Welcome

Welcome to "Our Life"

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Back to the Fun Stuff

I have been typing about the other part of life most of the summer. You know, the part where we have to deal with work, things breaking, people getting sick, struggles etc, etc. Well, enough is enough. It is time to have some more fun and get on with this life's adventure here in the bush. Myra will be back to join me soon (I Hope).
Several weeks ago I got in some new power inverters to make a better electrical supply system in the cabin. While I was working with the installation I had things setting all over. I guess I put a few things in Isabelle's chair and she refused to let me get in the way of a good nap.

I have had some time to work on the wood shed lately. It is now finished for the year and I have started putting things into it. Next year, or when the "Alaska Shed" roof wears out I will probably put a metal roof on this. It won't take much more work to make that possible.

Now I have put Gas barrels and lawn tools in there and I have metal roofing and wood in the loft. All I need to do is get my wood cut and in there before winter!


I managed to keep the Garden alive for the summer. I have eaten some of the fresh vegetables and that has been a real treat. I have to dig potatoes very soon now and I will finish getting the rest of the "greens" out of there and put to use. We got down to 29degrees the other night and these plants will not take much more of that.


I have also barrowed a little digger from a my fine neighbors and have gotten a new outhouse pit dug. As I was burying the old outhouse pit the motor blew up on the digger, and a new one is on order. It only takes a little Briggs and Stratton 5 hp to run it so it is not terribly expensive.I am not sure What would make me want to replace this beautiful little out house that was here besides the fact that there are no walls the floor is rotten and the pit is full.



This is the floor of the new Outhouse. The white ring is a cut off barrel that will be the "shoot" where the seat will be at. Behind the shoot is a little lift up door that will be outside the back of the outhouse for dumping the honey bucket. This will be built so that when the pit gets full again you just dig a new pit and pull the whole outhouse over to the new pit. There will be no need to build a new outhouse for many years.
Once I get the little digger repaired I am going to dig in the "French Drain" system for the grey water of the cabin and I am going to try to get the "Cold Storage" dug in. Time is beggining to run short before winter gets here. Fall is definitely in the air and the leaves are blowing off of the trees.

I have had to do a bunch of repairs as of late and i still have more to do. It seems that everthing waited until after fishing season. I am not sure if I made it wait to break, I just wasn't using it so it did not break or if God just knew I could not handle any more at that time but; another drive axle broke on an ATV and the second one has a bad U Joint on one axle. The propane refrigerator has stopped working. The big generator has died. The boat took a big drink of water from bad gas and it got all the way into the fuel injection pump
the little digger blew up and I am forgetting something?
I took two ATVs and made one that works. I still need to get some parts before all the used cobbled together stuff falls apart on the one that is working. Tom, our neighbor, gave me another big generator that is broken but in a different area than ours. I will take the two and make a good one of them. The boat was a real challenge but I finally got it running last night about 6:30. I still have not figured out the propane refrigerator. I may end up having to take it out of the wall I built it into and turn it upside down for an hour or two. That is an old fashion fix for this type of fridge but it works most of the time.
Fishing season: What can I say! I fished over 55 days that I documented and I had many many Salmon on my boat.I had over 1000lbs of King salmon come on board, over 500 lbs of Coho salmon and over 200 lbs of rainbow trout. I did not track how much Pink salmon or Chum salmon, Sockeye salmon was over 200 pounds.
The very last fishing trip of the season is when I got a motor full of water and the boat died. That was the first time that ever happened with clients and it was very embarrassing. Thankfully they were great about it and would not even let me row the boat. We never even got out of Fish Lakes Creek and we were able to barrow another boat from a neighbor and finish our trip with very little delay. (Thank You Dana and Deanna).
The last two days of fishing were fairly slow in some ways but very good considering that it was the first week of September and the salmon were supposed to be all gone. We caught about 12 silvers and 8 chums but only 4 fish were keepers as they were too old and degraded to keep most of them. There were lots of Zombie fish swimming around.
You Oughtta see Zombie fish sometime. These salmon all die after spawning you know. They do not eat and they burn all of thier energy just getting to their spawning hole and laying or fertilizing eggs. These fish literally rot on their bones but they keep swimming until they are in an un-believable state of decay. Some literally have skin coming off and holes threw their body. It is really gross but amazing to see the full life cycle.

Hey, I got lots to do and should probably not be sitting here typing, but I was in the mood. I hope you have a great day and Thank You for letting me share some of my adveture with you.

Talk to you soon,
Roger