Fall in the West or Fall Off the Roof!

The Streagle clan in Idaho has been busy. Along with our continuous house efforts we have had a few domestic moments as well. Let me recap. Apologies for the iPhone picture quality - it is in an industrial case that gets abused. Lots of lint and pocket fuzz over the camera window!

Karren has been hard at it with her new obsession, canning! We now have our kitchen cabinets lined along the top with tomatoes, jellies, pickles, preserves, and applesauce. And not just one type of each, but several varieties. My favorite is the winesap applesauce. Magnificent!

Don't you just love the wall paper. All things in good time...

Speaking of the house renovation, we finally got the energy (and good weather) to finish the roof on the mud room. This had been hanging over my head like Damocles' sword. It took much of Saturday and Sunday but it is done! It always seems like any day that includes a visit to Lowe's gets shortchanged. I call the big box stores the "black hole of time" or "SLowe's." We got more Black Jack roof cement, Brown latex caulk, soffit vents, a gold-plated hole saw ($45!!!), and a roof vent. I stripped the roof Friday afternoon when I finally got done with being lazy. This is what lives under cedar shake shingles:

There was a disturbance in the yellowjacket force that afternoon as I killed the last remnants living atop our domicile. Good riddance! I went through 3 cans of bee killer but survived unscathed. Take my advice and DON"T GET CEDAR/WOOD SHINGLES! They are breeding grounds for insects and attract all kinds of funk.

I tried to take a picture of Karren on the roof but I waited until it was too dark. By the way, she did all the prep work and much of the actual shingling too! She was on the roof attaching the new sheathing while I cut on the ground. Here's a look at the roof we did. Doesn't look like much but small roofs are full of cuts, ergo a pain in the $%&#.

This little mud room is slowly detaching itself from the house and had a wide open crack along the house/wall intersection. After resheathing the roof we decided that we would leave the structure in situ, based on the fact that it appears it has not moved much in the past year since we moved in. If it collapses, it will not be a huge loss - it's just a mud room. Kinda cool actually, the way the whole thing is whacked. The door is a trapezoid, the roof is out of square, and the interior looks normal - just beat up. 

We also made an investment in our emergency preparations for our country estate: a generator! I had been shopping for the right genset for the last few months and one day in Costco, there it was! Love at first light.. er, bite! This baby is perfect for us. I expect to lose power often during severe storms. Heck, we lose power here for no obvious reason frequently. Rocky mountain power is, well, a bit rocky.

A diesel generator. Runs quiet(er) than a gas model, has a much longer life, and will run for exteded periods without strain. This is not just a luxury when you consider we have no water pressure without electricity to run the well pump. This will also power our food preservation and will run my 240 volt tools in the garage. And it will do it for half the fuel of a gas model. The Chinese are an amazing bunch. I really like the design of this unit: It has a digital control meter, an oil pump and filter, sound absorbing baffles that really work, and a lift hook for our chain hoist.

End of generator rant.

The wood shed is just about full of split firewood for the winter. We have already burned about one rack (1/4 cord) of wood in the stove and still have more in the yard to collect, but here is the look of our shed now:

That's ten rows of wood y'all! I think this much combined with what we have to take down in the yard will get us through. Notice the gas powered splitter and the road maintenance fashion apparel. Gotta love the survival ethic out here. It just gets into your psyche somehow.

Yes, we like the fall in Idaho. We miss the autumn colors of Virginia but we are not without our own beautiful scenery. Just wish the snow on Old Tom had stuck around a while for this shot of our driveway view.

So tell all the folks at home we miss 'em, but not enough to spend the dough to fly home yet. Gotta get our survival gear together first!

See you next time!

Karren and Tim

Uncle Tim's Cabin

There are times when I feel like a throw-back to the past. We heat with wood because we actually like the experience of providing our winter heat with the sweaty torture of obtaining wood from mother nature. Each to their own. We are not most people. It used to be that economics was the major driver of this wood train, and it has made a difference for us again here in Idaho. The permit required to harvest 4 cords of firewood in the National Forest cost only $25, which is a far cry from the $600 we spent for 3 cords last year. Most of the folks in these parts heat with wood pellets and that is also an economical avenue to take. We would need about 4 tons for the season, and that would cost about $900.

Who is that strapping, overweight, old man? Believe it or not, I have actually lost about 20 pounds since that pic was taken. Our summer diet morphed into a six month effort to put us back on the trail to good health. I have lost a total of 37 pounds so far, weighing in at a fine 240 lbs. as of Oct. 7. Karren has dropped 20 pounds in the same time, which kind of makes sense since I'm twice her size. Pic was taken at about 7000 feet on the back side of Bonneville Peak, north of Lava Hot Springs. That's four wheel drive territory.

We choose to drive into the mountains and scrounge for firewood. And that has been our life for the last 3 weekends. It does make one more fit and trim to boot. We have focused on finding quality scotch pine, fir and other conifers, because we found out last year that the aspen and cottonwood (common to this area) are relatively poor woods to burn for heat. We now have under our wood shed roof about 3 cords or more of firewood, about half of it split. Because this is Idaho and not Virginia it will dry in plenty of time to burn this winter. You know, low humidity and all.

A gas-powered log splitter is a lovesome thing! I forced the issue and bought a nice Cub Cadet splitter last month and she is a splittin' machine! It is pretty much the same machine marketed by several well known brands but the differences are in the warranties and the service availability. I will come to think of this machine as my own personal friend before the end of the season. No more swinging the maul - YAAAY! We also bought a riding lawn mower this past spring. When we did this it was important that we get one that will be large enough for a small amount of utility work. The Husqvarna model we found at Lowe's fit the bill: 25 horsepower, 48 inch mower deck which has a quick release feature, and a higher-quality Kohler motor with cast iron cylinder sleeves for long life. It also had a ten year warranty on the mower deck, which is what usually wears out first anyway. Here she is hooked up to a cart of firewood being shuttled to the front porch for stacking. The new woodshed is the back side of the barn, so I call this the pinewood derby route.

The mower included a special promotion: a free lawn cart/trailer. Perfect for the cash-strapped homeowner that can't afford a real tractor, huh? Well, It is getting a lot of use. We are loving the ability to move useless crap from one pile to another with minimal effort. Life is good. Until the tractor won't start. "Was that can mix or straight gas?!"

The garden really had us in its grip for most of the season. This has been perhaps our most productive attempt at green-thumbing yet, and it really produced. Once we figured out that we had to provide the water, that is. A few dozen hoses later and the produce began jumping off the vines. Sweet corn was the most difficult to grow - we ended up with little dwarf ears that were good tasting but diminutive. Green beans easily became our favorite veggie du jour, with swiss chard growing like it was from some special irradiated test space vegetable. It is still growing out there even though it has frosted and frozen hard several times. Go figure - it's Idaho. However, there is one thing you just can't kill in this state:

Potatoes!

This is the land where the spud reigns supreme. When the garden was tilled we had tubers shooting out of it, all chopped up. I thought that would be the end of it, but NO! We witnessed the random ground breaking of perhaps 50 potatoes from the previous owner's efforts. Purple and red ones. What's more difficult than weeding potatoes? DIGGING THEM! Here is potato woman with her haul.

Well, I must tell you about the real reason I have not updated this page in such a long eon. I found a job. A real one. With benefits and vacation and sick leave and all the rest of the trappings of a gubmint boondoggle. Except this one is a STATE job. And that's a good thing in this day and age. IF you happen to live in a state that currently balances it's budget. Yes, I am a proud member of the Idaho Department of Transportation. That's IDT for those of you from VA. No common sense names here such as "I-DOT," noooo, it's IDT in this here neck of the woods. Managed brilliantly by human resource officers that live in caves under the state capital, it is a hugely understaffed and underpaid arm of the state government.

I had 60 days to obtain a Commercial Driver's License in order to keep the job. That entailed a complete month of study, practice and prayer that resulted in my passing each of three separate tests, all done without spending a dime (other than the exhorbitant fees for the license, tests, and examiner). It all turned out okay. I was able to practice driving the plow trucks and to use them plus a trailer from the shed to qualify for the road test. My examiner was the nicest guy in Idaho. He was also recently recovered from triple bypass surgery. That had me wondering about his health while I was driving...

This photo is interesting. Where are the drivers? Actually we are all waiting our turn at the "hot mix" plant. No, that's not a risque night club, but an asphalt plant. I typically carried 12-14 tons in the truck and drove to remote locations in order to pave roads no one ever sees. All the maintenance workers from the district and some from outside are recruited to haul the mix to save costs. Plus, we don't really have much of anything else to do, right? At least that is the public's perception.

This summer my shed repaired right of way fencing, paved roads, filled potholes, moved dead animals (large ones like elk are a pain), mowed grass (sometimes in the middle of a snowstorm), sealed cracks, and replaced highway markers. There's a lot more but I haven't the energy to list it all. Besides, the public doesn't care anyway, right? At least they certainly don't show they care as they blast by us at arms length at speeds approaching that of a rocket. Many one fingered salutes given and received.

Astronomy still plays an important part in my life and I have a new image to show off. This pic of M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy is one of my better efforts. It will be nice when I have passed my provisional period at work and I have a couple of extra dollars to throw at the hobby once again. I do so enjoy it. Karren and I attended the Craters of the Moon National Monument Star Party this past month. Glad we got to go before the "Shutdown." Cue ominous music. We were also able to attend the more relaxed Lava Hot Springs Star Party too. Both are fun events. Looking forward to the next one.

I promis to think about getting this blog back on a timely schedule. If it is not snowing I'll have more time to devote to it. If it is snowing, well, "See you next spring!"

Rhubarb Love

Woo Hoo!  Guess who?  It's me, Karren.  I am so excited about our rhubarb patch.  I love all things rhubarb and can't wait to start making cool rhubarb treats!  I plan to bake with it, make jam with it, and freeze it for yummy treats later in the year.  I have a feeling we will have rhubarb coming out of our ears.  Death by rhubarb.  Death, where is thy sting.  : )  If you get rhubarb jam in your Christmas stocking, you'll know where it came from.

You can see in the picture below that we have four healthy plants.  They are already as big around as a Miata tire. 
 

A Tilling We Will Go...

This is the view I have of the north end of our valley on my way home from work. It takes about 30 minutes to make the commute, which is easy to take because of the beauty and (no) traffic. The only time I wish I lived closer to town is when I'm sleepy! The town on the left is Inkom, ID, which probably has a population of around 500. Big town, huh? The freeway dips down here to the Portneuf River, then climbs back up onto a lava rock mesa, about 500 feet above the river. It is this stretch that sees the worst snow and drifting in the winter. It is only a stretch of about ten miles, and it is really not a big deal.

Yep, that's me posing like the farmer that I am. We have finished preparing the garden plot for this summer. We are planting corn, swiss chard, butterbeans, green beans, tomatoes, squash, peppers and onions. We have raspberries that have wintered over from the previous year, along with our latest discovery: rhubarb! That's right, we have five large rhubarb plants that were discovered by Ken Light, our church friend. Ken came to our place and brought his outstanding (old) Troy-Built tiller to help us prep the soil for the garden and he stumbled into the rhubarb while walking about the property! Of course this just sent Karren over the edge. She is already planning to freeze it, make pies, etc. We will have rhubarb for the entire Marsh Valley!

Ken is a wonderful friend to do us such a great favor by tilling the soil for us. Sure does take the work out of getting the plot ready! He wouldn't even let me pay him for gas. He and his wife Wanda are fabulous. That's the western face of the barn, by the way.

This is a-tilla the hun at work : ) Those old Troy Built's are pretty stout machines. His just chewed its way through the grass and rocks to yield a perfect texture of soil ready for planting. Look at how dark this dirt is! All the soil in these parts is from broken down lava flows and it is almost black. If you keep it wet anything will grow here. That's why potatoes do so well in southeast Idaho. We are not planting any potatoes, but there were a few left from the previous owners that will probably pop up.

Finally, a shot of the tulips that are by the garage. Flowers are appearing literally everywhere on the property. We have just begun to find them. Kind of like a scavenger hunt!

We did buy a new riding mower. It was painful and it set us back a good ways, but we had to have something to keep this growth under control. I had no idea Idaho had such a wet spring. The grass is growing well and the color is deep green. The yard is beginning to look like someone actually cares about this house we live in. If it were only as easy to fix up the inside as well.

Tomorrow I am going to work with a new company after I leave Home Depot at 9am. I received a call from the owner on Tuesday and he was interested in meeting me and talking about the possibility of working part-time with his company, 21st Century Renovations. They do only custom renovations, not clean up of fire damage or that kind of stuff. I met them for lunch on Wed. and we hit it off pretty good. They are interested in someone that is well rounded and flexible, i.e. knows a lot about all phases of construction. They were particularly interested in my sheetrock skills. What I also found out is that they are interested in having me full-time as well! Wish me luck as I try out out my first day tomorrow!

I will of course continue at Home Depot until I decide to throw in with this new outfit. I will of course give Home Depot the customary two weeks notice if it comes to that. I don't like to burn bridges.

Be sure to check in soon for more updates. Things are growing out of control here!

Long Time No Blog!

It is just one of those times. You know, things get wrapped up in knots and you are swept into the currents of everyday life. Time slips by. Next thing you know it's been months and you've ignored the blog. Until today.

PROGRESS REPORT:

We have survived the idaho winter, the glaciers have receded and spring has sprung. The last snowfall was day before yesterday. It was 22 degrees this morning, but we were out this afternoon working in the yard in t-shirts. Glorious balmy breezes were blowing. It was time to continue the clean-up.

Since the snow has melted and the ground is dry we have gotten most of the shingle debris from the fall taken care of, but the rear of the house still has a pile left. We loaded the truck again with shingles (I think this is probably around ten loads at least, not to mention the load that our neighbors helped us take to the dump. If you ever choose to strip shingle off of your roof, for goodness' sake, GET A DUMPSTER TO SHOVE THEM INTO! Lessen learned.

Notice in this last shot the pile of cinder blocks? That is actually stabilizing our internet dish antenna. The hurricane force winds we get on a consistent basis were enough to loosen the pipe in the ground causing us to lose our connection, so I piled blocks around it and it has performed fine ever since. I chose the location for the dish so that it was out of the wind, but apparently mother nature had other plans.

The place is beginning to look like we actually care about our appearance. The front is fairly debris-free and flowers are springing out of the ground everywhere. Karren has begun a rock drip strip around the house to prevent mud from splattering the siding. We removed the gutters last fall before we put the new roof on. I think we'll leave them off. Do you really need gutters in Idaho? We'll find out.

What we need now is a mower. Badly. I had no idea we would have this much grass growth in the spring. Looks like we'll have to go into hock for a riding mower. A tractor is still way too far out of reach until I can pick up a better job. More on that later.

Here's a shot of the rear of the place with Old Tom mountain in the background. Notice the burn scar on the pasture. Morgan (our neighbor) and I did some burning to improve the pasture out back sothat he can graze it this year. It is foolish to own prime pasture but let it go fallow, so I offered to let him graze it with his horses and we will get the benefit of his expertise and labor to help us keep it in good shape.

The white box is the telescope trailer. The main building on the left is the barn. It needs a lot of work too, but it will have to wait its turn. As you can see we've got a few piles of brush to dispose of, but I will wait until I can get a machine to move them far enough down the pasture and away from the house. It would be good to wait for a wet day too. Fires can get out of control quickly here.

This weekend we should be able to finish the shingle clean-up and we may have a solution for the mowing figured out. Our wood pile is beginning to grow for next winter and we have lots of work to do before we will have enough wood. I've got to drop a couple of large fir trees at the end of the house that are too close, and they will provide quite a bit towards our goal.

See you next time!

Gonna Get Me a Job or Bust!

Unfortunately, one cannot live by cross country skiing alone. It must be financed by some type of employment. So far, my Home Depot job has been fun, but I need a full time endeavor to make the bank happy. Full time positions at THD are just not falling into my lap and the application process through corporate is pretty bizarre, so I have been exploring other options... but first! Pics of cross country skiing!

Naturally, I was also trussed-up in my ski trappings, although I look like Jabba the Hut on toothpicks.

We were out in the wilds of Garden Creek Gap, just five miles from our house. This area seems to be an unpopulated back door to the mountain range just to the west of our home. Old Tom is the dominant mountain, topping out at just under 9000 ft. In these pics Karren and I are at about 6000 feet on a gravel fire road known as "Upper Rattlesnake Road," which runs a ridge line due west away from the paved access. We only got about a mile and a half up the ridge before we turned around. It is best to stop before you get too tired to careen out-of-control down the mountain, for that is what we beginners end up engaging in. Sheer madness, but fun!

At about the half-way point we encountered a large covey of grouse and were fascinated by their antics. I managed to get a picture of their tracks in the snow for posterity.

The birds were a riot and they were noisy. They are about the size of a chicken, but much more plump with stubby head and tail. I attempted to get a picture of them but it turned out to look like fly specks on white paper.

We have since been back to the Mink Creek area for a run up the Corral Canyon Trail. As we went up at 3PM the snow was a bit soft and the melting had ruined some parts of the trail. As we neared our limit and turned around the evening cooled, freezing the snow into a crusty ice track, similar to a bobsled run. This made our beginning skiing efforts all the more comical. Neither of us was hurt, but it wasn't for lack of vertical challenges. I fell a total of four times before I removed the damn skis and walked sown the final 1/8 mile. Karren just looks like she was born on the sticks and only fell once. It is difficult to learn how to ski when the trail limits your ability to do anything but fly down a narrow gully two feet wide that is solid ice. Next time we'll wait for new snow or we'll finish earlier before it refreezes.

So, back to the job search. I haven't heard anything from ISU about the position I applied for there, but the HR dept. says it will take some time as the entire population of Latvia applied for the job as well. I also have put my apps into the federal govt. for various park service related jobs and have had a nibble. Hopefully I'll have an at least an interview soon. The local highway dept. office is hiring a position too, so I have a grossly underqualified app filed with them.

I have been contacted by my first private lesson (trombone) student, but I'm afraid I may have scared his parents off with an exhorbitant fee structure. I may have to adjust for regional economic conditions in order to gain any traction with teaching privately. But I CONTINUE TO PERSEVERE!  I will not give up and become a groveling, whiny little pig. There is a job situation out there somewhere, and I will find it and make it my own. Something's gotta give - this 3:30 AM wake up schedule is ridiculous.

So, next time I will report on the snow storm that appears to be developing tonight. Hopefully it will lay down enough snow to furnish our skiing addiction enough powder and we'll be too busy to blog for a while. Or it could be that we'll finally run out of firewood and have to resort to burning money in the basement for heat. That would make for one cold house, let me tell you!

Next installment: Death by Downhill, or Tim gets hired as a mattress tester! Hard work, but somebody's gotta do it...

(P.S. What we are doing is really backcountry skiing, but not many people know what that is, ergo the cross country label)

Tim and Karren Fall Down - A LOT!

We have settled into the rhythms of frontier life here in Idaho and are really enjoying the snow country. Karren and I tried some cross country skiing and liked it, but I wanted more backcountry flavor, so we bought some sliding snowshoes/ski-shoes for our first try at it. It has been fun learning how to stay upright on them and we are beginning to get the hang of it.

These skis are really fun and are perfect for beginners like us. They use a 75mm three pin binding and have built in skins (not fish scales - skins) and they climb easily with great grip. They are also a lot more fun going downhill than snowshoes. I just couldn't see the point of slogging downhill in something clumsy when we could ski. They are not fast going down but that is a good thing for us beginners!

That's my high school chum Kevin Hopkins with us on the West Fork Mink Creek Trail. He and his wife Sarah were visiting and had to herringbone up the trail because they did not bring their skins with them. We made about 1/2 mile up about 500 feet in elevation that day but needed to stop because old, fat, middle-aged folks like Karren and I needed to have enough energy on the way down to try to ski without shaking too much and Kevin was just getting over the flu. He was amazing to be able to do that much cardio workout in that kind of shape. Of course Sarah was zooming all over the place like Picabo Street (famous ski star) and taking great pictures. She looks like she was born with skis on her feet. She made it look easy and gave our group some credibility with the other skiers on the trail. Thanks Sarah!

I can't wait until we can get into the elevated backcountry and learn how to ski those areas. It will be a while, but Karren is such a natural at this I think we'll learn quickly. There is a hut system that I can literally see from my house - that will be a blast! I've heard two avalanches at home already (scary!) so I need to get training with that stuff before we get too far out. I'm also still battling altitude sickness, so that is taking some time to get used to. I have increased from 6000 ft. to 8000 ft. as far as my comfort zone goes, but there are lots of 9000 ft. plus peaks around here that I want to climb. It's really tough to ski when you're dizzy!

We took the back way around the mountain range and traveled in the high country all the way home that evening and Sarah took a stunning shot of the valley where our house is located. It is a different perspective from the other posts previously, and she captured the light at its best.

What a beautiful place we live in. We are truly blessed... with snow.. and zero degrees this morning. Got to take the bitter with the sweet I guess. At least there aren't any mosquitos. Sarah has a picture of a cattle drive down our road that I am begging her to send me. I hope to be able to post it soon. They were following it as they arrived in McCammon. There was a good looking cowgirl on on horse and the old grizzled cowboy that owns the herd in front of our place. I think it was cool that Kevin and Sarah happened to be driving up just as the cattle drive arrived.

More later!