Out of the dark ages!
I can say now that we are officially out of the dark ages. Last night AT&T turned on 3G in the area.
This is great news for us because the laptop connect card is our method of internet access. It was better than dial-up but not much better. It would peak at about 100K for downloads which isn’t that great. Now with the joy of 3G I’ve been averaging about 1.2M down and 600K up.
Times are good!
Progress and Summertime Fun
So, our garden has finally become a source of happiness instead of worry and disappointment. We have more straightneck and zucchini squash than we know what to do with and tons of green beans, too. We’ve also got pumpkins starting to turn orange, four different kinds of tomatoes, jalapenos, green onions, red onions, okra, watermelons, cataloupe, two different kinds of cucumbers and some lettuce that has survived the hot weather. Soon, I’ll be planting broccoli, cabbage, more radishes, carrots, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. Our corn was completely decimated by the sqirrels, so we’ll try that again next year. I don’t know what they did with the corn. There weren’t any ears yet, but they gnawed the corn stalks off about two inches off the ground. We started out with forty-five plants and ended up with four. I finally tried red pepper on the corn that was left, as I heard it might work. C said he said saw one of the squirrels running away from the corn squeaking and jumping in the air. We haven’t seen any squirrels in the garden since, so I guess it worked. We actually got a permit to shoot them from DNR, but they disappeared for the entire month that the permit was good for. A few days after it expired, they came and killed it all. Now, I’ve never shot an animal and I’m not sure I ever could, but I was so angry about the corn that I thought I might be able to. Even A, who wants to save all the animals in the world, was using a slingshot, trying to whack the squirrel that we had chased up a tree. I think we might have better luck next year. We just got a beautiful black lab puppy named Diesel. I don’t think he’ll mind chasing squirrels for us. Also, we need a fence next year. I had to replant green beans because the deer seem to find them irresistible and ate them down to nubby stems.
The kids are having a great summer, swimming at friends houses and playing manhunt (a nighttime version of hide and seek) almost every night. I feel bad for R. There aren’t any kids in the neighborhood that are even close to her age.
In chicken news, we have finished the coop, at least until we have to insulate it this fall. The chickens should be laying their first eggs around the beginning of August. I can’t wait!
That’s all for now!
Written by erin Filed under Chickens, Dogs, Fun Stuff, Gardening, Homestead, Shooting Sports | Comment (0)Setting up twitter
Setting up twitter
Written by admin Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Daring Hill Adventures
After puttering around the driveway and the street outside I was ready to take the bike down the hill and toward a real road.
Background:
I live on Daring Hill Ln. It’s called Daring Hill rightly so. It’s a significantly steep dirt/gravel hill up to the road that levels out and then round the corner to my house. So going down and then back up the hill was giving me a little concern.
The experience going down the hill was perfect yesterday. I turned the bike around and plowed back up the hill with no problems at all. It was a very happy moment that I didn’t have any problems going down or up the hill. I feel somewhat silly for being concerned but for not being on a street bike in almost 14 years it can pass it off for that. If it was a dirt bike I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
Anyways today I got home from work changed pants and grabbed my gear and pulled the bike out of the garage to go for a ride. This was my first on street adventure with the new bike. So I went down the hill and down the road to a real paved road. By the way, we live a little over a mile off of a paved real road.
When I got to the end of dirt and to the beginning of pavement another biker was coming from my left. I was waiting and as normal I got the friendly wave. I waved back as he passed and started out onto the paved road. As I did so I stalled the bike! Yes I stalled it on my first outing to the pavement. I’m still getting used to the clutch and the “friction zone” so in time and practice I won’t do that. I can drive a stick-shift car/truck second nature now but I remember back when I first started and how many times I did the herky-jerky and stalled it out.
I take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation Beginner Riders Course on Wed/Thur/Sat/Sun and hopefully I’ll do well with that and get my full motorcycle endorsement. Right now I’m riding on a permit which allows sunrise to sunset which is actually really cool.
Written by john Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Happy birthday to me!
Well June 16th was my 29th birthday. Yes still young but I still feel very old.
I got a lot of great presents from the kids and Erin gave me the best of all. In fact I have a picture of it….. No, not that. We talked and agreed that I could get a motorcycle. It’s been years… over 10 to be exact since I’ve ridden a street motorcycle. I’ve been on dirt bikes since but not a street bike. So before and during and after my birthday I was shopping and looking and sitting and thinking and looking and sitting and thinking… You get the point.
Well, I decided on a Yamaha V-Star 650 Custom. I was thinking of getting the 1100 but I thought twice about it since it’s been a long time since I’ve been on a bike I didn’t want to be stupid and start off to big again and the 650 gets better gas mileage and that’s one of the big points. Park my big truck and start riding a motorcycle to work.
So, here’s some pictures of the birthday and some of the motorcycle.
Here is the picture of the half-eaten cake on my birthday. Notice there are candles in it but it’s already eaten??? Hahahaha well father’s day and my birthday are generally back to back. We didn’t have enough candles so there’s 20 candles and a big 9 from Conner’s birthday. There’s Rowan giggling in the picture
And here’s a picture of the bike with the kids posing… notice Conner’s “I’m cool” look and stance…. Yeah he’ll be a biker 
The Great Society: Introduction
I’m going to begin a series outlining how great this society is and what we have become. However as I don’t have the time at the moment to write up a complete part 1 to the series I will post this brief introduction with the link of the day.
Technology has in many ways improved our lives and in many ways made our lives worse. It has made people more inteligent with free access to information, and it has made people stupid with the inability to operate basic machinery. So here is the link to the woman that couldn’t unlock her car door… FROM THE INSIDE OF THE CAR……
http://www.kutv.com/content/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=89d59491-3910-45c2-9643-3a2fd9347606
And we actually let these types of people DRIVE CARS…. I’m amazed really. She can operate a cell phone but not use a manual lever to unlock her car door. Simply amazing.
Written by john Filed under Society | Comment (0)Slow Internet
The connection from this card is so-so… The speed is better than a 56K dial up modem but not by much. A lot of the time I actually think the modem would be faster. The reliability of this card or AT&T service, not sure which stinks! It drops connections a lot and the speed goes from slow to worse all of the time.
Usability within different OS’s is interesting. Currently the card is connected to a Linux box acting as a DHCP server and Internet facing router for my home network. The card works fine under Linux using native kernel drivers. The configuration is as simple as any other modem and the ppp connection just works. The card works just as well under Windows XP which is what my work laptop runs. But the funny thing as with most things is that it doesn’t work at all under Windows Vista. Others have reported that it works but nothing I have done will get the card to work under Vista. The software installs, the drivers load everything looks like it should work. I hit the connect button and it says it’s connected but there’s absolutely NO data traffic. I sniff the connection and there isn’t anything come or going through the connection. Oh well the Linux box can continue running as a router for now.
I did buy a modem the other day but it wouldn’t even power on so I returned it. I may get another one and set it up as a backup just to have when AT&T decides not to work.
Everyone asks what about cable or DSL? Well it’s just not available out here yet. So I’ve looked into Satelite but that is so expensive just to get setup with the upfront purchase of the equipment and such. Plus they have Fair Access Policies (FAP) which means you only get a certain amount of bandwidth per day or with some per month. So for me it may or may not be useful since I do a lot on the internet. I know for sure I couldn’t actually download much of anything certainly not a Linux ISO that would blow the FAP immediately.
Yes, I’ve thought of getting a T1 to the house, but at $500 a month I can’t quite justify that. Not yet anyways and no my work won’t pay for it, I tried that as well 
Sprint has their EV-DO service half a mile from my house… which really sucks! That would be great to have at this point. I’ve did sign up and buy an adapter to see if I could get it but the signal just didn’t reach me. I’ve thought about trying again and buying a booster and antenna to try and see if that works, but then again that’s several hundred dollars for a boost and antenna just to see if something works and if it doesn’t the hassle of returning everything if they will take it back.
So in the meantime I live in internet purgatory….
Time since updates…
Got tractor… it’s helped a lot in clearing out the soon to be garden area. The area is clear and mostly clean and we are beginning to plant.
Corn has been planted
Giant Pumpkins have been planted
The chickens have gotten larger and their house is 99% complete. I still need to add nesting boxes and put a hinged cover over one of the windows to get access to the nesting boxes. Will be done soon but the chickens aren’t yet laying and won’t for a few months.
On the same subject of the chickens Erin has decided to try the “free ranging” method and now for two days the chickens have been running free. They are enjoying it eating up the greens and the bugs.
Yay for John Deere!
We’re getting a small tractor on Tuesday! It will have a scoop and a backhoe and we’ll be getting a chipper a few days later. I cannot explain my happiness. If you’ve ever tried to clear land with a chain saw, shovel, various rakes, pruning shears and a wheelbarrow and felt like you were washing dishes with a q-tip, you know EXACTLY how I feel. I’m turning very country bumpkin, since I now daydream of tools and sheds instead of other insignificant ways to waste our money.
Written by erin Filed under Gardening, Homestead, Tool Joy! | Comment (0)Progress, minus pictures
So, we’ve acquired more animals and still have tons of work to do. We now have an adorable bunny named Sheila, because Rowan names everything Sheila. We also have five baby chicks that are about a week old. I have come to the realization that we won’t be able to go anywhere overnight unless we have someone to take care of our chickens, which is a definite downside for me since I NEED to go places and experience different things. Camping is especially crucial for my sanity during the nicer months, but I’ll just have to live with it. We have so much outdoor stuff to do, hopefully I won’t think too much about wanting to do something else.
We need big equipment to clear our garden area faster. We’re contemplating buying a small tractor that has multiple attachments because we need a frontloader, a chipper, a backhoe, a tiller, a grader and I’m sure there are other things we need that we haven’t thought of yet. As fun as it is to have lots of room, it’s a lot of work to clear a sixth of an acre or so…by hand. We want to have a large garden and become more self sufficient, especially with the cost of produce so high and possible looming food shortages. With a large garden, we can grow enough to eat fresh during the summer and fall and hopefully grow enough to freeze and can for the winter and spring. I know this is the first year, but I have such high hopes.
We also need to finish the chicken coop. We need to put the floor on and build a run. We also need to put screens over the windows, cut out a chicken sized door, add nesting boxes (later when the chickens are ready to start laying so they don’t use them for other grody things) and roosts. It feels like it will never be finished, but I’m sure it will. It has to be in about two months! One thing at a time.
I need to figure out how to tame our wild berry bushes. We have blackberries and wineberries intermingled in a thicket near our house, but I’m a little concerned about going out to pick in late summer because we had a copperhead in our woods last year. If we clear around the bushes and keep a path open through the middle, maybe it won’t be so bad.
I think we now have enough firewood for the entire next winter. The oaks we cut down were huge and we’re still not done cutting them into rounds and stacking them to be split later. Some rounds are so large that we can’t lift them. It will be nice to not pay for wood next fall. We should save several hundred over the next year. AND now that the trees are down, we have HD TV and we have plenty of sunny space on the roof for solar panels when we’re ready for them. I would love to be self sufficient when it comes to electrity and it will make us completely self sufficient when it comes to our water, because even though we have a well, we have an electric pump to bring the water to the house. We may even be able to create a set up for heating our hot water with the sun. So many possibilities!
When I remember how to do it (actually, find the directions John gave me for how to do it), I’ll add some pics of the clearing that’s going on and the chicks and bunny. For now, I’ll leave it to your imagination.