And then there were none

You do get a connection with nature living out here in the middle of the woods.  Often it seems it is a connection I could live without involving massive swarms of bugs.  During the time I lived in Las Vegas I never truly appreciated the absence of little critters.  For the last three nights we been swarmed by Junebugs. If a light was on to close to a window they would thump on the window like zombies trying break into the house and driving at night sounds like a hail storm as the fly towards the headlights and meet their fate on the grill of my truck. Last night I accidentally flicked on the back porch lights when I turned on the lights in the kitchen and they exploded into a frenzy. I sat their and watched the swarm just engulf the back porch. This morning I swept up piles of them and feed them to the hungry chickens, but tonight nothing.  I clicked on the lights out back and nothing.  Not a even a couple little remaining clicks.  If it happens again I am going to put a light inside the chicken tractor and turn it on after dark and let the chickens feast.  I don't know if the little solar pathway light attract the Junebugs or not, but I will have to see. 

It was the best of times, It was the end of times.

I watched a show about the impending doom of 2012 and realized I need to fortify the homestead to survive the end times.  Well, maybe not, if was going to be paranoid about events to come I would probably be more worried about the devaluation of the dollar and the potential for sky rocketing inflation.  Of course if that happens and it takes a wheel barrel full of dollars to buy a loaf of bread the my cucumbers should go up in value. If one tomato sells for a kazillion, trillion, monopoly money dollars then I will at least have some tomatoes.  What I have realized about myself, however is that I prefer living in earthquake country to a hurricane zone.  By that I mean that growing up in California you get use to earthquakes and when they happen, they happen. Not much you can do about it, no sense worring about it.  Hurricanes, on the other hand, are on the news for weeks with predicitions about where they going to land.  Of course those predictions don't really mean squat until the last little bit. You can get prepared, seal up the house, pack the car, and run for life only to have it turn and head somewhere else.

Of course when we moved here everyone said don't worry about hurricanes they don't come this far inland. Uhhh, well, in the six years we have lived here two have come through.  Probably, my  fault bad weather seems to follow me around.  In the six years the ran fall here has also significantly dropped off and the branch that runs behind the house has dried up every summer, which it never did in all the time my wife lived here as a kid.  If there was some kind of societal collapse we would be in a better place than many to feed ourselves and survive, but one thing I learned living here is that people moved to the city to get work because having to kill, grow or gather everything to feed a family would be a huge pain in the ass. I would be a much slimmer fellow than I am now. 

Little by little I have been putting in this years garden.  So far I have some zucchini, squash, green beans, carrots, shallots, tomatoes and cucumbers in the ground with about half of it poking up through the soil.  In the next couple weeks I have to get peppers, eggplant, herbs, and possibly some corn and melon in the ground.  I had kind of been finding it hard to muster the enthusiasm to the planting done, but some squash plants had come up on their own in the garden either from seeds that didn't sprout last year or some squash that got forgotten in the garden.  The smell of those plants gave me the shove I needed.  I never thought it would matter, but that sort of earthy smell always make me want to spend more time in the garden.  The smell conjures up memories of being in my grandfathers garden as little kid in Delano.  I don't remember much from before I was around ten years old so I am always surprised when I smell the squash or tomatoes and it instantly takes me back to that house. Now I wonder if grandpa was getting ready for the end times and just didn't want to spook a little kid by letting on that the world was gonna end.

The aspargus is trying to tell me something.

This is year one of our asparagus plants.  All of the shoots I planted have come up again this year and I am happy to see they are still alive.  Asparagus needs about three years of growth before you can harvest anything to eat, but the stalks coming up is a good sign that I need to get the garden in gear.  I started the tiller after its long winter nap which always requires a spark plug socket wrench and a hefty spray of carburetor cleaner.  Ah spring, the bees, the flowers and sweet smell of carburetor cleaner.  I can't imagine trying to do a large garden with out the tiller. 

Tastes like ass

Ok, actually it was delicious.  I cooked a hunk of venison butt roast in the crockpot today.  I just chucked it in the pot this morning with some carrots, onions, green beans and a little hunk of bacon.  It cooked all day and when we got home the house smelled great.  The first one I did in the oven was ok, but this was the way to go. 
The kids loved it and even came into the kitchen while I was putting up the left overs and ate every last bite.  According to Underhill Farms Online Store they sell Venison roast for 14 bucks a pound so that was the best deal on a home cooked meal we have every had.  I think it works out to be a dollar or two for the bullet and since I missed once I saved around ten bucks.  I really couldn't tell much difference between the venison and beef and wouldn't have known if I hadn't cut it up myself.  I never thought I would say this, but it is kinda satisfying to eat something you killed.

woodville bass club

Sometime country life is all about a relaxing, but I have never been much on fishing.  My wife's grandmothers place has a couple big ponds so we took the kids fishing this weekend.  My dislike of fishing may be the result of my general failure to actually catch fish. I find it hard to be quiet and wait for a long a enough time to  land a fishy, but not this weekend.  This time I got one a nice fat, wide mouth bass.  I think I had a little help.  A power provided to me by the energy of the patch.  I found this totally retro Woodville Bass Club patch in the house the other day.  I think the members of this now presumably defunct club open the universe for just a moment and granted me this tasty little fellow.

Garden number three

    With a day of warm tempatures I spent the day planning out this years gardening attempt and cleaning up some of last years remains.   The scarecrow came down, some tomato stakes that stood abandoned finally got pulled up, a soaker hose completely lost to weeds was recovered and the pepper plants that look like skeletons got torn from the ground.  I had hoped to winter the peppers, but I had to go to Vegas before I managed to get them covered up and safe from the few days of freezing weather.
      This year I am going to spread out some and till up two more areas for growing.  One will have tomatoes only and I haven't decided on the other one.  Either green beans or squash I am not sure which yet.  The tomatoes have to go somewhere else.  Luci thinks they will get tomato blight if we plant them in the same area again.  I figure around 120 square feet should be enough for the tomatoes.  We will actually have less tomatoes, but I think we will get more out of them if they are spread out and easier to get to.  Last year we couldn't barely get into the rows once the pants got big and it made picking them a huge hassle.  The longer they stayed on the vine the more damage form bugs. 
      I need to get the tiller going and get everything tilled under a couple times before planting time come around.  I had the chickens in the garden to tear everything up and add a little fertilizer before I moved them back to the yard, but I will probably buy a little bit of manure and maybe some compost to add to soil.  I should plant a cover crop, but I never get around to it.

My lesson in Cartography

This is a picture I took of a survey map at the appraisal district office this morning while I was trying to sort out how our property taxes had gotten jacked up.  When you live in the city the boundaries of your property are usually pretty clear.  At our house in Vegas I could have measured the whole lot with a three hundred foot tape measure in about a half hour.  There is of course always easements and once and a while neighbors have issues about where the lines begin and end, but it get more complicated when you can't actually walk along the property lines or see from one corner of the property to the other because there is a tons of trees and brush in the way.

According to the appraisal district, which is who decides how much you owe, a portion of our property had never been included in the tax roles.  When they added it and created a tax ID account for that section it was no longer considered land with agricultural value and was taxed much higher than some of the other parcels. The problem comes in when you have to figure out which parcel is which.  No where on the ground does it say this is parcel 777777.  I had to go over all the maps and aerial photographs with the mapping guy who at first assured me that no mistake had been made. The problem is that the lines are often left on the maps for separate parcels even when those parcels have been combined into a single tax account number.  Lines are also sometimes removed when parcels are bought from different people by one buyer. 

In order to determine which parcel is which you have to go over the field notes on the deeds which basically say  start at one agreed upon point and then say turn south 97 degrees go 85 feet turn east 56 degrees go 79 feet etc, etc, etc,  The only way to find the points is to take a metal detector and look for the scrap that is usually buried as a marker.  According to the mapping guy rusty rifle barrels were once a popular marker that would be hammered into the ground by the surveying crew. Why survey crews had piles of rusty rifle barrels laying around I will never know. 

Each chunk of land here is divided into files by the origanal surveys ours falls into the Robert Conn survey and you can dig through the file which is a collection of maps, photos, field notes, legal documents, etcs.  One survey from the sixties clearly showed how the land was originally divided and made the problem clear.  A piece of our land had not been properly accounted for, but not the piece they tried to add.  The good news for us is that since they can't tax us twice on the same piece we get a break this year, but have to file to have the newly added section classified as agricultural timber land. What a pain in the @$$.

The big freeze has ended.

      The weather has finally taken a turn for the better.  The freezing tempatures have been a pain since we aren't used to it and the house isn't really built for it.  The lowest I tempature we had was 19 degrees, but for us that's a pain.  I had to put a couple lights in the pump house to keep the compressor and the well pump from freezing. Even with those the connection between the pump and the pipe got a small crack somehow and it currently dribbling a small amount of water constantly causing the water in the house to occasionally spit and sputter  from air getting into the line.

The first day of the freezing weather a storm took out power lines all over the area and around twenty thousand people were out of power.  It is actually pretty amazing that everyone had power restored by that night.  We were in the last group to have the power restored because the line ends at our house.  If the line goes through and affects more people then it will be fixed sooner.  We realized we need to have a bigger stockpile of seasoned wood available just in case.  It would be fairly easy for the roads to get messed up leave us stranded for a few days without power. When all you have is the fireplace for heat you quickly see why pioneer houses were so small.

With the weather turning for the better I know I have a lot to do in order to get ready for this years garden. Today I had to fix the chicken tractors because the poultry netting had degraded in the sunlight and the now the chickens could claw through it and climb out.  I added a layer of metal chicken wire to each one and now they are safe to move around the yard again.  This week the girls are out of school and I need to get some tilling done and start some peppers and tomatoes.