Author: Garry

I was so damned pleased and excited as I opened the box of my Ruger’s new laser sight. Slapped the battery in that puppy and went to mount it…only to find that it was made for the Ruger LCP and I had a Ruger LCP II. Dammit. Good thing that Amazon gives do overs (at no cost), so I’m back to waiting for my new laser once again.

Holster arrive and It’s great. New below and old above.

I’m pretty safe around fire arms. Even still, there are things in the environment that will remind you just how deadly they are and how quickly things can go south. This last November one of my neighbors sent me a note asking if I knew who it was that shot himself in front of my place. That kinda talk gets your attention real quick. Turns out it was a hunter that lives about 15 miles south of here (near Rogersville) and he was on the road that separates my property from Alabama. I found this on his Facebook page a short while later:

What got me thinking about this event was the challenge I have with clearing my LCP. It was made for shooting, not for unloading. Here is why:

That is a 380 round sitting on the ejection port of the LCP. There is zero clearance for an undischarged round to clear the port. It fires well, and I’ve never had an expended shell fail to eject but clearing it with an undischarged round is a real pain. Here is another view:

In the grand scheme of things this means that if you own an LCP and carry with one in the chamber then you will always have a challenge clearing the weapon. That pesky round in the chamber just becomes too comfortable in it’s circumstances to dislodge easily. Despite these two major drawbacks (no external safety and undersized port) the weight and ease in concealment make it my weapon of choice.

Yesterday was a welcome reprieve from the constant rain here in southern Tennessee.  It’s back again today with all day showers/storms forecast/expected.

A constant breeze yesterday set up conditions where I could get out and work without sinking into the saturated soil so I took a stab at clearing out some of the gravel around the planting beds in the garden and stuffed some more hay into the hay rings so that I wouldn’t have to do it today.  I won’t melt but the tractor will tear up the pasture when They’re drenched.

Today is a different story, the rain came for a good long while and I spent the morning working up my veggie and seed order from Victory Seeds (site here).  I found everything I needed but the Besser Tomatoes.  Amazon has them and they did just fine last time I went there. 

Just as I was rounding out my ‘shopping cart’ at Victory I got spam mail from another seed provider that I’ve purchased from in the past: Harris Seed.  A quick look at their site and one thing became immediately apparent:  Someone is doing drugs in Rochester.

I thought someone had had erred so I dug a little deeper and found that the people over at Harris (site here) must really love their seeds.

When it comes to tomatoes there is no limit to the varieties. The same goes for other edibles but not quite so apparent. Baker Creek (site here) has some pretty wild heirloom varieties. I’ve done business with in the past and they were the only firm that bothered to mail me (as in someone carries a physical object and places in a box near your home) a color hard copy of their seed catalog. Unsolicited.

I’m was going to pass on all of the novelties this year and get back to the very basics of a country garden, but what’s the fun in that? I’m ordering these multicolored gems and the large yellow beefsteak (below).

I’ve still got to order root-stock and scion wood for apple and pear, but that’s an adventure (and story) saved for another day.

All of the ice and snow has converted to liquid and started it’s long journey to the sea. Last week we got down to -6 and it stayed at or below freezing from Sunday the 14th until the afternoon of Monday the 21st. Just when we cleared that hurdle another is being thrown in our path: flooding.

Wifey was able to get out to her hairdresser who lives/works about 5 miles away; I drove the route in advance in my Jeep to make sure all of the residual ice was cleared from the road and that she’d be OK. Between the time she left at 9:30 and the time I left to make sure she could get back in (noonish) enough rain had fallen to flood the low areas along the route. The most significant was along my drive. Here is what my valley looks like in ‘normal’ times:

Now here is what it looks like when the wicked witch of the west frowns over my piece of paradise. Looking down at the valley during a heavy rain.

My drive that crosses a ‘feeder’ (or wet weather stream) that feeds the creek.

Now here is a photo looking east along the ‘feeder’. Notice how much higher the wall of the trench look in the distance than they do near the road. As the water washes down it flows out of the banks and spreads across the terrain from near where base of the tree that is on the left of the photo near the road.. It also flows out of its banks past the tree on the right of the photo. In short, it flows broadly and swiftly through this area.

So after weathering the ice and snow of last week the rain and floods are thrown my way this week. I guess flying monkey are next. All of this for a boy that spent his formative years in an environment that looks like this:

I posted about my garden ambitions a short while ago and this morning I got to wondering why it is that the garden is on my mind at this time of year. Then it hit me: sauerkraut and hot sauce. I made a couple of hot dogs the other day and placed store bought (Vlasic) sauerkraut over the dog and splashed on just a few (a judicious few) drops of some hot sauce I had made a couple of years ago. That stuff is both hot and has a great flavor and I’m down to my last bottle. Oh, by the way: to say that I made it a few years ago is only kinda/sorta correct as it is still slowly continuing to ferment.

It’s made from fermented ‘Super Chili Peppers’ shown above. These weigh in on the top of the medium range of Scoville Heat Units (SHU) at 50,000 SHU. They are also know as ‘Asian Super Chili Peppers’. They are a dead ringer for the ‘Thai Chili Pepper’ (shown below). Thai Chili Peppers have a SHU rating of 100,000.

If you had bushes from both varieties in your garden then you’d not be able to distinguish between them on looks alone. Here is how to tell the difference: pick a couple of peppers from the plant, then reach down and grab your genitalia. If you quit screaming within a week then it was a Super Pepper, any longer then it was Thai.

I found a site that shows 470 pepper varieties and their respective Scoville Heat Units (SHU). It is located here. The table is by SHU (vice alphabetical) so the search/find feature of in your browser is your friend.

Ferment the peppers by coarsely chopping and then toss them in a jar with salted water. Things will get wild for a while and then calm down after a couple of weeks (I let mine go long). Everything, including the brine, goes into the blender until it is completely liquid. Poor it into bottles (Amazon is your friend) and you’ve got a great hot sauce that is, as far as my tastes go, on the upper limit of heat.

The sauerkraut made me think about the garden as well. Once you make your own, at home, with cabbage from the garden (notice I didn’t say your garden), store bought just doesn’t quite scratch the itch. Beyond remembering the great taste of past ferments, I ran across this as I was looking through old links.

Ingredients: cabbage, red apple, caraway seeds, whey, salt and spring water. Can’t wait to see if I can make this ferment work!

So even though I can’t get out of my driveway I’m thinking of a garden and what kind of great stuff can be created from 5th year soil (vice the dirt Ive been growing in for the last 4 years).

We’ve been locked down since Monday of last week and it looks like that’s about to end come this Monday. Still have to get through one more night of damn cold (vice fu@king cold) weather tonight but 6 is not unbearable. It was 6 when I took the dogs out for a walk at 5 this morning.

The rain may pooh-poo a Wednesday fishing opportunity, but it’s not like there’s not plenty to do around here. My largest major project is the downsizing of my garden. It’s not that it is too large for the amount of planting I want to do, it’s just too large a task maintaining the ground that I’m not planing into.

Generally I’m set up as in graphic below. Excluding the fruit trees the area is 60 feet by 120 feet. The small rectangles are 4×12 foot raised planting beds made with treated deck lumber. The large rectangles are 30 by 40 foot planting areas. The planting area at the top of the graphic is covered in heavy woven plastic sheeting with holes burned into them at 1 foot intervals.

The area between them is covered with ‘crusher run’ (gravel) over a heavy plastic cover. Here is a view (south side of the garden looking north north east) of my Roma tomatoes in the raised boxes.

This photo taken from the north side looking south. Young pepper plants in the foreground.

The perimeter fencing is 8 inch by 8 foot treated poles (little black squares) concreted 2 feet into the ground. between these poles I’ve pounded in tee posts and then wrapped the area in 5 ft high fencing. To keep the deer out I’ve run two lines of metal weaved plastic line (normally used in electric fencing) across the top of the posts and then half way between the post and the fence. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that what I’ve done will not keep deer out of a garden. That may be so, but it’s kept deer out of my garden.

The maintenance problem arises from the spaces between the planting boxes. Any blown seed that lands on the gravel will begin to grow. I know it’s hard to believe but 80 percent of the time I was spending in the garden was spent on beating back the weeds. I’ve had enough of it, I’m going to cut the garden in half lengthwise.

• move the boxes that are on the south side to the north sided and place them on top of the existing boxes.
• Cut the large planting area on the top of the graphic by more than half
• Overlay the large planting area on the bottom right with plastic weave.
• Reestablish the fencing

Taken together the total time I spend on weeding should be reduced to a very doable 40 percent.

But first, I’ve got to get through these next two days!

I was able to get to the hay barn and get a couple of roll out to the cattle yesterday.  It was a day ahead of my ‘every three days’ schedule mandated.  I could feel the tractor sliding on the hills so I did use the alternate route I mapped out and posted earlier.  No warning lamps or error codes on the New Holland, that’s a relieve as the previous use had me staring at a dash that looked like this:

a=power takeoff RPM  b=  warning light  c=hours  d= DEF system performance e= error code

Simply read what the panel says is there is a non-critical problem with the engine and the error code is 17359.  Now, I’ve got an operator’s manual for the New Holland and no where in the book is there a list of error codes and how to fix them; no where.  If you go online you find exactly the same information you find in the operator’s manual: none.  As fortune would have it, when I started the machine yesterday the fault and the lights associated with the fault had cleared.  Another mystery to go along with the mystery from last week.  The machine went down hard and ‘de-rated’ and so I had to borrow a Kubota 108 from my neighbor. The mechanic came out from Huntsville and said ‘I don’t have a clue, I’m going to have to dig into it’.  I haven’t got the bill yet, but I’m sure Huntsville Tractor is going to make the trip well worth their time.

The coon hound (Maggie) absolutely loved the snow and once she hit the door she was gone for a couple of hours.  I could hear her up and down the valley treeing squirrels and running deer.  That attitude changed today as the partial melt from yesterday refroze the top layer of snow and created a pretty significant ice layer on the surface.  She, and our other border collie (Rusty) struggled to get to a spot where they could stand and take care of ‘serious’ dog business.

We got to 6 below zero day on the Tuesday morning with no major problem.  I did have the pipe running to the downstairs toilet freeze and the down heat unit would not hold 68 degrees:  the auxiliary heat  was on and the temp was 65.  Not bad for a cabin with 23 ft. ceilings.  I built this cabin using ‘pex’ vice pvc or copper so there was no busting of the pipe, it just froze.  Tonight will be 9 degrees and I really should be more worried than I am, but just can’t seem to get there when its going to be 15 degrees warmer than it was two nights ago. 

The coming week promises a warm up and hopefully a little time on the river is in the cards.

There’s a guy on the Weather Channel explaining why the ‘primary’ roads will be cleared before the ‘secondary’ roads; I’m not sure that anyone who didn’t know why that’s so before he explained it would understand why after he explained it. 

I’ve got 18 head of cattle in the front pasture.  They are OK right now but will need to get more hay into the hay rings tomorrow after the snow quits.  I suppose that getting to the hay barn will be as challenging as it was the year before last when I had to go off-road with the tractor.  Here’s the set-up:

The tractor is in the barn at the lower right of the image above. The hay is stored in the barn in the upper left. Both sit on high ground and the terrain between the two incorporate low ground. The normal path is along the solid red line: down a steep hill then up a steep hill. The ‘backup route’ is via the dashed red line: I go down the hill in the pasture adjacent to the equipment barn where it is not steep. Through the woods along the side of a ravine and after crossing a cattle gap (pictured below) I go left into the woods and climb the hill.

Here are a couple of pictures from last year that shows the challenge:

This taken while standing in front of the cabin and looking towards the equipment barn.

This from the valley floor looking back at my cabin. That’s my good girl standing adjacent to a concrete drive in 5 inches of snow.

This photo was taken from the same place as the previous one but facing the opposite direction. It shows the road going up and to the left and the valley running along the right side.

Finally, this is the alternate route. Photo was taken from the same spot as the previous two but looking up the secondary valley (red dashed line). On the extreme right in the photo is the starting point of the steep path through the woods.

Trying to get up and down very steep roads consisting of ice covered concrete is a fools errand so will be off-roading the tractor come tomorrow.

For more than 7 years this had been part of our morning routine in our little spot here in Tennessee.  ‘Dixie Star’ was her name and, like clockwork, she would wake us up at 5 AM for her morning walk.  There were no shortcuts with this girl, you were required to trapse down the shallow draw, up the opposing side, across the field to the barn and then weave your way back to the house. 

After the walk she and ‘Rusty’ our other border collie would get a couple of treats to hold them over until breakfast and then Dixie and I would watch the news; actually, I watched the news and she had her belly rubbed for 15 or 20 minutes.

Day in and day out.

That ended this last Tuesday when she suddenly got sick.  We had her at the vets in Loretto on Wednesday morning and she passed that afternoon.  She was a good girl.