Rude Death Doggerel (Elegy)
And the stealthy bobcat,
of our little duckling
he did break it's back
and was to eat it,
but outcry was heard
by dear Melina
and he had to beat it.
The little duckling
now limp and still
the bottom of a hole will fill
to grow a tree
(planted by the dear Melina).
A tree to grow
bright and strong
in memory, loving and sweet
of our little duckling,
loving and sweet,
that the bobcat did kill.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Monday, July 13, 2015
"Barn" Renovations
Melina asked me to fix up an old shed on the property for safe storage of chicken/duck feed and various gardening tools and equipment. She's reading over my shoulder right now and objecting that she didn't ask me to fix up the shed...just that she commented on needing a place to store garden and animal stuff. I would note that we were standing near the shed at the time of our conversation.
Anyway, the 10 x 12 shed sits next to an old well East of the house, and probably housed a pressure tank and a breaker box in the old days. But then some prior owner drilled a deeper new well farther back on the property and the shed fell into disuse. By the time we bought the place a couple years ago, the roof was rotted, some of the interior framing had termites and dry rot, and a window was broken. I have to say it was never in very good condition - someone had done a very amateur and cheap job of stuccoing the exterior walls - the framing was wrapped with #18 gauge wire, tar paper was added, and chicken wire, and then a lumpy, clumsy application of stucco base - that's as far as they got. Aside from the "stucco," nothing of the framing or slab was level or plumb, and the framing was old (and probably local) full-size 2 x 4 cedar (that is, with dimensions varying by almost a half an inch). No matter, at least it was cedar, and had partially resisted the rot, water damage, and termites (doug fir framing, under the same conditions, would have collapsed into a pile of rubble years ago).
The "Shed." Note the fairly flat roof. The old well is off to the right by the blue bucket (we installed a manual pump to provide emergency water should the main well fail or electrical power is off for an extended period).
So, my late-June-through-July task is rebuilding the shed. And somewhere along the line I noticed that the shed had acquired the title of "The Barn" in our discussions - a somewhat glorified name, given its size and construction. But, from here on out, it's a BARN!
Well, as any remodeler knows, even for a simple project you need a rough sketch of the work to be done and the materials, but the first serious step is to collect the tools that will be needed - also known as marshaling EVERY TOOL KNOWN TO MAN: demolition tools, electrical tools, woodworking tools, metal working tools, drills, chop saw, hand saws, Skilsaws, tool belt, levels, plumb bob - I'm going to stop here because list could go on for pages.
The first step was removing the whole roof and its four or five layers of old and decaying rolled roofing, some rotten top plates, and a variety of other detritus. The original roof was sheathed with 1 x12 inch cedar planks (when this and the two or three rolled roofs on it had all failed, someone threw down some OSB decking and another rolled roof (the OSB had rotted back to chunks I could crumble in my hands, while some of the cedar planking is still reuseable). Then, a bit of new framing above the old front wall to increase the pitch of the roof. And, of course, new roof framing. I'm not going to go into all the sordid details; I will let the photos tell the story to this point.
The start (below): framing already added to front to raise the roof pitch to 3-1/2 in 12 (the original roof was almost flat). If the framing looks old it is because I tried to re-use lumber that was scavenged out of the demolition...and anything else we had laying around.
Adding upper fascia board to rafters (pay no attention to the man standing on the top of the ladder and flouting half a dozen OSHA rules -- but note I have a six foot ladder to jump to if I lose my balance).
Prepping rafter for fascia outrigger; some roof sheathing has already been added.
Nick and I roofing; we roofed "Texas style" - that is, no tar paper underneath the shingles.
Measuring for a small section of the T-111 8-in OC siding.
Upper section done (except for 1 x 4 corner trim and painting)
Stucco patching. The base stucco was weak, poorly-applied, and holey, but I am leaving it up. I am loath to haul another batch of stucco to the dump (we removed a bunch from the exterior of the bedroom we converted to the greenhouse last year).
Framing for a small storage loft. Here, I am shimming to an old cedar stud that is 3/8" smaller than the others.
I still have to buy some topping stucco and have a go at applying that. I've no experience, but the walls can't look any worse than they do now...
Anyway, the 10 x 12 shed sits next to an old well East of the house, and probably housed a pressure tank and a breaker box in the old days. But then some prior owner drilled a deeper new well farther back on the property and the shed fell into disuse. By the time we bought the place a couple years ago, the roof was rotted, some of the interior framing had termites and dry rot, and a window was broken. I have to say it was never in very good condition - someone had done a very amateur and cheap job of stuccoing the exterior walls - the framing was wrapped with #18 gauge wire, tar paper was added, and chicken wire, and then a lumpy, clumsy application of stucco base - that's as far as they got. Aside from the "stucco," nothing of the framing or slab was level or plumb, and the framing was old (and probably local) full-size 2 x 4 cedar (that is, with dimensions varying by almost a half an inch). No matter, at least it was cedar, and had partially resisted the rot, water damage, and termites (doug fir framing, under the same conditions, would have collapsed into a pile of rubble years ago).
The "Shed." Note the fairly flat roof. The old well is off to the right by the blue bucket (we installed a manual pump to provide emergency water should the main well fail or electrical power is off for an extended period).
So, my late-June-through-July task is rebuilding the shed. And somewhere along the line I noticed that the shed had acquired the title of "The Barn" in our discussions - a somewhat glorified name, given its size and construction. But, from here on out, it's a BARN!
Well, as any remodeler knows, even for a simple project you need a rough sketch of the work to be done and the materials, but the first serious step is to collect the tools that will be needed - also known as marshaling EVERY TOOL KNOWN TO MAN: demolition tools, electrical tools, woodworking tools, metal working tools, drills, chop saw, hand saws, Skilsaws, tool belt, levels, plumb bob - I'm going to stop here because list could go on for pages.
The first step was removing the whole roof and its four or five layers of old and decaying rolled roofing, some rotten top plates, and a variety of other detritus. The original roof was sheathed with 1 x12 inch cedar planks (when this and the two or three rolled roofs on it had all failed, someone threw down some OSB decking and another rolled roof (the OSB had rotted back to chunks I could crumble in my hands, while some of the cedar planking is still reuseable). Then, a bit of new framing above the old front wall to increase the pitch of the roof. And, of course, new roof framing. I'm not going to go into all the sordid details; I will let the photos tell the story to this point.
The start (below): framing already added to front to raise the roof pitch to 3-1/2 in 12 (the original roof was almost flat). If the framing looks old it is because I tried to re-use lumber that was scavenged out of the demolition...and anything else we had laying around.
Prepping rafter for fascia outrigger; some roof sheathing has already been added.
Nick and I roofing; we roofed "Texas style" - that is, no tar paper underneath the shingles.
Measuring for a small section of the T-111 8-in OC siding.
Upper section done (except for 1 x 4 corner trim and painting)
Stucco patching. The base stucco was weak, poorly-applied, and holey, but I am leaving it up. I am loath to haul another batch of stucco to the dump (we removed a bunch from the exterior of the bedroom we converted to the greenhouse last year).
Framing for a small storage loft. Here, I am shimming to an old cedar stud that is 3/8" smaller than the others.
I still have to buy some topping stucco and have a go at applying that. I've no experience, but the walls can't look any worse than they do now...
Well, we went through about 14 50lb bags of scratch coat stucco to get the ugly old stuff covered. That seemed adequate and I decided to skip the topping coat since I don't know anything about stucco texturing anyway (and I was getting mighty tired of applying stucco, even with Melina's ceaseless help). The old side window was replaced with a dual-glazed, double hung window I've been saving since it came out of my first Isleton remodel project about 20 years ago (justification enough for my "I know this will come in handy sometime" prediction back in 1994). I reglazed the door light and then had to glaze it again - my first effort broke when the door fell off the bucks. Then, a lot of caulk and a bit of trim.
As for the paint, I've been buying up yard sale paint and paint mistakes at the hardware stores in town for the last couple years, with an eye towards mixing up a green similar to the house color that I could use on the garage (turns out the barn came first). I purchased a brand new gallon of generic yellow to mix in, I got it real close (I know I'm cheap, but I also like the adventure of mixing paint colors - once an artist always an artist). Melina decided she wanted a barn red/orange for the upper section of T-111 plywood. I didn't like the idea - thought they would clash - but realized that the barn was for her use and she could have it any way she wanted it. I applied the upper and lower paints with a high pressure spray rig I bought at a yardsale. The machine worked great, making easy work of the eaves and other "pain-in-the- a__" areas. I also brushed and rolled it in behind the spraying, where needed, to get good surface penetration (spray applications can sometimes be very superficial).
When I starting thinking about a trim color, the leftover yellow paint caught my eye and I realized I was looking at a paint scheme that was an analog of a certain color scheme I obsessed about (a little) in my early days as a painter just out of high school - the green and red were colors of late summer weeds in vacant Santa Clara county lots: burnt sienna, grayed greens. The other color was the ochre-yellows of dried grasses. I realized the barn was meant to bring these colors to a real fruition. I thought my first mix of the yellow was too bright, but Melina liked it, so...and now I have to agree with her.
When I starting thinking about a trim color, the leftover yellow paint caught my eye and I realized I was looking at a paint scheme that was an analog of a certain color scheme I obsessed about (a little) in my early days as a painter just out of high school - the green and red were colors of late summer weeds in vacant Santa Clara county lots: burnt sienna, grayed greens. The other color was the ochre-yellows of dried grasses. I realized the barn was meant to bring these colors to a real fruition. I thought my first mix of the yellow was too bright, but Melina liked it, so...and now I have to agree with her.
So how does it all look? See below! I'll also refer you to Melina's blog, which nicely covers the "before" and "after" photos of the project. I am very pleased with the result and Melina is too.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Provisional workshop and workbench...
This is my temporary workbench that has been set up in the old Mill Office. I'd take more photos, but it's also chaos in the other three directions...
Those orange parts on the bench (old door from the house actually) are a Fairbanks-Morse pump given to me by a neighbor who, in the olden days, used to use it to pump water out of her creek for her livestock. A historic object, for sure, like the notion of water in a creek around here.
It is now back together after a bit of refurbishing, I haven't a lot of confidence that it is going to work as I am unfamiliar with the pump mechanism and the orientation of certain parts, and I haven't been able to find anything on the internet about it. I'll be testing it in the next few days.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Raining!!! (and we are thankful)
This year we got serious about collecting rainwater and put together a prototype system. The rainwater runoff from the house roof gutters is getting collected in garbage cans under the downspouts. Each can is connected by hose to the lowest can in the system.
At the lowest can, we put a float actuated sump pump that sends the water to a big temporary collection box. This is a photo taken during the morning rain on Thursday, 5/7/15, when the pump first started up.
The rainwater is routed to the box today because our 1500 gallon rain water collection tank is already full from the last rain of a couple weeks ago (photos taken 4/25/15, a day or two after the rain):
The greenhouse cans aren't connected to the system yet, so once the cans are full this water runs over into a channel we dug and is ultimately directed towards the garden trees. But we will be have these two cans connected for next year's rainy season and also hope to catch the runoff from the mill office and garage roofs.
At the lowest can, we put a float actuated sump pump that sends the water to a big temporary collection box. This is a photo taken during the morning rain on Thursday, 5/7/15, when the pump first started up.
The rainwater is routed to the box today because our 1500 gallon rain water collection tank is already full from the last rain of a couple weeks ago (photos taken 4/25/15, a day or two after the rain):
The greenhouse cans aren't connected to the system yet, so once the cans are full this water runs over into a channel we dug and is ultimately directed towards the garden trees. But we will be have these two cans connected for next year's rainy season and also hope to catch the runoff from the mill office and garage roofs.
RAINING!!! (and we are thankful)...
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Dishin' It
The "Demon Hauler" - that is,my 1934 Ford 1-1/2 ton truck - has carried a variety of stuff over the years. Not the least of which are dish antennas, better known as satellite dishes for their reception of TV/video signals sent down from geostationary satellites. My brother's business, KLM Electronics pioneered the first consumer-oriented satellite reception systems, largely because of an on-going interest my brother and his partners had in satellite communications both for commercial and ham radio purposes. The photo below shows half a of a bolt-together dish about 16 feet in diameter. KLM did not manufacture this dish which was probably purchased by KLM for ham radio and experimentation purposes. The scene is the parking lot of the KLM plant in Morgan Hill, California. My brother, Mick (or Mike to ham radio operators) is standing on the hub of the dish talking to Leland _____ (the "L" of the KLM partners). I don't remember if the dish is coming or going (its possible it came from the Stanford Research Institute where Mick worked at one time in their radio astronomy facility), but my truck is carrying it. The photo was taken by me and is likely from the mid-1970s.
Flash forward to 2015. Some forty years have passed. I am retired and living in the mountains above Mariposa with wife Melina. A few days ago, on a Facebook "buy, sell, free" site called "SWAP Mariposa," I noticed a satellite dish for sale ($50).
Now for some time I've been scheming on how to protect our 2500 gallon water storage tank from the summer sun (I hate warm tap water), and months ago a satellite dish came to mind as a kind of giant umbrella to suspend over it. And since that time I had been planning to (someday) put a wanted ad on SWAP Mariposa for an old satellite dish. Years ago, many folks up here had them installed because no cable TV was available and only a few areas were able to receive the two or three channels of terrestrial TV from Fresno (using conventional TV antennas). The big dishes intercepted the private commercial satellite feeds used by networks and cable TV operators. That window of opportunity closed after a few years when they started encrypting their satellite feed signals. That left the homeowner with a lot of channels showing of nothing but scrambled pictures. Now up here, folks are more prone to put stuff up than take it down, so driving around these days you can still see the big dishes dotting the landscape.
Anyway, in a short time, the SWAP Mariposa dish was marked down to $20 and I bit. This morning we took a drive in the very same Demon Hauling truck and rambled down Darrah Road to pick it. It turned out that this particular dish was made for commercial communication purposes, and very well built - a single piece of mesh aluminum pressed to the dish shape. The owner had bought it at a sale in Fresno and had planned to use it as a gazebo cover. But the project petered out somewhere along the line and he decided to sell it. Well, we got it home and Melina took the photo below. I am trying to mimic my brother's pose in the old black and white photo, and I am actually holding that same photograph in my hand. The dish, of course is significantly smaller. A bit of irony: here it is forty years later and (unlike me) the truck is in better shape than it was in the 1970s...
Flash forward to 2015. Some forty years have passed. I am retired and living in the mountains above Mariposa with wife Melina. A few days ago, on a Facebook "buy, sell, free" site called "SWAP Mariposa," I noticed a satellite dish for sale ($50).
Now for some time I've been scheming on how to protect our 2500 gallon water storage tank from the summer sun (I hate warm tap water), and months ago a satellite dish came to mind as a kind of giant umbrella to suspend over it. And since that time I had been planning to (someday) put a wanted ad on SWAP Mariposa for an old satellite dish. Years ago, many folks up here had them installed because no cable TV was available and only a few areas were able to receive the two or three channels of terrestrial TV from Fresno (using conventional TV antennas). The big dishes intercepted the private commercial satellite feeds used by networks and cable TV operators. That window of opportunity closed after a few years when they started encrypting their satellite feed signals. That left the homeowner with a lot of channels showing of nothing but scrambled pictures. Now up here, folks are more prone to put stuff up than take it down, so driving around these days you can still see the big dishes dotting the landscape.
Anyway, in a short time, the SWAP Mariposa dish was marked down to $20 and I bit. This morning we took a drive in the very same Demon Hauling truck and rambled down Darrah Road to pick it. It turned out that this particular dish was made for commercial communication purposes, and very well built - a single piece of mesh aluminum pressed to the dish shape. The owner had bought it at a sale in Fresno and had planned to use it as a gazebo cover. But the project petered out somewhere along the line and he decided to sell it. Well, we got it home and Melina took the photo below. I am trying to mimic my brother's pose in the old black and white photo, and I am actually holding that same photograph in my hand. The dish, of course is significantly smaller. A bit of irony: here it is forty years later and (unlike me) the truck is in better shape than it was in the 1970s...
Monday, March 30, 2015
Tanks for the Memories...
My1934 Ford 1-ton truck has carried a wide variety of goods during
my tenure as its owner (1971-present), when its doors bore the "Demon
Hauling" business name and a variety of painted-over phone number
testifying to my frequent changes of residence). Before I acquired the
truck in 1971 I think it spent most of its life
hauling boxed prunes and apricots around one of the many orchards
around Almaden California (in the then lush Santa Clara Valley). All the
stuff I hauled and all the places I went in this truck is another tale
altogether. In this post, I'm focusing on a specific type of cargo:
water storage tanks.
From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, I lived in Mariposa, California with Edna and our kids (Aischa, Gabriel, Nicolas). As part of my "Carpentry Etc." business I did occasional work for Sylvia Schaefer (not sure of the spelling of her last name) who owned a local and free "penny-saver" paper (with her husband Jim) that competed for a while with the historic Mariposa Gazette. The Schaefers lived on a hilltop near town and their land had water problems; that is, they had drilled several wells over time to find a reliable water source and none of them produced much water. This lack was complicated by the fact that Sylvia liked to garden. So I created for them a complicated plumbing and electrical system that linked all the wells and turned each one on when there was water available. The system worked well enough that the Schaefers decided they wanted a larger storage tank to capture the output. They found a used one that was for sale in Catheys Valley by Rita and Tony Kidd. My job was to haul it and install it. Thus, the photo below, taken by Sylvia as I struggled to get the heavy steel tank off my truck and avoid any loss of control could have sent that tank charging downhill uncontrollably - to the detriment of the tank and my reputation. So, I used a lot of ropes and proceeded with extreme caution. And, eventually the tank was landed safely on its bed of gravel and railroad ties.
Fast
forward to 2015 (!) and the place Melina and I live on Triangle Road in
Mariposa. Last year we installed a 2500 gallon tank as a
water/fire-fighting reserve. This tank draws from our main well and,
through a booster pump, feeds the house and Melina's gardens. Because of
the drought we have experienced here for the last couple of years, we
both have thought a lot about ways to save rain water, reuse gray water,
and possibly pump water from an old, shallow well on the property. We
haven't gotten very far on the plans and details, but when I saw a 1500
gallon tank for sale over in Ponderosa Basin (on the fb SWAP Mariposa
page) we knew we had to get it. As you might guess in this dry region,
tanks are in big demand these days and used ones don't come up for sale
very often. So I immediately agreed to the selling price and committed
to pick it up ASAP. Saturday morning (3/21/15) found us rambling down
Triangle Road in the very same Demon Hauling truck. At the place, a
young man came out of the house to watch us load it. He volunteered that
we might want to turn it on its side and roll it onto the truck bed.
But, I wanted to load it right side up (and have it sitting flat on its
bottom for more stable travel) and so we pushed and winched it up three
4x4 skids on the back of the bed, only to find, with the tank half on
and half off, that the tank's diameter was a few inches larger that the
distance between the stake sides of the truck. Just a bit embarrassed, I
volunteered that he was right. And so,we let it slide back down, tipped
it on its side, and rolled it up and onto the bed. We then spent about a
half and hour strapping it down. The photo below shows it at our place,
near the house and gardens. FYI, unloading a plastic tank is a lot
easier than unloading a big steel tank; Melina and I handled it easily.
Just where it will eventually be installed and how we will use it and
supply it remain to be discovered. The adventure has just begun!
From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, I lived in Mariposa, California with Edna and our kids (Aischa, Gabriel, Nicolas). As part of my "Carpentry Etc." business I did occasional work for Sylvia Schaefer (not sure of the spelling of her last name) who owned a local and free "penny-saver" paper (with her husband Jim) that competed for a while with the historic Mariposa Gazette. The Schaefers lived on a hilltop near town and their land had water problems; that is, they had drilled several wells over time to find a reliable water source and none of them produced much water. This lack was complicated by the fact that Sylvia liked to garden. So I created for them a complicated plumbing and electrical system that linked all the wells and turned each one on when there was water available. The system worked well enough that the Schaefers decided they wanted a larger storage tank to capture the output. They found a used one that was for sale in Catheys Valley by Rita and Tony Kidd. My job was to haul it and install it. Thus, the photo below, taken by Sylvia as I struggled to get the heavy steel tank off my truck and avoid any loss of control could have sent that tank charging downhill uncontrollably - to the detriment of the tank and my reputation. So, I used a lot of ropes and proceeded with extreme caution. And, eventually the tank was landed safely on its bed of gravel and railroad ties.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Our 2014 Christmas Tree and Some of Its Special Ornaments
I just wanted to highlight some of the
special ornaments on our tree this year. The camera and donkey are
fairly modern; the rest have been in my family since I was a kid and even then they were old: passed to us by grandparents and great grand parents - so many are
probably around 100 years old (some may have come from Germany).
No
lights this time around - just ornaments. The tree is a Colorado Spruce
that will be planted somewhere on the acreage in a few days.
Santas just don't look this serious anymore.
Hand blown glass...needs some tail feathers I think.
This is hand-blown glass and feather-light. Ooh, there's a modern robot at lower right.
The face is a lithograph
I restrung the web this year, which I also restrung at least 55 years ago. The spider itself has survived just fine.
I
found this and another donkey at a yard sale somewhere. It is probably made
in Mexico of very fragile, low-fire clay. I've had to epoxy several
broken legs. Melina loves donkeys, so although this isn't officially an
"ornament" it had to go on the tree.
I
made a series of these cameras about 15 years ago and distributed them to several friends
at work. I know of at least two that have wound up on
Christmas trees this year.
Not sure why Santa has no legs - maybe they wore out?
Amanita mushroom anyone??? I Googled "amanita" and discovered they are now sold legally for their hallucinogenic properties. I was always told they were highly poisonous. This one ain't for eating - it's hand-blown glass.
I bet the dull orange spots were once meant to be bright, shiny red balls (but I won't be messing with them).
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