On the 8th a storm went from SW to NE along the east slopes of the Cascades. It was a storm with many lightning strikes and almost no rain. In a stretch of about 70 miles over 90 fires were started.
Sunday, Sept 9 very windy today, all morning, with two hours of 40 mph gusts, later 47mph! And then back to 40 and sustained speeds from 26 to 32mph and higher as the day went on (blew on?). John has picked a beautiful bowl of large blackberries from our thorn less plants, and they must have gotten more water than those in the garden. Gorgeous. Also more corn, and a bunch of yellow pear tomatoes. John found a new pair of boots to replace the work boots that have a hole in the side. He bought these in 2008, for $30 marked down from $40. Today he saw that Bi*Mart had a like pair for a little more, so we need gasoline in the car, to deliver some squash to a neighbor, and to buy the cat food I forgot. I hope Rascal comes home to eat it. We haven’t seen him for a whole day and night. John found ONE pair of the work boots that fit him, and he bought them. He paid $35 today for $48 boots. I spent all afternoon transcribing my notes from an interview and getting some pictures off the web on the hay (and straw) industry. We heard planes and helicopters out looking for fires.
Monday, Sept 10 started with hay grower interview at 10:00 a.m. on the other side of the valley on the Thorp Hwy. This was cool because the grower has had two Brittanys from our lines. His first died the year the 2010 litter was born. She was 14. He called just at the right time, and I gave him first pick of the litter. At the beginning and end of our interview, I was able to meet Bri, a nice liver & white Brittany. He shot 35 birds (quail) over her the first season, and last year 100. He even shot a goose! Pretty cool.
I got home and John had a pizza in for our lunch.
Sadly, we have the first problem with the new tractor. He was using it and a hydraulic line broke, so it spewed fluid all over and stopped the backhoe. I hope it stopped it before any damage could occur. Our friend who is a farmer, musician, and friend, and fixes all his hydraulic stuff is on his way over here from Thorp. It’s about 20 minutes at least. He’s bringing his pressure washer and tools to see if he can help John remove the hose so we can take it to a parts store and get a replacement. Then we’ll have to replace all the lost hydraulic fluid. He was making progress with the backhoe and is very upset at this happening, although I do not believe he had any part in the breaking process. It probably just wore out.
John worked for about an hour digging a hole and another removal of a ditch edge. He realized he will need to get someone with a heavier earthmover (bulldozer), to take out all the stuff in the center of the “new’ round pen. It would be a LONG time using our baby-rig. However, it is perfect for smaller jobs around the place. He will love (already does) being able to dig a posthole not by hand.
Our friend came and is going soon, and he didn’t use the washer to clean it because it would create mud and John has to lay under the tractor to work on the line. (Or would be dirt to mud from added water). He did bring the wrenches to take off the ends and clamp where the tubing was “crimped.” John can take it to NAPA and get a new one, and I believe he knows how to put it back on, and yes, we’ll get more hydraulic fluid and add it too.
Tuesday, Sept 11 John took off early for a work day on the Pacific Crest Trail at Snoqualmie Summit. Tomorrow is my day off from events in town until tomorrow night, when I drop John off for a physics lecture [about the Higgs boson], and I will go to the south end of town for playing music with The Connections. I plan to use my time all day (with John gone to work on trails), working on transcribing my notes from interviews with hay growers, and cropping my pictures I have taken over the past few days. I also I hope update more stuff on my web page. I stayed home today and slept in, and mostly have spent time on the computer and dishes, oh, and calling the Dr.’s office about a $38 charge for something insurance should have paid for my lab blood work for the thyroid test. It always amazes me how things aren’t done right, and how many people likely just pay their medical bill without questioning it. Turns out it was not properly submitted to Medicare or Group Health. They even had a whole raft of charges from 2009 – 2011 on the same bill that WERE paid. Also, I’m not usually home this time of day, so I have enjoyed watching many quail in the backyard. Smoke fills the valley.
Wednesday, Sept 12 John’s going to be working on the PCT under the ski chairlifts at Snoqualmie Summit. [Smoke from our Valley drifted west and through the Pass along with one medical helicopter, likely headed for Harborview in Seattle.] I went in early for a dental appointment to install my dental bridge. It went extremely smoothly and I have essentially 3 new teeth in the upper left. It only (Ha ha) cost $2,150 (after insurance.) We’re having fun spending our retirement money. Then on to the Food Bank Soup Kitchen, to play music, and where I was given a violin to find a home for with a youngster. The fellow will bring it to the FB tomorrow and I will pick it up between 10 and 3:00 . Need to get me to the Rehab center by 1:45 and John will drop me off and then go himself for foot care, and come back to retrieve me. Therefore, we will go ahead of time to get the violin. Today we had 3 people singing with us (all guys), and it was rather neat. For lunch, they fed us a nice pasta dish with lots of meat, corn on the cob, large green mixed salad, and pineapple zucchini bread for dessert. While there, I picked up some almond/coconut milk (expired) and some bread. Went on to SAIL exercise class and did that for an hour, helping with the music and a few chores with assisting first time members.
We left about 6 and drove to town to Jack in The Box for a hamburger for me and one for John plus two tacos. [Too much going on to cook at home.] We carried our drink and drove to the parking lot at the University, finished eating in the car, and made it to a lecture on Rattlesnakes. The Prof (biology) even brought a female rattler and handled it for us, putting her head into a plastic tube, so that kids there and any adult could touch it if they wanted, and see the rattler close up and touch it and the snake. Yes, I did. She rattled through most of his talk (in a wooden box). The rattlesnake lecture was quite interesting. We have probably walked by hundreds (most likely on horseback), and they really are not interested in going after people or horses. If you were a mouse, that’s another story! His comment was that for every one you hear, you have walked by another quiet hundred. He made the point that stairs in homes are more dangerous! You can look it up.
Sadly, parts of our garden froze last night. Tonight we picked many squash, a few tomatoes (yellow pear small ones, like cherry tomatoes) a little corn, a couple of green peppers. The squash plants were hit severely. Most of the tomatoes likely won’t make it either, but we left them hoping they will ripen some more. It’s supposed to go to 37 tonight, but the freeze last night was not anticipated.
Thursday, Sept 13 John has foot care today and won’t go on a WTA trail crew. I will play music in the afternoon at Rehab where I stayed for 7 weeks. In this valley, we are surrounded on 3 sides (S, W, and N) by wildfires (caused by lightning) very bad smoke haze; even John’s voice is affected. I’m glad neither of us has asthma or needs to be on oxygen. The visibility at the airport was seriously low today. It went to 4 mi, 6 mi, 8 mi and finally got up to 10 late afternoon, which is about its width. We couldn’t see the hills on the other side of the valley (20 miles) when we started our drive in today, at 1:00 p.m. We drove by the Food Bank for me to pick up the half-size violin donated to me to find a young person to play it. It’s in a very nice hard case, but needs new strings, and probably the bow restrung, yet the price was right. I know of a 4 yr old whose brother is 12 and plays the violin, so perhaps I could give it to them, and they could have it repaired. John took me to the Rehab for music, and then he went for gasoline and for foot care for himself. He doesn’t have a medical need as I do, so he had to pay $20, but that’s better than paying the full rate and I get by with only $10. We had a small number of players, but did have 2 guitars, a banjo, a tambourine, and 3 fiddles. My retired colleague was in the Rehab, from after a heart attack, but he was sleeping when I looked in.
John left his good clothes on from today, and I made us a BLT for supper. He has taken off for the KVTR (trail riders’ meeting); he is taking the box of nails and metal picked up from our driveway, parking spaces, and around the place. It’s quite amazing (as you have seen if you checked our evolving web page listed at the end of the blog). I’m staying home to transcribe notes from our most recent interview with a hay grower. Got only one done; has taken me many hours today (this morning and tonight). It would have been easier had I not waited a week before transcribing and translating my notes. Some were rather cryptic.
Friday, Sept 14 Decided against running over to George today for the Bluegrass festival, but may well go in the morning. John leaves early for a trail work team west of Stevens Pass.
Good news. John got the hydraulic replacement line installed today, and started it and it works (oh, and he added two gallons of fluid to the tank). He checked (with my standing there), the uplift of the front-end loader, and then moved to the backhoe driver’s seat and worked out a load of rocks and dirt using it from the edge of our round pen. Then he picked up (with the hydraulics) both ends and drove it over to near a tub of water, where he had towels and “409” to clean off the tractor from the spray of hydraulic fluid. I’m so proud of him (town kid that he is) for fixing it and grateful to our farmer friend who helped show him how, and taking it off to get the replacement. It was doubly nice that he drove here all the way from Thorp. I think (know) John’s a much happier camper now.
Because of our being away tomorrow, we may not publish this until Sunday. (That’s what happened). At least one of you out there in cyberspace wrote to see if we were okay when it wasn’t published.
I was very impressed by the Physics presentation we attended tonight at the University. The chair of Physics, who is from NY, organized and presented the evening offering of experiments about the science of physics. His name is Michael Jackson. He goes by Mike, and he wears Bermuda shorts almost year round. He is outgoing, exuberant, and great with kids. Half the audience was young kids, and he involved them throughout, asking questions, and the kids responded (much better than college students do). He used them for assistants. He also had 8 or so of his own majors there to demonstrate various concepts (such as spreading out the mass of a student lying on a bed of sharp nails. The fellow then held a concrete block on a board on his chest, and another student broke it with a sledge hammer). He demonstrated AC current and lightning rods and electromagnetism, and a simple electric motor that Faraday invented (discovered) long, long ago (in 1841). We learned about induction and conduction and energy. We observed how liquid nitrogen can rapidly cool metal and affect the reactions through parts of experiments. We saw examples of Aluminum being used as a conductor. In addition, there were wires that were magnetized and with current running through them, acted differently with repelling or attracting. He had a camera set up so the people not on the first 2 rows could still experience the experiment. He showed us the gravitational force and demonstrated a pendulum. There was over an hour of non-stop educational entertainment. Oh, he showed how running a wire with a current next to a compass would affect the needle. Maybe my description is a little fuzzy but it was great fun, and a totally fascinating and interesting presentation.
He demonstrated current and lightning rods and their shape. They (Mike and students) used a Van de Graaff generator for several demonstrations,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator
including how a lightning rod (thumb tack) dissipates charge. With the lights out in the room, the student assistant waved his hands close to the metal globe and sparks jumped out, like little lightning strikes. Then he put a tack on the side, and had a woman come while warning her to be ready for a big spark. She put her hand close to the ball where the tack was. The tack acted as a lightning rod and did not “shock” her, or even show a spark. It was quite cool. They put a stack of throw-away aluminum pie plates on top of the globe and with it turned on the plates lifted off, one by one and fell away. Explanation and more here:
http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/vdg.shtml
And in it is this statement: “People with cardiac pacemakers should never operate the generator or come in contact with it.” I was sitting on the second row back and probably was over 3’ away! I knew there would be a section on magnetism and that I cannot be near large magnets such as are found in Wind Turbines. I was careful not to get as close to the Physics experiments as I did to the rattlesnake two nights before!
This was my first Physics lecture since 1959, when I was in a high school Physics class with Mr. Garner. I remember his class well and all the neat experiments we did. I was his lab assistant and got to grade all the student lab manuals. I could even put comments and sign off in his writing on his name. He always signed with a large G with a circle around it. (I was a Junior). Now I’m trying to remember if I wasn’t his assistant for the 9th grade General Science class, which I also had taken from him. Perhaps that is the story. It wouldn’t make sense for me to have been grading lab write-ups while taking the class. I had Chemistry my senior year from a different person who was not nearly as good a teacher. Interestingly, I still have an old designed GA flag (with the Confederate crossbars) that my Physics teacher had hanging in his den, took down (probably replaced with the new one), and gave it to me!
Oh, there was a yard sale across the street and we got to the building early, so walked across to it. I bought a perfectly new condition dark green sweatshirt with an Alaska emblem with nice wildlife and a saying, the last American frontier. (I paid a dollar). It is XL and probably will fit me fine and might also be okay for John for a dress up sweatshirt. I will not let him work in it, however.
There is heavy smoke coming from the hills west and north of us from the lightning-caused fires, many now blossoming into serious size. On our way home tonight, we saw a huge red glow from the nearest one – about 15 miles away. There are fires on both sides of Hwy 97 and that’s the road John has to drive early in the morning to go to his trail work past Leavenworth. He plans to leave at 6:00 to give him plenty of time to drive slowly and give right of way to the firefighters.
Saturday, Sept 15 John rolled out early for a trail west of Stevens Pass. Then, an early morning wake up call for me from our hay provider, down the road (for one Harobed load). They want to come today, so that changes my plans to leave. I will need to move trucks and make access room to our new building. I managed to get into the old ’89 Chevy truck without a step stool. The ’89 Ford has running boards, so it’s not as much of a problem. With John not here, I tried to postpone it until tomorrow, but that wasn’t possible. I don’t know what would have happened if I had already taken off for the planned yard sale to look at tools for John, on my way by Olmstead Park for the Threshing Days, and on over to George, WA for two bluegrass workshops. I’ll just have to wait for next year for that, and then John can also participate in the guitar workshop. I do plan to photograph the hay unloading process today, and perhaps we can use one photo in our Olympia talk on the hay industry. Unfortunately, the Harobed arrived just before 3:00 (John’s not due home until 6:00 p.m.) and we put it in the pole building, but it must have had a weak spot and when he pulled forward, it was leaning. He pulled forward to leave the stack standing, and it did for a little while. However, gravity got the best and the back of the stack fell off and rolled all the way out about 50 feet into the pasture. I was standing beside it, and saw it going so was able to run to the side of the building where I was behind the travel trailer. Only one bale came off that side, more on the other, but all the rest went off the back. I would likely have been crushed had I been standing directly behind it on the ground. Scary, very. My heart is still beating hard (as I wrote this Saturday afternoon). I should have taken my blood pressure and heartbeat rate, or maybe not. Ha ha. I did finally, but it was after I had talked to the grower and explained what happened and also started writing this blog entry. First time I took my BP on my right arm, and it was 143/68 w/pulse, 62. Then a couple minutes later I took it on my left arm and it was 114/85 with pulse 61. I think I read the diastolic correctly on the second one. I know the 114 was correct. So I guess I’m okay. I do know that John is not going to be very happy to see how many bales he will need to move. I could have gone a long while without this much excitement.
Now the rest of the day I am able to work on transcribing my notes from hay grower interviews, and taking off some pictures from my camera of our tours at hay growers and at one processor/exporter. We have another interview next Tuesday with another exporter (assuming I’m not serving Jury Duty). John made it home okay, but we both were too tired to do much sharing of information and just got dinner ready, ate, and went to bed. I didn’t have the energy to finish the blog to give to John for our normal Saturday night posting.
Sunday, Sept. 16. John was up early to go fix the fallen stack of hay. We got a phone call from the grower saying there may have been some weak bales that caused the tumble. Now that I have looked back at pictures, I think it might have been. Why? Because the baler broke a piece of chain and a wheel on the tension bar, and a couple of bales were not properly packed. If those weak bales were in our stack then it would not have been stable. We’re just fortunate it didn’t fall sideways and hit our travel trailer, the new metal shed walls, or me. I was out behind directing (from the side), and then was photographing the process on a movie. The grower brought two bales to replace the loose ones (no need, really), but we did not find the parts of the machinery, so we have to be on the lookout as we feed the bales.
This afternoon we were scheduled to go to the potluck for the Kittitas Valley Trail Riders. It is normally held in August, but this year was postponed by the wildfire that was within a half mile of the ranch where we were having it. Today was rather ironic because the lightning caused fires are in the hills to the north, with one having expanded to 2500 acres and still going. The smoke was very hazy in our valley today. When we left for the party, we only had 4-mile visibility. The winds shifted and we had 10- mile visibility on the way home. The food and fellowship was excellent. The host cooked large hot dogs for us on a grill and cooked a huge pot of corn on the cob from his garden. People brought all sorts of stuff from smoked salmon, to cheese/chicken casseroles, to other noodle dishes and salads, and there was a table of desserts to die for. We took our famous (or infamous) Kittitas Valley Cobbler (Pie cherries we grew, blueberries we bought last year from a woman at this very potluck, who has a farm in the Yakima Canyon south of EBRG, and our own Carpathian walnuts. As usual, it was a big hit.
We came home to a report from the Crew Leader (Blue Hat) from yesterday’s trail work crew, which is sent to the crewmembers (and to the WA Trails Association staff). Part of it follows:
“John H, Jon N, John Mac, Garrick, and Miguel, excellent job on the lower section. You surpassed my vision for the section. I had no idea it could look as good as it did by the end of the day. Great job improvising on the rock wall and turnpike structure. I very much enjoyed your ability to make that tricky section look great and function very well. Hopefully the hydrology won’t win out, and that giant boulder we all moved will break the flow enough not to erode away your tread. But you all really hustled throughout the day and moved a lot of material. You all worked really hard and put a ton of effort into that tread. Killer job!
John Hultquist: thank you very much for being an orange hat! You provided great leadership and wisdom to the crew. It was nice to be able to leave you to your skills and know that the group was in good hands. Took a load off my shoulders and helped me pass out candy more efficiently. Thank you for your donation of time and love to WTA and the trails of Washington.” [John says: I’m old enough to be this fellow’s father and likely have triple the days of trail work – but I like doing the work and don’t want the responsibility of being the (Blue Hat) crew leader.]
This link will continue to have a few things added this week after this blog is posted late, so stay tuned, and check back for updates.
http://www.ellensburg.com/nancyh/August2012Rock’NPonderosa.html
We can’t get rid of all the smoke in the house even with the AC and/or fan running. Open a door to let a dog in or out – and smoke gets in our eyes. A little rain might help. None expected.
Hope your week was a good one.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan