Random pix

Pretty sunset.

Some creative soul assembled a fall tableau and tied it to the telephone pole near the neighborhood mailboxes.  What a delightful surprise!

Naughty calves, forever slipping through the fence out of the pasture.  I herd them back in and they know exactly where to go.  That's why Don had to tighten the fences a couple days ago.

The snowberries seem especially large this year.

Same with the rose hips.  Some old-timers say this indicates a hard winter ahead.  Time will tell.

Pinecone.

An orange placard means "No Hunting."

Tractor woes

Our 1949 Ford 8N tractor has been out of commission since early summer, hampering many of our projects.  Now that our busy season is over, we can finally get the tractor fixed so we can catch up on at least some of the delayed projects before the snow flies.

The mechanic who will be fixing the tractor is about thirty miles away, so we had to borrow a trailer from some dear (and patient) friends (the same ones who loaned us their tractor at various times during the summer).

Since the tractor isn't starting, we used our car to tow it over to the trailer until it was close enough to attach a tow line.

To further complicate matters, the tow thingymabob on the trailer wasn't working, so Don cleverly cobbled it up to our car engine to power it.

We put boards across the trailer ramp to support the weight of the tractor as it was towed on.  You can see the tow cable stretched across the trailer to the tractor.

Hoisted on!

Ready to strap down.

And off it goes for repair!

Linked

My WND article "Cruising Toward Destruction" was featured (with permission) on a start-up blog called We Are Not Sheep.

There's some pretty cool stuff here.  You might want to check it out.

"We don't know yet."

See UPDATE and ADDITIONAL UPDATE below.

The girls and I came home late this afternoon from our weekly jaunt into Spokane for Younger Daughter's music lesson.  Nearly at the point where we turn off to get to our house, we came upon the scene of an accident.

We saw one truck rolled on its side, but in the chaos of trying to inch past the emergency vehicles, not much else registered.  (Older Daughter was trying to get pictures but we went by before she got the hang of the camera.)

Then a couple hours later when I got a choked call from our neighbor, Maid Elizabeth.  "Please pray for Zach," she said.  "He's down at Gritman Medical Center in Moscow (Idaho)."  All she knew was that he was in a car accident.

No, I don't know if it was the same accident I saw.  Probably not.  But the coincidence was rattling.

Zach "Smith" is 18 years old and as nice a young man as you'll ever meet.  The whole "Smith" family is one of those close-knit, truly decent families that you seldom find nowadays.  I have no doubt that Zach's accident was truly an accident, not a result of wild or irresponsible driving on his part because he's not a wild or irresponsible kind of fellow.

As of this writing, we don't know his condition or prognosis.  But it hurts to think of this giant (6'4") sturdy young man facing unknown injuries down at Gritman.

Please say a prayer for his recovery.  I'll post updates as I get them.
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UPDATE: I didn't sleep well last night, worrying about Zach.  So early this morning I emailed a mutual friend to see if she knew Zach's status.  She replied right away:

Zach came home last night.  He hit a moose and tore the top of his car off and left the car in pieces.  His right shoulder and arm are bothering him, but x-rays showed no broken bones.  He is very bruised and swollen, but in reality, walked away.  Only by the grace of God!

Thank the good Lord above!  And thank you all for your prayers.  God is good.
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ADDITIONAL UPDATE: I spoke to Zach's grandmother this morning.  Apparently the accident was worse than we thought.  The moose shattered the windshield (Zach still has glass in his eyes) and peeled off the roof of the car.  Because of Zach's height, he got thiiiis close to being decapitated.  Any animal big enough to take the roof off a car is big enough to take a head off of shoulders.

Zach was sleeping when I called, and his grandmother sounded pretty shaken.  This family's strong faith is upholding them.

Near-misses are frightening things.  And no, the moose didn't make it.

Splitting firewood

One of the neglected chores we've been meaning to get to is splitting firewood.  As you may or may not know, we heat our home entirely with wood heat, so firewood is a critical aspect of getting ready for a long Idaho winter.

We have quite a pile of unsplit rounds in the driveway.  Not enough to last the winter, of course, but it's a start.  Over the summer we didn't need to heat the house; but with a nip in the air, it was time to get some wood split.

Sunday afternoon while the tankards were drying, we hauled out the wood splitter and fired it up.  We often split by hand, but when we have a lot to split and not much time in which to do it, the log splitter is the way to go.

While I settled in to split wood, Don took some tools and repaired a fence where our snarky teenage calves were regularly getting out.

Some of the rounds were nearly two feet across, so we're thankful for the splitter which makes short work of them.

While I split, Younger Daughter started piling the wood on the front porch.

This is how much wood I split before I ran out of gas.

We were racing an incoming squall.  The squall won.

It poured.  Hard.

I managed to get a plastic crate over the splitter's engine, but that was it.  No worries, the wood will dry.

This afternoon, with our busy season officially over, Older Daughter loaded the wood into the wheelbarrow...

...and carted it to the porch.

I stacked it up...

...with overflow on the other side of the door (kindling is the pile on the right).

This wood will only last us about a month or so, assuming the weather gets chilly enough to keep the stove going most of the day.  We have a lot more wood hauling to do!

Ding dong, the season's done!

We shipped off the final production run of tankards to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival this morning!

Here's what the last insane 24 hours looked like.

We finished coating the insides of the tankards early Sunday afternoon.  Because we had to get them baked that evening (we force-cure the lining by baking the tankards at low temps for 1.5 hours), we had to get them dry as quick as possible.

So we tented the batch and put a space heater on them for several hours.

Late in the evening, we put the first batch of 30 pieces in the oven.  Meanwhile we got the shipping boxes ready...

...while the girls spread open newspapers for wrapping each piece.

Don stayed up very very late Sunday night (well, Monday morning) and got three sets baked and tested.  I got up at 4:30 am this morning to finish the last bake.

I put the remaining tankards in the oven and got them baking.

Meanwhile last night's tankards were still testing.  We fill them with water and put them on newspaper to see if there are any leakers.  (We can repair leakers.)

Here are the tankards which have been baked and tested so far.

Next step is to card each one.

What this means is each tankard gets a guarantee card with contact info, care and feeding instructions, and the woods found in that particular piece.  The cards are tied to the tankards so they don't get separated.

At the special request of our booth managers, in this batch we included two "giants."  These one-gallon-capacity monsters sell for $100.  And who, you might wonder, would be dumb enough to buy a ridiculously expensive tankard that holds far too much for one person to drink and weighs a ton to boot?  Well, as Don is fond of pointing out, never underestimate the power of tankard envy.  Last week, two other giants sold at full price within an hour of the Faire's opening.

Here's a giant next to a standard next to a coffee-size.

Here's most of the batch, carded and organized according to style, ready to inventory and pack.

But first we have to repair a leaker.  See the tape with the arrow?  That's where the water came through.

A quick fix, another test, and it's ready to go.

Ready to start packing.

Each box is lined with heavy-duty bubble-wrap, and each tankard is wrapped in newspaper to keep them from damaging each other in transit.  Tight packing also helps prevent damage.

A few extra layers of bubble-wrap on top...

Then we seal the boxes and put the labels on them.  Almost done!

Here comes FedEx Ground.  The boxes are about 45 lbs. each.

Bill, the driver, loads them up and takes them away.

Whoo-hoo!  We're done!  This is the official end of our busy season!  Now we can start tackling the dozens of projects, large and small, that we've been postponing - and that includes battening down the farm and getting ready for winter.