Home on the Hill

More than a frame of mind. We went out to the woods today. The pile just keeps growing and my feeble efforts on weekends are not reducing it. However, bit by bit we are stockpiling wood for next winter - House and Green house. There were some really large pine in the pile. My saw could barely make a though cut. Of course getting the stuff into the trailer took just about all I had. It was a very warm day, hovering around zero. Which means the snow was very slippery, wet, and sitting on a layer of ice. Trying to make it up our hill to deliver the goods proved problematic: A no go situation. Time to take a deep breath, put on the chains and once again commiserate about the desirability of putting the chains on before I am stuck. I just get, well, stuck on that one. Putting the off road chains on all four tires solved the problem. Barely. I was surprised at how slippery the hill was. It was touch and go. But we did make it home to a lovely cup of tea and got to open the parcels that had b...

I was doing some telephone support the other day. Needing to use the keyboard and talk on the phone. Problem was my handsfree headseat packed it in. Remembering a joke "cordless headset" picture that was making the www rounds a year or so back, I had a flash of inspiration: Necessity being the mother of invention. I am now offering these very effective, extremely light weight, adjustable to most any head size, cordless phone headset adapters for an amazingly low introductory price of $14.95. ( phone not includedAnd for those of you who notice the non-up to electrical code wiring in the background, I assure you the electrical maintenance staff has been alerted. After this adventure it was time for a meeting of the Poor Meow group. Always nice to have a place to go where you feel a part of.. And they just "Lap" up every thing I have to say. I have the shop back to it's pre entropy stage. Way neat. I took a lot of time to organize it shelf by shelf and drawer by dr...

We got up early on Saturday to start the weekends wood cutting operation. The ice fog left crystals over all the trees and the morning sunrise was inspiring. This was a pic taken with the "little" camera. J0-Ann snapped some beauty's with her camera: We managed t0 bring in six cords of wood over the two weekend days. One chainsaw, a 10 foot trailer and a pickaroon . We had a leisurely start and a chain saw breakdown. Maybe a total of eight hours. Two of that driving. Fortunately I managed to quickly repair the chainsaw after a trip to the shop. We have way more than enough wood for our house heating needs but I am contemplating using wood heat in a green house and chicken shed. I am still in wonder over the bounty that is going to be left to rot or burned as slash in our forests. The trees we're cutting here are too twisted or cracked for the mills to accept. They will be burnt if we don't pack it away. We're much more accepting than a mill. A bu...

This Picture was taken from Ashrita Furman's Blog - a very interesting guy- an amazing multiple Guiness World Record holder who I have added to my "must read" blog list. I want to get back to re-building the Skid Steer. Fix the seat, add a three point harness, some lights for those times when snow if falling in the dark. I want to do it in the comfort of the shop. Thus the concept of "shaving the yak". Joi Ito's Blog has a great explanation. Basically it's getting caught up in the sub-routines of life. One thing leading to another. Some times I can get so deep that I forget what the original goal was- the ( to badly mangle a couple of metaphors) "I Can't see the forest cause I'm so busy counting the moss on the bark of the trees", kind of thing. Or: "The draining the swamp endeavor has given way to the alligator sweater franchise." Wictionary has a concise definition. Back to the Skid Steer 2.0 problem. In order to g...