Second River Trip, Why 'out' of season is the best season

First, Snoopy says Hi.

Second, this weekend a top-secret river has been floated! I've been eye-balling it for a few years now, but there hasn't been conditions that lined up where we had lots of rain to fill it, and good weather to walk through it if needed. This weekend the stars were aligned, and Kaptain Krunch, Mrs Krunch, and I took advantage of the situation and tried it.
Here is Mrs Krunch loading up her solo canoe. That is hardcore. The first 1/4 mile or so was moving water, some bumps from the bony bottom, but it was NICE. Then, we hit the lift-overs. Here is the 77th out of 1Million and Nine. It was a biggun: Kaptain says F*ck Lift-overs.

After that, the secret river turns into a swamp, and so grown over we were laying in the bottom of the boats pulling ourselves along. Blow-downs in there sucked, because it was, well, a swamp, and if you got out of the boat you sunk up to your armpits in ice cold mud.

But, once the swamp widened out... it was some of the cleanest water I have ever seen, and it was pretty amazing to paddling through an area that very few people have ever been through.

At the beach and swimming hole and we decided to take a pit stop and refuel.

From there on out, it was easy paddling, unreal.

Later, we went to the east beach boat-beach. Here is what it looks like around here in the 'off' season'. See that beige strip of sand? That is the beach. In a month and a half there will be so many freaking NYers, Mass-h*les, and whatnot sloshing around that you won't even be able to see it.
While we were fishing we watched an obviously inexperienced tool try to cross the sandbar in a DEEP V hull, with 375 HP sucking down the stern, not once, But TWICE, and get stuck. Seriously, this machine was probably $75k-100k easy. And its this guys FIRST BOAT. WTF. When he got free the second time, we hollered to tell him where the channel was (it was obvious, its the DARK water), he got pissed off and went over to take this monstrosity out of the water. Only 6 more weeks till we have plenty more of those around here, I'll be hiding out on the weekends till their gone.

Don't forget, we are just TWO WEEKS from FARTAB!!!!

In case your forgot what happened the last five years:

Check out the last few years worth of pix:
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4

CTLP's Perspective of the highly successful Vol 4:
Volume 4 Post 1
Volume 4 Post 2

and of Vol 5. I didn't have the stomach to sort through the seedy pix, so CTLP did it for us.

Volume 5, Part 1
Volume 5, part 2

First River Trip

Hey, I started today pretty early working in the garden. By lunch it was 76 degrees and figured it was time to take a break. I loaded up my new(to me) kayak and headed down to carolina. Since I hadn't planned ahead, I didn't have the ever-important shuttle back to a put-in. I started at carolina on 91 and paddled upriver for a while. There is plenty of water in the river right now with all the rain we had, and paddling upriver was a bit slow going. The new boat is pretty slow when you are slogging upstream, it is a full 4' shorter than the other kayak, so I'm not surprised it doesn't paddle as easy. After an hour or so i stopped for a cerveza, went swimming at a great spot for a rope swing, then turned around. It floats just fine downriver.It has a great cupholder, so it'll work great for FARTAB Vol 6. The ibucket fits on the back pretty well, and once i get the cockpit sorted out it'll be just fine. Its small/light enough that i can pick up the boat, the ibucket, paddle, etc up off the car and carry all of them down to the launch ramp in one trip, greatly speeding up the launch/retreival process. Yeaaaah.

There are still plenty of trout out there, and on this stretch of the river I saw zero fisherfolk. I really need to get a license asap and catch some.

I can't wait for FARTAB, May 15th!

iBucket ver 4.0

The ibucket has been around for a while.

Ver 1.0 was born to go fishing and bring beer. I needed to be able to carry beer, tunes, and fishing equipment out in the boat or on a bike. This version had hooks to clip onto a bike rack like a pannier.


It was a hit the first summer down at the lake and out on the outer banks windsurfing for a week. The problem with it was, well, it's a kitty litter bucket with some all-season speakers bolted to it and a car amp stuffed inside with a heavy lead acid battery. The main drawback was the amp was too inefficient to have inside a cooler(or a bucket) and all that wasted power meant it needed a heavy battery. It simply made the beer too warm. I still use it a few times a year for fishing, drinking, and partying in boats mostly for nostalgia, but i've upgraded to the current amp design. Here's the original wiring. Its ugly, but it worked!



Ver 2.0 was much slicker. A very efficient amp that could be sealed in a tupperware container, a battery now could be small enough to hide in with the amp, and the whole deal could be jury-rigged into a cooler. This made it's appearance at snoe-down , worked fine at the hot tub, but was quickly retired because it only held a six pack. I can't find any pictures of it at the moment, and am too lazy and tired to go back out to the barn tonight to take pictures.

Ver 3.0 is the iBucket we all know and love. A whopping production run of five or six has generated buzz in at least three towns across the state. It holds 18 cans, is very durable, portable, yeah blah blah blah. The only problem is it doesn't fit well on the BFB, and it sometimes is a little bulky.

Ver 4.0:
After hours of R&D, I finished this up. Similar rigid frame to versions 2 and 3, but 1/2 the depth of ver 3.0:

The length and depth are perfect to tuck into the free-loader bag of an XtraCycle (BFB). I think it will work much better as a disc-golf bag too.

Cargo capacity is a 12 pack. Yeah. That'll do.

-40.

Work Days Part 2

Here is how the front yard looked before we started today's projects. The stakes are the end of garden beds/paths. The spacing is very scientific. The beds are just narrow enough so I can step over them, and that paths are just wide enough so a dual-tire wheel barrow fits between the beds. That works out to 36" beds, 30" paths.

Here's the beds after the first pass with the backhoe.
The plan was:
1) scrape off topsoil with backhoe, set aside. There was very little.
2) dig up stump and big rocks. There were plenty
3) dig down about a foot or so, set aside crap sand/gravel/clay
4) get manure from across the street
5) dump manure in the holes
6) fill in the rest with the loam/compost.
7) Finally I'll move rocks around the beds, like terraced/raised beds.
First manure dumping. This is about 6-8 month old Poo from some very pampered pets. It is basically accelerated compost.

Beds with about 8-10inches of manure. Ah... Gardening!

Here's the beds filled with the loam/compost mix. I still have some work to do cleaning up the extra rocks, etc, but you get the idea.

Dogs love dirt! At least maggie didn't pick the manure pile to take a nap in!

The swamp yankee way to straighten a woodpile...Use the 'Hoe!
It was a very successful day... in 6 hours we did what it would have taken me 6 weeks or more to do. Each of these deep-dug beds is very time consuming to dig with all the rocks we have around here. Now if only I had some seeds to plant.... hmmm.

-40.

Beermuda Triangle workday #1

So we've got a good thing going out here in the beermuda triangle. We take turns going from house to house and work on projects. Last weekend we headed up to Northwest connecticut to help BBW move into his new 'crib'. I just realized I didn't take any pix last weekend.... Probably because there is no cell coverage, I didn't have my cellphone in my pocket all the time. It was a blast, but you'll just have to take my word for it. MIBBADAB (Move In Bald Boy And Drink Alotta Beers) was a success! (even if I am a little out of practice on the -ADAB part...) Mrs 40, Lil 40 (would that be a 22oz?) and I will take a road trip up there in the convertible before the summer so she can check it out herself.

Anyhow, back to work weekends: most jobs go much faster with a little help. Today we did some backhoe upkeep, chainsaw sharpening then some firewood harvesting over at the Flattires' compound. A couple monster trees too close to the house had been damaged during excavation for the new house, so they had to go. Here we are using their patented "Push it with the 'hoe and hope it doesn't hit the house" method for felling very large trees.

Before:

After... with the Double Deuce!
To give you an idea of the scale of the operation:
Unfortunately CTLP couldn't join us today because their house got struck by lightning last night, most likely wiping out the well pump and who knows what else! Time for some lightning rods, and whole house surge suppressors.

This morning while waiting to go to the dump I pulled the cold frame off the carrots and beets that I covered in leaf mulch last fall. They look fine! So, in this part of RI carrots and beets can survive a very hard winter in just mulch and a cold frame.


I planted some broccolli transplants out there in the cold frame today. Supposedly you can plant them outside now without any kind of protection, but I don't believe it. Wouldn't hurt to have some glass over them to protect from frost and wind.

Tomorrow, we're digging up the front yard to increase the amount of garden beds by about 100%. Finally should have enough room to grow corn! Sweeeeet.

More updates tomorrow.

-40

My new crib...

So, I've been up to some big things. OK, one big thing. I bought a house. The moving is going well getting some help from family. My mother came over and helped clean the whole place. So, I plan to sleep there tomorrow night. Next weekend is MIBADAB (Move In Baldboywonder And Drink Alotta Beer). The moving should be easy, mostly large stuff, but not a ton of it. Then the official party Saturday night, which might be harder than the moving.
Needless to say I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. It's a great present to myself for the first day of spring.

The Beagle Logger

Last winter I thought it would be cool to train snoopy to bring home a stick every time we went for a walk. Ya know, free firewood. It worked well, though I doubt two sticks a day made any difference in the over all scheme of things. Though, 1lb of hardwood (of course he's not allowed to bring home pine, oak or maple only) is what, like 6000btu? So two sticks a day is 12000 btu. This time of year that is about one hour of heat. Well, I guess he's doing something!

The other day he picked out a great big one. Nice piece of maple. Cars stopped to watch him carry this thing home. I was over six feet long.... he had the neighborhood cracking up.

This weekend I extended the cold frame garden in the back. Another window pane wide. Here it is when I just started digging:


You get the idea.

What's new with you guys? Getting ready for spring? Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

-40.

Melting!

Hey, This winter we had alot of snow (for RI anyway). This past week it got up to 50 for a couple days and melted most of the snow! Sweet. I can see the ground out in the yard, and all of Snoopy's sh*t that he left in the snow all winter is scattered around like little brown landmines. Guess I know what I'm cleaning up later today. Great.

Here is the cold frame I made last weekend:
Here are the carrots I tried to save through the winter.. Ihave no idea if they will recover but eh.. its worth a shot:
This weekend I'm going to start some seeds out there. Snap peas, chard, spinach, and mache. Some claim its never too early to start greens but eh... I don't believe them. In case you haven't looked at a calendar, we are now 12 weeks before the typical last frost (Mid-May). Time to get seedlings started inside for stuff that can't be direct seeded. Start with cold hardy things this week, and then in about 6 weeks start tomatoes, squash etc indoors. Don't forget to pick up some seed potatoes for planting early/mid april!!! This year we're just planting red potatoes I think.

Here is Kaptain Krunch about to eat one-day old venison tenderloins cooked in butter with home grown kennebec potatoes cooked over a wood fire. This is living.




Cya! -40.

Real Winter

Heh. I have to say, after a few years of weak winters, this is a real winter. Frozen ponds, snow that stays around for a couple weeks, icy everywhere, no bike riding, going through a mountain of firewood and a tanker truck of fuel oil, I'm very much looking forward to spring. Along those lines, I've been keeping a look out for the return of robins. Yeah, sounds g-hey, but I'm one of those people that look for signs. The past few years I've kept track. Usually, its the first or second week of february. Last year, they never flew south... stuck around all winter. I saw two robins on Monday, Feb 2nd. Whooo Hoo!



I can't wait to be able to ride my bike to and from work. Mostly what stops me is icy roads or darkness. Right now we have both icy dirt roads on the way to work, and darkness after. I think maybe by the end of Feb, I'll be riding again.

In other news, with this snow i've noticed when we get snow, it melts very quickly next to the south facing foundation wall. I took a pitchfork and checked the dirt in a garden bed. Holy Crap! It's thawed right next to the foundation, about 2" wide . A light bulb went off above my head... I took some storm windows, leaned them up against the foundation, and sealed up the ends with a snowbank. In a week, all the dirt in the bed was thawed down a foot or more... pretty surprising. So this weekend I built a simple wooden frame, some plywood ends, dug out some tired dirt and added some good soil, kick@ss compost and worm casting mix. I'm thinking once the soil is 50F constant, it's time to plant some mache, spinach, chard, and peas. I might be able to start some of those inside and move them out, but it seems 'direct seeded' plants are much hardier than transplants.

-40.

"...And it's a great way to stay in shape!"

So Crayons, Mrs. Crayons, and Sleepy came over for Inaguration Eve dinner, and we made a sledding run with the foot of fresh powder we got in the last 24 hours. Good Times. And it's a great way to stay in shape!