Garden, end of summer

Here's the front yard gardens June 15th:
August 15th:


Squash/corn beds June 15th
August 15th

Not a good year for tomatoes or potatoes, stupid blight.

Little 40oz is growing pretty good. But not sleeping. I'm a zombie.

-40

Little Miss Forty goes home

My summer recently

There's something magical about watching movies outside. Not sure why. It's just more fun. This past Saturday, GardenGirl and a few other people went to a local shopping plaza and watch The Dark Knight outside. Every Saturday night during the summer they show a movie outside. Next week is Ironman. They set up a large inflatable screen and have a projector. We brought a bunch of food and had a picnic there.

I came home the other night from work and there were about thirty turkey feather all over my deck, mostly in the corner. Now this weird enough except my deck is on the second floor. But flying up there alone wouldn't cause their feathers to fall out, I would think. So either there was a turkey fight on my deck, or it saw it's reflection in my sliding glass door and started freaking out.

Not too much going on here besides that. Been getting used to the new house and the associated work that goes along with it. I've also been trying to get in shape for RAJHADAB. Not sure exactly when it's going to be, but you all need to start riding soon.

And all the little ones are on the way. Good luck to everyone and I'll see y'all soon.

Also, I never knew fresh beets turn your pee pink. I'll have to eat them more often for the fun of it.

Great weekend!

Not much else to say. Our friend Big B came down with his new girlfriend... we'll call her 'Buffy'. We kept her away from Mercy Brown just in case. Here we are taking a break from the river trip to burn stuff. The river is in prime condition this year with all the rain. Just go on a windy day because the misquitos are brutal otherwise.
Kaptain Krunch and the Mrs are down for the next few weeks. They brought their new boat, a Hudson Bay Freighter. Of course Kaptain has it all customized for hardcore fishing and messing about. Here we are after a morning on the saltpond we took it for a trip up the river from bradford. The little 4 stroke pushed it upstream easily. We went as far as the trestle bridge, then floated back downriver. Kaptain had the great idea to use this boat for next year's Fartab. I think its a great idea to get the camping gear to the site with zero effort or excessive car-dropping.
Zak thinks the boat rocks too:
One of the customizations is decking up front for a fly fishing platform. Or sitting up on a recliner sipping a beverage. Perfect.

The High End of Low Tech

I had a Thermodynamics professor who explained the earth would be a better place if you could help 4 billion people who cook/heat/live by firewood use less fuel wood than if you got a few hundred thousand yuppies driving hybrids. Think about it. He's not the only one who thinks that way. Many million$$ have been spent developing high efficiency wood cookstoves for those for who burning wood is a way of life, not a choice. The very impressive folks at Aprovecho have developed a simple, low cost, wood cookstove that can boil a gallon of water in 20 minutes (2x as fast) and using 1/2 the wood as the next closest 'technology'. Again, not a big deal to you or me who have the choice of electric stove, propane, or wood, but to those out there who have no choice, cutting one of their biggest daily expenses in half is a HUGE improvement.

Last week I ordered one to try out from Stove Tec (retail end of Aprovecho) and test fired it this weekend. It works on a very basic principle: Hot fires burn clean and efficient. The concept has gotten the name "Rocket Stove". I highly recommend you make or buy one for yourself to try out. I really want to brew a batch of "Off the Grid Ale' over this thing.... it would be perfect for that.

Switch Topics:

Time to harvest some of the early crops. Here is what onions look like when they're growing. This patch is companion planted with carrots. Yup, carrots grow in between the onions, and there is no room for weeds to grow. It works. You know when to harvest the onions when the tops fall over or when they send up flower stalks. I did the math on onions.... we eat about one or two a week. A bag of onions 'sets' is about a buck, and is enough onions for a year for us. It may not sound like much, but for something so easy to grow that takes up so little space, it is pretty satisfying to grow your own.

Stuff I learned this week.

When a turtle is hiding in his/her shell, then pokes out and starts walking, it *really* freaks out a beagle. In Snoopy's mind, I'm sure he thinks he just saw a rock get up and walk across the road. He started barking at other rocks to get them to wake up and walk. It didn't work.

Goats will go into the kitchen if you leave the door open.

Shiloh is happy when it stops raining every five days.
When it stops raining it is time to go fishing.

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...