictory evidence.

5. Politicians will continue to make very poor decisions to save us from something that cannot be proven to be man made and may not be happening. It's just good politics.

6. Nostradamus will be predicting the end of the world again next year along with Al Gore. It's just good business for them and the news industry.

Hope all is well with you and the global warming believers can forgive my irreverance, and all of you have a safe and happy new year. (I'm guessing Nostradamus will be wrong again.)

Fluffy, Our New Pet!

During the frenzied cooking fit Kris had while the blizzard was going on the other day, she made a sourdough starter. We have been bumping into recipe's using sourdough starters in a couple of our cook books and threatening to make one but never did. We have kids in Alaska and although sourdough starters have been around thousands of years, Alaska's gold rush seems to have been fueled by sourdough flapjacks and biscuits. Making a sourdough starter seems supportive of the adventure the kids are having in Alaska.

So, during the swirl of wind and snow a new sourdough starter was made. We had a recipe from a cowboy cookbook and Kris used this. When I came in from one of my trips out to blow the road, Kris had me peek in a small crock. I knew what the frothy mixture must be right away. "Cool, when can we use it?" I asked.
"Oh, it said 2-4 days, after it reaches the desired sourness," she replied.

Hmmm, desired sourness. Evidently, there are degrees of sourness. I decided to look up sourdough starters on line. I wanted to make bread with it and had no idea how much of this stuff to use. The flap jack recipe had called for a couple of cups of it which seemed like a lot. The second web site I looked at had all the information you could want on sourdough starter and how to use it. The author spoke with a relaxed, imprecise manner that comes from years of experience. I make my bread that way and his advice seemed to fit right in.

Well, sourdough starters are wild yeasts. Millions of little organisims that live in colonies and kind of make a collective glob that can be thought of as one organism. It needs regular feeding and can't get too warm. Other than that, it is hard to kill. Even if you don't feed it, it probably isn't going to die. They are simple to make and have been used for thousands of years and some are hundreds of years old.

I was reading the information to Kris. The blizzard was still going on so she was still a blur of cooking activity. At one point the author said he like to think of his starter as a pet that lives in the fridge. Kris stopped cooking, looked over and smiled. A new pet. We had a new pet. "What are going to call it?" she asked. I called to mind the bubbly froth and its intended use. "Fluffy?" I looked at her with raised eyebrows. Oh, yes, Fluffy has taken up residence in the fridge at Missed Skeet Farm.

I looked over at the small crock on the shelf of the wood stove where Fluffy was incubating. Fluffy had out grown her first crock and was oozing down the shelf and dripping on the cooktop. A frantic search and we came up with a bigger crock and put fluffy in that. I went back to reading. Hours before you are going to make bread with your starter, you make a sponge. Sponges are flour and water and your starter-usually all of your starter, in this case, Fluffy. This sits and percolates and then you use this just as you would regular yeast only lots of it. While Fluffy is out of her jar, you clean it and then take some of this blob and put it back into the jar and return it to the fridge. Fluffy will wait patiently until you need her again.

Cooking with Fluffy appeals to me for a bunch of reasons. First, it would make a great TV show-Cooking with Fluffy. "Lets punch it up a notch." Second, cooking with an amorphous blob you don't measure is irresistable, and finally, we have a new pet-- Fluffy, the wild yeast, able to blow up loaves of bread with a single blob!

Blizzard!

Yesterdays blizzard was great fun. The wind was howling and blowing snow between the boards on the horses side of the barn. Snow sliding off the roof was building large berms infront of the doors they go in and out. As storms go, this was a good one. I sat by the fire in my rocking chair, sipped coffee and read a book. Occasionally I'd look out and see how the storm was coming. It seemed to be doing just fine without me so I continued to read.

At three o'clock I decided to brush the tractor off and get ready to blow the road. The storm was supposed to end soon and I wanted to get most of the snow moved, but didn't really want to be snow bloiwing after dark and, much more importantly, Kris had been cooking all day and a large, menacing pile of dirty dishes had appeared and now threatened to take over the kitchen. It was time for action. "I got a go make a pass on the road before it gets too deep. Be back soon. Love you."

I was expecting a rough go of it. Usually the first snow storm is hard on the snowblower. Any large rocks on the surface of the road are scooped up by the snow blower and clang their way through or break a shear pin. Changing shear pins in a blizzard in heavy knee deep snow is not much fun although I am getting good at it. Still, when you hear the clang of a good sized rock you hold your breath till its over.

I had the blower tilted up so it would slide over a large part of rocks. It worked well enough that I only broke a fewe pins and bit my tongue once after a particularly nasty jolt. With the blower tilted, it leaves quite a bit of snow, but it packs down and covers the rocks you missed. The road becomes a super highway after a couple of passes. If it stays cold, the road will stay flat and smooth and be the best it is all year.

It was dark by the time I had made a pass both directions. This would make it a lot less work in the morning and since the danger of doing the dishes ended after dark (the light for doing dishes comes in the window during the day), I parked the tractor and waded through the drifts to the barn. I scooped just enough to get in the door. Normally there are two steps, but snow had piled up to the bottom of the door and you could just walk in and out. Since it was still a raging blizzard outside and I had just waded through drifts, I looked like I had scooped the road. I might be able to just walk in, grab my book and plop by the fire with hot chocolate. I tried to look exhausted and stepped in the kitchen.

"Ooohie, nasty out there!"

Kris looked up from chopping something and sized me up. "Go brush the snow off and bring some wood in. The horses need water too." My theatrics hardly ever work but hope springs eternal. I probably should have blew on my hands and shivered.

Kris had cooked three or four more things while I was out. If the blizzard lasted much longer our entire winter supply of food would be cooked. We had a stew, bread, pretzels, chex mix, sharing sauce, scones, broccoli salad, a new sourdough starter named fluffy, and cooked olives (I swear, cooked olives). I had said earlier in the day, I would make noodles and when I was done with the wood she remineded me. So I started on noodles and we added that to the soup. Did I mention soup?

I finally convinced her to stop when every pan, skillet, dish and piece of silverware in the barn needed to be washed. She agreed, but picked up a cook book and started reading. I surveyed the shelf with the dirty dishes. Hours of dishwashing lay ahead for someone.

"Looks like the blizzard is going to go on a little longer than the weatherman thought. I'll probably have to blow the road again first thing tomorrow." I pointed out happily. I could see that it would take me a very, very long time to clean up after this storm.

Christmas Musings

Three days before Christmas we were on a relaxed course to getting all the presents we were building or just wrapping complete. We would easily be done before Christmas Eve and spend the day dropping off cookies and wishing friends merry Christmas. It was almost like I envisioned retirement might be.
Well, perhaps counting my chickens before they hatched caused me to get a pain in my lower abdomen- sharp pain.
If a pain comes and goes well, se la vie. Hardly a second thought is given. If a sharp pain comes and stays in a vital area like your abdomem, well, thats a little different. I considered the possibilities and decided it was food related. I was pretty sure it was the 38 cent/lb Walmart turkey. I had inhaled a leg as soon as it came out of the oven the day before and now that I thought about it, hadn't felt quite right since. So, I waited for nausea and diarea. Nothing, just a persistent, now really sharp pain my the abdomen and a brand new deveopment-fever.
Great, I am having an appendicitis attack. I'll be in the hospital Christmas. I get on the internet and check out abdominal pain.
Abdomial pain is like real estate: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. Your appendix is on the right. My pain was on the left. I wasn't ready to give up on the appendix idea and wondered if I was just left handed inside?
Well, what's on the lower right side. Turns out your colin pretty much. Back to food poisoning or maybe I ate one of those tendons in the turkey leg and it is lodged in my colin and poking my intestine. The intestinal puncture is allowing fluid into my body cavity must be causing my fever.

I spent a feverish night with my imagination. Do they cut you open or use a pre-existing opening. I wasn't too hot for either choice. I could imagine Dr. Nightengale coming into my hospital room and telling me that I had a tare in my colin and I was full of shit. Even in my hospital gown near death I would smile weakly and look at Kris and say "well you've been right all along."
The next morning I took two aspirin and drank coffee, but didn't eat breakfast. I figured I was going to surgery- clear liquids only. I felt better and then worse all day.
Hannah called or I called her about Christmas. I told her I was not feeling well and had abdominal pain. She asked if I had called the doctor. "Why would I do that?"
She was not too thrilled with her father. "Call the doctor." I assured her I would if the mild case of food poisoning didn't get better by this afternoon.

Kris went up to the daycare Christmas party that morning while I stayed home going over who would get what, if my impending surgery didn't go well. You hear a lot of stories about people who go in for simple surgeries and get an infection and never come out of the hospital. "The operation to remove the wart went well but there were complications after the surgery, a nasty little infection and we couldn't save him."

After Kris got home I called the doctors office. I was hoping she would make the call. I felt kind of dumb doing it. I didn't want to have to tell someone over the phone that I have abdominal pain and if they were'nt too busy this afternonn maybe I could come in and the doctor could keep me from dying. Yes, I understood that tomorrow was Christmas eve and I was asking alot and I should have made an appointment a couple of weeks ago.

The actual call went alot better than I thought. The usually surly receptionist was remarkably simpathetic. I wouldn't be able to see Dr. Nightengale, but I would be able to get into see Shannon at 4:00PM. I said Shanon would do.

I hung up and pondered this new developement. If Shanon were a doctor, the receptionist would have said doctor Shanon. Shanon was a girls name. I had already resigned myself to Dr. Nightengale using the scope to look around inside and see what was going on. (He is big on the scope. Every physical he tries to sell me on it.
"This is what it looks like, see? I do the procedure right here."
Well, that's a big selling point.
"I'll be honest with you, it is a little uncomfortable.")
I'll just bet it is since it is four feet long and as big as my wrist.

Now some girl named Shanon (no-one over forty is named Shanon) was going "look into" my abdominal pain. I could hardly wait for 4:00PM.

Kris drove me to the doctors office and accompanied me to the examination room. I could tell she didn't want to miss this. The nurse came in, took my temperature and blood pressure then handed me a gown. "Put this on and Shannon will be into see you." She smiled and left. She was enjoying this too.

I put on the gown and sat exposed on the exam table. A knock at the door and Shanon came in. She asked me to describe my pain which I did. I waited for her drag out "the scope" and tell me to assume the position.

"Mmmm," she said. "I see you haven't ever had a scope?" She looked at me accusingly. "No, I haven't." Here we go. I looked at Kris, she was smiling.
"If you had had a scope, we would have a better idea, but this sounds like diverticulitis. You treat it with antiboitics. I don't think we need to do a scope today. I will write a prescription and you should feel better tomorrow. If you don't, you get to the ER it must be something else."

I felt better already. Shannon was a great almost doctor. She came up with something that I could take pills for. Incredible, no scope, no hospital! I'm not going to miss Christmas! Handels Messiah ran through my head, Halleluah, Halleluah, Halleluah. I could feel the organ music.

My first Christmas present and one of the best ever, came from Shannon, worlds best almost doctor! Merry Christmas to me!

Em's First Concert

Not being too imaginative, I had thought when my kids left grade school I had seen my last Christmas Concert. Not so, I can see now we will be going to these for a long time. Our beautiful granddaughter Emmily is in kindergarten and last night was in a play called Ms Scrooge. It was a musical in the grand tradition of grade school musicals and it turned out the two towns of Otis and Mariaville to fill the gym at the Otis School.

Em was dressed in a knee lenth red gown with white fur trim. To say she was cute would be a huge understatement. Radiantly beautiful and quite poised with an angelic smile, she was very comfortable being the center of attention as the local papparazi pushed and shoved people aside clammoring to take a seemingly endless stream of pictures of this holiday princess. (I don't think mom or the two grandmothers actually hurt anyone pushing to the front to get pictures.) Fathers aren't aggressive enough to get good pictures and if they have a camera you can hear angrily whispered orders: "Just go up there--no, you get back up there and take the pictures."

There were other kids there too, but I spent my time trying to get a glimpse through the heads of the people sitting in front of us of the princess in red.

Holiday concerts are funny, the older kids are self conscious and speak and sing at a level that can't be heard or distinguished above the kid next to him. As a result the first segment of these concerts grades 5-8 are always torturous for audience and performers alike. There are rare exceptions. Sometimes one of the kids is missing the brainchip that reminds them they could be made fun of for months- maybe years. "Hey remember when we were in grade school and you kept singing and everyone else stopped. Ha, Ha, Ha. Yeah well that's why you can't get a date with Charlene. She remembers it too. Ha, Ha, Ha." There aren't many that don't have that chip.

The young kids want to be the center of attention and don't care a wit about mistakes. Mistakes are good too, more attention. "Yes, I am glad you could all come and see me tonight." So they are more fun to watch and hear sing because they don't care. It's hard to care what Charlene thinks when you know she has cooties.

So Em made her debut and by now, is so caught up in getting ready for Christmas, it is probably a dim memory. Grandpa will remember for her.

Christmas Carols

We've been caroled! I have gone Christmas caroling many times, but had never been caroled. I hope the video we took works on this blog. If you haven't felt much like Christmas you will after watching this. Scrooge wouldn't have needed all those visits from ghosts if he had been caroled by Christy's daycare kids.

We have them up here often enough that we know their names and most know ours. Well they know us as Bart and Kristin- some aren't sure which is which and some think of us as one amorphous entity. All of them can tell you the dog and horses names and which is which. Be that as it may, they are excited to see us when they visit. When they leave, we get thrown kisses and choruses of "bye Kristin, bye Bart, Bye Belle, Bye Ebony, Bye Kestrel as they retreat down the driveway on Mr. Rope. We look foward to these visits and often stay home if we know they are coming.

The most striking thing about these visits is how orderly they are. With up to ten preschoolers in tow, you would expect crying, repeated warnings, fights over toys and a general air of exasperation from Christy. (I would have to shoot myself if someone left me with that many kids.) She has created order where you would expect chaos. The kids accept it as the way it is without fuss--amazing.

It hadn't occured to me that you could teach Christmas Carols to kids that can barely talk. Christy evidently was undaunted by such a small detail and did it anyway. She made each one a set of jingle bells on a pipe cleaner for them to shake as the sang. The caroling troupe walked the half mile on Mr Rope, delivered a smashing concert, stayed for cookies and juice, and then walked back to Christy's. There was never a squabble or whine the whole time.

When we caroled, we went to shut ins, elderly people and nursing homes. Since Mrs Walls moved out of the neighborhood, I am wondering if perhaps we are the elderly people that carolers seem to target. Mmmm. I am not sure I am ready to be the sweet old couple living down the road. I better take my nap and think this one over. I am going to mention this to Kris when I wake up if I can remenber it.

Santa's Workshop

I have been working on the presents for the local grandkids. These are the ones where UPS is not limiting the size or weight of my creativity. I have been trying to figure out how I could paint these presents without a heated workshop. Most years I dream up something that can be given without a painted finish. This year, I am not going to get away with that. These presents are going to need a finish.

Well, I had a stroke of genius and the shower-sauna shack is soon to be the fine finish building on a burgeoning Santa's workshop complex. We don't need no stinking Shower! (Use your best mexican accent here) Kris is really going to be excited about this idea. Sometimes she hops up and down and is moved to tears my ideas are so good.
We can shower today and try to get the presents painted and out of the shower building so we can shower again before Christmas. Two showers in one week--way more than enough.
Anyway, it solves the problem and that has me excited to get busy and finish them.

I still am one idea short of having all the presents dreamed up. Inspiration had better come today. I could make a great gift in less than an hour that would be perfect, but now you can't give kids a slingshot. When I was young, slingshots were given by parents and kids were warned not to shoot anybody with it. There were a lot of things on the no shoot list and when you violated the list you lost the slingshot for a period of time. Now these things are frowned on and I think the world is a lesser place for it. Few matches were better in the history of mankind than a boy and his slingshot. Even an unimaginative kid, could feel safer from wild animals with his slingshot in his back pocket. We lived in town and none of us had seen a wild animal bigger than a rabbit. Still, we felt safer. I'm sure the rabbits were not safer, although I don't remember actually killing any. I am sure we would have tried to get our mothers to cook it if we had. Letting little boys be little boys was part of parenting and minor injuries from being a boy were accepted not sued over. Shooting at rabbits with a slingshot was not a barbaric act of senseless violence, just something boys did to keep themselves out of trouble.

So I am stumped. Trying to come up with a really good PC gift is not as much fun. I guess the truth is Grampa finds a slingshot more interesting too.

Grandma just read this and she had a slingshot! Girls had slingshots? This developed after my childhood. Girls were on the no-shoot list when I was young.

Simple Life

This morning we finally remembered to shell some beans while we were having coffee. Most of you probably have never shelled dry beans. Now that I think about it, you probably won't either. That's too bad. This is a simple task that is satisfying for a bunch of reasons. The most obvious is you get to eat beans at some time in the future, but there are lots more.

We harvested about two bushel of bean pods from a row of beans about 40feet long. These are beans grown to be used as dry beans. They are doubly special to us because they were grown from seed we saved out of dried beans given to us by Virgil Wood. The beans were developed somewhere Downeast from Jacobs Cattle beans. They develop sooner and give better yeilds than regular Jacobs Cattle beans while maintaning all the same good eating qualities. The thing that is really most special though, is that Virgil gave them to us and he is very special to us indeed.

During the first summer we moved to Surry, Virg stopped in and introduced himself. We were working on the hay barn and it was late afternoon when he drove up on his four wheeler. It was hot and whatever we were doing, we were ready to quit so we invited Virgil to sit down in the shade. Virg is one of those people you just like to hear talk. He's in his seventies and has done enough different things to be interesting and he has some pretty good lines. We talked for a couple of hours like old friends. He kept tabs on us that summer and fall and brought vegetables from his garden occasionally which were greatly appreciated. Virgil goes north to Millinocket for the winter and just before he left, he brought a fifty pound bag of potatoes, a mess of buttercup sqhash and a huge bag of his dried beans-all shelled.

We were busy trying to get some kind of shelter up and Virgil could see we were up against time and the weather and was doing what he could to help. You don't run across people like Virgil often and when you do, you want to treasure them.

Shelling beans reminds us of Virgil, his kindness and how lucky we are to have his beans.

Winter Wonderland

I get up in the mornings around 4:00AM. I used to wonder why anyone would get up so early voluntarily. It's a combination of habit, waste disposal, back pain, horses, and I enjoy sitting quietly in the mornings waiting for my brain to slowly come back on line. I make a fire, put water on the woodstove for coffee and wait for it to heat the water and me. This morning it was 5:30 before I noticed it was snowing and we already had four inches. I had stepped out into the open part of the barn several times to get wood and feed the horses and hadn't noticed. You can tell I am not much more awake than people who are still snoring in these early hours.

This particular batch of snow was the big fluffy dry sort that piles up quick but is easy to walk through and no work at all to shovel. The type a big woosh with a broom sends flying out of the way.

The snow was kind of surprising since the forecast on two different websites and the radio had promised a sunny day. I turned on the radio to listen to the weatherman admit he missed the forecast. Weathermen usually don't live in your area any more and this one is in Atlanta. He was admitting that the downeast area might get an inch. I checked the accuweather website. No mention at all of snow there. I figured the snow would end soon so I woke Kris up.

We like sitting together by the fire and looking out the window on snowy mornings. We sat for a couple more hours and waited for the snow to stop. The clouds parted a little but it was still snowing. At 7:30 I turned the radio back on and the weatherman was still only admitting an inch. I had swept the boards stacked on the saw horses off yesterday and there was now six inches covering them and it was still coming down. Last week they had closed nearly every school in the state on the prediction of less snow than this.

When it finally stopped we had seven inches of snow and it was gorgeous out. We couldn't wait to get out for a walk and look at natures handiwork. We were'nt disappointed. The sun was out and snow falling from the trees made it like walking in one of those glass domed Christmas things you shake up and watch the snow swirl. After the walk we came back inside and I turned on the radio. The weatherman was still claiming an inch of snow was all you could expect before it cleared. This particular weatherman claims to have a 97% accuracy. It is easy to do if you just never acknowledge any variation from the forecast.

My favorite is the stormcenter TV broadcasts where they send the reporter out to some street corner in Bangor or Portland and cut away live to see the snow coming down. The music and tone of the reporters make a few inches of snow seem life threatening and only their daring broadcast in the face of such danger can keep you informed and safe. Kris and I don't have TV and usuallly are not aware just how near death we are. Snow coming quietly out of the sky seems pretty inviting to us and we usually just go for a walk during snowstorms. If its windy we bundle up. I have noticed the reporters which the TV stations send are usually cute young women who wear brightly colored ski jackets -no hats-just ear muffs. Evidently, these dedicated and daring reporters are not going to let a weather related cataclysmic event ruin their hairdoes.

The truth is natural disasters are good television and if you don't have a big one maybe you can make the one you have seem a little bigger. Hey, you don't think they are doing that with global warming do you? No, I don't thinks so either. I am absolutely positive that whenever a dire prediction by a climatologist doesn't happen, it is reported with the same ferver it was originally and as a man of science, the climatologist fights to expose his failed predictions with the equal zeal. The weatherman claiming an inch of snow instead of the seven we actually got will,I am sure, be on tomorrow pointing out his mistake, right?

O' Christmas tree, O' Christmas tree

Every once in awhile a good idea will pop into one of our heads. We've been threatening to go cut a Christmas tree out back and lash it to the clothes line pole. Kris felt if we hung the bird feeders in it or near it the birds would use it for cover and we would get more bird traffic. Yesterday the new snow gave us enough Christmas spirit to go out back and look for a tree. It was'nt long before we found a great tree way out in the area we are clearing for pasture. Since it was doomed to be cut next spring, it was a good use for a nice tree. It was a rather large tree and a chainsaw would make this a lot easier. I have two chainsaws so I was hoping one would start although I could imagine neither starting and then an aggrevating and futile effort to coax one of them to go-- ending in a prolonged struggle to cut the tree with one of my dull handsaws.
Happily, the first saw I picked up started on the second pull. This really was a great morning. After we dropped the tree we grabbed it and started to drag it out to the skid trail. I say started because it was alot heavier than I had imagined and we had to kind of roll and pull at the same time to get it the 20 feet to the trail. Before we tugged on it I thought we could just drag it out to the barn, but it took the tractor.
Before long we had the tree tied to the pole with bailing twine. The tree was so heavy, turning it and looking for the best side wasn't even mentioned. We pulled up the birdfeeder poles and drove them into ground next to the trunk of the tree. As soon as we rehung the feeders and stepped back to look at our handy work, birds started to flock to the feeders. Up until then, 3 or 4 birds was all that ever worked the feeder at once. There must have been a dozen birds flitting from branch to branch and the feeders. From a distance the feeders looked like small Nativity scenes with birds hovering around them. It was instantly the best Christmas tree we had ever had or seen for that matter. I hadn't expected anything special and suddenly we had created a Christmas tree with living Christmas scenes held within its branches.
Kris added suet balls in colored mesh for ornaments and is making popcorn and cranberry garland to string around the tree. The birds are ecstatic and we are humbled by the success of a small effort to help them which turned out to be a huge Christmas gift to us.

Christmas Is When?

Christy and the daycare kids were up collecting pinecones yesterday. She mentioned that Christmas was next week. WHAT? It can't be Christmas yet. I'm not only not ready, I haven't started on any of the things that I thought I would try to do this year for Christmas. This farm could be a winter wonderland and with a little decoration and a twilight bonfire it could create hallmark memories for all. Everything we need is right here and only a bit of time and effort would be required.

I see now that I should have started on the the grand kids presents sooner. Kris and I like to make presents but our imaginations have poor time management skills. As a result, making Christmas presents is a race with the clock when it should be humming Christmas Carols and drinking egg nog while you work on a present and savor the moment--putting love into each effort.

Instead, frantic frustration is a pretty apt description of Grampa Santa's workshop. Decorations and such are on hold until the presents are done and if history is any indication, late Christmas Eve will find us finishing up. Still, it is great fun, filled with love and exhaustion, the two Christmas spirits known to all Santa's elves.

Mercifully, Christmas finally comes and puts an end to this and hours of effort are rewarded with the look on the kids faces. Often times this look is less than you hoped and you try to explain what it is you've built and why they should like a personalized boot remover. Fortunately their parents have wisely purchased gifts and the day is still great fun. Over the years I have rationalized that our gifts build character and teach kids to deal with disappointment and this is a much better gift than a battery powered four wheeler they can sit in and drive. Okay, well at least they are usually unbreakable, small, will be around long after the jeep is toast and we enjoyed making them.

Gardening note: Kris picked broccoli from the garden yesterday afternoon (Dec. 14) and we ate it last night. This is close to 6 months of production from the same plants. We have had 10 degree weather and everything was frozen solid before this thaw. It is snowing and the ground has not refrozen yet. This means we will be eating parsnips out of the garden for the awhile longer. I find this amazing.

Mini-Mud Season

Yesterday's rain has washed away the snow and left us in mud season. The horses have been rolling in the paddock and look like rescue candidates. When they are wet and muddy, all you can do is wait for them to dry out enough to brush and vaccuum (yes we vaccuum the horses.) That quick blast of wet warm air caused everything in the barn to sweat and if it stays warm long enough the tools will rust and the leather tack will mold. Adventure always has a few bumps, that's what makes it adventure.
We went to Alex's birthday party last night and had to walk out to the truck in the dark. We park it out during mud season episodes so we don't rut the road up and ruin the drainage. Once the water follows the ruts, it hangs around on the road long enough to make serious mud. We have become mud management experts.
Up until we moved here, I hadn't given mud much thought. Now, mud is a big part of our lives. We spend a lot of the winter and spring draining puddles. This is the most gratifying of the twin pillars of mud management. You look for the shortest distance to lower ground and scrape or dig a canal to the low spot. You can watch the puddle disappear and depending on the size and pitch of your new drain this can be a woosh and a swirl. Great fun. The other "pillar of mud management" is flow diversion. This is more important but less dramatic. This consist of redirecting flows out of the road to keep them from eroding it and causing more mud. Kris is particularly good at flow diversion. Small grades that a surveyor might miss she uses to great advantage and diverts water through angled canals to ditches that are actually higher than the road way. She particularly delights in draining areas I have deemed undrainable which is kind of irritating.
Managing mud is time sensitve. It is best if you get right out in the worst weather and keep after it, making repeated forays into the teeth of a storm. Wind screaming overhead, whipping the trees and rain falling in sheets will find us out on the road armed with a hoe and a shovel. Armored in rain gear and boots the battle to save the road rages through the storm.
After the storm, sitting near the fire and reliving the high points of the day is one of the best parts.
Someday we will probably have put enough gravel on the road so it isn't the drainage ditch for the surrounding ground, but we have mixed emotions about it.

Storm

The wind is raging out of the southeast today. We have a huge old pine that's off that direction and with in striking distance of the barn. We should have taken it down before we built the barn but is was a monarch of the forest and the section of top on our side of the tree had already broken off. That weights the tree away from the barn and all things being equal it should fall away from us. Of course trees falls in high winds and things aren't equal during the big storms. The barn is creaking and it occurs to me we never braced off the gables back to the collar ties. I had forgotten that until the creaking in the general vicinity of the water barrels captured my attention. Having the barn blow down for want of a couple of braces that I meant to put in before the roof went on would be embarrassing.
The winds have been high enough and the storm strong enough that the world outside must have a lot of power lines down. For some reason now that I have a small photovoltaic system, the loss of power in the outside world makes me feel like the pig that built his house out of brick--a little smug. I should feel compassion for those less fortunate and I intend to if it turns into something worse than inconvenient for people. But smug is it this morning and that worries me a little bit. If the tree falls on the barn or the barn blows down I will feel like I caused it by feeling smug. Smuggness is an awesome feeling if you get away with it unscathed, but since "pride cometh before the fall," it is a tricky feeling to enjoy.

The storm has melted all the snow and now we will have to start getting ready for winter all over again. All those things we didn't get done are painfully visible and we'll be out there trying to get a few more done. Hopefully it will snow soon and bury them till spring this time.

Last night the rapid temperature rise and high winds caused a down draft on a dying fire in the wood stove and filled the barn with smoke. This started after we went to bed and this morning everything in here is smoked. Smoked clothing, smoked furniture, smoked dog and smoked us. An aging bladder gets me up in the night and I awoke to find the place smoke filled. I aired it out and left the door open but it was too late. We are smoked. Since the stack temp was low, it is an acrid creosote smell that we will probably be living with for awhile.

Today, we will go out and dig little drains in the road to keep water from washing it out. We have received an inch of rain with another on the way. These tiny little trenches just lower than the area we are draining do a remarkable job and are worth the effort. Usually just scraping with your boot is enough. It reminds you of playing in the mud as kid, great fun. Stomping puddles next to Kris is tricky though. You want to make sure you have a good escape route and don't mind sleeping with one eye open for a few days.

Going Viral

It is probably a good thing that I am using the blog to keep track of progress around Missed Skeet Farm. The web site this is posted on gives you your viewership statistics. Two things become clear in a hurry:
1) Only people in the US are reading the blog
2) Both now live in Alaska
If I am going to go viral, I will have to do something to create more interest. I can't understand why a blog about exciting things like piping the well into barn has not caught on. I suppose literacy is starting to be a problem. Reading is just changing from english with its nuanced discriptions that created a range of images in your brain to abbreviations. A humorous event could be described as funny, hilarious or amusing in english. In today's written communiques LOL replaces all these. Since typing is done with both thumbs practicallity limits these missives and abbreviations are now used to give rough approximations of the writers intent. Near 'nuff is near 'nuff I suppose.
I imagine saturation is another problem. The text messages come fast and furious all day and a reply is good ettiquette. Thumbs move in a blur at the dinner table and behind the wheel as harried recipients struggle to keep up. Talking to someone under 40 is punctuated with these episodes. Well,WTF.
Today is Alex's birthday so we are going out to dinner with he and Jess. Kris made him personalized pretzels yesterday while I was gone to town. I knew she was going to make pretzels and when I came back I saw a pretzel peeking out from under the wax paper. I decided to try her handy work and grabbed the X before I knew about the pretzel name and just that quick, the X had lost a leg. Kris stopped talking long enough to grab the pretzel and put it back under the wax paper, gave me the "you touch these again and your dead meat" look and went back to her conversation. Communications with her is really abbreviated. We communicate with looks alot. I used my "what I didn't know" look to which she shot back her "the tonnage of what you don' t know is mind boggling" look.
We have a webcam and perhaps looks will soon replace or suppliment text messages. Kris could ring me and I would answer, look into the phone and raise one eyebrow. She could look back raise both eyebrows and roll her eyes in exasperation. Oh, I would nod perceptably at the camera, hang up and turn the truck around and go back and get the gas can I forgot to put in the truck. Love the future.

Mushroom Hunting

Mushroom hunting appeals to me for a bunch of reasons. There is a hunter gatherer inside of all of us and mushroom hunting stirs this primordial urge. As a result, hunting for them is probably more fun than eating them. In fact hunting for them starts to replace things you know you should be doing and edging into, and finally taking over other activities. Any trip outside can be taken over by mushroom hunting. Leaving the house without a plastic bag in your pocket is liable to mean your pockets will become filled with edible fungus.

Many times Kris and I have both left the barn to grab something in the yard and been gone for an hour and returned with more mushrooms. This started innocently enough. I found the mushroom book in a box of old books I was going through and brought it down stairs. There are a lot of interesting mushrooms growing in the woods and I thought it would be fun to know what some were. So we went for a walk out back and took the mushroom book. At first we tried to identify the more distinctive or any we found interesting for one reason or another.

After awhile we took notice of the coral mushrooms you see in the pictures. As we read about them and one of the lines in the discription in bold print said simply EDIBILITY: Choice.

Well, we looked up everything we could find that might be similar and couldn't find anything that was poisonous. Still. everything you have ever learned about wild mushrooms is framed in the possibility of instant death. So after much research and trying to make sure the worst that could happen was we wouldn't like them, we cooked up a few. They smelled OK and so we ate a small amount and went to bed and waited for something to happen. I read and tried to distract myself from indigestion caused by the remote possibilty and therefore nagging fear I was going to be violently ill and then dead just shortly. Every stomach gurgle and gas bubble snapped my mind out of my book and back to this looming possibility. After a few hours with no ill effects, I drifted off to sleep and woke up in the morning alive and, amazingly, not sick.

Since they were ablsolutely delicious and apparently nonlethal, we floured and fried up a large batch in olive oil and butter. Wow, were they good ! Afterward, it occurred to me I may have not eaten enough yesterday to cross the threashold of a lethal dose but maybe I had today. More reading and pensive waiting proved this negative and we began mushroom hunting in earnest. Turns out this particular variety loves pine and fir forests and are in great abundance on our property. We spent many pleasant hours gathering large quantities of them. Collecting them is seductively fun. Oohh, look at this patch! Wow! Look at the size of this one.

Gradually, we began shirking activities we should have been doing to go hunt more mushrooms. The discovery that they dried easily and reconstituted beautifully in a few minutes of soaking now appealed to the winter storage instinct. Soon to the detriment of everything else we were in full mushroom collection and storage mode.

It occured to me that my friend Scott had mentioned he liked wild mushrooms and I called him and invited he and Gail over to share our discovery. After we showed him what they looked like, we took them out back and let them find some so they would able to do this at home. Scott mentioned that he had a secret tree that had oyster mushrooms on it. "Oyster mushrooms really are delicious" he offered. I acted casual but my mind went into overload. Another mushroom to look for!! After they left, Kris and I went through the mushroom book. Oyster mushrooms grow on hardwoods and are all over the US and the only mushroom that it could be mistaken for and was poisonous was located in Japan or Australia and the best part--EDIBILITY: Choice! We went looking immedialtely. We were definitely mushroom crazy, knew it but didn't care.

It took awhile but after a couple of weeks of searching, Kris spotted one while we were driving down an old road. We brought home some and did a spore sample and read and reread the description. These had to be it. So we tried them. Funny, it was no less nerve racking testing this mushroom. But, since I am typing now, I didn't die from the test. No and Scott was right. These are delicious too. We now have our own "secret trees". Thankfully, winter has caused us to get control of ourselves and we are trying to catch up on things around here. Still, I understand that Chantrelles start in early summer and the best part--EDIBILITY: Choice!

Hunkering Down

Yesterdays storm has ended winters preparations. Things frozen in the back of the pick ups will be there awhile. Yard clutter has disappeared. Firewood is a top priority. We have tons of it but most is uncovered and now buried in the snow. A wood shed is on the list of things that would be nice but hasn't made it to the top yet. Since I have discovered that the town would like you to get a building permit for a simple wood shed or the roof I would like over the sawmill, it has dampened my construction ardor. Building permits are sent to the assessors office so your taxes can be adjusted accordingly. It seems queer that you can buy a piece of land, clear it, saw up the trees into lumber, nail the lumber into buildings and for the privilege of working yourself to exhaustion for years on end, the town will charge you for your industry every year at tax time. If we did nothing, we wouldn't see a tax increase. If I improve the road at my expense, the town may reconsider the out back status and the taxes on each acre may go up. It seems the effort to improve is taxed.

Well, retirement and this realization has changed my thinking. Sitting by the fire and watching it snow is much less productive and therefore encouraged by the towns tax policy. Hunting and fishing are much less productive as well and I intend to do a lot more since this will limit my taxes by keeping me from accomplishing anything that might raise them.

If I do little enough, I may be able to get the town to give me public assistance. My complete lack of effort could pay off big. This seems backwards somehow. It would seem that your industry should be yours with no strings or increased taxes and you shouldn't get paid to do nothing. It is just odd and it gives me something to ponder as I'm sitting by the fire being careful not to accomplish too much. I don't want to upset the applecart.

We have canned over 500 jars of food from the garden and have a freezer full of wild berries. We have gallons of dried wild mushrooms. As a result, we require much less cash than you can imagine. (Now divide what you were thinking by 10) We can go weeks without spending a dime. We will be able to go months after I run wire to the well from the solar panels. The pump we just bought was a 110v soft start pump and since there is no serge as it starts it should work with the inverter we have. Right now we use gas to run the generator and pump water. The pump puts out at least 10 gallons a minute and if it runs for 10 minutes it fills the storage barrels that allow us to go a few days this time of year without pumping again. There is such a feeling of security from this it is hard to describe. We have pretty successfully phased ourselves out of the hubub and stress of trying to live in a conventional manner and gone back to an existence with a more circadian rythum (natural seasonal rythums-- save you looking it up). When something breaks it requires a trip back to the dark side. This fall I had to do a floor and some tractor work to pay for truck repairs and tires. Still, for the most part we live here and do the work of living here and to me it makes much more sense than the tax system.

If you are receiving this, you are on the list of people I thought might be interested in my blog. I intend to post daily during the winter. I did a daily journal when we started this project and it allowed us to go back and see what we had accomplished. This blog is to replace that and allow those interested to see what's going on at Missed Skeet Farm. I just got a new computer from the kids for Christmas and as soon as I get our pictures on to it I will include pictures to make this more interesting. Bart

Winter comes to Missed Skeet Farm

Getting ready for winter is a lot of work anywhere. Here it is a sprint to the finish with dismal consequences for things forgotten, ignored or more likely dropped off the list as time ran out. The final buzzer is the first big snow storm and the cold that freezes everything just as it was left. Still we look forward to winter all year and can't wait for it to start. Why? Well, it is a quieter less hectic time. It comes right after the sprint to get ready for it. Everything that isn't done will be there in the spring, but for now, it is on hold and there is no point in thinking about it for months.
Winter brings a wonderful solitude to missed skeet farm. Summer and fall allows people to use the road to reach the properties beyond us. Granted two or three cars a day and the occasional 4-wheeler is all the traffic we ever see. But winter closes in the road and we go weeks without seeing anyone. Aaahhhh.
We spend a lot of time walking. Winter walks are the absolute best. The worse the weather the more likely we will be walking in it. Snowfall is peaceful and we look forward to the storms.

This year getting ready for winter included:
1 Putting the well line into the barn so we would have water in the barn year round
2 Putting in a deep water pump in the well so we wouldn't have to heat the well house.
3 Changing the well house into a shower and sauna
4 Doing the annual road work.

The road work is an annual occurance and takes a lot of effort. We can't afford to put a foot and half of gravel on the whole half mile of road which is what it really needs. So we scrape and drag and cut drains in to move the water off the road where we can but the road is the ditch the water follows. This year Billy Gaspar said we could go get gravel out of his pit. We got 9 loads and the truck wouldn't start the following day. It took a day to get it fixed and by that time the weather had changed and put an end to this bonanza. I tried scraping and crowning the road so the water would drain out of some of the larger puddles and had some success and some notable failures. Failure is very bad in the road business. In this case it means that in the spring we will have some extra weeks of walking. Today we did what we could to make a very bad area less abismal and we are done.
We are now in an exhausted but euphoric state that follows the road work. Winter is here and we are in isolation mode. Wonderful.

Gardening with a Vengance

Hardwork pays off in the gardening world, sometimes. A garden is an exacting mistress that wants things right now. Later will not do. If you can do that and the weather cooperates and you guess the correct amount of fertilizer and are willing to water when you are sooo tired it is torture to stand out there, you might have a good garden.

There are no guarentees. You can work just as hard and get very little. Deer, rabbits or your everyday garden variety of insects can reap most of benefits of your work.

Everyone wants a beautiful garden, organic of course. Magically balancing soil nutrients with naturally occurring things. You are willing to share with a few insects and reap a beautiful harvest. Evidently the naturally occurring insects have not gotten the memo on leaving some behind for the organic gardener so he will plant next year. As you watch a gorgeous crop under attack and on the brink of annilation, this organic gardener searches his soul and finds a pesticide advocate underneath. Nuclear waste may be a little to weak-- something stronger perhaps. Yes, vengance and retribution becomes the order of the day. I want revenge for the damage to the crops. Some how gardening brings out my worst character traits. The romantic crap served up by gardening organizations about a tranquil hobby that will heal your psyche is just that, crap. Unless you are willing to garden with a vengance, you are probably not going to get much.

Kris has put hundreds of hours bent over, flogging the garden into existence. Restful hobby, I don't think so. Still there is a primordial satisfaction from gazing out at the garden and knowing it is the result of your hard work. We have nearly a hundred pints of food canned this year and we are just starting to harvest.

June Flies By

Well, Walter's barn is done for this year. There will probably have to be another round in the fall and maybe next spring. Kris has put in the garden, cleared land for a new garden and done all the chores around the farm since early May. I had the better job crawling around under Walter's barn in old manure and propping what what was left of it up and pouring footings and then replacing the rotted posts and sills.
The garden is spectacular and despite sore shoulders and elbows, the occasional limp, and a little stoop from back pain, Kris doesn't seem too much the worse for wear.
I have a long list of things to catch up on. None will take a lot of time, but thinking about them is a bit overwhelming. I should make a list and prioritize them, but that might really make me feel behind. Better to accomplish a few and feel good about something before I try to look to close at what's left.
Sometimes, we figure out what we are going to do that day by what body parts are aching the least. The theory there is some progress is better than none and the ailing parts can be rested sufficiently while the working parts carry the load. Most of the pains come and go capriciously and for no apparent reason. Your back could kill you for part of the day and then be fine later. Strange for those of us who look for cause and effect.
After 60, you seem beset by aches and pains and you talk about them a lot. You know this makes you worse than boring but you can't seem to help yourself.
The July 2nd parade is coming up fast. On Jellison Ridge road this is the largest event of the year. Christy's daycare marches the 50 yards from her drive way to Virgil's driveway. The parade route is lined with parents and neighbors, Gary Sargent and his wife come out on the lawn and sit in lawn chairs, and Gary's cows come to the fence and watch in fastenation. The kids all have hats and wave little flags and last year Christy had someone drive ahead and play a CD with marching music in their convertible. Some of the parents push strollers festooned with balloons and decorations making mini floats and siblings and cousins and friends all bring children for this event making this a surprisingly large parade. Well, this year we are riding the horses to lead the parade! Kris and I will dress with white cowboy hats and shirts, a red bandana and blue jeans. The horses will sport red, white and blue ribbons in their manes and tail, and we have small buntings with stars and stripes that usually hang on tables to drape over the horses butts. Since the kids are small, the parade takes longer than you might expect and after the parade, everyone sits in the shade of Virgils huge old oak and eat picnic fare and watermelon while the kids do sack races and games designed to make sure everyone wins some candy. It is a big deal on a usually sleepy road. Everyone on the road is related and theirfore don't usually get along that well, but for this event bygones are forgotten and a festive atmosphere prevails. We had a great time last year. I was the crowd that waved and cheered as the daycare parade went by. I'm not sure who the crowd will be this year since I'm in the parade but I'm sure Christy will come up with something. The cows are too quiet to add the excitement needed. Gary has sheep with lamb's this year and perhaps they will add a little crowd noise.
Kris and I have been practicing riding the parade route with the girls and turn circles every so often. The little legs take a surprizingly long time to walk that distance and the horses can only walk so slow. We figure turning circles will give the horses something to do to keep them from fidgeting and getting antsy. Anyway, we are trying to make this a memorable July 2nd parade.

Spring Ride

We have been having great weather and it has made riding irresistable. Unfortunately, that cuts down on spring work that should be getting done. I am trying to come to grips with that. Part of retirement should be the ability to ignore pressing jobs around the farm and be completely irresponsible and go enjoy the day or at least part of it. I have not completely eliminated the guilt from shirking, but I have learned you only feel guilty for a short time and I think it's a start. I have rationalized the lack of progress in some areas by pointing out to myself that some of my ancestors were aready dead at my age and got absolutely nothing done. Consequently, getting something done is better than some of them.
It is a strange phenomenan that as you reach 60 you start to think about your ancestors and how you fit into the gallery.
I have been helping Walter Kane repair his barn. It is approaching 200 years old. It was moved across the Newberry Neck road in the 1860's by 6 teams of Oxen. That had to be an incredible feet of practical engineering. I gather they really, really needed the barn moved across the road to even consider it. We own a tractor and an excavator and I would not want try to move the barn across the road. Laying under the barn and digging footings in a crawl space is slow work and gives you time to imagine what in the world would cause you to want to move the barn. I can't come up with anything. The best I can think of is at some point one of the wives looked out the window and said "you know our yard would look better if you would move that barn across the road."
I'll write more about Walter's Barn in future posts. It fastenates me and I'm sure you can hardly wait.

The water system takes shape

I thought I would include a picture of the barn so any followers of the blog who hadn't been here would be able to see the heart and soul of Missed Skeet Farm. I have been working on the water supply system and am close to having it ready for testing. I am using black well pipe to deliver water to and from the toxic waste barrels that serve as our storage tanks. It is cheap and the fittings our cheap and it moves a lot of water. It is however less than ideal. In a normal house there is only on junction of black pipe inside the house. There is a reason for this. They have great potential to leak and any sane plumber switches to something else as soon as the pipe is inside the house. We do not have a pressure tank. The water is gravity fed, so larger pipe is needed to get sufficient water to the hose bibs that pass as our faucets. They also move more water than a faucet would. The well pipe fits the bill. The down side is the joints have a tendency to spring leaks if they are disturbed. If you put enough elbows and T's in it almost guarentees a leak. Tomorrow I will go to Home Depot buy the last pieces of the puzzle and fire up the system. It could be real interesting. I can hardly wait. I will take before and after pictures of myself and the water system. Eventually, the water system will make our lives much easier. Tomorrow-- I have some reservations.

I seem to have peaked out at two blog followers.

Computer Wars

We have been fighting with the computer for days. It is a particularly obstinate. We are not asking much. Turn on and get to the internet before the battery runs out. You have to agree that is not expecting too much. We have gone from one internet security system to another trying to find one that allows you access to the internet. Most seem to offer great security by slowing the access down to until you don't want to be on the internet and go outside to do something else. After dumping Norton we tried mac avee and now we are using free downloads from Kim Komando digital goddesss. The computer went from slow to slower and finally slowest. We had fire walls and anti virus and spyware and malware. Unfortunately, we couldn't use the internet. I'm pretty sure you can eliminate all viruses using these systems.
I figured out that we had two spywares running and have uninstalled one. Now we are back at slow. This is a huge improvement and I am now much happier with slow than I was with slow originally.
Yesterday we went for as nice a ride on the girls as you could possibly have. The weather was gorgeous and they were behaving pretty well. These early spring rides are always interesting.
A horse's world shrinks in the winter and they are not comfortable outside there paddock first thing in the spring. You have to increase this comfort zone by going out further and further each ride. They are nervous and therefore capable of lots wild behavior. Your job is to sit on them and stay calm while encouraging them to go further into a terrifying world. In theory, they can feel how calm you are and will stay below panic mode. You can tell when you horse has lost faith in you because they dump you and run home where they feel safe. So you try to balance conquering new frontiers and staying alive each spring. We are constantly working with the horses so it is not as interesting as it is for some people. On the other hand these are not quiet dull horses either. As they are ridden more that spirit is a great asset. In the spring it keeps you on your toes. Any way yesterday was a great ride and today we'll do it again.
The water system is coming along. I am now piping it together. It will save us so much time and energy that of all the projects we have infront of us, it is the most important.
Kris started cleaning the garden up and I am going to rototill this afternoon. There always seems so much that needs doing now.
Turkeys just went through the yard and Kris used her turkey call to chase them off. She is
blaming me for scaring them. (Kris is thinking of starting her on blog. She says she needs to correct inaccuracies in this blog, huh.)

Horse Training

We have been learning to train our horses by various mediums. Books, video, and horse training clinics. We've been doing this for several years which is a comment on our slow learning curve as opposed to the horses slow learning curve. We have discovered that timing in horse training is as important as it is in dancing or maybe more so. If you get stepped on by your dancing partner it hurts less than your horse stepping on you. The other thing that counts is persistence and consistency. I am consistently inconsistent and it has been a hinderance. Kris is irritatingly consistent. We are beginning to make good progress. My horse Belle has finally stopped trying to leave me in the bushes. This is a huge improvement. I have been bucked off and stripped from her back by a thicket of jack firs. Lately she seems to have accecpted my leadership or is lulling me into complacency and waiting for a good chance to launch me.
Kris has been training them to do tricks and we both have been working on speed control and making them soft and easy to handle. Surprisingly, it appears to be working in both cases. So, we have had delightful rides and great training sessions this spring. The weather has been co-operating until a few days ago and appears to be getting better again.
We are working on side passes, hind quarter yields, forequarter yields and spins.
These are technical terms that mean we are trying to get the horses to do something other than walk in a straight line.
It is an excepted truism that good horse training is boring. Old people training horses is really boring. We could send you a video of me looking for a lead rope which would take 20 minutes and end with me using Kris's lead rope. I gather that we could include video with this blog and may try that. Now that Belle has stopped bucking, a lot of the interesting horse training is probably over. If it turns out that something good pops up we definitely will try it.

We worked on the water system today which consisted of building the rack to hold the toxic waste barrels. Just as I was getting started I knocked a 2x10 of the saw horse and the edge landed on top the arch of my foot. This would have made excellent video but we weren't filming and I refused to do it again so Kris could film it. Anyway, after looking my foot over and wiggling my toes I hobbled around and kept building. It was feeling much better by the end of the day and I'm pretty sure I didn't break anything.

I have two blog followers! Soon I will be famous.

Mud Season

Every spring our road becomes impassable. It is NOT passable by 4 wheel drive, it is IMPASSABLE. The frost goes out of the surface and remains in below, trapping water and making pools of bottomless mud just below the surface and they're invisible until you are in them. They do appear in the same places every spring giving you a sporting chance, but they don't all appear at the same time. Some come and stay for a while and then are replaced by new ones. Each day the road varies with temperature and sunshine. This keeps things interesting since you have to walk in and out. A mis-step and you are into your knee with at least one foot.
We mark the road to save unwary sightseers from getting stuck. Still every year at least one determined overconfident 4 wheel drive owner moves the saw horse with the sign and plunges ahead and sinks their vehicle to the frame. When they get to our house they have lost some of their overconfidence and are now very sheepish.
Since we have to pull them out and repair the road after mud season, I usually ask if they moved the sign that said the road was impassable. Yes, they reply sheepishly, but are quick to add how good the road looked and how solid it was up until they buried their vehicle. I always want to ask "how's it look to you now," but I don't. I have been stuck on the road and you don't need someone being a jerk to make you feel stupid. It is already plain enough.
This year it was the census lady who moved the sign and drove in about a half mile past us and then buried her car. It was a light car and she made it a lot farther than I would have bet before the road sucked her in. The road was bad enough after she went through we didn't use the tractor to pull her out. (I buried the tractor last year.) So armed with come along and straps we walked up the hill and pulled her out. Then we had her leave it on high dry ground and come back early the next day when her chances of getting out would be improved by cold overnight temps. Fortunately for her it worked. As she and Kris were getting to our drive way another truck came in and turned into the driveway. It was her boss. Pompous, arrogant 4 wheel drive owner who told the census lady she should have called him yesterday and he would have driven up the hill and pulled her out. At that moment Kris was ready to strangle him. "No you wouldn't have" she snapped. He told the census lady to follow him out and Kris said, "No. You follow us out and stay in our tracks." I was still walking back down the hill and missed this performance. I wished she had called the guy yesterday and they could have both been stuck on the road. His truck was much heavier than her car and wouldn't have made it to our driveway after the morning sun melted the road.
It makes you wonder what people are thinking. I guess they are not thinking. We have to repair the road after they rut it up. Water follows the ruts and washes out the road. Fixing falls to the owner. It does make you want to get road repair money out of them before you haul them out. On the other hand, it breaks up mud season.

Rainy Day blog

Kris and I spent the morning working on or solar electric system design. Sounds impressive, but it consisted of taking the manual for each component and seeing if it agreed with the design diagrams of the other components. It didn't come with a master schematic to go by that uniquely went with this system. Industry accepted abreviations abound and make each one almost incomprehensible. Still by laying out all the parts and checking the manuals we believe we are starting to get it. I believe that based on my patience limits that in a couple of weeks we will have a fully operational photovoltaic system with battery storage or a complete meltdown of parts, which may include multiple explosians and fires. Either way I am psyched to get started. Our water system is the other project we are working on. It represents the other end of the spectrum and is very low tech, perhaps no tech which appeals to me greatly. It consists of 4 free toxic waste barrels that were free. (Free appeals to me greatly also.) It is a gravety feed system and has only two valves and a few spigots---no electronics, abbreviations or moving parts to breakdown. It will be hear and functional before the final hook up of the solar electric system since the water may come handy if things don't go well.
We have been riding the horses and having a ball. All winter we watch training videos and then torture the horses first thing in the spring until they get what it is we are trying to train them to do or they get so fed up with our efforts it becomes too dangerous to keep trying.
Since this is my first blog I will try to get this out and see if this is going to work

Missed Skeet Farm

It is raining and blowing a gale today so we worked on the Solar system design. This consists largely of trying to make all of the manuals sent with each component we purchased agree with the other manuals on how to set this thing up. We bought a very modest system but the parts are from different companies and trying to understand what each instruction booklet is trying to tell you and making sure it fits with what the others are trying to tell you is interesting. I am beginning to think I get it. This is worrisome since there are huge areas that I have to ignore to reach this conclusion. Still, I think we will either have solar power or a large meltdown of parts in a week or two when the rest of the parts arrive.

A couple of weeks ago we purchased a set of solar garden lights that run on 3 AAA batteries and hooked it up inside. It gives dim ambient light, but fair light over the stove, sink and table. It required no knowledge of amps, watts, volts, wire size, what a shunt is and why you should have one, polarity, Gfp, Awg, and dozens of other abreviations that mean nothing unless you are an electrical engineer. This one could be that simple but they really don't want "do it yourselfers" putting these together. That makes it all the more attractive to do it yourself.

Our water system is the antithesis of the our Photovoltaic experiment. It is very low tech, perhaps no tech which is the other end of the spectrum and appeals to me greatly. It consists of 4 formerly toxic waste barrels that we got for free (this also appeals to me greatly) and some black well pipe and sundry fittings that will provide us with running water to the sink, hot water tank on the back of the wood stove, and water buckets in the horse stalls. Chores are going to be easier and less time consuming which will give me more time to work on the photovoltaic solar electric extravaganza. If it is still raining tomorrow I shall start to put the water system together. It will need it's own insulated room in the barn loft and that will take more time than putting the pipe together.

We have been riding since the weather is better than you could possibly hope for this early and the horses are getting better with each ride. We keep training new things and trying to expand their repertoire of skills and things we can do with them. Just sitting with them while they stand around or lay down and sleep is fun. Riding is a bonus.