Today is June second and its 43 degrees here in southern Oregon. Still too cold to plant beans or corn. Very unusual weather this year. I started some cucumber and tomato seeds indoors and have transplanted them into the garden, but this cool weather is keeping them from doing well. Ten day forecast ...

October 16th, its getting cold at night and the rain has started here in Oregon so its safe to have a fire in the woodstove. I have swabbed out the masonry chimney and removed the steel chimney inside the house and cleaned it. After re-assembly I started the first fire of the season, but something ...

October 16th, its getting cold at night and the rain has started here in Oregon so its safe to have a fire in the woodstove. I have swabbed out the masonry chimney and removed the steel chimney inside the house and cleaned it. After re-assembly I started the first fire of the season, but something ...

October 16th, its getting cold at night and the rain has started here in Oregon so its safe to have a fire in the woodstove. I have swabbed out the masonry chimney and removed the steel chimney inside the house and cleaned it. After re-assembly I started the first fire of the season, but something ...

The weather has changed to cool and wet here in Oregon, so I have harvested most everything before the rains start. Picked all the grapes, plums, and ripe tomatoes so they don't split open from the rain. Dug up the potato patch and picked the remaining blackberries. Decided to leave the apples on ...

I use madrone exclusively because it produces more BTUs than any other wood in the Coast Range or Cascades. It takes at least 2 years to dry out enough to burn properly. I have several blow down trees, one oak and 3 Doug Firs that need to be cut up and split. Fir is good to burn in the morning when ...

When I was 30 years old I realized I had to bug out to save my sanity. I worked in just about every major city in the country, both coasts and the Midwest and the Gulf Coast too. Big cities are a trap. I was talking to a real estate agent while sitting on a bar stool in San Jose California in 1978 ...

When I was 30 years old I realized I had to bug out to save my sanity. I worked in just about every major city in the country, both coasts and the Midwest and the Gulf Coast too. Big cities are a trap. I was talking to a real estate agent while sitting on a bar stool in San Jose California in 1978 ...

I'm in the same boat. Its still way too cool to germinate seeds outdoors, very weird weather this year. I planted 13 tomato plants and they are doing fine with yellow flowers showing. Too cold to plant beans as they like warm soil. Corn seed has rotted in the ground for the same reason. This is the ...

Have been working on extending a raspberry patch 18' longer. Used railroad ties for a wall on the deep end to hold the dirt and must bring 3' of dirt in to fill the low side of the bed. Its built on a hillside which I have terraced over the years but each year I build a new raised bed it takes ...

Viet Nam war sniper Chuck Mawhinney passed away on Feb 12 at 75 years old. He had the most confirmed kills of any sniper in that war. I met him a few years ago while participating in the Idaho State Sniper Championship at Blacks Creek Rifle Range near Boise. Chuck was the guest of honor and did the ...

In the summer of 2021, I noticed that I could no longer see the sights on my pistol, could not get a proper sight picture or sight alignment and had a lot of misses while participating in a local defensive pistol shoot. Went to the eye doctor at the VA hospital for an eye examination and the doctor ...

Last night the temperature dropped to 30 degrees, so that's it for this years gardening. I had picked all the green tomato's and have them sitting on the window sills to ripen. Last week I harvested the remaining apples but left about a dozen up in the top of one tree that I could not reach. The ...

Oregon has seen a mild and dry summer up until last week when the temps jumped up to 106 degrees. This heat wave lasted 5 days and it cooked the garden. My green bean plants fried in the sun, cukes too. I had already dug up the potato bed. Tomato plants survived and are producing large, tasty fruit ...

Are the pipes exposed to where you can see them? Bathroom water pipes are usually small diameter, like 1/2" and they will freeze before a larger pipe would. If your house is 30 years old or older it probably has copper water pipes. It may have gotten cold enough to freeze and crack open the copper ...

I have 18 five-gallon buckets stuffed full of dry kindling. Without it, making a fire becomes very hard during the winter when everything is wet and hard to light. Also keep several boxes of a fire-starting material called "Firelight Timber Starter" which is a mixture of sawdust and wax and comes in ...

In the last several months I have used 35 gallons of gas which I have stored since 2017. This fuel was for use in my generators when the power goes down, but I never used it. Long term storage was aided by adding STABIL. I have found no problems with using this gas after 5 1/2 years in 5-gallon ...

In California they have outlawed the sale of all gas powered equipment, chainsaws, lawnmowers, generators, weed wackers etc. Brilliant move. They make a battery powered chainsaw but they are junk with no power and can only be used to branch trees. With no generators available for winter power, they ...

I picked the last 2 cukes and 2 small tomato's last week and thats it for this years garden. Two years in a row I have had bad weather and low yields. Potato crop did good this year but there were no apricots or apples due to a late frost that killed the developing fruit. There was no fruit ...

So now there is a nation wide shortage of firewood and prices have soared. It still has not rained here and the woods are shut down for fire restrictions so the harvesting of firewood is at a standstill. Very unusual to not have any rain yet in the middle of October. I have managed to get 3 cords of ...

Last night I had a dream. I was young again and living in Florida during the great construction boom of the early 1970s, making good money and having not a worry in the world. I was hanging out with good friends and having a great time, was tan and fit and as strong as a horse. This dream was so ...

Yup, I use about 5 cords depending on how cold it gets. Thats 5 cords of hardwoods like madrone or hickory. If you use fir it takes about 6 cords. Fir burns a tad hotter but has no duration and requires stoking the stove more often. Madrone will burn all night and is easy to restart the fire when ...

Firewood prices have gone up this year here in Oregon. Plenty of forest but summertime fire restrictions prevent cutting of wood and running of internal combustion engines during fire season. I have several large fir trees that blew down last winter that need to be cut up and split as soon as it ...

2022 is another shaky garden year due in part to the late spring which delayed planting by a full month. I counted 200 apricots that turned black from 32 degree temperatures, then fell to the ground. Several apple trees also failed to produce any fruit and the frost also terminated the cherries ...

Ouch! That one hurt. So now you know. I have built an 8' tall x 12' long food storage locker in my attached garage to store canned goods and other supplies. It stays nice and cool in the garage. I added 2" furring strips to the 2x4 walls and installed R-21 insulation bats, then drywalled the ...