What a difference 16 days makes !

Can it be real? the crocuses have bloomed

two weeks ago we had a foot of snow on the ground . . . .

and now but for a few patches its all nearly gone . . .

its been a long a cold one . . .

but just bellow the kitchen window . . .

where the sun hits hard . . . .

the flowers are sprouting out of the ground . . . .

life begins again . . .

must have been some hankie-pankie going on as the tag says they were supposed to be white . . . .

First day of Spring????

Started officially at 7:02 am today. Yet the scene that greeted us was 12 more inches of wet heavy snow. Thankfully the new chute I made for the snow blower seems to work quite nicely.

Tuesday it snowed for 36 hours . . . . Last year on this date it was 80 deg F and folks were at the beach sunbathing in their bikinis.

And here is why I dislike it so much. After shoveling off the deck once, then clearing the driveway and a path around the house, I have to rake the roof off . . . .  and  . . . .

then try to remove the rock hard snow from the deck.

Not sure whats easier, fighting the shovel or the machine . . .  I remove the snow from the roof as rafters are only 2"x6",  24" on center spanning 18 feet so I have some structural concerns should we get an other load or worse rain. And if I don't remove the snow from the roof the melting just makes a perpetual mess on the deck.

Habemus fumabat tructa

We have Smoked Steel-Head trout . . . . The white smoke from my smoker box signals it is so . . . . smoke from apple and mesquite wood around these parts have a more pedestrian significance than the smoke of burning ballots in Rome . . . . Yes we have a new Pope as well. An Argentinean fellow, Pope Francis his chosen name was the Cardinal from Buenosaires. A Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio I hear tell is a man of humble manners. As a Cardinal he refused the accoutrements accorded his rank such as cooks and chauffeured limousines, preferring to live in his own rented apartment and ride the bus back and forth to work. Lets see if Mr Bergoglio can scare some good Jesuit sense in to Mrs Kirshner and her goons in the rest of South-America, much the same way John Paul II faced off Mr Jaruzelski in Poland together with Reagan and Lech Walesa taking down the soviet empire.

. . . as I was saying . . . . I salted up an other batch of Steel Head trout last night

after a couple of hours under the fan this morning it went in to the smoker

5 hours of smoking

the results

The real sharp ones among you you will note one less piece than went in the smoker... that's because it has already gone down my gullet along with a nice beer.

Adventures in snow-blower repair

The chute on my Cra-p-sman Snow-blower has seen better days. One to many chunks of ice has gone through it shattering the brittle plastic in the bitter cold. The lower bolt holes busted out this winter and the chute would no longer stay on the geared mounting collar. I mended it with bailing wire just to make it through the winter.

Multiple repairs over the years. Including epoxy on the inside to keep things more or less contoured so the snow would not hang up on the rivet heads from the patches.

As Sears closed its repair and spare part annex last year spares are not available for Craftsman products locally. So I resolved to make a new one..... hmmmmm that 7 inch sewer pipe I left by the road crew on my lawn when they put in the new sewer lines a few years back might just do the trick. A few slices with the circular saw and a bit of heat seemed to do the trick.

On my first attempt the angled bit was not long enough so we did a second try. 10 inches long is just about right. I may actually elongate the holes in order to make it adjustable.

A bit of work with the heat gun does wonders to reshape PVC plastic

And as the insides of the new chute are much smoother than the old one the thing now shoots snow quite nicely.

The old chute would spit snow from the gap of the deflector hinge back on the hot exhaust of the engine at causing steam thus making the engine quit. In order to keep it running I had an aluminum shield over the engine. My new improved version has no gap thus no snow on the hot exhaust and no need for the shield.

The first sunny day in more than 3 weeks brought us nearly 40 deg F and in the sun in front of the garage and no wind it must have been nearly 70 deg F. An other successful repair.

For a change . . . .

. . . . we got 12 more inches of Al Gores BS today . . . .  the wet and heavy kind

Annie shoveled the deck and a path to the garage. . . . the look on her face says it all. Note the bracing on the fence behind her.. Despite my repairs last fall three posts managed to snap off at ground level once again in a windstorm about a  month ago.

I cleared the driveway

Miserable looking garbage

Took a couple of hours with the snow blower to clear the driveway and a path around the house.

even the one lonesome dove was looking forlorn as it picked through the snow for some seed.

To cheer up the dreary day I made an attempt at making some Ciabatta

The results were quite good washed down with a good bitter .

Beer and fresh baked bread, what could be better?

Smelting Lead

After suffering for three weeks with the flu, including a seven day stint with 102  F fever, and loosing about 15 lbs, I finally felt better and got out yesterday. So I went to visit my friend Terry Harper in Windham and scored about 200 lbs of lead from him. So now I have some thing to cast bullets from. Its a mixed bag of about 3 gallons of wheel weights, some ingots and half a dozen cylinders that we're told are medical radioactive shields of some sort or a other. Each one of those big cylinders weighs about 25 lbs

So this afternoon I melted down the wheel weights in the shop wood stove in a nice little cast iron pot that I also got from Terry

Resulting a a very heavy little pot of liquid lead and a whole lot of steel clips floating on top of the lead.

so we skim the steel clips off with an old kitchen spoon . . . .

and flux it with some sawdust to get the impurities out and keep the antimony in the lead.

Then we skim the scum and floaties of the surface of the lead and get our mold ready

and pour

and after a couple of hours end up with a nice pile of ingots.

Global warming???I think not.

Winter storm Nemo.

About 11 pm Friday night looking out the living-room window.

camera set on 400 asa no flash

According to Al Gore its so hot that maple tree should just about be ready to drop coconuts.

and out the other window on to First St

the tool shed 11 pm

The old Mazda covered after about 16 hours of snow. Annie shoveled the driveway twice already during the day removing about 6 inches each time while I lay in bed sweating out a fever. Not a good time to get sick. And as if that weren't enough the furnace pump is starting to screech and needs replacing.

7 am this morning out the kitchen window.

the back yard

about 4 feet of snow on the barn roof

Mazda covered... official count is 30 inches so far and more to come

that's not going to be fun

wish I could do like the bears.... just wake me up some time about end of April