Sept 30th - Home Again

The tractor, trailer and I made it back to Missouri just fine. Below is a photo showing things parked in front of our house.



 I left Tom and Mary Lou's around 7:20 this morning. The trip, 580 miles, took me 10 hours and 15 minutes. I stopped in Crossville, about 15 miles from Tom & Mary Lou's, to check to make sure everything seemed to be OK. Everything looked good. I got a couple of breakfast sandwiches and a coffee, to go, at Hardees and hit the road. 

 

The next stop was mid way through Kentucky. I stopped for gas and picked up a couple of roast beef sandwiches, to go. Final stop was at Kingdom City, about 30 miles north of Jefferson City. I got gas and headed home.

 

Traffic wasn't bad until about 15 miles from the Mississippi River. Then it was BAD until maybe 30 miles west of St. Louis. About 10 miles before the river there was 3-4 miles of stop and go traffic. In St. Louis there was another mile of the same.

 

My on board fuel economy meter claims that my fuel mileage averaged 13.5 for the trip. I didn't check the mileage but based on previous experience the actual mileage was probably in the high 12's. Higher than I expected, although the trailer did pull well.

 

Tom and I levelled the pile of rock that had been in our Tennessee driveway. We now have a level place to park the RV at our place, You can't tell it in the photo but the rock is at least a foot thick back near the building. The front of the RV would be about even with the two yellow stakes nearest the road, on the right side of the photo. The back of it would be within a few feet of the building.



Good night to all. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 29th - Loaded UP

The tractor is on the trailer and the trailer is hooked to my pickup, ready to start the trip to Missouri tomorrow morning (Sunday morning).

I think Tom has given me two days of his life, a pretty awesome sacrifice, while I have been here. We spent more time working on one of the trailer brakes this morning and are now reasonably confident that everything is working as it should.

In addition I've been fed quite well. Last night we had Shepard's Pie, corn bread, some other type of bread, salad, etc for supper. Everything was good, as expected when at Tom & Mary Lou's. Dennis & Jan, friends of Tom and Mary Lou's and people who I knew from previous time spent in TN, were out for supper. Jan had been out helping Mary Lou do some cleaning (Mary Lou has been having wrist/arm/neck problems). Dennis came out after he finished his Honey Do list <grin>.

This evening I went to the festivities at the Pikin Barn. Merv, my father-in-law, and Lillian, his girlfriend, arrived just before I did. We ate sandwiches together before the music started. They had saved a couple of seat in the "theater seats" and set in them for the entertainment. I sat in the back on a folding chair. I think there were about 125 people in attendance. It was great to see as many as 12 adults and two kids regularly get up front and do a little clogging to the more peppy blue grass. On several of the slower songs couples were slow dancing.

I saw 6 kids between the ages of 6 and 12. The average age of the audience, including the 6 kids, was at least the mid 60's.  Actually the average age of the entertainers was probably about the same.

I stayed for a couple of hours and then headed back to Tom & Mary Lou's. Merv and Lillian were still there when I left.

The weather today was nice and I think it is supposed to be nice again tomorrow, for my drive to Missouri.

Good night to all. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 27th - Trailer Bought

I bought a trailer this morning. The roads to get to the location of the trailer reminded me of the county roads we drove on in SE Missouri last year, except these were actually chipped and sealed. They was only one lane of road, and enough of a shoulder that two cars could pass, but you both wanted to be going very slow.

I imposed further on my great brother-in-law and he and I worked on the trailer for at least four hours after I got it to his place. The wiring was in bad shape, nothing that was a shock for an old trailer. The frame is good and it has close to new tires. The deck will need some new boards soon, for hauling things on the road. For use "around the house" the deck is OK. With the wiring to the brakes, it only has brakes on one axle, repaired we now know for sure that the brakes work. In the morning I need to go into Crossville and buy a couple of new taillights and some more wire. The existing lights didn't look bad but once we opened them up they weren't worth salvaging.

I ended up paying the young gal $800 for the trailer, they were asking $950. I might have gotten her down further but didn't have the heart to try. Her and her husband just bought the place, it had been in foreclosure, and were trying to fix it up. I think they were selling the trailer to raise cash. Not long ago they had paid $400 for the tires that were on the trailer. Besides her little girl, maybe a 2 year old, was really cute.

My tractor looks awesome. I didn't have time to play with it today but hopefully will have some time for that tomorrow. (In addition to finishing the electrical we still need to pull the wheels and tires off the right side of the trailer to check things and repack the wheel bearings.)

There are festivities at the Pickin Barn Saturday night. I'm hoping to get down there to listen to some good ole Bluegrass music. I plan on heading back to Missouri Sunday morning.

Had a good supper, as always when at Tom & Mary Lou's, just took a shower and am ready for bed. Shopping wears me out.

Good night and may God bless you and yours.

Sept 26th - Nashville Tonight

The good news is that my eyes checked out as being healthy this morning. The bad news is that I need new glasses because my prescription has changed and with me being incredibly near sighted I have to get special lenses (they don't make Coke bottles with thick enough bottoms <grin>) and they are VERY expensive. Praise God I can afford to buy a pair so that I will still be able to see well.

I checked in to the Days Inn on the east side of Nashville, TN about 7:30 PM. I've spent the past hour unsuccessfully trying to make arrangements to go look at trailers tomorrow. I found out that one of the ones I wanted to look at doesn't have brakes on it, which makes it unacceptable for me. Another guy called me back a few minutes ago. He has to work tomorrow and he won't get home from work until after 5 PM. I'm still waiting for a call back from another guy. I did find a new trailer that is reasonably priced, for a new one, but more money than I want to spend. I may end up buying it just to have it over and done with. Both used ones are located within a half hours drive north of Cookeville, TN. The new one is at an equipment dealer in Cookeville. After checking out in the morning, and having breakfast at the Waffle House across the street, I will head for Cookeville.

Good night to all. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 25th - Wood Stacking

Spent the morning researching trailers online, and doing research getting ready to leave for Bryce Canyon, Utah in a couple of weeks. I was going to stop in Denver and have repairs made to our awning (see post dated August 15th) as well as the annual chassis maintenance. After the research I think I will wait and have the work done when I get to Arizona.

I have my annual eye appointment in the morning. I am planning on heading for Tennessee after the appointment. Tom, my fantastic brother-in-law, has done some "leg work" for me and found a couple of trailers between Nashville and Crossville. I plan on staying overnight in the Nashville area, buying one of the trailers on Thursday and taking it on to Crossville with me. I will come back with my tractor and trailer on Saturday or Sunday.

This afternoon I did manage to get our split wood stacked. I think I have about 2.5 cords in this building.

We also have a little over another cord in the lean-to that houses the wood furnace.

My guess is that this amount of wood would only last into January if we heated only with wood. My very uneducated guess is that it would take 10 cords of wood to last through a normal mid-Missouri winter.

We have an average of 5,200 heating degree days during the winter. Crossville, TN has 4,200. Coldwater, MI has about 7,000. Indianapolis, IN has 5,600. Winters here are almost as cold as they were where we lived north of Indianapolis. We experience 1,200 cooling degree days while Crossville, Coldwater & Indianapolis experience 1,200; 530; 1,000.

Have a great evening. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 24th - Furnace Work

We didn't do much yesterday. Kathy still wasn't quite up to going to church so we stayed home all day. I did get the lawn mowed in the afternoon.

This morning I went out to split some wood that I cut and loaded in the truck Saturday. I couldn't get the splitter to run, I might have flooded it. I unloaded the wood from the truck.

 I then cut up one of the logs that are out back.

 The piece in the foreground required 118 blows with the 6# splitting maul, hitting the wedge, to split it. This piece was still heavier than what I wanted to lift into the truck so I split it again. I couldn't start the wedge, it just kept bouncing out. I  had to score the top with the chain saw to provide a kerf for the wedge. I think it took about 40 blows to split this piece.

 Lydia at lunch time. Kathy was babysitting today.

 The wood furnace guy came out today to check over our wood furnace. Everything on the furnace worked okay but I had him change the controls so that the propane furnace would automatically take over heating if the fire got to low in the wood furnace. He doesn't work on propane furnaces. I still need to get someone out to check it out. We paid for an extra furnace inspection when we bought the place and we were told everything was OK. The first time I looked at the propane furnace and saw that one of the flu section was not even in place I knew the inspection wasn't worth anything. The guy was here at least 3 hours.

After that I loaded some more sections of wood into the truck.

 I got the splitter started and split the wood that was on the ground and the wood that was in the back of the truck. A 40-50% chance of rain is in the forecast for the next several days. I need to get this pile stacked to make more room.

Hope all of you are having a good evening. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 22nd - Tried Out 0the New Saw

I cut a couple of logs in two with my new chain saw. It did OK, but I'm not going to like the "break-in" procedure. You aren't supposed to run it at full throttle for the first couple of tankfuls of gas, that is going to take FOREVER. The "good stuff" that I have been cutting is HARD. Cutting 15-20" diameter logs at less than full throttle is a pain.

I forgot to include this photo in one of my previous posts. Kelsey took it the morning Kathy was in the hospital. Lydia had been smiling but when I asked Kelsey to take the photo the smile went away.

 Kelsey & Lydia left Kathy a note the evening that she had surgery. Kathy was still out of it and barely remembered them being their. The note on the side says, "We love you Grammy". It is signed Love Kelsey & Lydia.

 Below is part of our wood pile. I have between 1.5 and 2 cords in the lean-to over the wood furnace. This stack is about 7' tall and 16' long. There are probably two pick up truck loads of split wood just thrown on a pile next to this stack. I haven't taken the time to stack it yet. I'm going to have to start stacking some of it or I'll have to move it to open up a place for the new stack.

 These are supposed to be oak logs. There are three of them. Total length is about 28'. They range from 18-24" in diameter. I'm getting sick of all the clean up and will probably start cutting them up tomorrow or Monday.

 This is the area I'm currently working in, out back. I've already removed most of the good wood from here. This stuff is all feed for the next burn pile. In this area I will end up burning more than I keep for firewood. No telling how long this stuff has been out there. Somebody put a lot of work into cutting it up and hauling it here. None of it came from the property.

I think the reason this stuff is out here is because there was some reason it was difficult to split. Either the pieces were slightly over 24" long, the ones I'm cutting up, or they are so large that they had to be split by hand prior to putting them on the splitter.

Good night to all. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 22nd - Not A Beautiful Day

OK. The weather was just awesome yesterday. High in the 70's and low last night in the low 50's. Today the high is supposed to be high 60's and the low tonight is supposed to be 39. Kathy and I both LOVE these temperatures. Tonight we might actually close the living room windows but the bedroom windows will remain open.

The other good news is that Kathy is progressing well after her hernia surgery.

Yesterday morning I split some wood I had in the back of my pickup and then move the truck over to where I found the good wood. I hand split a few pieces and had to cut up some that were to big to fit in the splitter. The large long pieces are only 25-26" long but the splitter will only take 23.5" pieces. We end up with a bunch of very short pieces.

I had "touched up" the chain that was on the saw but my "touching up" doesn't last long. The yellow wood that I'm cutting/splitting, I have no idea what it is, is hard and HEAVY. I put a different chain on and found out that it was duller than the one I took off. I put it in the pile of dull chains and tried another one. It cut OK, but not like a new one. I had filled the tank about 3/4 full when I started in the morning and refilled it to about this level during the last chain change. After about 3-4 minutes of heavy cutting with the last chain the engine seized. No warning, it just went from full throttle to dead stop instantly. It was a sad morning, I REALLY liked this saw. I knocked off for the day in mourning <sad grin>.

I did some searching on the Net this morning. The only new "short blocks" for Stihl saws appeared to cost 50-75% of a new saw. I located local dealers on Stihl's web site and went in this morning and bought a MS290 with an 18" bar. It is larger than the MS250, smaller engine and only a 16" bar, that died. I bought it at Pop's Outdoor Equipment. It will not be that last thing that I buy from them. I liked the guys.

I discussed what had happened with my 250 and the guy said that sadly he is hearing more and more such stories. He blames in on the quality of today's gas and government interference that continually forces engine manufacturers to lean out their engines to meet EPA requirements. I told him that I had noticed that the saw smoked more than normal when I first used it yesterday morning and that it quit smoking after I refilled it, for the same gas can. When it was smoking I wasn't concerned, I just figured that I had mixed the gas a little "rich". He told me that he thought that the gas and oil had partially separated in the gas can and the first fill up got me an oil rich mix while the second one got me mostly gas. He also confirmed that it would cost a lot to fix my saw.

This afternoon I will try out the new one.

Hope all of you have a better day than I had yesterday. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 21st - Beautiful Day

The weather yesterday was great. The high was 78 and the low last night was in the mid 50's. I was amazed when I saw that it was supposed to be 78, I would have guessed that the high was around 70.

I worked on the splitter, took the carb off and tried cleaning the main jet. My carb cleaning didn't get the job done, the splitter engine still doesn't run right. I'm pretty certain that it is just a carb problem, but I'm not smart enough to fix it. Hopefully it will keep chugging along until the guy who is going to borrow it takes it to his buddy who works on small engines.

I found a cache of good wood yesterday, maybe a pick up truck load. It was back in an area where I had not cleaned previously. There are several trash wood piles back in this area, just like everywhere else, but it was great to find a decent amount of good stuff in one area.  I will probably start a burn pile in a new location today, but may not light it.

I went to the hardware store in California, MO yesterday morning. California is about 9 miles west of us. I bought new blades for the lawn mower and found out that they sharpen chain saw chains. I've got a couple of chains I need to get sharpened. They have quite an assortment of rental equipment. I liked the guy I talked to and will be going there to buy things rather than going to Jefferson City.

Carl and April finally sold the skid steer. The guy came and picked it up yesterday, right after I dumped $20 worth of diesel in it <grin>. I will miss it. I have to get a time scheduled to go get my tractor from TN. I want to have a three day "window" when I go get it so that I can spend a day putzing around our property there.

Kathy is still doing amazingly well. She was is spending a lot of time out on the front porch, enjoying the beautiful weather. She mixed me up some pancake batter for breakfast this morning, but she didn't eat any of them. She isn't much of a breakfast person. I think it will soon be very difficult for her to not overdo.

I had to cancel my appointment with the guy who was supposed to come out and show me everything I need to know about the wood furnace, because of Kathy staying overnight at the hospital. I left him a message yesterday asking him to call me to make another appointment.

Today is supposed to be another beautiful day. I need to get more grounds cleanup and wood splitting done. All the cleaning, sorting and burning, to find decent wood, makes the splitting really slow. Only a couple of the pieces I found yesterday were small enough that I didn't have to manually split them into halves or quarters, so that I could lift them into my truck and haul them over to the splitter. The hand splitting is tough on a fat, old fart. Yesterday I moved the splitter to the front of the building where I am storing wood. I think it will now be easier to move the big chunks to the splitter and then throw the wood into the building after splitting it. I think I have about half the wood split that would heat the house for an entire season. I'm hoping to have the wood furnace guy do whatever modifications are required so that the heating automatically switches over to propane if the wood furnace does not provide enough heat. I think it was originally set up to do that and for some reason Carl took out the second thermostat.

Hope all of you have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 18th - AM

Yesterday I burned more trash wood. This was the start of yesterdays burn pile, about 11 AM.

 I kept adding to it all day long. Below is what it looked like around 5 PM.

 It is a shame that so much of it has been allowed to get to the point where I don't think it is worth the effort to split it. I already split one piece like the one shown in the photo below, and did split this chunk into 5 section so that they were small enough that I could lift them onto the splitter.

I'm at the hospital today, waiting for Kathy to get out of surgery. She is having a hernia repaired. The Doctor thought he might be able repair it using laparoscopic surgery, small incisions and using a small camera to see what he is doing. As it ended up she had multiple hernias. He fixed a  couple of small ones laparoscopically, but for the two larger ones he had to do an open incision. The Doctor said that everything went fine and that Kathy is doing well. She is still in recovery. Instead of going home today she will end up staying at the hospital at least overnight.

Have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 16th - Morning

Yesterday we went to church at Solid Rock, in Jefferson City. It is a large church with two services. We have been to the later service a couple of times but yesterday we tried the early service, we didn't note any difference. One thing that is always amazing is the diversity of the worshipers, both age and race. It is LOUD. I put in my ear plugs as soon as the band started and didn't take them out until we were leaving. The Pastor was so loud that I saw Kathy stuffing pieces of Kleenex in her ears.

After chuch we went to Walmart so that Kathy could pick up some yarn, and a few groceries she needed. Then it was on to the Chinese buffet for an early lunch.
We got back home a little after noon.

It was back to burning trash, and splitting anything that appeared to be decent. This was the start of yesterdays burn pile. I added several large chunks to it, and a lot of smaller stuff, as the afternoon progressed. I ended up with one and a half skid steer buckets full of good stuff. The burn pile was still about this size at 5 PM when I called it a day.

This is one of the MANY logs laying around the property. Sadly they are so old that I'm not sure they are worth cutting and splitting. I split the perimeter off one of the pieces I already cut off this log. I burned all the stuff around the outside but think the center may be worth splitting. This piece may be worth the effort to split it, but it is marginal. The piece with the chain saw sitting on it will go to the burn pile.

The weather has been beautiful here. Highs in the 70's and lows in the sixties. Forecast is for even better weather, highs in the 70's and lows down into the 40's a couple of nights.

Just got a call from the Doctors office to give me the results of my blood tests. Everything looked good except my triglycerides, which are always high. My A1c, average blood glucose level over the past 2-3 months, was 6.6, goal is to be under 7.0. My BP, the day of the appointment, was 120/64.

Kathy finished cleaning the hot tub yesterday. She had drained it not long after we moved in. She filled it and started the heater. The well water was 59 degrees when whe started the heater. It was up to 84 this morning and she tried it out. She said getting in was pretty envigorating but it felt good.

Time to get at more burning and splitting.

Hope all of you have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 15th - Quick Update

We had a good trip back to Indy and arrived back here about 10 PM last night, we left here at 4:45 AM Thursday morning. About 900 miles driving during the two days.

Both appointments with Doctors went fine.

We stayed overnight with Doug and Anthony. We were able to spend a little time with Doug but didn't get to see much of Anthony. He didn't get home from work until late Thursday night and he had to be back at work before 9:30 on Friday morning. We went to Lebanon and had a great visit with Steve and Judy Acton. We even got to see some others from Harvest (where I went to church while in Lebanon) because it was their small group meeting night. We then had dinner with Phyllis, our next door neighbor while in Lebanon, and Ed, Cindy (Kathy's sister) and Oliver (their son). Oliver, who is working on his doctorate in North Carolina, was in the area doing some work for the USDA. He stayed overnight with Phyllis while he was in the area. Ed & Cindy came down to see him and so we got to see all of them.

Sept 10th - More Cleaning, Splitting & Burning

Yesterday I spent most of the day cleaning out one of the outbuildings so that I could stack firewood in it. I had been just dumping the wood in a pile but that was taking up to much room, with all the junk in the building. The building is 16' wide by 25' long (I think, can't remember for sure). The eave height is at least 8'. Below is the left side. The wood shown in the photo is what I had split last week and just dumped in the building.

 And the right side. Note the two rolls near the bottom right of the photo. One is brown and the other is gray. They are 4' wide rolls of sandpaper. The brown roll weighs over 50#. Later in the day I found two more rolls in another area.

After cleaning out the building and stacking the wood I mowed the lawn for the 3rd time since early June.
The first thing this morning, around 9 AM, I started burning junk wood.

 After starting the fire I fired up the splitter. Later I moved this wood into the building and stacked it. One of the chunks of wood was large enough that even after splitting in into 4 sections, using a splitting axe and wedges, I still had to split one of the 4 pieces in half so that I could lift it onto the splitter.

 About 2 PM I added another bunch of junk wood to the fire. It was still burning nicely when I came in for a shower around 4:30.

Today wasn't as nice as yesterday. Today's high was 88 degrees. Tomorrow the high is forecast to be 89.

Hopefully I will get some more splitting and burning done tomorrow. Thursday we head for Indy. We have Doctor's appointments (routine) scheduled for Thursday afternoon an Friday morning. Then it will be back to Missouri. I'm not sure when I will make it to TN to pick up the tractor I bought there.

Our wood furnace is made by Hardy Mfg. I contacted them to find a local salesman/installer. I called the guy yesterday and he is coming out next week to look over our installation. Before we purchased the house I paid extra for a "furnace inspection" to make sure the wood furnace and propane furnace were both operational. The guy said it was a simple operation to switch back and forth and that both were OK. After arriving here and finding a section of the propane furnace flu laying on top of the furnace I'm not real confident that the furnace inspector gave me my moneys worth. I want some good information on the possiblity of the water in the wood furnace freezing if it is not used for a period of time during the winter. I also want to know what modifications are required so that the propane furnace will act as an automatic back up to the wood furnace.

Lydia was here again this afternoon. Either she isn't feeling well, or she is being kind of bratty. I hope she is being brattym that would be better than her being sick. She was here yesterday also and acted about the same. Bratty or not, she is still a little cutie.

Good night to all. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 9th - Grandparents Day

Below is a photo of our grandparents day gift from Lydia.

The text says:
This isn't just a butterfly
As you can plainly see
I made it with my feet
Which is part of me
It comes with lots of love
Especially to say
I hope you have av very
Happy Grandparents Day
Love Lydia
2012

The gift was great, even better Lydia & Kelsey spent a lot of time her yesterday and we got to enjoy their company.

By the way, I have complained about the weather in Missouri a lot. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful. High was a sunny mid 70's while last nights low was in the mid 50's. Today is supposed to be a repeat. We better enjoy it, by Wednesday (Sept 12th!) the high is supposed to be 87.

Have a great day. May God bless you and yours this day.

Sept 8th - More Splitting & Cleanup

It rained yesterday. I did virtually nothing.

Kelsey and Lydia came over this morning and picked up Kathy. They went to some type of even at the fairgrounds and had lunch at Red Lobster. They got back here around 1:30. Kelsey and Lydia stayed until around 5:30.

I split wood and did more clean up. About 15-20% of the wood around here isn't worth saving. Another 25-30% is pretty crappy but should be burnable in the wood furnace.

I split four skid steer buckets full and burned a lot. Below is what the fire looked like after burning for about 9 hours. The big piece at the back of the fire is about 27" in diameter and 24" long. I haven't added anything to the fire for three hours.

Kathy saw a couch on Craigslist and we went to the northeast side of Columbia to look at it this evening (about 100 miles round trip). She bought it and we brought it home. It is a hide-a-bed and I'm going to need Andy help me unload it. It was around 8 PM when we got back home.

We are watching the NASCAR race but I think I will be heading off to bed long before the race is over.

Good night to all. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 6th - More Cleaning & Splitting

First, and most important by far, we got to babysit for Lydia Tuesday afternoon. Kelsey dropped her off around 2:30 PM, on her way to work, and Andy picked her up around 7 PM, on his way home. She was awake most of the time she was here and was a real sweetheart. Tomorrow she will be 3 months old. We (Kathy) gets to have her next Monday and Tuesday also. Elaine, Andy's Mom, watched her today. Below is a photo of her laughing at Kathy.

This morning Kathy and I burned the last pile of brush that we had piled up. Then we split more wood, just two bucket fulls in the skid steer. We also cleaned up more junk wood. I started the fire before 10 AM and at 8 PM I went out and "poked" it again. There is still a nice fire. As we cleaned up we kept adding fuel to the fire. A lot of the wood laying around is junk. I've gotten to the point where I'm getting more picky about what I keep to burn in the wood furnace. The stuff I reject goes into the burn pile. There is just so much stuff laying around.

 There are lots of tortoises around here. Kathy sees them all the time. This one was crossing the driveway. When we got close it "hid" in its shell. The glove is to give you an idea of their size.

 Maybe 15 minutes later it came out of its shell and was checking things out. Later in the afternoon we saw another one up near where we were gathering wood to split. We knew it wasn't the same one because, even though it was about the same size, its shell had a totally different color pattern.

 When I was taking a break on the front porch a pair of hummingbirds came up to check out the flowers along the porch. I got a photo of one of them when it settled on a branch. It is pretty cool when they come by. They will fly up and hover about 3' from you and just look at you for a short period of time.

 A storm came through in the afternoon. We got some wind, nothing bad, and maybe a quarter inch of rain. It rained quite hard for a short period of time as the storm passed over us. After the rain I fired up the chain saw and cut up a few sections of wood that were to long to fit in the splitter. I forgot to cover up the splitter when it rained and it wouldn't start after the rain. I took the battery out and took it into the barn so that I could put it on the charger. The splitter ran good while I was using it. There is a clear filter in the fuel line and junk should not be able to get in the carb. A couple of days ago I took the bowl off and there was a flake of something, almost like a flake of paint, in the bowl. In the morning I'm going to take the bowl off again and check it, before trying to start it.
Tom forwarded me an email, from a guy at their church in Crossville. It was about a tractor the guy has for sale. It is a lot nicer than what I was planning on buying, and a lot more money. I ended up buying it tonight. It is a Kubota B7510, 21 hp, hydrostatic transmission and comes with a loader. It is a "compact" tractor which is what I wanted but didn't think I would be willing to spend the money for one. I will need to buy a 4' brush hog to go with it. Tom used it once to load some wood when he cut some trees for owner. The guy sold the house he had been living in and moved to "town". He no longer has any reason to keep it. I'm not sure what model year it is but it has to be newer than 2004. It only has 194 hours on it, basically it is barely broken in. Tom told me the guy really takes care of all his stuff. While it was a lot of money it was about half the cost of a new one. Timing may work out well. Yesterday Carl and April came over (Carl still can't put any weight on his leg) and took photos of their skid steer. They have a guy who is interested in buying it. Now I need to make a trip to TN to pick it up.

Time to watch a little TV. Anything but the liars at the Democratic convention, they make me vomit! I can't begin to understand why anyone believes the crap they are dishing out, not that the Republicans are much better.

Good night and may God bless you and yours. (If Obama gets 4 more years I probably won't be allowed to say God any longer, though I might be able to say Allah.)

Sept 4th - Rain Again This Morning

Sunday I went to the worship with the Christian Fellowship of Jefferson City. It is a small group, probably only around 40 people were there Sunday morning. I had found them on the web and listened to one of  the Pastor's previous sermons. He is doing a series on Acts 2:42-47, guidelines on how a body of believers should function. I think both the message I listened to online and the one Sunday were spot on. Based on my brief encounter with them it seems that they are striving to be the "church" described in this passage.

After church I had a chimichanga at El Jimador and then I went to Walmart to get a couple of prescriptions refilled. The lunch was good, the Walmart experience was not so good. They had no problems filling one of the prescriptions but the last time I had  the other one filled was when we were in Washington. For some reason the Washington Walmart cancelled the prescription. I have no idea how it could even do that. After two hours without getting the mess straightened out I left. Hopefully they will keep working on it. I need to call them and build a fire.

Yesterday I split some more wood. I didn't get out early and it got HOT so I quit. I think it got to 93, with a heat index of 96. Today and tomorrow the high is supposed to be 98. Have I mentioned how much I like Missouri weather. Actually Friday the high is only supposed to be 78. That will be the first time since we arrived here, on June 6th, that the high has only been in the 70's.

The last couple of times I had the splitter going I split the wood in the back of my pickup. There isn't all that much there with only a 6' bed and the tool box in the back but there was more than enough to finish filling up the building with the wood furnace. I threw the rest in an outbuilding that I plan on using for additional wood storage.

 The photo below was included in a previous post showing photos of some of the piles of wood on the place.

Below is a photo of the same pile after splitting the wood that was on the truck. I also burned several pieces.

 Sunday afternoon I also burned the brush in the piles below. I had a good fire going for 5 or 6 hours. Actually it burned most of the night, I only fed it for 5-6 hours. Yesterday it was still hot enough that I raked it around a little, piled some more trash on it, and it took off again. I burned stuff for another hour or so, but the fire was much smaller than the one I had going Sunday. I still have one more brush pile to burn, some of the stuff we cut down while trimming along the driveway so that we could get the motor home back here. Actually there is still a lot of junk laying around that needs to be burned, some day.

We go another half inch of rain this morning so that put a halt to trying to burn that brush pile.

Kelsey dropped Lydia off about an hour ago. We get to babysit until Andy gets off work.

Hope you all have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 1st - No Rain Today

I went to California, MO for breakfast this morning. Breakfast was good but not anything great. On the way home I stopped in Centertown and talked to a guy who has used tractors for sale. He doesn't have anything with a loader right now. He said that when he does have one it usually sells quickly.

We didn't get any significant rain today. On the way from California to Centertown it misted enough that I had to occasionally had to turn on the wipers, but that was about it. It was really humid all day.

I didn't do much until late afternoon, then I split some more wood. Before Kathy left she and I move the splitter over next to another pile of wood.

Goodnight and may God bless you and yours.