Month: November 2019

Happy Thanksgiving!

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It was pissing down rain and I just purchased a 4 – wheeler 4 days ago. Because of the rain I hadn’t had time to play with it. So, in Alaska fashion, I put on my rain gear on and played with it out in the rain on our rainy Thanksgiving holiday. I drove it to my friend Jamie’s house and visited with her and her family for a little while. The cable was out on their TV and couldn’t watch the game. So, Jamie decided to use her original iPad to watch the game. She couldn’t find the charger, I’m sure everyone remembers the old chargers that the iPads, iPhones and iPods used to have.

I suddenly remembered that I have about 4 or 5 of those ancient things at my house. I offered to go get one for her to use. I drive back home on the 4-wheeler in the rain and began my search for this ancient relic of the past. They were all in an old Bark Box with black sharpy labeling it CHARGERS. I couldn’t find the damn thing any where. I even searched my bedroom thinking I had stashed on there. No luck. As a my last ditched effort I looked on the kitchen table which had coats, winter hats, my purse and a plethora of other random items on it. I moved my coat and other random crap to make a hole where I stuck my hand through and grasped something that felt like a wiry object. Luck struck me and there it was! That ancient power cord from days of yore! I screamed! Dad popped popped out to find me holding on to this once white antique charger cord. I think we were both extremely surprised that I found it in some random spot on the catch all table!

I took the 4-wheeler back to Jamie’s and presented her with this archaic device charger. I didn’t think that the darn thing would even work since it has been buried for many years away from human use. I felt like an archeologist! It did work and it was happily charging her device. I hung out for a little bit longer and figured I still have to cook side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner, take a shower and of course fix my hair.

Back at home, I started readying myself to cook. This takes time. I got the water boiling for home made mac and cheese and started staring at the Christmas decorations. I got side tracked and started opening up the box and soon realized we are missing a box! Dad went out to the connex and the storage tent with no luck. I’m officially missing a large plastic container of Christmas stuff. Now that I am telling you this, I seem to remember maybe it’s in a card board U-Haul box. I will have to check that out tomorrow. Anyway, I pulled a few things out and started decorating. By then, the mac was done and I drained it. Time for the adding of cheeses

I added beaten eggs with a powdered milk solution, one block of cream cheese, a dollop of Daisy (dollop meaning the whole container), a cup of butter, lots of shredded cheddar, parmesan and bread crumbs. As I was making this, I was hoping everyone was in good heart shape to eat this. Talk about clogging your arteries.

I also made Southern Pear Salad. Something on the lighter side. Well, I guess mayo is lighter than that cheese dish. This salad consists of half pears, a small dollop of mayo, shredded cheddar cheese, and a maraschino cherry. It sounds kind of gross but it’s fantastic!

Picture courtesy of http://www.aletiadupree.com I took it of the internet because I forgot to take pics of mine. This is what it looked like

Everything came together at the last minute and we were off to Dave and Lisa’s house. Which Dave is my boyfriend Dan’s brother. There was so much food and we ate ourselves sick. There are so many leftovers! We had a lot to be thankful for last night. It was great spending time with family and friends. I can’t wait to do it again!

Today it didn’t rain, but is really gloomy. We are all hoping for snow again to get rid of the re-emerging mud that was once frozen and a pleasure to walk on.

Stupid weather can’t make up it’s mind!

Well, I guess that’s it. I guess I will leave you with a cute picture of Taco being cute and sleepy. HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!

Someone just woke up to a phone in their face!
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The Stove Pipe Fiasco

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Dad and I decided to clean the stove pipes and as we were doing it some of the pipes were rusted out and came apart. New dilemma! What was supposed to be an easy job turned out to be an over haul on our pipes. This means we had to go to town and buy new pieces of pipe to replace the broken ones. So, Dad goes to town and buys new pipe. When he got back we had to put them together. It has a seem that you have to connect to make it a complete pipe.

As you can see this is a pain in the ass. It took 2 people and a ratchet strap to get it together. We had to do this three times. When we got to the third on we realized it was the wrong size. At this point we are exhausted and its dark thirty. So, we went without heat over night and the latter part of the next day. I had to work the next day. Luckily, I explained this to my boss Tory and she let me work a half day so we could get the stove fixed. After work, I went to Ulmer’s Hardware which is now an ACE hardware instead of a True Value. Ace has much better quality than True Value. It was a great decision on the owner’s part.

I was able to find the right size little pipe and was on my way back home. Then, we worked all day trying to fix the damn stove. What was once supposed to be an easy pipe cleaning job, like I said, turned into a career move. There was a lot of make shift work that we did in order to have heat. Some of it is just temporary and will be fixed soon. Stupid stove pipes!

I thought returning that one pipe that was too big was going to be difficult without the receipt. Dad tends to loose them as soon as he gets them. (Forehead slap) But it wasn’t. ACE is completely computerized and was able to find the transaction immediately. I love that store. It has everything. You need boots, they have them, coats? pants? Carhartt?! You need a grill, no problem! Greeting cards, kitchen stuff, pharmacy, toys, sewing material, auto stuff, tools, paint, hunting and fishing gear, winter sports, socks, you name it, they probably have it!!! They even carry bee supplies in the spring!!!

Well, that’s about it! Just another day on the Steele Homestead where anything and everything can go haywire. lol

Weather and Burning vehicles

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Hello, again!

The weather is still not improving. It continues to be a very warm fall. It’s been dark and depressing. The gloomy wet weather is not improving anyone’s outlook on life. The mud isn’t helping either. I am hoping for an improvement soon. We need sun or snow. Snow doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. There is always hope for the sun.

Courtesy of The Weather Channel app: As you can see we might just get some sun! The weekend is also looking pretty good too! I am going to bask in the sun like Taco and Betsy loves to do and if there is no sun, they like to lay by the wood stove or find a warm place to burrow into. There is definitely a cute factor here.

There have been some abandoned vehicles on the side of the road for way over a month. Two very old subarus and a really old camper. It looked really trashy on the side of the road and no one would do anything about it. Not even the Alaska State Troopers. So, someone decided to move them off the road and burn them. Yes, I said burn. Talk about making things worse!

Pictures from Facebook

Not only did they burn the subarus one night, they proceeded to burn the rv the next night. It made such a terrible mess.

Dad tried to get gravel yesterday with the dump truck and the gas peddle came loose and fell of. He ended up stopping across the road of the Fritz Creek General Store in the parking lot of an old restaurant that probably will never open back up. Anyway, Dad had to hitch hike back the the house where he had began to load the old Land Rover up with his tools. He stopped and though about this situation very carefully. If he left the Rover at the little parking lot all day; will someone think it was abandoned and then possible torch it? He unloaded the Rover and put his tools in the 2016 Ram. His thought is that it has full coverage and it looks newer. It’s less likely to get torched I guess.

This past summer, I started recovering pieces of furniture with batik. Here is my ottoman. I’m also making slip covers for the couch pillows. Which are also batik. I will hopefully have those done after my quilt.

I am so happy that today is Friday! This has been a long week and I deserve to sleep in late and then drink lots of coffee.

Riding the Pineapple Express

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It has been raining now for about a month.  It’s dark, gloomy,  it’s warmer than usual, and we should have snow on the ground.  Instead, we are riding on the Pineapple Express which has brought in rain and warmer temps.  We were in a drought all summer.  It was dry, dusty, and hot.  All we wanted was some rain.  But nooooo, we had to get it now which has made outdoor conditions wet, muddy and miserable.

Highs have been in the mid to high 40s and lows in the high 30s.  It’s a yuck fest and it’s affecting everyone.  15 day forecast says more rain and same temps.  The ground needs to freeze at least.

WHERE IN THE SAM ELLIOT IS MY SNOW!!!

Because of this weird weather, Dad and I haven’t really been working outside very much.  Too muddy!

This has given us a chance to organize the house.  My late Uncle was a prepper and before he died he brought over all his food cache.  I’m talking tons upon tons of food. Way more than I could ever eat in my lifetime and most of it I can’t eat because of the gluten.  So, Dad went through it all and organized can goods and dried food.  Anything that we didn’t want went to the food bank.  It filled the whole old Land Rover up from front to back.  Dad had just enough room to drive and possibly see? It felt good to help people and to get all that food out of my house that I will never use.

While all this organizing was going on, Dad found many of my kitchen gadgets and small appliances that I have been searching for.  What won’t fit in my tiny unfinished kitchen is getting store in our BRAND NEW STORAGE TENT!

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We built a huge tent to store excess which has cleaned up the house and gives us a place to run power tools and build.  One of the big things I needed to do is insulate my bee hive so they will stay warm through the winter.  The tent sure came in handy with all this rain.  I was able to cut all my board insulation with the jigsaw and use screws and metal tape to create a mimicked shell of the hive. It just fit right over the hive with minimal problems.  The metal tape did cut me numerous times and bled all over the insulation.  The rain washed it all off so it’s not a bloody mess.  It seems to be working and my bees are warm.  I need to check up on them this weekend and make sure they are safe, warm, and dry.

Just when I think I have enough projects, I decided to revisit the quilt I started a year ago and see if I can finish it.  I am using batik in an outdoor/wild animal prints.  I love batik its so pretty. This is my first time making a quilt.  Yes, I just woke up one day and said, “I think I’m going to make a quilt with out knowing anything about quilting and a small amount of experience sewing”.  I think I’m doing a pretty good job for just starting out.  One thing I did make a mistake on was how many 5 inch squares I needed to make a queen sized quilt.  I was off by a crap load.  So now I am waiting on more squares because I didn’t have any to spare.  lol!  I went ahead and ordered some pinking shears to make my own squares if I decide to make another one.  That, I I have bees wax and I am going to make food wraps with leftover material.  I think that will be fun when we actually get winter.

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As you can see, the squares don’t really match up with each other, but I’m okay with that.  Gives it character.  I can’t wait to finish it and out it on my bed!  it’s going to be 90 x 108.  I have the batting and flannel material to go on the back.  It’s going tot be very warm and bring more color in my life.  That and the satisfactory that I finished a project.

Okay!  I think that about sums it up.  Life right now is all hunky dory!  Just need this God forsaken rain to stop.  We need sun or snow!  I will keep you posted.  Thanks for reading!

Ends in Bloodshed 10/19/2019

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As ya’ll know, I have ducks and geese.  6 geese and not too long ago there was 27 ducks. We have had a lynx problem that was picking our ducks out and consuming them.  I was left with 16 ducks before I decided it was time!

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All my ducks and geese were led into the greenhouse for safe keeping and to make it easier to catch them.  My neighbor was culling some of his ducks and turkeys so I asked if I could piggy back on the processing since he would have the large boiling water and cleaning table already set up.  He agreed and so I started the messy, muddy, crappy process to catch the ducks I wanted to put in the freezer.  I decided to process 9 of the 16.  My ducks are extremely greedy and eat more than the geese.

So, I’m in the greenhouse cornering ducks all the while they are kicking up poop and mud all over me.  One by one I’d catch one of those heavy buggers and had it to Dad and he would put it in a dog carrier.  Two of these ducks were named and best friends, so I can’t kill one without the other.  Because I named two of these massive ducks I couldn’t bring myself to dispatch them.

I drive up to my friends house and tell him I have all my ducks in a row, but they’re still alive.  I just can’t bring myself to do it.  Thankfully, he helped me with the dispatching of the ducks.  At this point, once heads are quickly chopped off, in my head they are now just meat and I can clean them.  I raised them for food and eggs so I knew the day would come that I would have to put them in the freezer.  They died quick and painless.  Clean kills.  That makes me happy.  It breaks my heart if they suffer.

And so the plucking begins!  Come to find out I need plucking practice.  I’m a terrible plucker.  It took me for ever to pluck one duck.  Thankfully, my friend jumped in and helped me pluck all nine.  He also taught me easier ways to gut and clean them as well.

It wasn’t really a cold day, but it was sprinkling nonstop and I was standing in one place for a long time.  My feet became ice cubes in my Xtratufs and my fingers frozen from being wet.  Let’s just say it was kinda a miserable day.  It would have been nice if the sun was out.

After all that work and the cleaned ducks in an ice chest, more work had to be done.  There was still the rinsing and wrapping of said ducks and then they could be put in the freezer.  This took a couple more hours and a shower was in desperate need.  I was bloody, muddy, had duck and goose crap on me and I was frozen to the bone.

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After the shower, I had a new sense of accomplishment.  I successfully put meat in the freezer for winter.  I celebrated with a glass of wine!