Party Planner

That is my title for the next couple of weeks.
The middle girl "Boppy" will be graduating next Friday and just like with the oldest, she gets her own backyard BBQ party on Saturday. So, I am mister party planner until then.

Last Saturday was our last Chili Cook Off for the summer. I am now rebuilding and re-figuring on how we can make it a little easier for next season. I am sure I will come up with something.
The Oklahoma Southwest Championship had 140 cooks and brought in a lot of money for their charity. Like always it would have been easier if I would have just handed them my twenty five dollar entry fee and went home. Neither the wife or myself placed in the top twenty one places. We cooked with six other folks who are in the top ten percent of the country and they didn't place either. It is amazing how a chili can win one weekend and not even place the next.

 

This is funny right here. Monday morning a buddy of mine calls me up and says he knows where the fish are. Well of course I loaded up the family and went. When we got there he said he needed to shuttle all us out to the island. It took three trips in the boat, but we all made it. I kept looking for an island, but what he dropped us off at is pictured here. A forty feet long, twelve feet wide pile of rocks out in the middle of the lake only six inches above the water level, then he left saying, "See ya later Gilligan." To say stranded was an understatement.
We did catch some fish and had a great time. Thankfully my buddy did come back and give us a ride back to shore. That is what I call trusting a friend.

Other than that, we partied like we were young all weekend long. We also got about three inches of rain to boot. The rain water tanks are full once more.

MDR

Non Stop All Weekend Long

I put in sixty hours of work on the job during the five day work week. During the two day weekend I put in a little over forty. It is non stop from Friday evening to Sunday night. Not all that is work though, I do take time to do some cool stuff.

After finally dragging our tired bodies in the house late yesterday evening I asked the wife, "What do you think it would have been like if you would have married a normal guy?"
Her response was simple, "Boring."

Friday night after we loaded the truck for the cook off we had some friends come over to sit by the fire and relax a long week away. There is just something about kicking your feet up, watching the flames dance in the dark and enjoying life.

Early Saturday morning we were unloading and getting ready to cook. The chili cook off went just as I figured, the wife kicked my butt again. This time I have no excuses, she flat out beat me fair and square along with over three quarters of the other cooks. This has been harder than I thought. I pride myself on my food and really thought I was going to walk right in and be a super star. I am just getting spanked over and over again like a red headed step child.
It's almost like golf, at fist when I grabbed a club, walked up and hit the ball it actually went close to where I wanted it. After playing for a while, studying and learning how to play I started to suck worse and worse. I think I am over thinking it. Maybe I just need to go and cook chili instead of analyzing every little detail.
I have only failed at two things in my life. One was when I ran for City Council and the other is Cooking Chili.

Straight from the cook off to "Music in the park", where we sat with friends and listened to a free concert. Good music, good friends and cold beer, is there anything better than that?   

 Early Sunday morning I busted everyone out of bed with much resistance to go fishing. After they were all up and alive we had a great time, but that first few minutes was touch and go.

Check out my huge catch of the day. It's not much bigger than the minnow I was using and look at that hat I'm sporting, "I'm sexy and I know it."
The other pictures are of the oldest girl BEB. The youngest girl and the wife was there as well. The middle one stayed asleep because she had to get to work early. 

Why were we not in Church you ask, well let me tell you this, I have spent a lot of time behind the pulpit preaching and more time sitting in the pews listening and I can honestly say, I have never felt closest to my creator, my family and myself as I do when I sit on the creek bank thanking him for this opportunity to be with them and to be alive. That's my kind of church right there my friends. I don't need to sit inside four walls listening to a guy with different views than I have telling me how I need to live.

Sunday evening was spent over at my Mom and Dad's doing some back porch sitting and just living. It was great end to a wonderful weekend.

What I left out of the post was all the work. Even though we had a great weekend and did many things, we still have a homestead to run. Between going here and there we mowed, fenced, built, cleaned, fed, watered, moved animals around and gardened. All that is pretty much a given.
The wife did get one of her projects completed and the oldest girl finished her project. I will post pictures of them both.

More storms tonight coming through so when I get home I will need to batten down the hatches. I hope all my friends up in Oklahoma fared well last night.     

Surprise!!!

I have this one goose that has tried to set her eggs for a couple of years. The end result has always ended in disappointment for us and her because they have not been fertile. After the allotted time to hatch we would gather the eggs, candle them, then discard. This time when we went out to gather her eggs we found five new surprises.     

The now four year old pair has taken to parenthood like they were made for it. We cannot get within 30 feet of them before we are attacked.
I am happy because in a few months that in about $150 beautiful little yellow dollars that I did not have to do anything to make.     





This week has been good minus the rain. We had a great visit from some family all the way from Tennessee Wednesday, I sold a truck and got rid of a load of junk I was keeping for some reason or another. I had a friend come over last night and I started loading him up with stuff I probably should have kept, but I am tired of looking at it. I am sure his wife won't like me any better now.

This weekend consists of fishing, fishing and maybe some more fishing. Sometime in there I will try and do some more work on the giant bird hotel, but that all depends on how good the fishing is.

I will talk to y'all on Monday,
MDR 

Good Country Living

Wow, what a weekend. Just an easy going, doing what I wanted weekend. No deadlines, no pressure, no stress.

Saturday morning I woke to the smell of pancakes and sausage. That in it's self is a good enough reason to have a great day.
Daylight broke and we were all down at the creek. The water levels are way down and we had to go a little out of the way to find deep enough water to fish in, but we found some. 

The sand bass were running in about two feet of water and we took advantage of it. The middle girl caught the fist fish of the day and gave it a good luck kiss, hoping for more of the same. The oldest girl came up from A&M bringing her boyfriend along with her and he caught the biggest fish of the day.

The season has started, from now until it gets too hot we will be down at the creek every weekend. The crappie will be running in a week or two, then the catfish.
At the end of the season we will hold a huge fish fry for all the friends and family like we do every year. That is some good living right there. We have been waiting all winter to get back to creek and now it's time.

  I didn't get much accomplished on the roof of the big bird hotel. Being it's eight sided it takes a while just to go around it once. The boards may be getting shorter, but it's still a pain in the butt. I did have some help though, the oldest girl and her boyfriend (I guess I'm starting to like the boy, but I will never admit it) hung around after fishing so I put them to work until I ran out of planks, I guess you could say I under estimated a little, so it's just going to have to wait till next weekend after fishing.
We have more rains coming in mid week so I am not even going to try it.

The back yard was dry enough to mow late yesterday afternoon, but the front is still holding water in spots. It's going to get away from me if I don't get a chance to mow it. I need to adopt a bunch of kids I guess. Mine all are gone or have jobs and don't have the time to help old dad out much anymore. Lets see, I need one for the lawn care, one that can build, one to weed the gardens and one to care for the animals. So I need to foster about four kids. No wait, that would be called a sweet shop then. LOL 

I do have to brag about this though. I have been looking for a generator for a long time and every time I get the money I just can't make myself buy one. I look at it as money just sitting.
I ran across this 8500 watt generator Saturday evening. Brand new, only been ran a total of ten minutes, $1200.00 if you bought it new from the store. The guy told me he bought it for his shop, but did not need it and it was going to sit for another three years until a time where he might. I picked it up, put gas in it and the thing started on the first pull. We negotiated the price and I ended up giving him a hundred dollar bill for it. I almost feel guilty about it, almost.

I got more to tell, but I don't want to bore you any more this time.
See ya on the flip side,
MDR   

Fathers Day Weekend With The Kids And Wife

Buck creek, Lake Ray Roberts Texas

My New Fishing Pole At Buck Creek

Boppie At Buck Creek

Spending The Day At Lake Bridgeport, Texas 

Date night with the wife, Concert in the Park, Aubrey Texas

Must Be Doing Something Right

I don't know if it is one single thing I am doing or a combination of several things, but whatever it is it's right.

These two raised beds are full of Squash, Pumpkins, Cantaloupes and Watermelons. 

 Look at the size of this squash plant. It is like a Giant Elephant Ear.

And Carrots, I have never had carrots this big and bushy. I pulled one just to make sure something was growing under the top and the carrot was already eating size. Another couple of weeks and these bad boys will be pickled.

I got maters and I am happy about it. Last year the plants were big but they never produced any fruit. I have so many plants this year I think I will have more tomatoes than I will know what to do with.

If you were wondering, yes the girls did out fish me again. I sure am glad I am not making a living on what I catch. The girls on the other hand, they might could make a few dollars.

Right off the bat this morning before I even had the chance to bait my hook, the youngest "Wee" pulled in this  4 lb Alligator Gar. We don't eat Gar so I threw him back. The little devil, with all his needle teeth did get in a bite on my finger before I could get him back in the water and yes the blood was flowing.

Boppie (The middle girl) did manage to pull in some baby fish we could not keep, but at least the cork went down.

I, again did not pull one single fish out of the water, but I did get to relax, hear the girls laugh and have a little fun, priceless.


I hope y'all have a great week and thank you CFW, I am undeserving.    

Whoa There Big Fella

I don't know what happen, but I went from overdrive to first gear in one week.
This weekend I absolutely did nothing to write home about. It seemed like everything was in slow motion when I was trying to do it.

My Boppy

Saturday morning I did get the chance to do a little fishing. Of course I was out fished by my daughters like always but never the less I went. Boppy, my middle girl, caught the biggest and Wee, my youngest, tied with Boppy on how many. I came in last place with catching only one.
It's okay, at least I went. I could have sat out there all day and it didn't matter if I got a bite or not as long as I was with them.
The rest of the day I spent with the girls just being there.



Sunday, today, was a different story. I got up chomping at the bits to get something done.
I tried, but the harder I worked the less was getting done so I just slowed down and went at a nice slow pace.

After getting some odds and ends done I decided to turn my focus on the Rain Water Solar System. I mounted the solar panel on the housing box and plumbed in the "on demand pump". I also went ahead and wired in all the DC electrical stuff to go with it.
Everything runs off a switch. Flip that switch over at the bath house and the pump comes on to 45 psi and shuts off. Every time you turn the water on either in the bathhouse or the gardens the pump kicks back on.

The one thing I should have done was plumbed in two union fittings so when the pump has to be replaced it will not be such an ordeal to do it. I just got antsy and went with what I had.

I plan to add two more solar panels and two more batteries in the future.

This is just a quick set up to see if everything was wired right. The leads from the battery (Not shown here) plug into the outlet, energizing the switch to turn the pump on.
Very simple design I thought of here.


If you have not been reading, all this is for the rain water harvesting system. This will pump the water out of the two 1500 gallon tanks and into the gardens and bath house.
Oh, I almost forgot. The Verde River Citizens Alliance is using my Rain Water Harvesting System design for their Back Yard Garden Expo. I am pretty excited about that.  

I got bored today and decided to also go ahead and start on the Solar Laundry Room.
I got the floor completed and now I am thinking on how exactly I am going to do this.
My question is, do I want to try and run everything off of DC solar power or run everything like the old days where it was all manual labor. I have not figured it out yet.  

I Guess I Didn't Need To After All

After forty some odd calls to the County animal control, I guess they finally got tired of me and came and picked up the two dogs that was giving me so many problems.
I am proud of myself for handling the situation by going through the proper channels and not just killing the dogs out right. It is not the dogs fault.
I never could get a call back and this morning the guys boss just happen to pick up the phone when I called. Well wouldn't you know it, the animal control officer called me within two minutes of me hanging up with his boss lady. Ha, go figure.

Work has had me slammed these past couple of weeks and I am finding it hard to post on here when I get home so late. Today was and exception and I got off at a reasonable hour. What to do with a little daylight left, mow of course. I really didn't want to and after much debate with myself and I think I even twisted my own arm, I decided it's only going to get worse if I prolong it.
I guess I didn't need to after all because as soon as I was done with the front I ran out of gas. Oh, the bad luck (sarcasm intended)
At lest the front is done.

I really don't care what happens this weekend I am going fishing. The creeks are still high but I know of a spot that I can get to if I get there early enough. It's one of the only spots there is to fish right now and everybody wants it. First come first serve.
I might just take my tent out there the night before to insure I get the spot. Kinda like those city people do when a new I-Phone comes out. "Open, Open, Open"      

All Over The Place

This post will be kinda all over the place so here we go.

 First thing is I added another raised bed to the garden area this weekend. I built it last week and have been filling it up with that pile of compost my dad delivered to me a couple of months ago one wheel barrow at a time.
Onions have to go in at the end of the month and I needed another bed to dedicate for just onions because the wife plans to make several cases of salsa this year.
I am also trying to figure out a cheap way to put up some sun screens so the summer sun will not have such a devastating effect like it did last summer.   

I got the plumbing just about done in the solar bathhouse. It is not how I really wanted to do it but it was the cheapest way.
I also went ahead and built the shelves for the towels and other things I will have to have in there.
I have not had the chance to stain the outside yet due to the weather. We have not had but a couple of days where the sun has been out and the wind has not blown a hundred miles an hour. As soon as I get it stained I will make the signs and hang them on the bathroom wall.
In the mean time the virtual wall can be found at the top of the this blog and has the names of everyone who helped out so it is not too late if you are still wanting to participate.    



I also scored a free hot tub this weekend. I had to get three guys and drive almost to the Red River but it's mine now.

Being that is was free I did not expect it to work and after closer examination I noticed the wiring had been really butchered and would take a lot to repair.
I got the thing because I need the parts in it. It has two big filters that will go on the outside of the bathhouse to filter the rain water.
It also has a big pump that will be used for the Aquaponics system to be built later this year. The control panel has two different timers in it that can be salvaged to use on the same system.
The tub was a nice one in it's day. There are four low voltage lights I can use and several different valves, pipes and various plumbing parts. The tub itself will be used as a minnow hatchery for this springs fishing season.  

So there you have it. A weekend of doing this and that. The weather man said it was going to be in the 70's and sunny but it ended up being cloudy and nasty. I had such high hopes too.