big things from the outdoors

Zuccs that got away:

Great Horned Beetle that won't go away:

One tree, saved for a rainy day: 

project picking up a little trash

So this little item was down in a gully quite a ways off the road.   It had been used as a shooting range target for a number of years.  

Here's a view of the uphill path it eventually took.  It's maybe 50 yards at about a 45 degree angle.

Surprisingly, with a bit of cable and some chains, it came out of the woods pretty easily.  Now to bag up the trash inside it and get it all hauled off the mountain.

Setting up to bake

The solar oven got wings the other day, to increase reflective heat gathering.  There's also a stick with nails in it to help position them. 

Dragged this cedar shed over from the neighbor's who wasn't using it.  

and took a day or so to get it into place. I had built a simple sled underneath it, to hold it together and slide it on the ground.

And got it settled.  Now to clean it up, add benches and wood stove, and have a sauna!

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Thar be dragons here!

that apparently can climb ladders...

more holes

Truck fuel line had mouse chewed hole.  Took me a while to figure out why the truck wouldn't run on veg. 

Split a Log

So there was this big piece of log laying where I was hoping to have a flatter space, so I decided to try and lift it up and get it out of there.  Turns out it was bigger than I expected:

 So I got it flipped over - it was a slab from a tree with one side charred from some old forest fire -and decided if I could split it, I could move the two pieces easily. So I got my wedges and my hammers:

 And after much pounding and hacking, I got it split.   someday, I'll put these pieces on the sawmill and make some lumber from them.

Holes in Things

So, someone keeps biting holes in my veg oil containers.  the dog? raccoons? 

It's not like it's just sitting around. I have it up on a tower...

And then I discovered that this PVC pipe just unglued itself.   I suspect that there was some amount of tension on the pipe further down the hill, and for whatever reason, it just came undone.   The sad part is that it means we lost 5000 gallons of stored rainwater when it failed. Bummer.  It will probably not rain another 4 inches yet this year to replace that.   

I've easily let another 10,000 gallons go off into the woods because these tanks were full early in the season.  It'd have been nice if this pipe had failed earlier in the rainy season, if it was going to fail. 

Cooked and Frozen

Miner's Lettuce, formerly two baskets full, scalded and vacuum-sealed.  

Spinach replacement for next fall.

Volunteers

The local lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata, miner's lettuce, 

seems to really like our terraced garden with raised beds and containers. 

This year's Greenhouse

all the regular stuff getting going: tomatoes, peppers, squashes, pumpkins... 

Spring is starting

Miner's Lettuce and Asparagus starting to come in strong in the raised beds.