R.I.P. Lambie

Many of you have been introduced to Christie's Blog, but if you haven't, I encourage you to read it. The first story (a two-part story) tells how we lost our pet lamb. He was a sweet little guy, and he deserved better. We are trying to honor him by not letting his value as a food animal be wasted.

High Tech: 1, Mother Nature: 0

With all that wind on Friday, my satellite internet service wasn't working. I hoped it would clear up by Monday morning when I had to telecommute to Chicago again. Monday morning came around and the internet was still down. It was funny, because it seemed to lose its signal each time the wind blew really hard. I went out on the deck and eyeballed the dish's line of sight and noticed a tree was waving in front of it.

When we installed the dish, that tree was a good 3 feet to the right of the dish, but the high winds pushed the top of the tree over in front of it. I got the chainsaw and dropped the tree, letting the wind push it over right where I wanted it. It was about 40' tall and still had lots of greenery at the top. I hate cutting down a live tree when we have so many standing dead, but in this case technology had the trump card because if I can't connect to the internet I don't get paid.

Aunty Em, Aunty Em!

Do you hear that?! That isn’t coyotes, it is the wind howling outside. Good thing we’re safe and sound inside.

As is usual for Friday night, our neighbor Sarah came over to have dinner with us and watch West Wing on DVD. We’re up to Season Six, where President Bartlett has the MS attack on his China trip. We had to turn up the volume a bit so we could hear over the blowing wind. We had just started the second episode of the evening when there came a knocking at the door.

It was Jarred, our neighbor. A tree was down on the road and he couldn’t get home. He wanted to borrow a chainsaw because he really didn’t want to hike up to his place in the dark to get one. We grabbed both of our saws and headed to the downed tree. This thing wasn’t the biggest tree in the world, but with all of its foliage, it formed a barricade as tall as a man. Jarred and I started at opposite ends, limbing the tree so we could get at the trunk. Once all the limbs were out of the way, we cut the trunk and rolled the log to the side of the road. (Tomorrow I’ll go back with a truck and drag that log to the house, it will make good firewood. :)

The job done, Jarred ran me back to the house. I stowed the chainsaws in the garage and wished him safe driving. He drove up our driveway, and then started to back down again. Yep, in the time in took him to drop me off and turn around, a tree had fallen across the driveway up by the road. I grabbed a saw and trudged up to the top of the drive. This was a little tree, one cut, then the two of us pushed it off to the side. This time, I sent the saw with him, wanting to make sure he could get home.

Back inside Christie and Sarah had finished the episode and were ready to watch another. After the third episode, in which President Bartlett struggles with his disability and watches his last China Summit fall apart, Sarah went home. Not wanting to take any chances, we sent our other saw with her in case she had to clear any trees.

She did. A while later, our neighbor Regis stopped by to return the saw we sent with Sarah. He was coming up the hill and arrived in time to help her chop up yet another tree. Good thing she had a saw with her, huh?

What do you want to bet that every single resident of this mountain has a saw in their car/truck tomorrow? Heh, I wouldn’t take that bet!

Water, water, all around. (Or, why it was raining in the garage.)

Sunday morning. A rare opportunity to sleep in. I woke up from a dream in which I was searching for a bathroom. You all know what that means, right? I stumbled to the bathroom, did my thing, and headed back to bed. I only got a few steps because the toilet was making a whistling sound. Darn, I was SOOOO looking forward to sleeping in.

I knew this whistling sound from experience, the cistern that supplies our water was empty. We don't have a well, we have an underground spring, which is captured in a cistern up on the hillside opposite the house. The cistern is higher than the house, so our water pressure is supplied by gravity. It is a sweet setup. That is, unless someone leaves a water hose running overnight. It happened a few times this summer, which is why I knew the whistling sound.

Still in my PJs, I put on my mud boots and headed outside. I was going to turn off the hose and go back to bed. Peculiarly, the hose wasn't on. I opened the hatch to the crawlspace under the house and cocked my ear. Nope, no sound of running water (as from a broken pipe, which also happened this summer). OK, where else do we have pipes? The garage.

In the summer of '05, we had a young couple living in the apartment above the garage, and they installed a water line from the house to the garage. Predictably it froze in the winter, and in the spring of '06, there was a tiny crack seeping water onto the garage floor. I patched it with silicone tape and went on with life. Well, this lucky Sunday is when the pipes really cracked, and it was raining in the garage.

One of our winterizing tasks was to crawl under the house and turn off the water to the garage so it would not freeze again. Now seemed like a good time. Christie volunteered to do the crawling, bless her sweet, angelic heart! From deep under the house, she called out "Which valve do I close?" I told her it was the one on the line to the garage. She called back "There isn't one."

I'm trying to keep this blog family friendly, so I won't repeat what I said next, or about whom. What it came down to was that the only way to shut off the garage was to shut off the main valve. Nice.

Home Depot here I come. Christie went back to bed and I drove to town. I got a 3/4" valve and PVC cement, then headed home. The 3/4" valve did not fit the 3/4" pipe. This is when I learned that there is a difference between CPVC and PVC. I bought the wrong thing.

Fast forward to 9PM, we finally have the right parts to install a valve, so we turned off the main valve and put in the new valve. The PVC cement needed 2 hours to cure, so we left the water off overnight. This morning we turned the water back on and everything looks good, no leaks.

It is currently raining outside the garage, but I'm told that is normal.

I have the power!

At last, our primary generator is working again. Over $400 later, and putting some old parts back on, we have the 15kw propane generator charging the batteries again. There are still a few minor parts that need changing to get it running smoothly, right now it tends to backfire on startup. However, it is only about $20 worth of parts, and I can install them myself.

For the gearheads out there, we had the points and the condenser replaced, and the generator seemed to have good spark, but would not start. The tech suggested a new pressure regulator, which I installed myself, but didn't solve the problem. I checked each component of the fuel delivery and found them in working order. The tech came back out yesterday, and finally got it running by putting our old condenser back on. Evidently the new one was bad, out of the box. We've ordered a new distributor cap and rotor to complete the electrical overhaul, and that should help with the backfiring.

I'm still primarily a software engineer, but each time we get something fixed, I quiz the guy until I understand why it failed. I'm getting to where I almost understand internal combustion engines and how they work.

My momma told me...

...if you don't have anything nice to say, then say nothing. I don't know if I can do that this time.

My employers are going to red-tape themselves right out of business. My contract came up for renewal in mid-October. They renewed me for another 6 months, the maximum allowed by policy. That was nice, because knowing where my next mortgage payment will come from helps me sleep better at night.

However, and it is a huge however, they neglected to sign me up for another 6 months of network access. I'm not talking about my ISP, I pay for that, and it is up to me to make sure it is working. I'm talking about the privilege of logging into their network so I can do my work. On Wednesday when I logged in for work in the morning, I was able to connect to their VPN, but I could not use any of their services, like e-mail, chat, or remote desktop. I knew what this meant, I'd seen it every six months, like clockwork, since I started working for them. They'd turned off my account.

I called the Help Desk, and they confirmed that it was disabled. They told me my boss had to submit a request on an internal website. He did. A few hours later he received a message saying his request was fulfilled. It wasn't. The Help Desk confirmed that my account was still turned off. You might think the Help Desk could do something about it, but no, the group in charge of allowing me to work is a secretive organization that works solely from an e-mail drop-box, with no phone number, and no way to find the name of a real person belonging to the group.

The request to re-enable my account was assigned a case number: A141631. Don't you feel all warm and fuzzy? In order to communicate the failure of A141631, my boss had to send an e-mail with "A141631" as the subject to the mystery drop-box. He got back a message that they had assigned case number A141848 to his request to look into case number A141631's failure. Go ahead, sit down, my head is spinning too.

On Thursday morning, my friendly Help Desk person confirmed that my account was still disabled. Luckily, a few hours later, the cloak-and-dagger squad dispatched a message to my boss that A141484 had been resolved. Great, now I can get back to work!! Oh, if only it were true.

Do you recall that on Wednesday, I could connect via VPN? Well, on Thursday, I could not. My ever so helpful Help Desk person confirmed that my network account had been enabled (hooray!) but that my internet proxy account was disabled (boo-hiss!). Was my internet proxy account covered under the original request? Nope. Does the same group handle the request? Nope. Was there a phone number I could call to expedite the request? Nope.

This time ... get this ... I had to log on to an internal website, download and fill out form #210, sign it, have my boss sign it, and then fax (yes, FAX) it to the number listed on the form. Well that first step was a doosey since I could not log on the their network at all. Thankfully, my boss was kind enough to send the document to my gmail account. I printed it out, signed it, then scanned it back in as a PDF and sent it back to my boss so he could print it out, sign it, and fax it to Whoever-They-Are.

If you think there is something wrong with this process, join the club, my friend. A quick Google shows that the fax machine was invented in 1843. Here I thought I lived in the 21st century, the information age, but we're still using an antique process by which the 25 kilobytes of data from the original document is blown up to 272 kilobytes and, as a bonus, is no longer machine readable. What do you bet that on the other end of the fax line there is a computer which translates the fax data into a digital image and stores it in an optical database archive, wouldn't that be a hoot? (OK, I'll admit that my sense of humor might be a little skewed on this one.)

So, here we are, it is Friday morning, and I still cannot log in. Do I have anything nice to say? Well, I can say that the Help Desk people, while less than helpful, were very friendly. Hey ... that's it! I said something nice, so I can justify the preceding rant without upsetting my mother!

Late for Work

I was late for work today, but I didn't oversleep, there was no traffic, and I didn't miss my train. I was late today because we had to load a little colt into the trailer so he could go to the vet. The colt however, had other ideas.

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that Mariah's baby, Cordova (or Cory) had a goopey eye. That is a technical term which means his eye was draining lots of fluids. Upon closer inspection, his eye was also cloudy, so we whisked him and his mama off to the vet. Cory wasn't halter broke yet, so we were lucky that he hopped right into the trailer behind his mama.

At the vet's office, we found out he had a deep cut right in the middle of his eye, and that, left untreated, the eye would likely rupture and eventually he would lose it. The vet installed a very thin tube in Cory's eyelid and then sewed the eye shut. We've spent the last two weeks squirting medicine into his eye through the tube as often as we could, up to 10x per day. Needless to say, the little guy has had a hard couple of weeks.

This morning, we led mama into the trailer, and Cory decided he'd rather eat frozen grass. We tried to herd him towards mama, but he was very clearly saying "Thanks guys, but I'll pass, the last time I got in there you sewed my eye shut!" So, there was nothing left to do but halter break him in order to lead him into the trailer. About 30 minutes later, we had him on a lead line, though he was clearly not happy about it. With some coaxing and lifting of feet, we got him in the trailer and quickly shut the door.

Then I went to work, late.

16 degrees

I doubt you'll ever hear me complain about the cold. I love it. I might have complained last February when one of our mares foaled in -30 degree weather, but really, it wasn't the cold so much as having to be awake in the middle of the night.

So let me just say for the record that being out in 16 degrees of chilly goodness doesn't bother me. I'm writing this not so you will feel sorry for me, but so you will get a real idea of what it is like "Living the Life."

My alarm went off at 6:30AM like always. After a couple of snoozes, and a little staring into empty space, I was ready to start my day. Morning chores today included feeding the cats (so they will stop complaining about how we starve them to death) and feeding the wood stove. Once I coaxed a bit of flame from the new log I threw in, I checked the power.

Earlier you saw my solar array. That solar power feeds into a bank of 12 6-volt deep cycle batteries arranged to produce 24 volts. Whatever the sun doesn't provide, our generator does. Whenever I come in or out, I check the battery level, it is a good habit to be in as it avoids some nasty surprises. At 23.8 volts, it is time to charge the batteries, at 22.0 volts the system shuts down to avoid damaging the batteries. I consider this a nasty surprise.

After feeding the cats and the stove, I checked the power, and we were down to 23.4 volts, which means we need to charge the batteries SOON. I threw on a flannel jacket, grabbed a flashlight, and trudged out into the pre-dawn darkness. My shoes crunched in the frost on the lawn. I gassed-up the backup generator and started it.

Our primary generator runs on propane and is fed from a 1000 gallon talk, so it never needs to be gassed-up. Our primary generator operates on a remote switch, so there's no need to trudge anywhere. Out primary generator can be started automatically by the power system without any intervention from me. Our primary generator, as you may have guessed by now, is not working.

So there I was trudging back into the house. Luckily the morning fog had lifted from my brain enough to wonder why the batteries weren't charging. Turing on the generator isn't enough, you have to make sure the power is actually being consumed. OK, back outside, yep, the breaker on the generator was popped. Aha, that explains why last night's run didn't charge the batteries enough...

Welcome to life off the grid. Would I trade this in for power lines and electric bills? Nope.

Toys for boys

It is nothing new, but a few months ago I got a PSP, that is Playstation Portable for those of you who are acronym-challenged. It is a pretty decent game machine, but that isn't really why I decided to write about it. This device, dismissed by many in favor of Nintendo's DS-Lite, is a multimedia extravaganza. Those of you who know me will notice right off that I'm not one to use the term extravaganza lightly! ;)

What impresses me most about the PSP is its ability to handle all manner of portable entertainment. Of course you can play games on it and load it full of MP3s, but there's so much more. You can also load it with your favorite photos like a virtual leather wallet filled with pictures of your family, or if you don't have a family you can keep the picture that came with the wallet and tell everyone she's an old girlfriend. From there, you can amaze and captivate your friends with full motion video! Anything encoded in MPEG-4 video plays just fine on the PSP, and looks very good. Yep, that old collection of Star Trek episodes you have on VCD can now go mobile!

Now how much would you pay? Wait there's more! In addition to all of that, the PSP supports wi-fi internet access and has a built in web browser. One day I was in town and wanted to see a movie, so I pulled into the parking lot of a hotel with free wireless internet, and checked movie times for the local theaters. Also, because the browser has flash support, you can download Shockwave Flash games and other content to play offline, just in case you managed to get bored with all the other features.

Nope, not done yet! Along with the web browser is an RSS feed reader. If you click on a feed link, it will ask if you want to add it to your feeds. From the feed reader, you can download all your favorite podcasts, video podcasts, pictures and music for your viewing/listening pleasure when you're not near a hotspot. If you're not up on RSS, it stands for Really Simple Syndication, which is an easy way to subscribe to your favorite feeds, whether they are current events from CNN or the latest of Strong Bad's Emails.

Surely you're done now, Dave?!? Not quite. While I have not dipped my toes into the homebrew scene, there are thousands of programs out there written by Joe and Jane Schmoe. Not all are games, one person recently came up with software to turn the PSP into a digital voice recorder if you plug a mic into the headphone jack! There are also more than a dozen emulators available for your favorite game consoles of yore. Miss the SEGA Genesis? There's an emulator for that.

As you may be able to tell, my enthusiasm for this machine is unbridled (please excuse the pun). There's so much more that this little box can do, I haven't even scratched the surface. There's an IR port on the top, but none of my software uses it (yet?). Sony is releasing a GPS receiver and webcam for it this December. What other uses might we come up with? Who knows, the sky is the limit!

For now, I'm working my way through Daxter (37% so far) and using it as a PMP (Portable Media Player) almost every day.

The Rural Arms Race

Dateline: Monday, 25-September-2006, Wild Mountain Farms

Christie burst into the house shouting "Coyote! He's right there ... get your ... he's ... where are the dogs?!?" I was at my computer upstairs and couldn't see what she was talking about, but since married couples need a certain amount of telepathy, I got the gist of it and ran downstairs. While I got my rifle, unlocked the gun lock, loaded the clip with "varmint" rounds, and put on shoes, Christie explained that there was a coyote right across the creek, not 20 yards from a pond full of terrified ducks and geese ... in broad daylight.

Dateline: Saturday, 23-September-2006

Christie and I spent the day in town with Janice, Katy, Paul, Lucia, and Ella. Jarred agreed to feed the animals for us so we could have more time with family. While Jarred was in the main barn feeding, the dogs went crazy. He poked in his head out in time to see Louie and Rajah charging toward the barn. He looked around and saw a coyote in the barnyard ... in broad daylight. When the dogs got close, the coyote turned and loped off back the way he'd come. Jarred went to his truck for a gun in case the dogs needed help, but they chased that coyote back over the mountain.

Jarred finished the feeding and came out of the barn to hear a horrible ruckus from the ducks and geese. He looked over and thought he saw Rajah at the edge of the pond. As he was about to scold Rajah for terrorizing the birds, he saw another Rajah a little ways off in the pasture, and two more behind him. As he got closer, he realized that four coyotes were closing on the pond. By the time he was within pistol range, they decided to retreat.

Dateline: Monday, 25-September-2006

We ran out to the back porch in time to see the coyote right by the footbridge. To reach the pond, all he'd have to do is cross that bridge. He spotted us on the porch and backed off to the base of the hill to consider his options. We took a moment to do the same. Without many words, Christie and I agreed that I should shoot this coyote. I took aim and fired. He twitched, then rolled down the hill. Until that moment, I'd never fired a gun at a living thing.

Dateline: Sunday, 24-September-2006

Upon hearing Jarred recount the tale of the four coyotes stalking the waterfowl I realized the coyotes had raised the stakes. It started when they began taking chickens from us. Then, we got Louie to guard the ranch animals, and he put the coyotes back in their place. In answer to that, the coyotes changed tactics, and sent one member of the pack to lead the dogs away while the others feasted. If Jarred hadn't been there, we would have lost many birds. We'd never seen more than one coyote at a time at the ranch before.

Dateline: Monday, 25-September-2006

The coyote only twitched a little after the first shot, but I fired again to make sure he wasn't suffering. Christie and I didn't say anything for a while, letting the import of the moment sink in. For me, it meant we had raised the stakes of our little rural arms race another notch. I felt bad for having to kill the coyote, but I hoped the rest of the pack would be deterred by my action. Time will tell if the coyotes decide to go back to eating field mice and wild rabbits. They may have developed a taste for fowl, which would be a shame.

There's gold in them thar' hills!

One of the great things about living in the west is that the land isn't all used up yet. Case in point is the Garnet Ghost Town. This is one of the most amazingly well preserved ghost towns anywhere. Due to a major fire, the town doesn't look anything like it did in its heyday (over 1000 people lived there), but the feel of the town is still very much alive. When you walk through the buildings, like the three storey hotel, you can easily get a glimpse of what life must have been like.

Unlike most mining boom towns, Garnet was very family friendly. They even went so far as to have a cabin set aside for newlyweds in which a young couple could live until they built their own place, or another couple got married, whichever came first. What amazed me was that so many families would end up in such a remote place. It is remote by today's standards, which is to say you have to drive on dirt roads to get there, and there are no power lines or phone lines running to it. (Wait a second, that sounds like our ranch!) However, when you contemplate what was involved to support a town of 1000 people, it boggles my mind.

Today, there are two roads that lead to the town, one of which is narrower and steeper than Mill Creek Road, where we live. (Those of you who have visited the ranch will appreciate how narrow and steep the road must be.) The other road has been developed by the BLM for recreational purposes, and even on that road, you have to climb quite a ways from the valley where highway 200 runs up to the site of the town. What took my pickup a half hour to drive must have taken all day in a wagon!

Here is a link to the location on Google Maps, so you can see just how far back in the hills we're talking about. Even though it takes a while to get there (about 1.5 hours) it worth the trip. If you're ever out here visiting the ranch, this is a must see.

Snow!!

I woke up on Saturday morning to a winter wonderland. There was snow everywhere about 1" deep and it was still coming down. :) It stuck around most of the day, and I'm happy to say there's still a small pile of it down by the barn.

In other news ... er ... umm ... sorry, I've got nothing. I'm very pleased to report that nothing interesting happened at the ranch last week. Another week or two like this, and I might actually get around to working on a fun project.

Hot Springs Eternal

Our anniversary was the 2nd but we had company in town so we delayed the celebration until this last weekend. After the long summer we've had, the delay seemed almost intollerable, but it was worth the wait!

Friday after work, we headed up to Hot Springs, MT, and spent the weekend at the Symes Hotel. It is a beautiful old place built in 1928. They have somehow managed to maintain the charm and pace of an earlier time. We spent our days soaking in the pools and relaxing. In the evening we dined in their little bistro and were even entertained by a "cowboy blues" trio in the big common room. There was no cover charge, but they did pass the hat (literally) to pay the band.

One interesting thing about the people at the Symes is that they seemed to form a tight-knit community. I got the impression that you don't get "hired" to work there, you get "adopted." There were numerous characters who hung around, from the little old guy who ran the gift shop, to the lady who makes and sells massage stones. They were all interesting to chat with.

I feel much replenished by our weekend away, something that I don't think we could have accomplished by shutting ourselves in at the ranch and telling everyone to stay away. If any of you are considering a visit out here, I'd highly recommend a trip to the hot springs, they are only about 90 minutes from the ranch.

Size Matters!

Oh My God, Becky, look at his Solar Array, it is so big! ;)

We decided to fill out our solar array this year. We got eight panels on a 14 panel mount last fall. Last week we added the other six panels to complete the array. This puts us at 14 x 170 = 2380 watts! The solar installers said this was the biggest single mount they've ever done.

Before the solar power came in, our generator would run 2-3 times per day for 3-4 hours. With the eight panels, our generator still needed to run once each night. Well, two days ago, we had our first all solar day. We got enough power into the batteries during the day to last us all night!!!

Since then, we've had some partly cloudy days, so I don't have a lot of data with which to establish a pattern. However, even if we only last all night every other day, that is still cutting generator run-time in half! At that rate, these panels will pay for themselves pretty quick.

BTW, my little friend in the picture is none other than Chico. Here's a bonus picture of the little bugger. :)

Putting food on the table

[For those readers who are sensitive, I'm going to be talking about hunting for and butchering meat. I won't be offended if you decide to skip reading this post.]

I just bought my first gun last week. I'm sure I'm on a list at every government agency by now, but I'm not so concerned with the political ramifications of my decision. Those of you who know me will agree that I am not a violent person, so you might be wondering how I became a hunter. The simple answer is that I don't consider hunting for food as violence.

OK, you caught me, I'm not really a hunter yet. I've never fired a gun at a live target. So, please allow me to backup so I can explain the basis of my opinion.

Living this life, an hour from town and off-grid, has instilled a certain sense of self sufficiency in us. We learned early on that most professionals (electricians, plumbers, etc) don't really want to drive this far for a job. So, I became my own electrician, my own plumber, and my own etc. Christie has a garden every year, and its bounty (meager though it is) fills us with pride. Our chickens have also been producing enough eggs for our needs for a couple of years. It isn't a big step from there to consider raising some animals for food. Besides, we could hardly do worse than AgriBusiness with their feedlots, growth hormones, and mad-cow disease.

We have a few neighbors who are already raising some of their own food, so we talked to them, read books and magazines, and Googled until we felt we knew enough to get started. We acquired some meat rabbits (Florida Whites) and decided that some of the 40 chicks we had this spring would be eaten. Up to this point the biggest thing I'd ever killed intentionally was a grasshopper, however, the only way I was going to learn was by doing.

So, we invited the neighbors over for dinner. We decided to slaughter two rabbits for the meal, they would demonstrate on one and I would do the other. I won't go into all of the gory details, but one thing I noticed was how personal it was. When you cut the rabbit's throat, it bleeds on your hands and shoes. This was nothing like going to the store buying a pack hamburger patties. What's more, the very personal nature of this method felt right. I'm not turning into a blood crazed lunatic, I'm just saying that the hands-on approach gives you a very different understanding of the circle of life.

I have since slaughtered, butchered, and dressed chickens, geese, turkeys, and more rabbits without any trouble. The one rule I always try to work by is this: be quick, and make sure this animal isn't suffering longer than is absolutely necessary.

Now here is where my logic gets a little fuzzy, but I'll see if I can explain. I feel I am ready to hunt with a rifle, to reach out and kill from a distance, because I am willing and able to do it with own two hands. I see the hunting rifle as an extension of my arm, rather than an instrument of destruction. It is just a much longer knife.

Now, as I am so inclined, I did a lot of research on rifles before making a purchase. I wanted to make sure it was a weapon Christie and I could both use safely. It needed to be capable of handling predators (coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, and possibly bear) as well as game animals (deer and elk for now). Since I am left-handed, and Christie is right-handed, a bolt-action was out of the question. Also, I wanted to make sure I followed my rule. In order to be quick and make sure the animal doesn't suffer, I decided on a 30-.06.

So, my first gun is a Browning Lighting BLR 30-.06, a lever-action rifle with right-side eject and 4 round clip. We put a Bushnell ELITE 3200 scope on it. I can already see that this could get to be an expensive hobby because we still need a case and shoulder strap, not to mention that the shells are about $1 each! All I can say is that I'm looking forward to saving money at the meat counter.

Swallowing the Rhino (or How Chico Became "The Man")

No, I'm not talking about some exotic aphrodisiac from the far-east, get your mind out of the gutter!!!

Are you familiar with the old children's song about the woman who swallowed the fly? Below is the final verse, in which you can see that the old lady has clearly gone way too far in order to kill a fly.

I know an old lady
Who swallowed a rhinoceros
Isn't that preposterous!
To swallow a rhinoceros
She swallowed a rhinoceros
To catch the minister
She swallowed the minister
To catch the goat
She swallowed the goat
To catch the dog
She swallowed the dog
To catch the cat
She swallowed the cat
To catch the bird
And she swallowed a bird
To catch the spider
That wiggled and jiggled
And tickled inside her
And she swallowed the spider
To catch the fly
But I don't know why
She swallowed the fly
- I guess she'll die!

I'd like to tell you a similar tale about our lives, and (hopefully) explain why we had to pickup a goat last week...

It all started when Christie decided she liked birds. We got some chickens from a local rescue and I mentally checked that off as a Mission Accomplished. The next Easter, we got a handful of chicks and ducklings from a family who thought they would be cute in an Easter Basket. After that it gets fuzzy, there were some geese and ducks from the rescue, and maybe some other critters, and then suddenly I was awakened by a terrible clatter. I realized immediately that we had just crossed over from Mission Accomplished to Mission Impossible.

OK, it wasn't that sudden, but it felt that way when early this spring Christie's shipment of 40 chicks, 15 ducks, 15 geese, and 15 turkeys arrived. It was around March/April, and it was too cold to have them outside, so we setup a hatchery for each species complete with heat lamps. For those of you who have never had an impromptu hatchery in your living room, these birds were noisy and stinky! In late May we finally released them all to frolic and play. It was sometime in June before we got the house to smell normal again.

What we didn't know at the time [cue sinister music, perhaps a selection from Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev] was how brave the coyotes were getting. At one point we had a coyote taking a nap in one of our pastures, less than a hundred yards from the house, in broad daylight, with three of us yelling at him!! This spring we lost at least 6 ducks and an untold number of chickens to the mangy, flea bitten, varmints. Some protection was in order! We adopted a one-year-old, 100 lb., Great Pyrenees named Louie. He was bred to protect the small and innocent (sheep, goats, etc) from the cruel and heartless (wolves, mountain lions) and the low-down, dirty, and rotten (coyotes). He's a great big, fluffy, white, ball of love to us, and a terror to any predator who dares to step on his turf.

Louie's instincts were strong. Too strong, in fact, because he started spending all of his time at the neighbor's house protecting their sheep and goats! It seems that horses didn't need him, and birds were beneath his notice.

Oh, what to do? We started driving over to their house to pick him up each night. He would come home easily enough, but by morning he would be gone again. We made a deal with a local butcher for meat scraps to feed him. Bribery worked a little, instead of having to go get him every night, a couple of times a week he would come home on his own! Now this was progress, but he was still spending most of his time at the neighbor's house.

As a scientist -- OK, I'm a computer scientist, but you've got to work with me here! Ahem ... as a scientist, I figured we had to get to the root of his behavior. If he likes to guard small animals ... then ... if we had some suitable livestock ...

I never got to finish the thought. In a flash, Christie was on the phone researching where and how we could cheaply acquire sheep and goats. Within a week we had begged, bought, or adopted three goats and a lamb. The lamb was a bottle-fed orphan and we named him Oliver Twist. Oliver is very personable and makes a fine addition to our petting zoo. Two of the goats were adult, lady goats. They will provide us with meat goats and milk in years to come, right now they are comic relief. They have been raised to be tied out in a field during the day, and sleep in the barn at night. They are named Clara and Annabelle.

The final goat is Chico. We only just picked him up last week because we wasn't weaned yet. He is "The Man" because he is (or will be) our stud goat. At present, he is only about 6 weeks old, and is the cutest little bugger you'll ever see. The ladies don't take much notice of him yet, but I can see he'll grow into a handsome young man.

So, to recap...

We got the goats (and Oliver) to keep the dog
We got the dog to protect the birds
But I don't know why we got the birds
-- I'm at a loss for words.

;)

All in all it is working out well with Louie now. He is spending the majority of his time at our place and just visiting the neighbors sometimes. He has chased off the coyotes more than once, and they tend to stay gone for a few weeks before getting their courage up again.

I'm a little worried about the rhino, though, because we already have a minister here (Janice), and once Christie gets an idea in her head ... look out. If we get any packages from Africa, I'm going to Return to Sender, unopened!

Breathe in. Breath out. Repeat.

That is my mantra today. Keep it simple, just try to survive.

Our guests went home yesterday, but not without a typical bit of Wild Mountain Farms excitement. Monday night we got a message from the airline saying that their flight out of Missoula was cancelled. After many phone calls they got it smoothed out. Well smooth doesn't exactly describe how yesterday went, but at least we got them home.

4:00AM - Wake up
4:30AM - Take first guest to Missoula airport
5:30AM - Drop off guest at airport
6:30AM - Return to ranch, eat breakfast
8:00AM - Take other two guests to Kalispell airport 2.5 hours away (suprise!)
11:30AM - Drop off guests at airport

... at this point, you'd think any sane person would crawl into bed for a nap. Well, at Wild Mountain Farms, we're crazy like a whole litter of fox pups! Read on ...

12:00PM - Lunch in Kalispell
1:00PM - Pickup goat ... it is on the way home! (The story of the goats will have to be another post)
2:30PM - Return to ranch, settle in Chico (the goat) with Oliver (our lamb)

... nap? Well, I may have passed out for a few minutes while Christie was handling the critters, but then it was right back to work ...

4:30PM - Take Natasha (visiting mare) home, thus closing Breeding Season.
5:30PM - Stop off at Sportsman's warehouse to buy a hunting rifle (that will have to be another post as well, I'm afraid)
7:00PM - Back on the road to Natasha's house
7:50PM - Are we lost? No! There's the turn to Corvalis ... whew
8:00PM - Natasha returned home safe and sound
9:00PM - Dinner at Applebees (yeah, well, it was the only thing open)
10:30PM - Heading home
11:45PM - Home at last, jiggity-jig

Is there a moral to this story? Nah. All I know is that I spent about 20 hours awake, and 15 hours of that driving all around Montana, including driving up and down our mountain three times and I'm tired.

Breathe in. Breath out. Repeat.

The Book of Dave

And lo it came to pass that the Bubbas would be returning to the land of The South. And Dave said unto Christie "Rejoice! For we are passing from the season of Guesting into the season of Leftovers" And Christie was afraid, for truely Dave and Christie's refrigerator was stuffed to the hinges with the remnants of good meals gone by.

Cooking for Bubbas

We have our second group of vacationers with us this week. They are self-described Bubbas from South Carolina and Virginia. These three guys are an unlikely trio, and are fascinating to be around.

The first night they were here, I took the easy route and cooked Johnsonville Brats at the outdoor fire-ring. We sat around the fire eating, drinking some beer, and telling stories. At one point the discussion turned to barbecue. The quietest member of the trio launched into a 20 minute explanation of the "best" way to BBQ a whole hog. I won't relate the entire discourse, but suffice it to say it takes all day and involves using the skin of the hog as a "bowl" in which to simmer the pulled pork and sauce. The sauce is made from scratch and includes ingredients measured in gallons and pounds.

I'm telling you that so I can tell you this...

When I was getting ready for bed that night, I glanced at the menu board for the week and got a sinking feeling in my gut. There it was in green dry-erase marker: BBQ Pork Ribs, scheduled for the next night. "Oh my God!" I thought, "I am going to serve BBQ to Southerners!!" Christie thought this was really funny, but I wasn't laughing.

Now, one of my specialties is Country Style Pork ribs, served with a local BBQ sauce. This cut of meat isn't really a rib at all, it is boneless strip of meat that comes from somewhere near the ribs. The Costco butcher shop cuts these strips into something more adequately described by words like hunk, chuck, or slab. These monsters are about 2"x2"x8" of pure pork with nice marbling all through. Needless to say, it is a moist and tasty "slab" of meat. I believe you could serve these on shoe leather and they would still taste good! Just for good measure, I rub them with some Chef Paul's Magic Seasoning.

The next evening came, and I built a nice big fire in the pit. The cooking went well, with corn cobs on the outer rim of the grill and the meat cooking in the middle over some nice hot apple wood coals. Rain threatened, and the first big thunderclap rumbled through our valley just as I was about to add the sauce. The sky opened up soon after, and I quickly declared the outdoor portion of the cooking finished. We ended up serving the meat bare with the BBQ sauce as a dip.

To my immense relief, the guys tore into that meat. We started with 9 lbs. of meat for 6 people and ended up with about 3 lbs. of leftovers. They even requested we serve the leafover meat the next day for lunch! At that point, I relaxed, knowing that my poor, Northern, imitation of BBQ was well recieved.