Benjamin Scribner's Blog, page 12

The weeks news. The cabin build starts

 

It’s been another hectic week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

I’m a bit late this week because of having to haul in building materials and other supplies for building a cabin, plus feeding more mouths.  The building materials my son ordered last week were delivered on Wednesday. Since then, we have laid out the floor and nailed the joists and sub floor down. The original plan was for a one-story cabin with a loft for him and his wife and a bedroom on the first floor for their two kids. After some discussion, we decided to go with a New England saltbox style home, instead.  This gives them more room on a second floor for both bedrooms and leaves a larger open first floor for their growing family.  This increases the needed building materials, but I am waiting until we run out before having him order more so that we won’t have any extra.  Though it would get used sooner or later, there’s no sense spending the money now. Better to get him settled first, then make plans for later projects.

Stiff and sore has been the order of the day since the building started. I’m not as young as I used to be, and my son has been a stay at home dad since his second son was born. His stamina isn’t there any longer, and within a few minutes, he is huffing and puffing like a steam engine pulling a heavy load of freight up a long grade. I am hoping that by the time this build is finished, he will have slimed down and have more energy. I, myself, lost forty pounds up here my first year, and my health improved greatly as a result.

We have made more trips than is usual for us up to the city this past week.  In addition to our monthly trip for supplies, after the building materials were ordered for my son’s cabin, there was a trip to Habitat for Humanity searching for doors and windows, of which we did have a few good finds.  We will likely be making a few more trips up as we find things we need that can’t be found locally, or as cheap, as we can find up in the city.

About three weeks ago, I purchased some old barn board from a lady in Washington.   I was able to purchase half of what she was selling for $100 but the catch was I had to pull the usable boards apart from the walls.  This board had apparently been slated for a building project but had wound up not being used.  Since then, it had been languishing on the ground where it had been set after the barn had been taken down.  We spent a couple days over the next two weeks tearing boards apart and hauling them back to our lower lot.  Today, I took my son with us and we made our last trip to harvest the boards.  We wound up leaving some behind because it was next to impossible to tear apart with the tools we had available to us.  I believe that I now have enough to finish at least the kitchen ceiling and possibly enough to finish the living room ceiling.  We shall see.

While I was looking in the Marketplace on Facebook last night, I came across the antique stove that I had originally had in mind for my kitchen.  It looked in good condition and was in a price range that I could afford.  We decided to go take a look at it today on our way to get the rest of the barn board.  We wound up bringing it home with us.  It is a Detroit Jewel gas stove with an oven and broiler on one side and the burners and warming drawer on the other.  There are a few minor issues to fix, but overall, it is in great shape.  It even has the right colors to match the kitchen décor!  I have decided to place the antique stove I brought up from Florida for sale online.

Rain has hindered building, but I don’t mind.  The alternative is a tinder-dry forest and a risk of fires, which nobody up here wants. So, we work around the rain.  It will take longer to build, but I am sure things will be tight by first snow. The rain has helped me get started on a few of my indoor projects I need to finish before winter, such as getting another coat of polyurethane on the living room walls. Next, I plan to complete the front wall of the kitchen which has been left unfinished since I added it on several years ago. I had to fix the shoddy roof the past owner and builder put up on the main cabin before I could complete the wall because rain and snowmelt leaked into the front wall and ceiling of the kitchen. Now that the roof is tight, I can finally finish it and move in my antique cook stove, getting rid of the stove that came out of Casa Del 5th wheel what seems like ages ago. It’s nice to see things moving forward.

The lovely wife is now on summer break, which means I haven’t been going into town as early as I would otherwise, and therefore, haven’t seen any of the old loggers. I will have to try to get down there soon and catch up on any local news.

With more traffic on the mountain, moose seem to have been steering clear of this side.  Normally, we would have seen a few with new born calves by now, but as of this writing, we haven’t. Other wildlife has been scarce as well, and I can only surmise it’s because of all the activity going on.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

This weeks news. A big move

It’s been a pretty hectic week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

My son, who has lived in Florida these past twenty years, decided to sell his house and move his family up to my land. They arrived on Tuesday, and since then, it has been busy. I do not have enough room in my cabin for them, so for the time being, they are staying in an old travel trailer I acquired last summer for use as a guest cabin. My son and I moved the trailer closer to the cabin for now, allowing them access to water and power. We ordered building materials and they will be delivered next week. So, I will be pounding nails once again. I’m hoping to have their cabin dried-in as soon as possible since they are a bit cramped in the trailer, and as usual, we are up against Old Man Winter. Everything we do up here must be completed before snow flies once again. With my health being the way it is, things will move slowly since my son has never done anything close to building and will be learning as we go.

It’s raining today, making it impossible to get anything done outside, though I did load scrap from the old truck body up and hauled it to the landfill. There are many more such loads to go, though I am seeing the pile drop almost daily now.

The lovely wife’s last day of the school year was Friday, bus cleaning day. She’s been in pain since, and I have had her taking it easy; my son and I have been taking up the slack so she can relax. As a result of everything going on lately, we have been eating at My Kitchen a lot, since I haven’t had time to cook up here. Sam, down at Always Grounded, has also enjoyed the extra business since we have been stopping in there more often, needing caffeine.

I’ve been making a mental list of things my son will need to have on hand before too long, such as a water trailer, one set up with two 55 gal barrels instead of the one I have because he has a family. Also, he will need smaller water jugs, the seven-gallon type, so he can have water inside, and like myself, will have to have rainwater storage soon. I had planned on having my rainwater storage working by the fall rains, but now have put it off until next summer. Then, we will both have time to build the necessary storage to have water over the winter without fear of it freezing.  Dogsleds are on the list as well, making us able to haul supplies up this winter. I already have two snowmobiles for him, though we have some repairs to do before we can use them. That will happen in the early fall, so it’s low on the list for now.

I’m sure other things will come up as things progress on the building.  There are a couple of projects I need to finish on my cabin this summer, ones that I cannot put off any longer, therefore there will be time away from building to complete those.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. Work around the cabin

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

We were able to get the pickup into the yard almost a week and a half early. Since then, it’s been pretty busy around here. The old truck body that we were using as a storage shed, had started leaking over this last winter. The rivets holding the aluminum on had started to separate from each other, letting melted snow in. The floor was also buckling, and showing rot. The lovely wife and I emptied it out, and a friend who had rented an excavator to do some work on his property, came by and tore it down for us. Now we get to clean up the mess, which will take some time.

There is another couple in the process of moving up here, last weekend they attempted to move their small cabin using the excavator, and the less said about that, the better. The husband has been in and out a couple times this week making repairs, and last evening they drove a U Haul in with their belongings.

They will be settling in for a while, then finding firewood for the upcoming winter.

They also need to find a couple of Snowmobiles before long. I have hopes they will learn quickly.

Our off grid pellet stove arrived this week, it’s still sitting in the truck bed as of this morning. This will save me about half my summer that I spend hunting firewood, not to mention the cutting, splitting and stacking, which my body can no longer handle. I’m looking forward to installing the new stove, but first, the old one has to come out, then I have to insulate the ceiling above it, since I wasn’t able to do it before we had to start using the stove last fall.

We hung the hummingbird feeder early this year, since one came around before all the snow had melted. I boiled up some sugar water to fill it, and after it had cooled and the feeder was hung, the hummingbirds emptied it almost overnight. They must have been hungry, since no wildflowers were blooming yet. The consumption of sugar water has slowed down this week, but the small birds still stop by for a quick snack.

We spotted elk on this side of the mountain, one halfway down the mountain while I was taking the lovely wife into work. Then the next day we spotted three more at the bottom of the mountain. I have lived here going on six years, and it’s only the second time I’ve seen elk. The moose have been staying out of sight, they must be on the south side near Allen this year, since that side has less traffic. Once we aren’t going up and down daily, they should migrate back over here.

Well that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news, Fond memories, and a short history lesson of Old Castine

 

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

It’s that time of year when things tend to become stagnant up here; too much snow still on the ground to work outside, and the weather is warm and sunny. Cabin fever starts to set in for me about now.   So, since there’s nothing new going on, I decided to drift back to a time and place in my childhood for some fond memories. Part of my early years were spent in Castine, a town situated on a small peninsula along the rock-bound coast of Maine. It was here that some of my most cherished memories were made.

Castine is situated at the mouth of the Penobscot River (once known as Majabigwaduce) and Penobscot Bay. It was here, in 1779, that the British decided to build a fort to control the shipping lanes from New York up into Canada. Castine was nothing more than a small fishing village when the British fleet sailed in and dropped off troops, that then began building the fort on the heights above the town. The colonial forces found out about it and launched what turned into a disastrous expedition to take the fort before it could be finished.

I didn’t know the significance of these ruins when my friends and I played there in the 1960’s; it was just a fun place to play. Later, while I was in the Navy, I developed an interest in the fort when I stumbled across some old documents about the battle that took place; though, it wouldn’t be until many years later, when I read Bernard Cornwell’s book “The Fort,” that I understood the whole picture of that battle (military documents can be dry reading, so I didn’t delve further into it).  It is insignificant compared to some of the great battles we learned about in our history books back in school, but it had more significance than the footnote it has been relegated to. I won’t go into too many of the details here because it would take too long, but the battle was a major defeat for the colonies. Anyone interested can read the book, or google it online, it is an interesting read.

In brief:  Many ships of an already small colonial navy were lost when they found themselves trapped at the mouth of the river by the far larger British navy that held the bay and had to sail upriver until they could go no further. They grounded their ships, which included troop transports as well as warships, then set them ablaze to keep them out of British hands. The surviving troops then had to march the long and perilous journey back to Boston. The land battle was no less a disaster than what happened at sea. Incompetence of the leadership and outright dislike between some of the officers towards each other caused many a good man to fall.

This was the place in which I was fortunate enough to spend a good many of my summer days, without knowledge of what had transpired on that ground almost 200 years prior; running along the now overgrown earthworks that once were the unfinished walls of the fort when the colonel troops first tried to storm it. I had no idea that where my friends and I ran and played men had fought and died. I don’t know if anything would have changed in my then six-year-old mind, but who knows.

The fort is still there, older now, as am I.  I later found out that it was the last fort surrendered after the war ended. From what I have seen online, the town is larger now. Someday I would like to take a trip back there and see all that has changed. Castine will always hold a special place in my memories.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

This weeks news. A close encounter of the moose kind.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

April showers bring May flowers, or so the saying goes. Our spring rains have arrived, at times in the form of snow that has melted off or washed away quickly. We are expecting a major storm today with thunderstorms, high winds, and heavy rain. I hope it washes most of the snow and ice from the road below so I can get the pickup a little further up and closer to the cabin. I was again able to park near the spring yesterday, so the pickup is almost a mile closer.

I had a close encounter of the moose kind this week, and by close, I mean within five feet. I had taken the Alpine down to the spring, as far as I can go on any snowmobile, and decided to hike down to meet my lovely wife and check the road conditions.  The mud is just as slick as ice, and we have quite a bit of it right now.  I was close to the downhill side of the road, walking along, not paying much attention (which up here can be a bad thing at times), enjoying the spring-like weather. There was a moose napping just over the bank, not five feet from where I was.  It blended in with the surrounding burnt logs left over from the logging company, and I didn’t notice it until it stood up, rather quickly, and took off down the bank. It must have been sleeping pretty hard not to have heard my approach. Now, moose don’t have the best eyesight, but there is nothing wrong with their hearing, so why it didn’t hear me is a puzzle. Anyway, I don’t scare easily, so I just started talking to it when it turned to look at me from a few hundred feet further down the bank. I doubt I would have had time to react anyway if it had decided to turn on me instead of running the other direction. By the time my lovely wife came into view, the moose was down on a lower logging road and still turning to watch me every so often.  I don’t think it will be napping beside the road again anytime soon.

What snow that is left is starting to become dirty, or the dogs have been going in it. It is getting harder to find clean enough snow to keep the rain barrel full. This morning, I took snow off the porch roof, it was the cleanest I could find with no worries the dogs have been into it. It won’t be much longer before we have to haul water from town for all of our needs since I won’t be able to use the water trailer yet. It’s a difficult time of year, water wise.

We are starting to put away the heavy winter coats and are breaking out the lighter ones, and I am exchanging my heavy winter boots for my old military ones I wore during the war. We are letting the fire go out during the day now, mostly since the woodpile is getting rather sparse, but also because it can get pretty warm in the cabin during the day. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to have a fire going but need to have all the windows open as well.  I still have almost a cord buried under the snow I wasn’t able to cut or split before the snow hit, so should we need it, we can dig it out. Though the rain may uncover it first.

Still working on my writing. I have a book of short stories almost finished and hope to have in print this summer. My lovely wife has been trying her best to get the editing done, but there are times she hasn’t been able to take her laptop to work with her, since it’s heavy in her backpack, and she doesn’t want the extra weight should she have to hike up the road any distance. I don’t blame her, parts of the road are steep and hiking without a pack is a struggle at times. Neither of us are young anymore, things tend to hurt after such a hike. So, she takes it with her when she can, and does her best to get things edited. I don’t know what I would do without her around.

Allen stopped by the other day just to let us know he was still kicking. We haven’t seen much of him lately, since travel on his side this time of year is hard. He lives on the south side and the snow tends to melt off faster over there, leaving him with lots of bare patches he can’t cross with his snowmobile. I don’t know who decided that plastic skis on snowmobiles was a good idea, but they should never have gone that way. At least with metal skis, I can cross over dirt without fear of wrecking the skis, as long as I don’t do it all the time. Plastic wears out fast if run across dirt too often. A bad choice all around, if you ask me. The weight savings isn’t all that much, and you have a tougher machine.

I stopped by Larry and Moe’s yesterday on my way into town. Tina stayed home sick, so I went in to grab a few things we needed for the weekend. Larry and Moe are doing fine, they have their first granddaughter, and Moe has been spending a lot of time up in the city helping get things settled for the new parents. She is home for now and keeping Larry busy building baby furniture.

I haven’t seen much of the old loggers lately, when I am in town. I have been too busy to stop by for coffee and conversation at My Kitchen.  Instead, I stop by Always Grounded for a latte-to-go and say hi to Sam. I hope to slow down a bit and catch up on the goings on in town with the old loggers soon. I need a few more stories from our sheriff, and he has had a few good ones. I have probably missed out on a few by not stopping by there lately.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

 

This weeks news. Snowmobile repair man

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

I never intended to become a snowmobile mechanic, but lately that’s what’s been happening up here.  I buy older machines (they can be picked up cheap) and for a few days work, plus a few bucks, they can be fixed up enough to do what I need them to do. Then, I can get rid of them if they become too costly to repair, or finding parts proves impossible. The two shops in town that repair snowmobiles seem to have trouble finding parts for anything older than the 90’s and have come up empty-handed more than once with my machines. Lately, thanks to the internet, finding parts for some of the older machines has been easier than I anticipated. Gotta love the web. So, it looks like I’m in the business of repairing my own machines now. My mother thinks I should make a living finding, restoring, and selling, those old machines, but there’s not much of a market for them out here. That market seems to be back in the Midwest, Northeast, and Canada, not here.

Earlier in the week, I decided to take the Ski Doo Alpine my son had purchased out for a shakedown, hoping that if anything decided to break, it would do it now and not next winter when he needed it to haul in supplies. It did not disappoint. One of the rear axles broke after a five-mile run around the mountain, just as I reached the end of our driveway. At least it did it there and not a few miles away. My son found the necessary part online and it arrived in a few days. Now, I have never put a rear axle in a snowmobile, so this was a new experience for me. With the help of my wife, who was off this week, and the side by side, we managed to get the axle and track back in place. Using the side by side as an anchor, a ratchet strap ran from the front bumper to a part of the axle and then we ratchetted the track back enough to get the adjustment bolt in place. I then took it out for a test ride and made a few more adjustments before calling it good. Next, I started trying to figure out why the lights weren’t working. My old Navy experience working on torpedoes, and being able to read wiring schematics for them, has helped me track down the problem with the lighting on the Alpine. Unfortunately, it turns out it’s the lighting charger, an electronic part buried behind the recoil starter. Finding a replacement has been somewhat easy, but I think it will wait until this summer, when my son is here and I can take that machine out of service.

I have quite the eclectic mix of snowmobiles around here. First, there’s my ‘75 Arctic Cat Cheetah. Though it’s underpowered for the mountain, it has been a real workhorse, hauling not only a sled full of supplies, but my wife and I more than once as well. It only had 246 miles on it when I picked it up in a trade a couple of years ago. It has seen a lot of use since then, and I am planning on restoring it over the next couple of years now that I have a parts machine for it. Then, there’s Tina’s mid-80’s Yamaha Phaser. I picked it up last summer for $100 and got it running this winter after the UTV went down for the last time. It needs new fuel lines, filters, and some cosmetic work, to make it a reliable machine, but I think it will last us a few years at least.  My son bought the Alpine so he has something next winter after he moves his family up here.  We were also given back another Ski Doo which I gave Allen a couple of years ago. I have no idea what it will need, nor do I remember what year or model it is. I am hoping it’s a close year to the Alpine since Ski Doo used a lot of the same parts on their different machines. That will make things much easier keeping spare parts on hand.

All of the machines will get their carburetors cleaned this summer, new fuel lines and filters, plus any other work necessary, before winter hits again. I refuse to go through more of the same headaches as I have had this winter.  At first, the snowmobiles were only backups if something happened to the UTV, but after the UTV proved it couldn’t handle tracks, or daily use, the snowmobiles have become the primary mode of transportation up here. Plans for larger sleds, in order to haul all our supplies up in one trip, are in the works; another project for this summer.

My son wants to learn how to repair machines.  Well, he’s about to get an education in the busted knuckle academy. I have cut and bruised myself many times on these machines. Tina had to patch me up today when I sliced my hand open while stripping a wire on the Alpine; damn metal prong on the wiring harness pulled out of the plug, and the sharp end cut a short, deep furrow across the palm of my hand at the base of my thumb.

In other news, we still have a couple of feet of snow up here; while in town, trees are starting to show signs of budding out, and grass is looking greener. Rain is in the forecast for the coming week, and I am once again hoping to get the pickup much closer to the cabin than it is now. It’s currently about a mile away, and it’s that time of the season when we can’t get the snowmobiles very close to the truck because of too much bare ground yet can’t get the truck closer to the snowmobiles because of too much ice or mud in spots. We are trying to come up with a solution to this problem for next winter, as lugging heavy seven-gallon jugs of water and five-gallon fuel cans, plus the other supplies, isn’t a joy the few hundred feet uphill they have to be hauled before we can load them in the sled. We are looking forward to the day we can drive the pickup into the yard once more.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

This weeks news. Snowmobiles, snowmobiles everywhere.

I’m a bit late this week due to finding and hauling in snowmobiles. Sorry for the delay.

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Signs of spring are plentiful in town, while up here, two feet of snow still clings to the mountainside. Temperatures are all over the place, which is normal for this time of year. We have to have the fire going, yet also have a window or two open to regulate the temperature inside. Sleeping requires nothing more than a flannel sheet to start, anything else and we sweat. Sometime during the night one of us will end up pulling more blankets over us as the fire dies down and the cabin gets colder.

My youngest son from my first marriage has wanted to move up here for a couple of years now. It appears that this summer he may be making the move. He is starting to make plans for a cabin for him, his wife, and their two sons on my lower building lot. It will be nice having him close, and the extra hands will help, since I am not young any longer and find some tasks becoming more difficult as my disease progresses. We started looking for snowmobiles, since he understands what it takes to live up here and wants to concentrate on building his cabin instead of hunting down machines when he gets here. He has left the search up to me because I am more familiar with what will work best on the mountain.

I had found an old Ski-Doo Alpine on line a couple of weeks back. The gentleman that had it was asking $400 for it, originally, but eventually wound up listing it for $300.  He said it needed a fuel pump and that the shifter wouldn’t come out of neutral (these machines have a simple transmission with two forward gears and one reverse.)  I offered him $250 for it as it sat, and he agreed. Upon arriving to pick it up, we were informed that not only had he gotten it running and it didn’t need a fuel pump, but he also freed up the transmission so it would shift. Instead of hauling it onto the trailer with a come-a long, it was driven on. For those of you not acquainted with this machine, it was, I believe, designed and built for farmers and ranchers as well as for ski areas to use for grooming trails. It is a twin-tracked, single-ski tank. It is heavy and slow, which is fine on our mountain since speed isn’t something we can do on the narrow snow drifted road.  It will be taking the place of my side-by-side that I got rid of because of all its mechanical issues.  This is a machine that will be used to pack the snow and bring in supplies.  Its fuel consumption and weight make it undesirable for a daily driver.

The other thing that happened this past week, while looking through a vintage Arctic Cat site I found another 1975 Cheetah, the same snowmobile I currently have. This one didn’t have the motor, but all the rest of the parts were there, including a seat with the original seat cover from the factory.  What a find! If they can be found whole with no tears, they can sell for as much as $350. The other parts I figured would cost me around $500 to $700. I got the whole thing for $150. The only problem was that it was sitting in Illinois, a few days drive from me. As luck would have it, an old friend of mine who still drives a rig, was coming back off the east coast and had room on his trailer. I should have the “new” machine here by the end of the week. This coming summer I will be stripping it down and storing what I can use, then getting rid of the rest. I can keep my old trusty machine alive a few more years this way.

One other machine has been located nearby.  It belongs to Allen and is a mid-80’s Ski-Doo that I gave him a couple of years back when I took it in trade and figured he needed a backup. He hasn’t touched it in two years, and a couple of weeks ago, offered it back to me after my side-by-side went down for the last time. The Ski-Doo was running when I gave it to him but needed some more work to make it dependable. Allen is not mechanically inclined, and it has sat in his yard all this time, now buried under a few feet of snow. This summer I will haul it out and down to the local shop to let them get it running, since I have more than enough on my plate as it is. This will give us four working machines by next winter. I plan to have the carburetors pulled off of all of them this summer and cleaned, as well as to run new gas lines and any other servicing they need before Old Man Winter hits again.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

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This weeks news. A slow week for me

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Spring is once again making an appearance; warm temperatures and rain are once again upon us out here. While the east coast is getting pummeled by nor’easter after nor’easter, we are having spring-like weather. As a boy growing up in New England, I don’t recall quite so many storms in any given winter as they are having these past couple of years. We might get two in a season, but nothing like what has been happening back there this year.   Then again, the winter which we have had here has been abnormal as well. I have never before been able to drive the truck right into my driveway on Thanksgiving Day, but I was able to this past November. Also, we were able to drive to within a mile of the cabin in February, something that hasn’t happened since I have lived here.   I believe that by the end of this month I will be driving to within a mile of the cabin once again, maybe sooner. In the past, there have been some pretty nasty storms move through in March and April, making travel up and down difficult, but I don’t think we will get much more in the way of snow this year.

The primary clutch shattered on Tina’s machine earlier in the week.  Fortunately, I was able to locate one locally and had it running again quickly. Her Phazer needs some fine-tuning this summer, and then I believe it will be a good machine for getting her to work and hauling in supplies next winter. It has an electric start, making it easy for Tina to operate.  I won’t have to fight with it on cold mornings to get it running, nor will I have to ride down and get it running when she is ready to come home.

We spent this morning digging out the old wrecked Yamaha (the one where the throttle stuck full open and went over the bank to smash into a tree last year) so I could get the drive belt off of it.  It seems Yamaha didn’t change belts for almost twenty years, so the belt will fit the Phazer.  At least that’s what the shop in town told me, and having another belt is always a good idea up here, even if it’s a “limp home” belt.  I have ordered a new belt for the Phazer, but it won’t be here for another week.  The one that is on the Phazer now is getting a bit worn, so the one off the wrecked machine should be a good replacement.

It has been a slow week for me, since I pushed too hard the week before. My body told me to stop or it would shut down all together. Therefore, I have been doing the least amount of work possible around here to keep from ending up in the hospital.  Tina, the strong gal that she is, has been picking up the slack without complaint; she wants me around a few more years.

I have put my Arctic Cat aside until summer, when I can take the time to restore it. Since it decided to breakdown, I haven’t wanted to try figuring out just what went wrong with it. Finding parts could prove impossible, or at the very least, damn hard.  I really want to tear it down and rebuild it from the belly pan up, and you can’t do that when using it every day. This summer, I will be looking for a replacement machine and storing the Cat in the shed until I can find the time for it. It’s been a hard-working machine and deserves to be restored properly and enjoyed.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weeks news. My Mother growing up, and a little about the town I live near.

     It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

     We often think that the off-grid movement, if it can be called that, is something new; yet, that is far from the truth.

     It wasn’t so long ago that people lived without the things we take for granted today: running water, lights at the flick of a switch, central heating, flush toilets, etc.  My mother’s generation, born in the thirties, was the generation in transition from what we consider off grid to modern life. My mother jokes that she didn’t use a flush toilet until she was in high school.

     She was born at home, as were many of her generation, in a small town. Her family, like so many in town, had electricity, though a lot of those in rural areas had yet to be hooked into the grid. By the time she was born, most people in her town had a water closet, what we call a bathroom today, with a tub, possibly a sink, and a flush commode with a pipe leading to a septic tank outside. Her family had no such thing. The sink was in the kitchen and had only a cold-water faucet, no hot.  Baths were taken in a washtub, with water heated on an old wood-fired cooking stove in the kitchen. Father went first, then the rest of the household followed by age, with baby being last.  By this time, the water was mostly dirt, which is where the saying “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” came from. During the winter months, everyone congregated in the kitchen around the cooking stove, as it was the warmest room in the home; the fire was not allowed to go out there.  The family toilet was an outhouse, connected by a breezeway so one wouldn’t have to brave the winter winds. Almost all New England farms had a breezeway connecting the home to the barn, often times with the woodshed and outhouse in-between. This made it easy for the family to get out to tend the animals as well as bring in the day’s firewood. Though my mothers home wasn’t a farm, being in town, there was a carriage shed, at one time used for keeping the family buggy, prior to motor cars. In this case, the carriage shed was turned into the woodshed, though her family used coal for the cooking stove in the winter.  The coal was brought by truck in the fall and dumped, by means of a coal chute, into the basement to be hauled up, one bucket at a time, as needed.  Life back then was far different than what we are familiar with today – with a flick of a switch you can have heat and/or lights; with the turn of a knob, you have water, already heated and ready for a bath.

     I was in town yesterday having some welding done on the exhaust system of the pickup.  The shop had a couple of books with pictures of St. Maries, from its founding days up until just before the turn of this century. It was interesting looking back on the town when it was starting, and looking at the history through pictures. The town has changed many times over the years, from simple logging camp to what it is today. Some of the early buildings are still here, down along the main street. Others are long gone.

     I wonder what this town will look like in another one hundred years. I doubt anyone from back in the early days would recognize the town today, nor would anyone alive now know it in a hundred years.

     That’s progress I guess. This town, which is the county seat, will most likely continue to grow, while small towns nearby slowly die off as people move away, or die as other small towns across the country have done, and are continuing to do, as time marches on.

     Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

This weeks news, moose, snowmobiles and things.

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

It appears winter is finally here to stay. After weeks of abnormally warm temperatures and rain, we are getting cold temps and snow. If we hadn’t had all the rain, I believe we would have a record amount of snow this winter.

Since getting rid of the money pit that was the UTV, both of the snowmobiles decided to pick this week to break down, leaving us with no transportation off the mountain. Enter the local satellite company, whose site I take care of up here. They called to say they were giving me the use of their UTV so I could make the trip up to the tower, and if I needed to bring in supplies, then that would be fine also. Great bunch of guys there. Using this, I was able to get the Yamaha Phaser towed up to the cabin from where it had been sitting when it broke down.  I was then able to tighten up the bolt to the clutch.  It had come loose and was causing the clutch to slip.  This machine has electric start capabilities, so I bought a battery in town, installed it, and now the snowmobile will start without having to pull the cord.  Next week, I intend to take the recoil starter off and take it into town for the local shop to put a new cord on it.  As for the Arctic Cat, all I am waiting on to fix that are the drive belts.  Those were supposed to be arriving by UPS today but the current weather seems to have delayed them.  I am also looking into buying another, larger sled to pull behind the snowmobiles to haul in needed supplies.

Though I like small towns, goods bought locally tend to be more expensive than goods bought in the city north of us, and buying some things online has proved cheaper then buying from a dealer. Case in point, the drive belts for my snowmobile. In town, the shop would have had to order them, since my machine is so old, and I would have had to wait a couple of weeks for them to arrive, at the cost of sixty dollars per belt. A quick web search found me two belts for that machine for just under sixty dollars and free shipping, with them arriving within the week. It does pay to shop around, especially when you’re on a fixed income.

A few days ago, as my lovely wife and I were coming home from a day in town, we came upon a cow moose and her calf near where we had spotted a cow moose and her day-old calf last spring. Moose tend to stay close to one area, so we are thinking this might be the same ones from spring, just now the calf is close to the size of her mother. The cow also looked pregnant, which means she will be kicking the older calf out of the nest, so to speak, this coming spring when she gives birth. Calves often stay with their mother up to two years, barring death of or birth of another calf. Often, cows will give birth to twins, then both will stay close to their mother for a time. I have crossed paths with a lot of moose up here since I moved in, and there’s nothing like seeing them up close. Often, they will stick around to listen to me as I talk to them. Other times, they run at the first sound of my machine coming, and when I see them up ahead, I slow down to give them room. I would hate to see one fall over the embankment and get hurt.

Last winter, when I had taken my Arctic Cat out for it’s first run to check it out, I came upon a young moose that had fallen from the bank above the road onto the road, breaking its left front leg in the fall. I stopped, but it was already scared and in pain, so it ran through a large snowdrift ahead of me on the road. I don’t believe it survived the winter; an injured animal is easy prey for the predators that roam after dark up here.

Moose are such magnificent creatures, their stately antlers, their slow stroll through the forest. They are far more intelligent than most people give them credit for.  At one time, an army in one of the Scandinavian countries decided to use moose instead of horses, since moose were plentiful and horses were not. Now, a horse can be trained to run towards gunfire and will not be bothered by the sound. Moose can be broken to ride, yet, no matter how the army tried, the moose would always run away from the gunfire. Smart creatures, moose.

Down in town, I still don’t know where most of the old loggers have wandered off to for their morning coffee.  I stopped by My Kitchen the other day and was the only one at the table for almost an hour before the sheriff and a couple of them showed up. I have been stopping by Always Grounded most of the time now, since the old loggers have been going elsewhere. Sam, her mother Hanna, and her father Dave, are much more fun to talk to. The sarcasm is thick and the laughter loud when I’m there.  I also have my weakness for a good latte; it’s better than the regular coffee I normally get.

I’m looking forward to spring, though it will come late to the mountain now since Mother Nature decided to wake up. I have plans for a greenhouse this year, but can’t start until there’s bare ground. So much for the early spring we had seemed to be getting.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.