Monsoons, Tractor Computers, and Fishin'.

It started raining about a month ago and only stopped twice. I measured 1.5 feet in the last two weeks in my 5 gallon bucket on the deck. I had to clean the gutters, while I was up there I snapped a picture of the front-yard gardens. They're doing ok. The corn won't be 'knee high by 4th of July' but I don't see any old timer farmers doing any better around here.

I took a random day off to go fishing. The river was freaking sweet on wednesday.


This week I headed over to help Joe with his computer. It was smashed. We took it apart down to the boards, did some solderin' and it worked! Joe's computer is back on the job surfing the interweb for tractors. I love the beermuda triangle.

Hopefully this rain stops soon. Driving me nuts.

Happy summer

Not quite into the 'Dog Days' of summer, but to snoops everyday is his day. Here he is relaxing on the reclining patio chair under the gazebo.

How's your garden going? Mine is doing alright... Here's how the taters are growing:

Planted a little late, 4/27
Sprouted 5/9

5/12
5/26

Today:

The new potato towers are working out really well. The vines seem pretty happy and healthy.

The garden in general is cranking along. We're about midway through the first harvest of sugar snap peas.... finally. The rest of the summer garden is all the usual stuff:
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Carrots
Onions
Green Beans
Radishes
Butternut Squash
Acorn Squash
Pumpkin

New this year:
Sweet Corn (Silver Queen and Spring Treat)
Melons

Its hard to believe, but it is time to start seeds for the Fall/Winter garden already, so I planted a whole bunch more stuff this weekend:

Parsnip
Kale
Chard

The 'only' thing left to plant for the summer garden is the shelling peas to climb up the corn once the corn is about knee-high. Hopefully it works.

This weekend is the summer solstice, longest day of the year. Hope to get up early for either dawn patrol surf or biking, then maybe fishing and then stay outside all day until we have campfire or something. Anyone interested?

-40.

Bonus pics.

Good times...

Especially if you are Sleepy's paddle...

FARTAB Vol. 6 (Part I)

I think that we can classify FARTAB Vol. 6 as a rousing success. No fatalities or arrests. We initiated Flat Tires into the world of FARTAB- this was his first and outside of some weirdo taking creepy shots of his feet and legs he seemed quite happy with the proceedings. Kaptain Krunch and Dogg came on their second float. 40 and BBW made their 6th and GUDG, Sleepy and myself were 4 or 5 respectively.

Big props to BBW for pulling the FARTAB version of the mullet. If a mullet is known as, 'business up front, party in back', then BBW's outfit for the trip should be referred to as, "business up top, party down below'. Wait. That doesn't sound good. I'll think about that and edit it later!

Anyway- there was a sweet addition to this FARTAB. Instead of having four to six different ibuckets blasting totally different tunes, 40 rigged up a nice 'n legal (honest... I swear...) FM transmitter so that we could all be listening to the same music and not have competing genres all day. Worked a treat. At least unti it was submarined. More on that later...

As we packed up I discovered the joys of not being a part of the car moving caravan. I was able to get my stuff set in an easy manner, get half way down on my first mixed beverage and have a rollicking game of parking lot Fappy Hun Ball. Sweeeet. GUDG was so excited to start that he ended up totally missing out on how to properly wear a beer-de-laro. Though I would say that moving forward this is a perfectly acceptable way. I will call it the 'Duff-man' variation.

After a quick group shot

GUDG and 40 showed us the direction to paddle and we were off.

Since this was the earliest FARTAB (calendar wise) on record, there was plenty of water which meant that getting under some bridges was a bit more of a chore than usual.

The challenge aroused Sleepy a little more than I thought a bridge would but hey- to each their own...

FARTAB Vol. 6 (Part II)

By late morning/early afternoon, the sun had broken through.

This made me happy- so I thought that I would document it.

Dogg and Kaptain Krunch seemed to be entertained no matter what the weather. Which is nice... Though I have to admit- I was always afraid that they were up to something, so I tried to keep my distance...

This year we skipped our normal lunch spot by the horseshoe falls and kept going, deciding to stop further down river. It was already well past lunch time so that might not have been the best course of action considering the time allocated towards the -ADAB portion of the trip.

This also gave me time to take pictures of the old broken down mill parts that line the river. Every time we pass one of these spillways it drives me crazy that there is not some kind of turbine capturing the water power. Seems to me that either the dam should be gone or should be used. One or the other. The parts of our past era as an economy when we actually made stuff is beautiful and kind of depressing...

From here on out, lots of rafting up was the call. It was nice that the river was so high- it allowed for us to make good time distance wise on the river with very little effort. And it made it easy to pass beverages off, too!

Just the way FARTAB should be. More F'ing (floating) less paddling and exertion!

FARTAB Vol. 6 (part III)

The prolonged period of rafting up and actually floating meant that there was an extended period of time for slaking thirst, listening to music and talking. The good part: it is fun! The bad part- it does tend to increase the chances of TMTD. This session lasted for a good portion of the afternoon so that by the time we got to the last 'portage' and were ready to load our gear, not even Darth Vader himself could slow our mood or stop us from running the last dam. Check out Darth in the first pic:

(Flat Tires is NOT scared of Darth)

(CTLP is...)

The definite downside was that a loss in coordination which was directly responsible for the major issue of the trip: Canoe sinking:

The first victim was an accidental torpedoing of Dogg and Kaptain Krunch's canoe by 40. Definitely unintentional- as there is no way that 40 would have soaked the transmitter on purpose. The FM transmitter's use was toast for the rest of the trip, but it is ready for a return performance... 40's bellow could be heard from miles away as he dragged the converted ibucket out of the river. Meanwhile, Dogg and KK were busying themselves with trying to save the food and other assorted items... Kudos to them for good scurrying. And if anyone finds a camp chair in Westerly- it belongs to Dogg.

From that point on, canoe dumping became fashionable. Sleepy and GUDG had to follow suit! I was pleased that I had pretty much all my stuff loaded onto my kayak, which certainly helped keep my stuff dry! The sun was starting to go down, and with another 40 oz mile to go (read: another hour or two of paddling) we started to get motivated to get to the camp site.

I went cruised through Burdickville alone to make tracks to claim our spot. No one was there and we were able to set up camp and enjoy a great camp meal prepared by BBW. That guy can make some camp chow... Thanks!

After Flat Tires got the fire raging, I looked up and noticed that it was barely 10:00 and everyone buy myself was in bed. I was not about to waste a good camp fire and crawled into Tent Suburbs a while later



After a nice leisurely breakfast and camp breakdown, the trip out was uneventful and very enjoyable. Nice bright sky (almost too sunny) and a calm pace made for a nice finish and a great wrap to FARTAB Vol. 6.

See y'all next year!

The End!

Literally...

Growlers

Growlers of Berkshire Brewery Steel Rail Rocks!!! I really can't wait for their Oktoberfest beer. I know it's early, but it's probably my favorite beer of this time in my life (my tastes change over time as most people's do) and I hope it stays my favorite for while. It will probably be a good thing that it's only available during the fall....hence the Oktoberfest name....and here's some history for those of us who want to learn. Unfortunately it's only available in CT, MA, RI and VT, so those of you not in New England are outta luck....like there's any of you out there.

BTW, there's rumors of a homebrew for RAMHADAB, but if not I hope for another Berkshire Brewery beer even though we had one last year.

I may also start for a poll for a BOTADAB (Brewery Observation Tour And Drink Alotta Beer), but it may be tough to coordinate because no one wants to be the driver, plus all the little ADABers on the way. But if we get it started, I would like to visit all the local brewery's in all the local area's as a group.

Busy again.

This time of year things become a blur between getting ready for FARTAB, working on the garden, and work-work.

I tend to overdo things.

Instead of just building a couple more gardens this year, we converted the whole front yard.

Instead of trying to start some plants from seed, I decide I need to start everything from seed. Multiple varieties of plants, multiple plantings, and start some from friends too. When my sister came over and went on and on about how cheap already started plants where I thought, WTF, but whatever. I didn't waste a single minute of time tho, how are you going to learn how to start plants unless you practice?

And now, for FARTAB I've been scrambling to refurbish and heaviliy modify the original ibucket for a very specific FARTAB-a-rific mission. I just finished about ten minutes ago (12:45am) and have to say I'm pleased with it. It is fully functional, sounds decents, is still portable-ish, and looks like someone made it from recycled everything. Freaking Faaaaantastic.

So, without any order, here are the pics from the last week.

New raised bed. 3'wide, 16' long, dug down 1+ft, and built up 1 ft. That's alotta soil.


Just in time too. The middle bed is now full of early and over-wintered plants, the one of the right is 1/2 full. I'm going to try Square Foot Garden planting in this one. My sister, Mrs Kaptain got the book this winter, the theory makes sense! Here is where the potatoes were planted last year. We grew about 3 bushels here. I found a handful of bonus spring potatoes when I cleaned it up and turned in the winter mulch. They seem fine even though they were in hibernation all winter out there.

Next up, FARTAB, then it's time to plant the main garden. I'm going to try to grow corn for the first time... should be interesting!

Potatoes

Last year I planted potatoes. It was pretty satisfying to dig up and eat home-grown potatoes. Almost as much fun as clamming. The only drawback of traditional hilled-up-rows they take up alot of space, and you need to give the row a break from other plants for a year. That is a long time to have a bed sit idle for a garden that has something growing in every square foot all year long.

This year I'm trying to plant in Towers. I read about them here. I used leftover T111 from the shed project, and some 2x3 studs. The first comment people make about the garden is "Oh Man you should have used Pressure Treated!". Well, I know they don't use arsenic in PT anymore, but the new stuff still doesn't sound that much more appetizing. So, I'll let this wood just rot into the ground every 5 years and not worry about poisoning the family.

Supposedly you can grow 100lbs of spuds in 4 sq ft of space. I kind of doubt it, but it's worth a shot.

After telling everyone how great homegrown taters are, I convinced a couple other people to plant some this year. I had some extra seeds so I went over to CTLPs tonight to help setup their potato bins. They have enough room to plant in traditional rows, but we planted in bins. Here I am with my new tool, an Azada. Believe the hype... this is a great tool for digging and garden preparation. Beer is also great tool for digging and garden prep.

CTLP and his bin made from scrap wood found in the yard.
One week till FARTAB! Next thursday night we kick it off at B.R. with some riding, then to visit the owls for wings!

-40