Learning some odds and ends

    Every homesteading article I read says the same thing.   Take it one step at at time and learn new skills.  Now that's all well and good, the only problem is that I am a "City Mouse" and I've become used to having things either "on demand" or having someone that can do it for me on my time schedule.  

      Thus it was the first weekend in November that I had planned on learning how to split wood.  Sue and I ended up buying a pellet stove, and buying a ton of pellets (50 forty pound bags) which were stacked into the back of the garage to fuel it.

    Originally we were going to go with a traditional wood burning stove and had even bought a cord of wood, however that plan fell through due to cost to replace the original wood burning stove and bringing everything up to code.  (See previous posts).  

    So we gave the cord of wood that I had previously bought to a family member and spent part of the day Saturday loading and unloading  two pickup trucks full of wood and driving them to their destination.  That's when the offer to split wood came about.

    I had bought myself an ax previously thinking that it could be something useful to have, however my experiences with axes and chainsaws was limited at best.   I've never used a wood spiltter but I am familiar with the concept.   

    Sue understood where I was coming from.  I'm interested in the experience and working with her family and friends might win me some respect in their eyes.  I've spent my life working white collar jobs.  I've been a teacher/trainer, a banker, an insurance agent and underwriter.   I work with data and formless numbers.   Her family however has always been strip miners, truckers, and people that work off the land.  The City Mouse fell in love with a Country Mouse.

    Somehow, after 15 years of being together, we make our relationship work.  Both our families didn't really understand how or why.  Sometimes we don't either, but we do make it work.

    So, given the chance to learn a new skill, why not?  The only problem is that it rained and Aaron, my handyman buddy, called me and canceled.  Another day, another time.

   Since you can't let a little rain stop you though we ended up working part of the day Sunday clearing bricks for our new concrete walkway and metal roof replacement and extension,   It wasn't going to cost us to much to have the roof extend fully over the front porch, it was only a partial before, then have posts added to hold the roof up.  Cables would run along the posts to create an "enclosed" area.  This is basically the last of the "outside" jobs we would have before spring, and I was hoping to get it down before old man winter hit.   

    We think that the original walkway was done in red firebricks but something happened somewhere and it looked like a step was removed from the front porch or maybe the previous owner was thinking of replacing the steps and walkway with the bricks?   Whatever the thinking was, it simply didn't get done.  So Sue and I spent part of day pulling up bricks and re-stacking them in back.  Next weekend we get our new roof and walkway taken care of.

    We were wanting to keep the old red bricks for a few reasons, including building a small flower garden outside of our windows. It's hard to think of flowers and a sudden rainstorm turns into hail.  The temperature had been falling all day, and as I write this, snow flurries make an occasional appearance. 

The small square is the hopper, the large box the burn tray

    I was glad to get the stove installed when we did.  

    One thing that did bother me about the pellet stove,  was when I woke up at 4 AM, unable to sleep for what ever reason, I had walked down stairs to work on the blog only to notice that the pellet ash in the stove had piled up quite a bit.  

    Th ash was literally up to the hopper, I don't know if this is part of normal operation or not.   We've only had the stove for three days and have only gone through 2 and a half bags of pellets.  I turned the stove off so that the pellets could burn down and made a mental note to call.   I then cleaned out all the ash with a shop vac and wondered at the amount of ash that had built up.  We've run it for just about 3 days continuously though.  

    Although I don't believe it was ever a danger, I just don't know enough about them one way or another and would like to speak to someone about it.  If we need to adjust the auger speed, we will let the installer do it.   Luckily, the next few days should be warmer.   It actually dipped down to freezing that other night meaning we had a thin layer of frost on the ground in the morning.  

    As a little side note, my neighbor has several horses and one of them got out of his fence and wondered over into our yard.  This particular horse is named Billie.  She's very tame and easy to get along with.  We manged to get a hold of her and lead her back home.   Since my neighbor wasn't home we tied her to a post, left a note and considered it closed.  .   Billie showed back up in the yard eating our grass.  I guess she likes the apples we feed her.

     Anyhow...long story short at 8 PM we're leading her back to the barn and was able to find a link of chain that affixed to her halter.   Friends of ours in Kentucky own horses and a friend of mine from Tampa used to train them.  So I had a rough idea on how to act around her.   She's gentle but big and strong and welcome to eat our grass anytime she likes.