16 April 2020 Thursday.
Was a beautiful day of the Kenai Peninsula. Sun was out all day and the temps got very near 50F. The snow is melting like crazy and if we can get a few more days like today and we’ll be, at last, snow free. This ends what has been an unusually cold winter here in Fritz Creek. Some of the old timers have told me that this is how the winters used to be 10 years and further back. The ground is still frozen below a few inches down. This precludes any post hole digging or running the garden tiller. Still it won’t be more than a couple of weeks before we can fence in Goosifer and his girls. That damned gander is becoming a serious nuisance. He’s bitten both Taco and Gandie and now Summer has to go outside with them because they are afraid to go out by themselves. It’s pretty bad when the dogs are scared silly. Taco will chase a 1200 pound moose but he’s scared to death of a 20 pound goose. Goosifer has to be corralled and soon.
I pulled the battery out of the dump truck today. I always leave it disconnected because the truck has a short that runs down the battery after a few days. Anyway, pulled the battery out and put it on the charger for about 3 hours. After it had charged I checked the voltage and found that it was up to 13.7 volts. With the battery hot, I reinstalled it into the dump truck. The carburetor has some problems so you have to use starting fluid to get it to run. Once it is running it is okay. Am going to call tomorrow and get an appointment to get the clutch adjusted and have the carburetor rebuilt. I have the rebuild kit but I’m a mite short on expertise. Ii could adjust the clutch but since it is already going to be in the shop, I’ll let the guys at Aftershock Automotive take care of it. Besides I’d have to lie in the mud and they have a nice concrete floor.
Summer evicted the ducks and geese from the greenhouse today. She needed to use it to harden up some of her plants. They were seeded and grown in the warm house so they need to be exposed to the cooler temps outside before they are planted in the outside dirt. The ducks and geese won’t suffer as they have been spending most nights under the house. They’ve spent a good part of the winter wandering around in the snow and it is substantially warmer now than back in January.
I got around to (at least attempted to) cleaning the debris off my work bench in the cargo container. They call them a conex up here. CONEX was a prominent shipping company with thousands of cargo containers with their name on the sides. So-o-o-o that became the generic name for a cargo container. Kinda like Coke is the generic name for a soft drink in the South. “What kind of Coke do you want?” “I’ll have a 7UP. No, make that a GRAPICO.” You can, actually, see the top of the bench in some places now. I spent all winter just tossing stuff onto the bench because it was either too cold or I was too busy to put things where they belonged. Some progress is better than none, I suppose.
Last fall I had a company come out and spread some gravel because my tractor was broken. The young guy driving the machine hit the greenhouse. He broke one two of the ribs and one of the panels. Summer tried several times this winter to contact the company that sold us the greenhouse. No one ever answered the phone. I called today and got a person whose English was so heavily accented that I had to really concentrate to understand him. The upshot was that he told us how to order the repair parts and Summer ordered them. They have to come from Washington state. Hope they don’t have the Corroded Virus on them when and if they arrive.
Tomorrow I’m going to try to get the garden tiller running. I won’t be able to use it but it will be ready when the time comes. Same thing for the gas auger. Can’t put in post holes now but that time is coming soon. I can’t work on the tractor yet because I haven’t been able to move the parts tractor to its’ new home up on concrete blocks beside the big storage tent.
Go to the site below to see why I was ranting the other day about how the older people are being treated and are dying because of the idiocy of this ‘Lockdown’. Nursing homes have very minimal medical facilities and little expertise. They are not equipped to deal with any serious illness. Older people are trapped away from needed medical care. Sacrificed upon the altar of government control when the hospitals are all but empty. This is a form of genocide based upon age instead of race or ethnicity.
Try to remember during this Corroded Virus scam that we are Americans not a bunch of wimpy, sissy, limp wristed European slaves. It is past time to start acting like Americans. Some of your fellow citizens are being murdered. Citizens are already bucking up against the unconstitutional limiting of our freedoms by over reaching bureaucrats. You’ve got stuff to do and they have no right to stop you from doing it. Remember this: They can’t put us all in jail.
Alaska or bust 