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Today was a banner day, it was a beautiful day, sunny, slight breeze, warm , the high was 75 f. After lounging around most of the morning into the afternoon, we got up and started working on concrete. We poured about a foot in depth and about 10 feet long, we are pouring a three sided wall, we pour, allow it to set for a few days, remove the forms and reattach them higher on the wall and pour again, this keeps the forms from bulging out too much, concrete is heavy. Bob mixes the cement powder, local soil, local gravel and a little water in the cement mixer, pours it into a bucket and brings it to the wall, he pours it into the wall cavity, I tamp it down and smooth it out as best as I can with a stick. We also throw in fist sized rocks and poke them into the wet concrete.

After that, Bob got out the powered post hole digger, my Dad gave it to us, so far, digging has been so easy that Bob hasn’t felt the need to use the auger, but he tried it tonight, and was very impressed, he dug 3 holes a few feet away from the south side of the cabin, he set some long 2×6 boards in the holes, filled the hole back in with dirt and a little water and tamped it down. His intention is to make a scaffold structure so he can work safely on that side of the cabin. While he was doing this, I made dinner, I was instructed to post the recipe on my blog, so I will. It’s a recipe I made up when I was a teenager, it’s extreme comfort food.

4 slices of bread (your choice-white or wheat)
4 wieners (hot dogs)
1 can chili
1 can cream corn
mayo
shredded cheese (your choice)

Heat the cream corn and the chili in separate pans, you can heat the wieners in the chili if you want or heat them separately, leave whole or cut into bite sized pieces, your choice. Take 2 slices of bread for each serving, place it on a plate, slather each slice with a thick layer of mayo, I like Miracle Whip, my hubby likes real mayo, make it thick, pour the chili with the wieners) over the bread, place some shredded cheese over this, as much as you want. Next pour the cream corn over the top. Eat. This serves 2 hungry people.

I don’t have a name for this, anyone want to name it? When I made it as a teen, I didn’t add wieners or cheese, I add this now to make it more of a meal. It may sound like a strange combination, but it’s very good, have lots of napkins. Don’t ask about the calorie count, if you have …

02-16-08

Today was different, quite fun actually. The weather has been fairly quiet the last few days, sunny, calm, a little wind now and again, warm days (in the 40s & 50s), cool nights (30s-40s) but for the most part, uneventful. The humidity is generally pretty low, in the 20-30% range, higher at night, lower in the day.

Last night the humidity got up to 91%! I looked out the window and could see low clouds coming across the mountain tops, obscuring them. Today, it snowed, not much accumulation though, a couple of times it looked like we were in a snow globe and someone shook it up. :) I really enjoyed the snow falling and blowing, the snow fell for a short time, and as soon as the sun peeked out from the clouds, the snow that had accumulated, immediately began to melt. A couple of times, during the snow fall, there was so much snow falling and blowing, I couldn’t see the mountains around me, it was so pretty to see. Sorry I didn’t get any pix, but my cell phone takes terrible pix and with all the snow blowing, all it would have shown was white to light gray on white/light gray…

The snow is gone, but the wind stayed, it’s not that cold outside, but with the wind blowing and gusting, the heat that is generated by the wood stove is pulled out almost faster than we can make it. It also messed up movie night, it’s nearly impossible to hear the little computer speakers on the laptop, that is something that I overlooked before I left Best Buy, I wished I had known, I would have gotten a small set of powered speakers, but live and learn.

Power

We have been doing very well with the power, we have learned how much we can use and still have power left over, ie we don’t run out of battery power any more! We have a total of 4 deep cycle batteries, 2 are hooked up to one set of solar panels and 2 are hooked up to another set of solar panels, we use one set for the water pump on the sink and one light, the other set is for the rest of the lights, computer, fan (rarely used), cell phone and occasionally a small electric blanket. Oh, I almost forgot, we are now running a small cube refrigerator, right now we are leaving it outside, covered with a piece of plastic to keep it dry (just in case). It is in the shade (it’s on the north side of the cabin, so it never gets any sun), and for the most part, the outside temp stays cool to cold so the fridge doesn’t run very much, even so, I unplug it at night, and sometimes even leave it unplugged during the day, just depends …

02-11-08

This morning I awoke more refreshed than I have been in a while, the reason is the bed, our bed had been just a mattress laying on the floor, it was comfortable enough, but being directly on the floor, it was cold, we kept 6-7 layers of blankets on top, but the cold seeped in from the bottom and stole our heat, I would wake up aching from being cold. Last night Bob took some of the lumber he got from town and make a frame for the bed, it’s not fancy, but it does lift the bed off the floor by several feet, so now we can store things under the bed. It made a lot of difference in the amount of room we have available. When we went to bed last night, the temp in the room was around 40, but the bed was toasty warm.

Bob went to town with our friend the local builder, he is helping him with a project, it will take about a month to complete, this is the first time I will be by myself all day (with the exception of the dental visits), I must admit that I appreciate my “me time”, don’t get me wrong, I love Bob with all of my heart, but something we both appreciate is the value of private time, and in our little cabin, it’s hard to have any privacy.

I took a leisurely “bath”, well as much as a bath as one can take without a tub, I took a pan of warm water, a wash cloth and a bar of soap and cleaned from top to bottom, I shampooed my hair too, that felt good, I ran around with rollers in my hair until it dried, that doesn’t take long with the warm temperature and low humidity. I used my Avon skin care products on my face, something that I don’t always do every day. I put on clean clothes, then did the dishes. It’s so nice to be able to wash myself and the dishes in hot water.

I started something, maybe something good, maybe something not so good, we have honey bees in abundance around here, they fly in the house and that’s OK, they don’t bother anything or anyone, they just buzz around looking for something good to eat. They fly in the front door, and mainly check out the sink area, if I have anything they might like, I try to make it easy for them to get it. Today, I made up a sugar solution in a plastic lid and placed it down for them, one bee found it, sucked up as much as she could hold, then flew out the window, about 20 minutes later, I have 2 bees buzzing around, they both found the sugar solution, and a while later my cabin was a buzz …

02-05-08

Just before daybreak, we were awakened by the sound of sleet falling on the roof, when I went to bed (at about 3:30 am, yeah I know…), the temp was 42 and steady, the wind was blowing, as usual, I could see the stars out the window so the sky was clear, what a difference a few hours can make! Bob got up and started the fire going in the wood stove, I laid in bed until it got light outside, Bob was making biscuits on the wood stove, he makes a pretty mean biscuit :) I finally rolled out of bed to see the snow, the sleet had stopped and had been replaced by fluffy snow flakes. Everywhere I looked, the snow was swirling, the ground was becoming white, the mountains were looking very scenic. I grabbed my camera (cell phone) and started snapping pix. I put on my thick, quilted coveralls (one of the best things we got before we left Irving!), I leashed up a very reluctant dog and went outside. Once we were out, Pekoe became less reluctant and more interested in doing her business, the clouds were breaking up and the sun was starting to shine, it had just came over the east ridge of the mountains and illuminated the patchy snow on the ground, I snapped quite a few good pix, it’s amazing how a little snow can make the most mundane objects look special.

I came back inside when I ran out of memory in my cell phone for pix, the dog had completed her business and my fingers were frozen. I carried 2 logs up from the street side of our property, that’s a bit of a walk, all up hill, but I managed, we needed the wood, and besides, I didn’t want to have to explain why I didn’t bring at least one piece of wood when I was right next to it.

An interesting observation, I noticed that when frozen precipitation falls, it doesn’t melt, it evaporates, the air is so dry here, the humidity is nearly always low, when I picked up the snow today, it just evaporated in my hand, very interesting indeed…

Now I am sitting in front of a warm fire, wearing my warm, fuzzy pink PJs, sent to me by my MIL, enjoying part 2 of the weather event that was NOT predicted by the NOAH weather people on line, the clouds came back and it started snowing again.

Care Packages

In the last week, we have received 2 sets of care packages, the first came from Bob’s mom, it came via UPS, delivered to our neighbor’s house (thanks again to our wonderful neighbor!), it came in 3 boxes, one box was for our neighbor, he has been inducted into the family so he gets care packages too. About half of the stuff was …

02-04-08

Here are some pictures of the water system, it is all inside our cabin so we don’t have to worry about anything freezing. It basically works like this, we have a 55 gallon plastic (food safe) barrel next to the sink, it is filled with clean water. We placed a length of black plastic tubing (it’s like a hard water hose) going down into the inside of the barrel, it goes all the way to the bottom of the barrel. This goes to a 12 volt water pump, this is attached directly to the water faucet which is attached to the wall above my sink. The pump is powered by one of the big batteries in our power system. It is always powered on, but only comes on when the faucet is opened. When the faucet is opened, the pump immediately pumps water from the barrel to the faucet, it creates pressure so the water comes out hard enough to do what I need it to do. Right now, there is only cold water, we have to rely on our wood stove to provide hot water for now, that will change in the future, but for now, it works great!

The graphic I drew is pretty close to how it really looks, but things are a bit farther apart then I drew, the barrel is pretty close to the sink, the pump is really that close to the faucet, the sink is not that far from the faucet, and the battery is not that close to everything else.

My sink

I love my sink, it was a “found treasure”, when we still lived in Irving, I was coming home from work, taking one of my usual short cuts, I passed a rent house that was being renovated. There was a pile of trash and stuff sitting out near the street. I saw the sink sitting there and decided that it would be mine. I went home, got Bob, we went back and got the sink and a few miscellaneous items, it’s amazing what people throw away! :) The sink has been around for a while, I would guess it’s a 40s or 50s model, you don’t see them like this anymore. It’s enameled steel, white, with a double bowl design, what is different is it has built in drain boards on both sides of the sink, (all made out of enameled steel), it has an art deco look to it. The enamel is in pretty good shape, it does have a few dings in it, but far fewer than my original sink at my old house! The biggest advantage for me is the drain boards, most people now days have automatic dish washers and don’t have much need for these, but since I am living more like a pioneer, the drain boards are a real help to me.

Bob …