Laffing Horse Crafts

Remember my gripe 2 days ago about alternative fuels and why aren’t we using them?

Try this link: Myspace.com

This one does appear to be getting some coverage and results!

it is a myspace video I found through stumber.

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We had, this morning, a refrigerator, a freezer, a washer, a dryer, 8-12′ horse panels, about 15-8′ cattle panels, 2 rolls of sheep fence, 1 roll of chicken wire and about 2 dozen boards of varying length still loaded in the trailer.

No problem! We’ll just use the dolly and tote them into the shop, right? Wrong.

The first thing that had to come of was the refrigerator. The refrigerator that measures 31.5″ from front to back.

The door is 28.5″.

Anyone have any ideas about how to widen a door in a stone building by 4 inches?

Our solution was to drive the trailer, fully loaded, to the property. We unloaded the refrigerator and parked it under a tree and wrapped it with a tarp and there it will stay until we get our house built. Maybe we’ll build a shed just for the refrigerator and run an extension cord to the shed. Maybe, we’ll decide to build the house around the refrigerator instead of ever trying to move that beast again.

Anyone have a 28.5″ wide refrigerator they’d want to trade for a 31.5″ wide refrigerator?

Of course, if we had measured everything with a $.96 tape measure before we’d made the attempt, we could have saved about an hour loading and unloading. Would have saved the ears of the local wildlife from hearing such colorful language, too.

Ah, but for the want of a tape measure…

You know, we have a recoil tape measure… and a yardstick… and hand wound tape measure… and a field measure (really HUGE hand wound tape measure… not sure what the ‘real’ name is, but I’m sure it has a ‘real’ name)… and a measuring tape in Jen’s crochet basket.

Hmmm… Lesson learned?

The plan for today – now that we’ve got the trailer unloaded – is to get the rest of the shop situated, orders finished and shipped, and locate and move the lumber we’ll need for the barn construction. It’s supposed to rain tonight, so digging the post holes will be easy tomorrow (unless it rains 12″ instead of the 1/4″ that’s forecast).

As always, we’ll let you know how it goes.

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When you have a long time to drive and most of what’s on the radio you’ve either heard before or don’t like you start to think. At least I do. And then this happens:

A little slow on the up take, are we?

Here we are, getting ready to put together a homestead. We are starting from scratch. Nothing more that 32 wooded acres, two streams, a chainsaw and a bunch of books to rely on. We can pretty much do it right! Right?

But what is right?

In the process of researching ways to fuel the farm off the grid, we have discovered some distressing stuff. For instance, there is an air car ‚Äì a car that runs on compressed air, a car that gets 120 miles on one tank of compressed air, can be ‚Äúfueled up‚Äù at any air compressor, has it’s own compressor that will fill the tank in 4 hours, uses a pint of oil a year or some such. This car was prototyped about a decade ago. It is estimated to cost around $12,000. $14,000 fully equipped. Comes as either a subcompact (they are actually all subcompact, but configuration differs) a mini pickup or a mini van that will seat 5 people.

We have known about the oil crisis since at least the mid-1970’s, so everybody has been clamoring, off and on, for cars that get better mileage. The best that I have read of to date is the Honda Fit at 60 mgp, introduced in 2006. The air car, which doesn’t use gas, cost less, was intro’d nearly 10 years ago, and I’ve never heard of it. I accidentally stumbled across it while surfing late one night.

Why?!? Why haven’t we heard about it? More importantly, why isn’t every urbanite, suburbanite, commuter ‚Äì driving one?

I mean, everyone is concerned about Global Warming and Greenhouse Gases ‚Äì so much so that at one point there was legislation introduced (and I can’t remember when or where) that attempted to regulate the diet of cows to reduce the amount of cattle flatulence released into the air (methane is a greenhouse gas, remember). Meanwhile, cities, counties, states and countries create stronger and stronger emmisions controls for vehicles, fuel mixtures are being juggled with different mixture of oxygen and ethanol, (and the best ethanol is not made from corn. It’s made from Sugar Beets – betcha you didn’t know that) and cars are being equipped with scrubbers and filters and catalytic converters to meet these stricter standards, yet here is a car, which was intro’d 10 years ago that produces air and water vapor as emissions.

We can’t move with this car, even if we could find one to buy, which we can’t yet. Instead, we are using a great big diesel truck (which we bought because of better mileage and decreased emissions and better pulling power) but once we are settled in ‚Äì wouldn’t this be the perfect car to have?

But doing it right is not just about the type of car we drive. It is also how you take care of your environment. For the longest time, everyone has been told that composting is the way to go, it breaks down some trash nicely and produces a nice fertilizer in return. What a wonderful, environmentally correct thing to do.

Or is it?

Seems that composting produces methane ( a greenhouse gas, remember) and releases it into the dear old atmosphere while we go our merry way heating our houses, food and water with fossil fuels.

But methane burns just fine, and you are making it whether you want to or not. So, why shouldn’t we be using it instead?

Because it takes too much equipment to do it.

That’s what I thought, too. Then I found out that you can generate methane with your left-over salad, a utility knife, duct tape, and an inner tube. I found this out, again, not through mainstream media, not through readily available references, but from an obscure, stumbled upon web site that told me that it is not only readily available and easy to do, but also that the technology has been around for a long, long, long time! Oh, you don’t have to give up your composted fertilizer. In fact, once all the methane has been generated, what’s left is an easy to apply, all natural, liquid fertilizer that doesn’t need to be tilled in.

Seems anyone can do it, and everyone produces it, but we aren’t using it.

Why?!?

Of course, there is also biodiesel, biomass, better ethanol, solar, geothermal, wind and water, but I’ll save those rants for later.

So we are a little slow on the uptake, but that’s only because the information about a better way, about the ‚Äúright‚Äù way isn’t readily available and because we are, perhaps, a little set in our ways, too comfortable with our comfort.

See? I get all preachy and angry… I blame it on the radio not programming stuff that interesting to me… well, that and the fact that this information is not readily available to the general public and touted as alternatives… but don’t get me started… again…

Needless to say, we’ve made it to Fox. We have the truck unloaded, the trailer partially unloaded and a plan to get the first of many barns built tomorrow and Thursday.

We’ll get some pictures and post more tomorrow to let you know how it’s going.

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All the bags are packed but we’re leaving the stove
The shocks look like they’ll handle the load,
It looks like we’re ready for a real long drive
… … …
I’m leavin’ in a big truck,
I just hope that I don’t get it stuck,
4WD not so good when I tow.

With apologies to all that wrote and performed the real song…

I’ll let everyone know how this trip goes once it’s over…

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Maybe I should have titled this post “The high price of complacency,” but complacency is such a long word (note the bold type below).

com¬?pla¬?cen¬?cy

n.

1. A feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble, or controversy.

2. An instance of contented self-satisfaction.

Whereas comfort… well, it’s much easier to say and type (note the bold type below).

com¬?fort

tr.v. com¬?fort¬?ed, com¬?fort¬?ing, com¬?forts

1. To soothe in time of affliction or distress.

2. To ease physically; relieve.

n.

1. A condition or feeling of pleasurable ease, well-being, and contentment.

2. Solace in time of grief or fear.

3. Help; assistance: gave comfort to the enemy.

4. One that brings or provides comfort.

5. The capacity to give physical ease and well-being: enjoying the comfort of my favorite chair.

6. Chiefly Southern & Lower Northern U.S. A quilted bedcover; a comforter.

The long and short of this is, had I been vigilant and taken care of things, life would be easier right now… at lest it would have been easier a few hours and several feet of mud and many, many colorful adjectives and nouns ago.

This next trip will be accomplished with the truck towing the horse trailer. The horse trailer is what we’ll be using to move the horses, the sheep, the goats and all of our larger household items like beds, refrigerators, washers, dryers, bookcases, etc.

The horse trailer, however, has been sitting unused for about three years. We found that we could haul the small loads of small critters in the Suburban or truck or even a minivan with the back seats removed so we hadn’t touched it.

We think we knew that the wiring was shot. We found out we were right.

I had faith in myself.

I knew I could find the shorts and the breaks and fix the trailer.

I knew that if I had done it when it was dry it would be an easy thing to do. Now, however, it would mean laying on my back in six inches of cold mud crawling around under the trailer.

This I was not willing to do.

Instead, I went to town and bought a new wiring harness and rewired the trailer from stem to stern and strapped the wiring to the exterior of the trailer rather than running it through the conduits underneath.

The job is done. The trailer lights work: right turn signal, left turn signal, brake lights, tail lights, side marker lights. I don’t have huge, grotesque clumps of mud in my hair and on my pants and jacket. I should be happy.

I am.

But I can’t help but think that if I had tackled the task when I first thought there was a problem I would have saved precious hours and about $30 in cash now.

Lesson learned? I’ll have to wait until I feel comfortable or complacent again and find out…

How about you? Are you comfortable or are you being complacent?

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A lot of lessons can be learned by the moving process. And when the moving process is as large as ours, the lessons are equally large.

But I’ve always like to think one can learn not only from one’s own mistakes, but from the mistakes of others. So, since I didn’t bother learning from the mistakes of others, here’s your chance to learn from mine

• Don’t push! I drove more than 1700 miles (that’s about 850 one way) in four days. In that space of time, I also unloaded the truck, parked a camp trailer, spent an evening visiting with friends, packed and shipped about 4 packages, and slept a wee little bit. I pushed and I paid… once I returned home I was basically immobilized for a day recovering. If I had taken it easy on the road, I could have returned home a wee bit more refreshed and productive. The trade off wasn’t worth it.
• Prune before packing. That’s prune as is lop off, cut off, or remove stuff, not prune as in the wrinkled, dried fruit full of dietary fiber (as a matter of fact, I would stay very, very far away from the latter if you’re planning a long trip ). Getting to where you’re going and discovering that you’ve packed a lot of nonessentials is frustrating. If it can be replaced for the price of moving, don’t take it. That is, if a bookcase is going to cost $50 to move and you can get or build a new bookcase for $50, leave the bookcase. This applies to everything – not just bookcases.
• Decide to live frugal. This is good advice before moving as well as while moving and after moving. The more (*&%(&^** you have, the more (*&^%(** you have to move, the more )(*&^)(9** you’ll have to care for, the more *&^9)(*&^* you’ll feel obligated to replace. Get rid of the (*%(*(*^%$ and don’t replace it. Here’s how:
  • Look around you and examine the things you use daily. If you see an item you use rarely, drop it in a box and store it somewhere – mark the date on it.
  • Go back in 3 or 6 months… if the box has not been disturbed, toss it… if it’s truly not garbage take it to a recycling center or Goodwill or a Salvation Army or sell it on eBay. Just don’t decide to keep it.
    You’ll be surprised how much stuff you really don’t need and how often you’ll utter the phrase “It seemed like we’d need it when I bought it.”
  • ONE WARNING: This decluttering, simplifying technique will, later on, also cause you to utter the phrase “You never have a &(^%(&^%(* when you need it and we had a (*&%%(&^%)( and we threw it away and now we need a &^%$*&%(. &^%*&%!!!!!!!!!” Even so, it’s worth it.
• COMMUNICATE! Chat, talk, write, observe, comment, make lists, share, and, oh, yeah COMMUNICATE! The easiest way to (*&%(* up a move is to not tell your partner what you’re moving/doing. Then, when your partner goes to unpack his or her _____________ and finds it gone, the (&^%(*& hits the fan. That’s just one example. I’m sure you can think of others. This too is really good advice for every occasion, but vital when moving.
• Maintain a sense of humor. Really, a lot of this stuff is funny.
• Over budget! This does not mean GO over budget. This means if you think it’ll cost $50, take $100. It’s easier to return change to the coffers at the end of a day than it is to fill the fuel tank of a truck with the 37 cents you have left in your pocket because when you last filled up it was $2.35 a gallon and is now $2.59 a gallon and you thought you had enough for breakfast in the last town. Really, trust me, I am an authority on this one!

Hope these help you…

What are your thoughts on moving? Sure would be nice to hear of other people’s, um, er, experiences and learn from them.

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So I’ll follow up the privation post with a “we’ve got too much stuff” post. How’s that?

Here I am in smallsville, Arkansas, snow flurries swirling around in the unseasonable wind and cold, unloading box after box after box from the back of the truck. These boxes are – for the more part – neatly labelled. Boxes large enough to contain small, third world countries. Boxes labelled…

Yarn.

After the boxes are bags and bags and bags and bags, oh yeah, and more bags of fleece.

I know we’re fiber addicts. I know we spin and weave and dye and felt and raise sheep and angora goats and llamas, but really… this is a one-ton truck I’m unloading and I think the yarns and fibers might have strained the suspension.

What’s your stash look like?

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pri¬?va¬?tion (pr-vshn)

n.

1.

a. Lack of the basic necessities or comforts of life.

b. The condition resulting from such lack.

2. An act, condition, or result of deprivation or loss.

---

[Middle English privacion, from Old French privation, from Latin prvti, prvtin-, from prvtus, past participle of prvre, to deprive; see private.]

It’s amazing to me what that word means to different people in different cultures.

Ask a stereotypical soccer mom in middle America and it might mean having no Microwave.

Ask another stereotype – the teenaged boy – and it might mean having to do without his Wii or XBox or PS III.

This came to me last night as I struggled to get warm while lying on thin padding over a concrete floor, covered with several blankets and a small heater directed at me and I started to feel like I was missing something… I was, but in this case the things I was missing involved creature comforts and not needs. I was not suffering from privation, but rather I was wishing I had a nicer bed and Jeanette to warm it for me

I thought instead about the ol’ cowpoke lying under the stars on the ground with no more than a thin bedroll. He’d point his feet to the fire and trust in the powers that be that he wouldn’t roll around too much and catch his toes on fire. Or that it wouldn’t rain or snow or a pack of ravening, stealthy wolves wouldn’t come through in the night…

After that thought, my cold four walls and floor, inadequate heater, thin pad, and stack of blankets felt pretty good.

Still, Jeanette would have been nice to warm those up, too.

What do you value most? What would you miss most? What is privation to you?

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While driving through western Kansas (between Garden City and Dodge City, I think) on our last run from Colorado to Arkansas we saw why Kansas suffered such a power outtage during the ice storm about a month ago.

You know those HUGE metal towers that carry multiple power cables? I’ve always called ‘em Walking Men because they look, to me, like huge giants marching in a long line. Jeanette says she always called ‘em kitties because they’ve got the two pointy ears.

But I digress…

About a dozen of them were crushed and looked more like a ball of tinfoil than they did metal structures. Amazing!

I did take some pictures of them – drive by shootings hanging my camera out the window while we whipped past – but I took them with my Palm and there they will remain until I return to Arkansas where my Palm’s cradle is. As soon as I’m back there I’ll download them and post ‘em. You have to see to believe.

And speaking of the ol’ Colorado to Arkansas run, life has gotten easier thanks to the help of some friends we found on the way. OK, we’ve known them for years, but they had moved and we hadn’t stayed in touch. I found ‘em at a convenient halfway point ‘twixt here and there.

Meanwhile, Jeanette’s in Colorado Springs teaching weaving and I’ve spent the day digging out a trailer (had to pull both tires and change one and air the other one in the muck that comes from 3′ of melting snow and a lot of frozen soil – yuck!). I’m proud to say that the trailer is now sitting in the driveway waiting to be loaded for the next run in a couple of days.

Between tires and towing chores and critter chores – during my ‘breaks’ – I started the work on a 6′ TriLoom, a 7′ TriLoom, 7-1′ TriLooms, a 2′ TriLoom, and 3 sets of square circular knitting needles (sounds funny I know, but I’ve taken my square knitting needles and cut ‘em down, added an 18″ silken cord to make ‘em circs – pretty popular, actually).

And I wrote this blog entry and replied to several emails…

Not a bad days work!

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Jeanette wanted a blog when they first began and I set one up for her. She wrote in it a few times, then it kinda sat in the corner and gathered dust. I understood. A lot of the blogs I had set up originally had done quite the same thing.

I talked her into trying it out again the other day. While she was writing, she said she’d write more often (oftener? frequentlier?) if only she had ideas – says she didn’t want to bore people with personal minutae and it wasn’t anybody’s busines what mood she was in or what song she was listening to. I wrote up a list of things she’s doing every day that people would find interesting, but would not be personal and boring.

That was 3 days and 3 posts to JensBlog ago and she tells me she already has an idea for another post.

She is such a wonderful writer – she was editor and reporter and writer for many years at a newspaper so I don’t know why I should be surprised.

You’ve got to read her post today. It’s about trains… sort of. It’s great.

This post, with it’s rambling title, is being written in her post’s honor.

Not that it really matters.

Speaking of moot points, we’ve decided we’re going to get creative with the naming of landmarks on the property in Fox. Hey, at least it has geographical features to name… the Colorado property is pretty flat and the only reason it doesn’t look like most of Kansas or the surface of the moon (no, I’m not insulting Kansas) is because we left the trees and somewhere my high school English teacher is counting the words and shaking her head sadly and muttering ‘Mr. Hoefer, Mr. Hoefer…’ about bad grammar and run-on sentences (hello Mrs. Grimes )
But that’s kind of the point, here, at least, sort of.

Oh, yeah, geography… One of the hilltops will be named Moot Point, the other hilltop will be named Whatsyer Point, and one of the streams that runs through the property between the two hilltops shall be named Consciousness. We’re debating naming the spring Hope Eternally. When I first said it, Jeanette smiled, said she liked it and wondered what a turnally was… Hopi Turnally… go figger.

While reading Jeanette’s blog the past couple of days – and yes, even though we live together and work together 24 x 7 x 52, I still read her blog – I noticed that there was a lot of food talk. OK, so some of it was dog food, still…

And I just wrote about the geography of the property…

That made me think of our neighbor, Rip, who invited us over for dinner the last time we were there. He fixed Cracklin’ Corn Bread and Ham and Beans and Poke Sallett. Definitely a mountain folk dish, and I had read about it in Foxfire and old Euell Gibbons books and I even had a very dear friend who hailed from Tennessee and I met in the Army (Hey, Loaf, you out there? Charles?) that spoke of it. I had never tried it until that night. I went back for thirds. Would have gone back for fourths, but it was gone. Good stuff.

What?!? No mention of Pogo Sticks? Nope, not one save that one. If you want to read about those, read Jen’s post.

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