Spring is here..... I hope

I apologize for not posting in a while, it has been a crazy month for me.  Between working and helping the wife get the garden in at the homestead we have been pretty busy.

The weather has been pretty nice down there so I think we got most of the cold weather crops planted at this point.  This year we are going for a pretty good sized garden.  I promise when I get a chance I'll take pictures of it and post them on here.

I was very grateful when the patriarch of the family came over with his tractor and broke open over an acre of ground with it.  I'll admit I was not looking forward to taking the tiller over that on the first pass, it might have taken a while.

Now to get the lawnmower going before we have a forest to cut down and countless other things to do.  I will be so glad when I can get transferred down by the homestead instead of being 7 hours away.  I've put in for two positions close by so I hope I hear from them soon.  It will make things so easier to get done on my days off.

A cheap drip system for the garden

I ran across a pretty interesting article over at shtfprepardness.com  on setting up a Chapin Bucket irrigation system.

The link to the instructions can be found here for it.  The system is really pretty cheap to put together from what I can tell.

It is a simple gravity fed system that goes to a drip line.  From what I can tell one of the many benefits is that it would be easy to monitor how much water you are giving your plants in the garden there and its a system that does not waste any like a traditional sprinkler.  This is a system that is used all over the world in many different situations.  I can see how easy this would be to use along with a catchment system to really cut down on the watering bill for your garden.

This looks like another of the many things to try out.

Gotta love American ingenuity....

The nice thing about free enterprise is that you have a hard time slowing it down.

A little while back the wonderful state of New York passed a very atrocious 'gun control' bill that would ban any type of AR platform.

I ran across a wonderful article at gunsfreedom.com where a manufacturer has already worked around the restrictions.

Yes, at one glance it doesn't look very pretty but like they state, it shoots exactly the same as any other AR platform.  Also the beauty of it is that you don't have to do a whole lot to set it up as any other AR platform.

Right now it sounds like there are some pretty hard pushes in the states that passed crazy laws like this to get them repealed.  The public as a whole does not like the fact that 'big government' is encroaching into their lives so they are pushing back so we shall see where that leads. 

Round .... of snow

This was what I woke up to this morning.  We were predicted to get anywhere from 3-6 inches from one forecast to 6-9 inches from another.

The thing about this is that it sure makes for a slow work day for me.  I do work for a company that focuses on safety so when the roads look like they are even remotely starting to get 'interesting' they lock all travel down to an individual basis.  So on my first day back to work up here in NW Oklahoma I am sitting here at the farm watching it snow outside.

I swear I have lost track of how many times it has snowed this year.  Honestly we don't get a whole lot of snow, but I have a feeling that the weather patterns are switching on us again.  I can remember back in the late 70's getting these nice snow storms like we are this year.

Now my kids back at the Homestead in Eastern Texas were commenting that they wanted to see about this much snow down there.  I told them that was a bad...bad idea.  For one that would mean the possibility of  quite a bit more snow back up where I work.  More significant though is the fact that the climate down there is really not suited for that kind of freezing weather.  The wife is wanting to get geared up for the spring planting season and get the garden started here pretty quick.  A large cold snap that brought snow would really adversely affect the growing season down there which wouldn't be good.

You have to love the Farmer's Almanac though.  It did predict both the mild summer we had and this wet winter we have been getting so far.  To me that looks like another sign that the weather patterns might be switching.  It should be interesting to see what the summer holds for us this year.

So what does everyone else think of these weather patterns?

Having fun with the fence lines

This is a shot of the fence I put in at the family farm.  Now I know some people will consider a 8-9 wire overkill but when you are trying to keep in little critters like goats it works out well.

I know people ask, 'why not use woven wire'?  Well there are a few factors in determining if you want to do that.  I'll admit it does have an initial lower cost, but the maintenance and upkeep for it is quite a bit higher.  When you start getting critters stuck in it and you have to cut them out you understand why.  A high tinsel barbed wire fence has fewer maintenance requirements over the long run.

Another bonus that I noticed is the fact that other critters like dogs etc have an extremely difficult time getting through that kind of a barrier.  They have to dig pretty far under the fence if they try that tactic since your bottom wire is only a few inches off the ground if that.

This is the kind of fence I plan on putting up at the 'homestead' in Texas.  There is no permanent fence on the southern boundary of the property and I plan on fixing that.  Last weekend (for me at least on my days off lol) I had the kids working on clearing out the brush and trees along the other established fence lines.  I was rather surprised at the amount they were pulling out of the fence there.  They pulled something like 6 pickup loads of brush cut out of the fence line.  It sure made the burn pile we started rather large but it burned down nicely and left a nice bed of ashes that we can spread out in the garden plots later.

For the fence line on the southern boundary I have to cut a lane through the trees for about 100 feet so that's on my agenda when I go home this weekend.  That way I can get ready to start putting up that stretch.  It is a little over 900 feet so that's a nice little stretch.  Once I have the lane clear I can figure out how many corner posts and braces I need, t posts etc so we can get the rest of the materials and get started on it.

The other project we are working on is a new chicken coop and runs that we are building.  I will have to do another post on that one.

Til next time...

The fun in assembling a M.O.L.L.E. II pack system

Well to those of you who have had the dubious pleasure of serving in our armed forces you know how much fun assembling gear can be.  The military usually does things one of two ways.  They either give you a point by point set of instructions that can border on the insane, or you get absolutely nothing.  For some odd reason there is no in between lol.

So I had ordered the large pack system over 6 months ago.  I got one that was in excellent shape, with no previous markings on it from the 'former' owners which was nice.  I had purchased it to carry in my truck while I was driving over the road so if I needed to I would have something to be able to make it home with.  Well I decided shortly after that I was not driving over the road anymore so I never set it up.

Here it is 6 months later and I decide that maybe I should go ahead and set it up since I have it.  I pull all of the pieces out and lay it out.  At that point I realize that I have never set one of these systems up!  I always got it assembled.

So I get on my trusty laptop, type in a Google search and look at the results.  There were a bunch of  video links but I will admit it took about 3-4 different ones before I found one that actually showed how to assemble it.

It took me about 3 hours between searching the net and slowly putting it together to get it assembled.  It really wasn't all that hard which was surprising lol.  Here soon I will load it down and readjust it accordingly.

So who has had this much fun with army surplus supplies lol?

Cold in Texas!!!!

Who would have thought it gets cold in Texas, I mean its way down there in the southern part of the US, right?  Yeah I know wishful thinking lol.

When I went home last weekend it got pretty cold at the homestead.  Now keep in mind that we are located just below the 'freeze' line that stretches across the area.  Yes I know it can still get cold down there but not into the single digits normally, not including win chill ugh.

We found out we have some work to do re-insulating some water lines.  Thankfully they didn't break, but we spent the whole day with a heater trying to thaw them back out.  This happened in the newly remodeled section of the house where the new bathroom was plumbed in.  We do have a section of wall on the outside that needs some new siding put up, so I plan on pulling down the old siding so I can get to the water lines to make sure they are well insulated first.  In that spot is where the water comes into the house, and to the hot water heater.  Having a spot between one to two inches on the outside that is exposed to that wonderful wind did us in I believe.

Another thing that I needed to do was fix the security lights we have on the poles outside.  They are your normal pole lights that come on at night.  Well the first problem is that I didn't have a ladder that could quite reach all the way, unless I put it in the tail gate of the pickup.  The other is that the light in front is not right on the pole but out about 3 feet from the pole.  I started to go up, but after looking it over, thought better not to without any type of fall protection harness to protect me since I would end up like the picture above.  I'm sure our cats would make the same comment too knowing those furballs lol.

My father in law was able to bring over a bigger ladder after I had to go back to Oklahoma for work and reach a pole that was a little lower with the light right on it. (we have 3 total in the yard)  I'm glad he didn't try the other one.  I think we are going to call the electric company and see what they would charge to make a service call to put in the other one.  If the charge isn't too bad I'll gladly pay to let them do it safely.  I'll admit, I'm not relishing the idea of getting up that monster lol.

The kids are very happy to be back in their old school, and the better half is glad to be back in her house.  Now to build that list of  "honey do's" for the year so we can figure out what needs to be done.  The only other major thing I have to do is look into putting in an amplifier for our cell phones.  The service for ATT in that area sucks although they say its fine.  I can get a few bars outside but inside the house the signal drops too much.  One I located is about 220 from Wilson and it looks like the best bet so far so we'll see.