It's always a busy here! I have been spending a lot of time behind the looms!
Please stay tuned I will do my best to update new stories and photos of all the new and exciting things happening around here!
Sunday, July 8, 2018
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Over the winter update 2018
Wow............how time flies! It is now May 2018!
Working at the school as Principal Aide still. Working with great teacher/principal couple!
Christmas break: Daisy stayed with Gramma Pam, Angus and the chicks stayed home. We put in a fenced back yard area and dog door..........my other neighbor came twice and day to feed, water and get Angus outside. They also got to enjoy all the fresh eggs they wanted for taking care of the girls.
So we went to North Carolina for Christmas. It was nice............no need to move there LOL!
Drove back to Alaska................Stopped in Frankfort Kentucky............just a few hundred miles out of our way so that I could purchase my own Christmas gift from Jon. A new Flip rigid heddle loom! Woot! Can't wait to make dishtowels! Larger width items. My other loom is only 12" great for scarves and cloths............
After that we went to (10 hours?) Michigan. Packed up some things we just couldn't live without.............such as more yarn, fabric and drum carder! Oh and to spend time with my Dear Daughter who I miss so much even though we text most every day.
From there we went straight through to Montana (23 hours) where Jon's daughter and soon to be son-in-law live. Stayed with them a couple of days. Oh how I love the blue skies of Montana!
Next stop was Kamiah Idaho (6 ish hours) to visit a friend. Stayed there a couple days and then on our way we go to Fort Nelson BC (20 some hours) to stay with Daisy's gramma Pam's daughter Heather.
After that it was a straight through drive to Fairbanks...........(yup you guessed it another 20 some hours). Spent the night. Got a good rest then the next morning got up had breakfast and a lot of shopping to get done! Then we had to go to pick up our truck that we drove to the airport when we left.
Home here we come only 3-4 hours to go!
I think we were gone almost a full 3 weeks. Boy that is just a long time to be away.
Came home to quite a lot of snow. Luckily we had another neighbor plow the driveway so that we could get in.
I will catch you up on more story in the next entry!
Working at the school as Principal Aide still. Working with great teacher/principal couple!
Christmas break: Daisy stayed with Gramma Pam, Angus and the chicks stayed home. We put in a fenced back yard area and dog door..........my other neighbor came twice and day to feed, water and get Angus outside. They also got to enjoy all the fresh eggs they wanted for taking care of the girls.
So we went to North Carolina for Christmas. It was nice............no need to move there LOL!
Drove back to Alaska................Stopped in Frankfort Kentucky............just a few hundred miles out of our way so that I could purchase my own Christmas gift from Jon. A new Flip rigid heddle loom! Woot! Can't wait to make dishtowels! Larger width items. My other loom is only 12" great for scarves and cloths............
After that we went to (10 hours?) Michigan. Packed up some things we just couldn't live without.............such as more yarn, fabric and drum carder! Oh and to spend time with my Dear Daughter who I miss so much even though we text most every day.
From there we went straight through to Montana (23 hours) where Jon's daughter and soon to be son-in-law live. Stayed with them a couple of days. Oh how I love the blue skies of Montana!
Next stop was Kamiah Idaho (6 ish hours) to visit a friend. Stayed there a couple days and then on our way we go to Fort Nelson BC (20 some hours) to stay with Daisy's gramma Pam's daughter Heather.
After that it was a straight through drive to Fairbanks...........(yup you guessed it another 20 some hours). Spent the night. Got a good rest then the next morning got up had breakfast and a lot of shopping to get done! Then we had to go to pick up our truck that we drove to the airport when we left.
Home here we come only 3-4 hours to go!
I think we were gone almost a full 3 weeks. Boy that is just a long time to be away.
Came home to quite a lot of snow. Luckily we had another neighbor plow the driveway so that we could get in.
I will catch you up on more story in the next entry!
Catching up some
So this is how the story goes………..
Several months ago I saw a posting (yes it was originally my fault) a few months ago I saw a posting by a major oil/gas company Schlumberger (pronounced slumberjay). Jobs are hard to get up here and Jon wants to buy a plane…….so he will have to work for it right?
Anyhow they along with the State of Alaska were offering training for work up here. This is pipeline work. Cold and hard work. 12 hours a day 7 days a week and depending on contract could be 2 weeks on 2 weeks off or something similar.
So in order to be accepted to limited training and certification you had to send a resume and cover letter, that was a few months later followed by a phone interview and then a trip to Fairbanks for drug tests and physical fitness testing.
Jon who will be 55 this December passed it all. So yes he will be attending this training.
You are responsible to get yourself to Fairbanks (160 miles and in this weather 4-6 hour drive) then they will drive you to Delta Junction about 80 more miles away. There he will stay for 14 days of 12 hour a day 7 day a week training out in the freezing cold. I am sure it will also include some classroom training.
Then there is Miss Whoopsie Daisy. She is an Alaskan sprint race dog (which is a husky mutt). She was from a litter of 5. If you do the research Joee Redington https://www.adn.com/sports/2017/08/16/breeder-trainer-rac... or this is my favorite http://jukebox.uaf.edu/site/interviews/joe-redington-jr
Anyhow Daisy came from the last litter. Joee was in poor health for a number of years and decided for one last litter. I received a phone call one evening to come up and help his wife Pam get a temp on the mother. They told me that the mother had killed one pup. 4 left and not doing well. Stayed there most of the night hand feeding 6 day old pups. As it turned out 2 more didn’t make it over night. The next morning we had another musher Brent Sass bring one of his bitches over to see if the remaining 2 pups would nurse. One did and the other kept trying. So after he went home later that night we put a muzzle on the mother brought her into the house in a kennel and let the pups nurse. Somehow the mother got the muzzle off and killed another pup. That leaves one. One after a day or so was thriving and taken back out to the dog welping area. Next day they found that pup had been bitten in the head and had excessive swelling and possible infection.
That was it. I ran home and told Jon that I would like to give that pup a chance, she was just 10 days old and unable to nurse. Jon (Dr. Doolittle) said sure we can give it a try but…….you are not keeping her. Wean it and send it back.
I brought her home, and we only had some cattle antibiotics available so Jon did the math and for a pup that size it was a ‘drop’ of antibiotic given intramuscularly(yes in an insulin syringe in her hind quarter). She only had a small chance at that point for survival.
After administering said drop, within just a few hours time the swelling had reduced almost by half. At this point we were not able to try and nurse her with a syringe. We have a farm about 30 miles away that has fresh goats milk and there was NO puppy formula in this tiny town of 70-ish people. So according to the internet goats milk is about the best.
Next day we administered another injection. Swelling almost completely gone by bedtime!
One of my neighbors was in Fairbanks and on their way home soon, stopped at pet supply for a large can of formula and bottles as the syringe thing wasn’t working so well.
Ok bottles in hand now and puppy is nursing better! I forgot what having a baby was like! Every 2 hours feeding. I think that I lost a couple of months time……..tending to puppy.
Next hurdle was that her eyes started to open and one was tiny (damaged?). The mother had bitten her head remember and one canine was very close to her eye. So either she already had a ‘problem’ or mom just created one or …….the swelling created one. Anyhow, blind in one eye puppy. Ok we can deal with that.
As she became more and more mobile we noticed her balance was way off. No problem there I will just be giving her more floor time each day to strengthen and improve her ability to compensate.
We are now at a point that she needs a human bottle……..no one in this darn town had one! Again someone was in Fairbanks and picked a couple up for me. Took her about 2 feedings to get the hang of eating from that bottle……..Now she has become a champ!
Moving right along……..we think that she may even be totally blind. Oh my now what? Well as time went on she has shown that she does indeed have partial vision in her good eye. Whew.
She got her name do to the fact that she was always falling over, up the stairs and even on a blade of grass LOL! Whoopsie Daisy!
Today…..she is just 17 weeks old. Getting around fine and knows ‘come’ ‘sit’ ‘stay’ and is totally potty trained. She has one strange quirk though. When she needs or wants something she paces and it is in a circle…….always to the left. LOL.
My biggest fear through all of this is that Angus wouldn’t keep her. But to our surprise he is very tolerant of her and even teaching her when he has had enough.
After just a couple weeks with Daisy……Joee Redington passed away. Very sad. Great man and family. So Daisy is ours to keep. A puppy……..man they have a lot of energy! I am hoping that later this winter she can go hang out with another local musher once in a while and just run with his dogs. She can’t pull until she is about a year old but if she can learn she can pull me on skiis or small sleds just not for a really long distance being the only dog.
Several months ago I saw a posting (yes it was originally my fault) a few months ago I saw a posting by a major oil/gas company Schlumberger (pronounced slumberjay). Jobs are hard to get up here and Jon wants to buy a plane…….so he will have to work for it right?
Anyhow they along with the State of Alaska were offering training for work up here. This is pipeline work. Cold and hard work. 12 hours a day 7 days a week and depending on contract could be 2 weeks on 2 weeks off or something similar.
So in order to be accepted to limited training and certification you had to send a resume and cover letter, that was a few months later followed by a phone interview and then a trip to Fairbanks for drug tests and physical fitness testing.
Jon who will be 55 this December passed it all. So yes he will be attending this training.
You are responsible to get yourself to Fairbanks (160 miles and in this weather 4-6 hour drive) then they will drive you to Delta Junction about 80 more miles away. There he will stay for 14 days of 12 hour a day 7 day a week training out in the freezing cold. I am sure it will also include some classroom training.
Then there is Miss Whoopsie Daisy. She is an Alaskan sprint race dog (which is a husky mutt). She was from a litter of 5. If you do the research Joee Redington https://www.adn.com/sports/2017/08/16/breeder-trainer-rac... or this is my favorite http://jukebox.uaf.edu/site/interviews/joe-redington-jr
Anyhow Daisy came from the last litter. Joee was in poor health for a number of years and decided for one last litter. I received a phone call one evening to come up and help his wife Pam get a temp on the mother. They told me that the mother had killed one pup. 4 left and not doing well. Stayed there most of the night hand feeding 6 day old pups. As it turned out 2 more didn’t make it over night. The next morning we had another musher Brent Sass bring one of his bitches over to see if the remaining 2 pups would nurse. One did and the other kept trying. So after he went home later that night we put a muzzle on the mother brought her into the house in a kennel and let the pups nurse. Somehow the mother got the muzzle off and killed another pup. That leaves one. One after a day or so was thriving and taken back out to the dog welping area. Next day they found that pup had been bitten in the head and had excessive swelling and possible infection.
That was it. I ran home and told Jon that I would like to give that pup a chance, she was just 10 days old and unable to nurse. Jon (Dr. Doolittle) said sure we can give it a try but…….you are not keeping her. Wean it and send it back.
I brought her home, and we only had some cattle antibiotics available so Jon did the math and for a pup that size it was a ‘drop’ of antibiotic given intramuscularly(yes in an insulin syringe in her hind quarter). She only had a small chance at that point for survival.
After administering said drop, within just a few hours time the swelling had reduced almost by half. At this point we were not able to try and nurse her with a syringe. We have a farm about 30 miles away that has fresh goats milk and there was NO puppy formula in this tiny town of 70-ish people. So according to the internet goats milk is about the best.
Next day we administered another injection. Swelling almost completely gone by bedtime!
One of my neighbors was in Fairbanks and on their way home soon, stopped at pet supply for a large can of formula and bottles as the syringe thing wasn’t working so well.
Ok bottles in hand now and puppy is nursing better! I forgot what having a baby was like! Every 2 hours feeding. I think that I lost a couple of months time……..tending to puppy.
Next hurdle was that her eyes started to open and one was tiny (damaged?). The mother had bitten her head remember and one canine was very close to her eye. So either she already had a ‘problem’ or mom just created one or …….the swelling created one. Anyhow, blind in one eye puppy. Ok we can deal with that.
As she became more and more mobile we noticed her balance was way off. No problem there I will just be giving her more floor time each day to strengthen and improve her ability to compensate.
We are now at a point that she needs a human bottle……..no one in this darn town had one! Again someone was in Fairbanks and picked a couple up for me. Took her about 2 feedings to get the hang of eating from that bottle……..Now she has become a champ!
Moving right along……..we think that she may even be totally blind. Oh my now what? Well as time went on she has shown that she does indeed have partial vision in her good eye. Whew.
She got her name do to the fact that she was always falling over, up the stairs and even on a blade of grass LOL! Whoopsie Daisy!
Today…..she is just 17 weeks old. Getting around fine and knows ‘come’ ‘sit’ ‘stay’ and is totally potty trained. She has one strange quirk though. When she needs or wants something she paces and it is in a circle…….always to the left. LOL.
My biggest fear through all of this is that Angus wouldn’t keep her. But to our surprise he is very tolerant of her and even teaching her when he has had enough.
After just a couple weeks with Daisy……Joee Redington passed away. Very sad. Great man and family. So Daisy is ours to keep. A puppy……..man they have a lot of energy! I am hoping that later this winter she can go hang out with another local musher once in a while and just run with his dogs. She can’t pull until she is about a year old but if she can learn she can pull me on skiis or small sleds just not for a really long distance being the only dog.
Rewind to May-ish I got chickens! Chicks really but I have always wanted my own chickens. Bought 21, 6 meat birds and the rest layers. That won’t start laying until like September. But eh it will be fun!
Lost one as a fox threatened the chicken run. She must have been stuck in the corner a few minutes too long as after a week or so had to be dispatched as she was not thriving. Next one to leave was a hen that I am pretty sure got taken out of the run by another fox that climbed the fence! Both of these Foxes have been dispatched.
Ok so now I needed a rooster from the same farm I got the goats milk for Daisy.
And now I have 2 roosters and 12 hens. Eggs started coming in mid September and I will get between 8-12 eggs per day now. I am able to sell them almost faster than I am getting them. And now they can at least buy their own food! LOL.
Lost one as a fox threatened the chicken run. She must have been stuck in the corner a few minutes too long as after a week or so had to be dispatched as she was not thriving. Next one to leave was a hen that I am pretty sure got taken out of the run by another fox that climbed the fence! Both of these Foxes have been dispatched.
Ok so now I needed a rooster from the same farm I got the goats milk for Daisy.
And now I have 2 roosters and 12 hens. Eggs started coming in mid September and I will get between 8-12 eggs per day now. I am able to sell them almost faster than I am getting them. And now they can at least buy their own food! LOL.
Next entry will be a little catch up..............over the winter.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
12-1-15 Tuesday
Today I will run into town on the snowmachine and pay a few bills......return some dvd's and a bowl, visit a bit too.
Not much on the schedule today. Need to finish Lisa's second cloth as her birthday is Dec 2 then I wlll take a photo.......
Tomorrow we might be heading to Fairbainks. Have a list of supplies for building etc to get and I will pick up a few additional groceries. Nothing we need yet but will need and if for some reason we can't get to Fairbanks in the next several weeks we will be all set.
Last night we had left over moose back strap with mashed potatoes, left over stuffing and I made some brown gravy to put over all of it. Was fabulous
One thing that is really awesome about having a wood stove going all the time is you always have warm water, and a super easy way to warm dinners..........as we have no microwave here. No Keurig and no toaster either. Coffee is a slow process with the perk pot.....but before bed I use Jon's grandpa's coffee grinder and fill the basket and get the water ready so the first one up just has to turn on the stove to get it going. By the time breakfast is ready, coffee is too!
I did however ask 'santa' for a toaster for christmas. As we have a really great generator now and it can totally handle a toaster.
I can say one thing, my biggest fear of being here in the winter was to be cooped up in the cabin with him.......and ya know what? It isn't bad at all. I do my crafts and he has his own. We listen to audio books or watch silly old tv series shows and next thing you know the day is over!
A weird thing to get used to is waking up in the dark at 8:30 with the moon full out and illuminating the sky just like it was sunrise or something. And by about 10:30 or so you can watch the sunrise. Now it getting dark at 4-ish not my favorite for sure, and the moon doesn't peek over the trees until about 10pm. So there is a time of real darkness early on in the evening. Sorta makes you find the time to see if you should be hungry for dinner yet! LOL
Phot below of Jon digging out our truck!
11-30-15 Monday
Today is Monday and the temps over night and all during the day hovered around -14 degrees.
brrrrr chilly for sure, but snug as a bug in a rug in our house!
Jon spent most of the day again sewing, ran to town to get water and just staying warm.
I did laundry with me new panda washer! Socks and undies, t-shirts and hoodies. Will resume laundry in a day or so. We only have enough room in the house for a small clothes line and drying rack. Works out great! You only do as much laundry in a day as you can hang to dry. I did it early in the day so by the time it was dry we where ready to hit the sack!
I made one and a half face cloths today along with a bit of knitting on my stocking. Lisa's birthday is on the second so I will give her a few face cloths and a bar of soap that I made.
11-29-15 Sunday craft day
So we spent the day crafting and stayed home all day. It was a good day......a lot accomplished.
Jon got all the fur and leather bits all cut out. He had to hand sew most of it as my little machine just wouldn't sew it well.
I worked on my stocking kit from Annies Woolens. I figure that I can take a photo when I have the his and hers hanging by the fire!
For dinner we had Moose backstrap broiled along with baked potato wrapped in foil that stuck in the front corners of the woodstove......free oven right? And some canned corn.
Oh the meat was spectacular! I encrusted it in all kinds of seasonings and black pepper before broiling. I cooked the hunk whole and got it about medium rare. So as you cut into it.....was looking a lot like prime rib.
I should try to take more photos......Everyone likes food photos right?
So in a nut shell we pretty much stayed up till midnight as he was on a mission to get the outer portion of his hat finished so he can spend tomorrow Monday finishing and attaching the liner.
11-28 and let the sewing begin!
So Jon dug out his beaver hides that he trapped a year or so ago and we sent off for tanning. We also brought up a deer hide that his grandpa Dyer shot and killed then sent off to be tanned.
We got out the scrap fabrics and pattern for a trappers hat. Jon traced off all of the pieces and cut out a sample hat from polar fleece and a discarded pair of carhardt pants.
TaDa!
Yes he even sews on a machine and by hand...........
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