Aug 28th - Mom Called

My Mom called me last night to find out what was wrong with me. She was worried because I not quite posting. Told her all was fine, just didn't have anything worthy of posting.

Our return trip to Missouri went fine. Our patch job to hold the motor home awning in place held up and we had no problems with it. (See earlier post about ponding on awning causing it to collapse). I called our insurance to see about having repairs made and when they called me back they told me that our policy had been cancelled last November because we had not paid our premium. We knew that there had been an issue with them not getting the payment on time but thought that we had resolved. The fault was ours, somehow we managed to let sending them a check fall through the cracks. We found no record that we actually did pay the premium. We have travelled from southeast Missouri to central Missouri, then on to Texas, from there to southern California, up through California into Oregon and Washington and back to central Missouri with no insurance. The recent trip to Tennessee and Michigan was also made without insurance coverage. We consider ourselves blessed that we did not have an accident during those travels. Our policy, which costs about the same as coverage on my pickup, was a $1,000 deductible. As it turns out we will end up ahead from a money perspective. The repairs will not cost more than 10 months premiums plus the deductible.

During the past week we continued working around the property. We received a quarter inch of rain on Sunday so yesterday we burned one of the piles of brush. I started the fire around 10:30 AM and finally put it out (didn't actually put it out but damped it down) at 5:30 PM.

This was the fire about noon yesterday. The shed in the background houses our wood furnace. Several of the pieces were so large that I could only roll them up next to the fire. There are lots of pieces of wood around the property that are to big to lift and also to gnarled to split. The other pieces were to far away to roll to the fire. After the next rain I will set fire to one of the piles back behind the outbuildings. I should use the skid steer to move some of them to that brush pile prior to lighting it.

 This was the pile left over when I hosed it down.

 As we were cleaning up the areas behind the shed, never went further than 100' from the house, we also cut up some of the wood and put it in the woodshed. Later in the afternoon I cleaned out he woodshed up by the furnace and took the old ashes out of the furnace. Even if we decide not to burn it this year I need to get someone to come out here and make sure everything operates property (before our homeowner's warranty expires), that I know how to run it and that I know how to switch back and forth between the wood furnace and the propane furnace in the house.

This building will hold over two cords of wood. We have several other much larger building where we can store more, if  get around to splitting more of the stuff laying around.

I just did some research on the climate in central Missouri. In terms of heating we have about 10% more heating degree days than Crossville, TN while Coldwater, MI has 30% more than us. In terms of cooling Crossville had only 62% of the cooling degree days that we have while Coldwater has only 40% of our cooling degree days.

The guy who built my log splitter for Carl, the previous homeowner, called and wanted to work out some type of deal so that he could use it. Carl said he is an OK guy, April (Carl's wife) isn't so sure. He has access to some "hedge"(?) trees and offered to let me have as much of the non-merchantable wood as I want to cut, in trade for letting him use the splitter. He plans on selling the logs and making fence posts out of the straight stuff. The site is about 15 miles from here. Probably a good deal if I needed the wood but since there is already more wood here, already cut and waiting to be split, than we could use in one winter I'm not to excited about cutting more when I don't even know if we are going to use the furnace this winter. Of course there is nothing wrong with storing the wood since I have buildings available. The guy also has a dump truck and has hauled gravel here, for the driveway, in the past. He might be someone good to know.

Time to get out and do something. I need to take advantage of the cool weather. High temps have dropped down to the low 90's.

Good day to all and may God bless you and yours.