The Ultimate Answer to Kings

This morning’s sunrise deserved a better lens, and a better photographer.

I knew from the moment I was vertical this morning it was going to be a beautiful day.

Near the end of December and/or the beginning of January is traditionally when we’ll get some truly cold weather dumped on us, though it can happen any time. It’s not real common to have such a pretty couple of days right after Christmas. But I’ll take it – and I didn’t want to take it in my traditional winter way of sitting around reading a book and being bored to tears.

I spent the morning futzing around doing chores…

…mostly hauling woodstove and burn barrel ashes to the ashpit, and generally cleaning up. I wanted to do something substantial outdoors this afternoon but nothing useful came to mind – I could go shooting, but you know. Ammo supplies are still present, but finite. Then I got to remembering… Continue reading →

…which just happens to fall on Christmas.

I have long rebuffed the idea of any sort of slow cooker at the Lair for the obvious reason that things that make heat with electricity are notorious power hogs. Granted that I know two sets of neighbors who think nothing of using Crockpots, they have much bigger power systems than I do and also think nothing of using their big backup generators.

I maintain that the decision was prudent – but that doesn’t mean it was tested. And when Landlady brought a small Crockpot to Ian’s place and gave me express permission to use it, I didn’t argue. In fact it would be an interesting test of Ian’s large but more than 10-year-old battery bank.

It mostly sits there, running nothing but a refrigerator, topped off with power every morning and with water on the first of every month – and it has shown no deterioration at all because it’s made of top-of-the-line batteries and it’s never stressed. Time to see what happens when I stress it, just a bit…

Christmas supper will be elaborate by my standards – two chunks of frozen pork and a couple cans of veggies, washed down with box wine that was a neighborly gift. I ran the pot on high yesterday afternoon just to see if/how it worked – it works fine – and then on low overnight. This practice would basically be against my religion if I started having a religion. Thou Shalt Not Run Appliances At Night.

And the batteries noticed…

…but took it in stride without apparent distress.

Today we eat!

Enjoy your holiday.

Couldn’t hurt…

Cold, windy but sunny today. No matter what and no matter how, this had to be baking day and I got an early start in hopes of using the waste heat to get the Lair toasty early.

I succeeded only in making bread dough, since the Lair oven refused to light. Again*.

Plan B: Take the dough and a few needed tools to Ian’s place, just over the ridge…

…where there’s a perfectly good oven.

Climb under the counter, reach around behind the stove to open the gas line**, then light the oven pilot. From there, I’m in business.

There’s actually an incentive that makes this arrangement less unpleasant than you might think… Continue reading →

A Christmas gift from neighbors who know me too well…

D&L have doctor appointments in the big town about 50 miles away, which means their dogs and horses are at the mercy of my pitiful ministrations…

Feeding the horses always includes going around cleaning up horse apples, and this time of year you also need to remember to break and skim off ice. D&L have a special tool for that…

…which was a gift from me, sometime in 2015. I bought a heavy-duty shitfork for one particular job of moving a multi-ton manure pile in 2014, had no further use for it and intended to sell it to D&L. But then I cracked the handle and ended up giving it to them after a field expedient repair that apparently worked really really well…

They think the same thing of the fork that I did, which is that it’s too heavy for regular shit shoveling: The lighter plastic ones may not last forever but they’re easier to use. I bought it because I had a huge pile of composted manure to move, and since I gave it to D&L they’ve relegated it to skimming ice off watering troughs. It works really well for that and though it doesn’t put my handle repair to any strong test, the repair has at least lasted a really long time. 🙂

Sorry – I swore off political filler but this one made me laugh very hard.

Sun’s out: Yesterday afternoon got warm enough to melt off quite a bit of remaining snow cover, and last night got plenty cold enough to freeze all the resulting moisture back out of the atmosphere. The result was a nice hard frozen ground for my morning walkie…

Coming home over the ridge overlooking the Lair, I noted that the rooftop solar panels had already shed their frost but the groundmount panels hadn’t even started. This was no surprise, since they’re aimed in different directions* and of course the rooftop panels had been out of the shade longer.

But there was a sort of smudge on one panel I thought rated a closer look…

The hell?

I have no explanation for this. These panels are over 15 – probably closer to 20 – years old and this might be a sign of some sort of malfunction. But I can’t imagine what it might be. The system overall seems to be working fine.

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*When I built the cabin I deliberately oriented it such that the roof slope would face due south, thinking that was the right thing to do. In a classic example of not knowing what you don’t know, I had completely forgotten/ignored all that talk about “declination” in my long-ago ground nav courses. In the SW desert, the difference between magnetic south and true south is substantial.

In a classic example of what we’ll call a Reverse Murphy, this later provided the unintended advantage that my rooftop panels function better in early morning while my groundmount panels function better in latish afternoon. Also they’re set at different angles, with the groundmount panels (deliberately – not everything I do is a mistake) permanently angled to take better advantage of winter sun, but that’s not really relevant to this post.

9 o’clock this morning found me very punctually waiting for a propane guy to come do propane stuff at a neighbor’s house. I can’t describe to service people how to get to the Gulch, so sometimes I have to wait at the county road to lead people in. Comes with the territory.

He actually showed up on the horizon closer to 9:30, which given the comment I wrote just before leaving to keep the appointment sort of tempered my annoyance with amusement.

Turns out Landlady had switched propane providers, so this guy disconnected and replaced the old tank but didn’t haul it off. Which probably means that before long I’ll be sitting beside the county road waiting for another propane guy to show up.

In spite of Lair improvements that help me make it more livably warm, so that winter isn’t quite the drawn-out emotional event it used to be, I still pay a lot of attention to the coming and especially the passing of the winter solstice. In particular, I like to note exactly when the sun peeks over the ridge to the Lair’s immediate east…

…which, when I first started paying attention to that, used to be almost precisely 7:45. But last winter I noticed something that perplexed me for a minute or two, before I had some more coffee and gave it a bit of thought…

Local daybreak was coming later. It’s not supposed to do that. We’re not talking about climate change, which obeys the bidding of its masters Algore and AOC. This is the frickin’ sun and planets, which probably only answer to somebody like Soros. And why would he want to make my day several minutes shorter? Is it a plot? Is it some nefarious plot involving terrifying space monkeys? Maybe I need a bigger gun.

The reason, of course, was obvious by a moment’s study of the scene. The sun wasn’t peeking over the ridgeline as such. It was peeking through the branches of a juniper which, in the 9+ years since I first started noticing solstice daybreak, could be expected to have grown slightly.

I was amused at the extent to which the knowledge made me feel better. I’ve said it before: Moving to a cold place where you have to make your own heat and shelter or freeze will give you an appreciation for why ancient people are said to have gotten so worked up over the winter solstice. Under those circumstances, it’s important.

Not important enough to go up and cut that juniper out of the way, but important.

Quite unexpectedly, Christmas came to the Gulch yesterday.

A nice card with some strange green paper inside. Wonder what it wants?

Amazon gift card which immediately got used…

One from Landlady, who knows me well…

…and a big box’o’food from Big Brother!

Thanks, guys! You rock.

…and it struck a little early.

According to the forecast I saw, yesterday was supposed to be colder than Friday and then today was supposed to go all to hell.

That would have been reasonably good timing, because yesterday evening was the scheduled time for one of S&L’s famous all-neighbors parties in honor of a couple of newbies. And the party went off wonderfully well – but we were all aware that the wind had come up an hour or two beforehand and the storm jumped the gun and broke while the party was going on. Which meant…

…not everybody even made it home under their own power. Super-heavy wind, sideways snow, temperature dropped 20^o in an hour. The one family that doesn’t have 4X4 ended up stranded and we ferried them home in two different vehicles. 4X4 is usually unnecessary in the boonies – but you don’t always get a lot of warning about when it’s going to stop being unnecessary.

The storm stayed just long enough to make the homeward trip an adventure, then the sky cleared completely. And you know what that meant…

Single-digit temperatures for the first time this winter. Landlady normally comes over for coffee before heading home Sunday morning, so I was in a hurry getting the cabin’s indoor temp presentable.

Funny thing: At one point last night, supper table conversation turned to a list of all the dangerous or possibly-dangerous game we’ve seen so far this winter. One neighbor claimed he saw two bears on his game camera, and was an eye-witness to the brutal murder of a coyote by a mountain lion. That was … motivating news. And then this morning while Landlady and I were enjoying coffee, her dog suddenly wanted into the cabin and when she got in she was trembling and the hair on her back was all standing up. She had seen or smelled something she thought called for immediate human intervention or at least comfort. I asked Landlady if she was carrying, and she admitted she was not. So – I lent her a rifle and she didn’t even give me a funny look. That’s not weird. Right? Continue reading →

I have four pair of nice new winter jeans. One’s not even out of the package yet. Only one pair has any real time on it since I bought it halfway through last winter. And Tuesday evening that pair came back from S&L’s washing machine like this…

I think it’s my fault, too. These are the pants I wore at the start of the month, during battery day. Not completely certain of it – holes just like these showed up on my old winter canvas jeans at strange random times till they were just covered with patches.

Meaning, of course, that my jean-patching infrastructure is well established. I had to wait till today’s full sun to use it because an iron-on patch requires me to break out my cheap drugstore iron, with predicable results…

That’s not how that meter is supposed to read at mid-day with the sun shining brightly. But electrical things that make heat are absurd power hogs. I wanted to fix my pants yesterday afternoon but there was too much gloom: I’m more touchy about abusing my batteries than about holes in my new green jeans.

Still, a few minutes with an iron followed by a lot of minutes with needle and thread…

…and they’re good for anything but maybe a dinner party. By the historical standards of my winter pants, today this pair has become a man.

I’m not convinced battery acid did this – but I will take care to avoid wearing them on battery day for the rest of the season just in case and we’ll see if any more holes mysteriously appear.

I woke this morning to the sound of rain on the roof…

…and since it really clouded up overnight the temperature outside wasn’t even freezing. Which meant that for the first time in days I had nowhere I had to go, nobody I had to meet and nothing that had to be done first thing. Yeah, chicken chores but their water would still be liquid and they had food and they’re not laying eggs to any great degree so I could do that at my leisure. Which, finally, meant I could do something I’m not at all in the habit of doing: Reclining on my unmade bed with a book and a cup of coffee and indulging in a morning of complete sloth.

That lasted until about 7:30, when the stunted little angel on my shoulder woke up, stretched, yawned, and reminded me of something I had completely and conveniently forgotten…

Yesterday I was over at D&L’s helping to unload a pallet of wood pellets. And while I was there D said he planned to go to town this very rainy morning, and I specifically asked if I could come along, because…

…as of yesterday morning I was officially half out of propane for the bedroom heater.

Bother! I really did not want to get up, put some pants on, and do all the necessaries before heading to town in the rain. I grumped. I moaned, swore, and cursed what gods there may be. I may have whined just a little. Nevertheless I never seriously considered begging off, because…

You can put off things that don’t really need doing. But you better do the things you gotta do at the first opportunity, because doing anything else is an open invitation to Uncle Murphy. And Murphy shows up uninvited often enough as it is. Do it in a mild rain, or do it in a shrieking freezing wind – or huddle next to the woodstove wishing to heaven you hadn’t put it off when you had the chance. Not really a choice.

Anyway, now every single propane bottle is full or near enough – and that’s a really nice feeling.

And that’s a perfectly good reason to do it, in my humble opinion.

Only a few months after I moved into the Secret Lair, for reasons having to do with thoroughly poor woodstove and pipe choice, I had myself a chimney fire. And while I dealt with it well enough at the time*, it added a layer of PTSD to the winter experience I could have much more happily lived without.

That was several years ago and I’m pretty much over it. Except once in a while.

Like this morning, for example. Sometimes Uncle Joel, getting on toward being an old man, wakes up in the middle of the night and has trouble getting back to sleep. I’ve been up and dressed, bunk neatly made, since around 3 ayem. And for the first time all this winter I was reluctant to light the woodstove, and having lit the woodstove anyway I found myself (a little) paranoid about fire in the stovepipe.

I have a remedy for that…

I knew intellectually that there was absolutely no danger of a chimney fire. I checked it only a little over a month ago. But at the same time, there was absolutely no reason not to take the stovepipe down and give it a quick scrub if the issue was going to bug me.

So I did.

When I installed this stove and pipe back in December 2012, remedying the problem that caused that fire a long time ago, I deliberately arranged the pipe such that removing it for cleaning or whatever would be very simple and easy. I anticipated that it was going to be an emotional issue – and for a couple of winters the pipe got cleaned with a frequency that could only be described as neurotic.

I gradually got over that. Very gradually. But it’s in no real danger of ever being neglected to the point of ever becoming a real danger ever again, ever.

Hey, it takes like 20 minutes. And it did no physical good – there was no creosote building up in the pipe. But afterward I always feel much better. So why not?

I’m not even bashful about it – after all, the very fact that I live in the boonies at all is a testament to the lengths I’m willing to go to remove fearful stress from my life. A quick stovepipe scrub is nothing.

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*I’m happy to say without fear of contradiction that I’m generally not one of those people who freeze in a crisis. More often I immediately concoct a list of things to be done in order, do them in that order, deal with the situation and the cleanup and then fall to pieces at my leisure. Living here has given me a few more opportunities to prove that to myself.

For some reason the Jeep just goes through batteries. I think it’s probably because it never really goes anywhere and so the battery is never really fully charged. But that’s just a guess. Anyway, we seem to go through this every winter. The past two mornings after rather cold nights it has been reluctant to turn the starter motor over, and I thought I’d better take the opportunity of a warmish afternoon to see if servicing it will help.

Step one: Clean off the battery, clean and tighten the connections. And all are indeed filthy, so that could just possibly fix the problem right there. In fact if it doesn’t – and if the problem doesn’t turn out to be in the starter motor, which happened one time – the next step is a new battery.

Having done that, which took no time at all, I went into the powershed for my Battery Minder…

[Honest Trailer Awesome Voice] In a world where a man finds himself dinking around with batteries all the freaking time…he needs a Battery Minder.

sigh – preferably one that hasn’t been quietly rat-chewed since the last time he used it.

Break out the tools and a soldering iron. Search till you find where you left the solder, which of course you didn’t store with the frickin’ iron. Trim the wire and solder it together – of course you can’t find your heatshrink so tape it tight as you can…

…and we’re back in business.

The Jeep and the Battery Minder are old friends. Last year they spent a whole month together when I went to the city without them. So I’ll let them catch up on business overnight, and then in the next few cold mornings we’ll see if that fixed anything.

Over a year ago I dumped a bunch of stovewood at the barn above Landlady’s house during the annual woodcutting festival. Today I hauled the last of it down to her porch.

I brought my saws along, having deliberately not scavenged four or five pallets that have lain around the barn for years.

I cut the pallets apart with my nice reconditioned Sawzall, cut them into stove lengths – I have this down to a science by now…

Loaded them into a wheelbarrow…

Carefully wheeled them down a steep slope to her porch…

Then filled up her woodbox and ready rack. This, including the surplus, might last till the end of the month. Might not – but my nice full woodshed is holding up nicely so she won’t run out during her visits every 2 or 3 weeks. I like to think of myself as the Gulch’s on-call villein: A resident but not a landowner, and motivated to keep them thinking I’m useful.

This has taken a really long time.

(ED NOTE: Regular readers might be wondering why I seem to be endorsing a rifle product, especially one involving a fancy AR-15. How would the old cedar rat even know about it, right? Well – I’m friends with Ian McCollum. And when Ian gets excited about something, all his friends are going to hear all about it. In detail. With working models and free ammo. So I’ve been following this with interest from the beginning. ‘Nuff said.)

Ian and Karl’s What Would Stoner Do Project back in 2017 got a lot of attention at the time but ran into a roadblock on its journey to fame and fortune when it turned out that the lower receiver they chose wasn’t being manufactured and wasn’t going to be. Continue reading →

…to the biggish town about 35 miles away. Which meant I had to actually dress like a townie…

…which is not the problem it was years ago when I lived on 30 bucks a week and wore rags. At the end of last winter I finally retired my winter jeans, which were mostly patches, in favor of new. So this time I didn’t even have to change pants. Shirt and belt gear were something else, but no big deal. Just doesn’t happen very often, and so it tends to put me into a ‘junk on the bunk’ mood… Continue reading →