I got tired of waiting for the pork roast in the wood pellet smoker to reach an internal temp of 205F, so I just went to bed at about midnight — only to have the thermometer app on my iPhone alarm at 3:30A when the roast was finally done!
Somehow (still an unsolved mystery) … both donkeys escaped from their barn pasture. Historically, that has led to a full day of chaos and frustration, chasing them around the property, and even in a few cases down the road (off property).
I’ve learned NOT to chase them (even though it can be fun doing so on my KTM 990 Adventure dual sport), and instead use “donkey bait” (carrots or peanuts (in the shell)) to coax them into a bridle, or in this case a rope noose.
Ended up deciding to let them stay in the garden pasture for few weeks, so they can graise down some of the weeds.
Another quick Teeter EP-960 Ltd inversion table demo.
Another quick project: Camp Chef Deluxe Pellet Grill and Smoker. Yeah, quick … NOT! 😉
Now is not the time to do a complete review of the new smoker. Need some time in the saddle before I’m ready to pass any judgement. However, that said, I will report the unboxing and assembly were VERY straight-forward. Their packaging is well thought out. Instructions were very clear. Diagrams are a little too small to see finer details, but workable.
As suggested in this video, I bought the pellet smoker on a whim. Not because I needed it, but more so because I have a vested interest in all things biomass fueled. A few months ago I bought an OONI (alt: UUNI) wood pellet fueled pizza oven. LOVE it. Now I have a wood pellet fueled smoker. What’s not to like.
For some time now, I’ve been researching the viability of picking up my own biomass pellet making machine, but haven’t found a unit yet this is cost effective (read: smaller, non-commercial, non-industrial).
Had to laugh (not really) … when it took WAY LONGER than I expected to smoke a 1.75 pound pork loin roast. At 11P I gave up (waiting) and just went to bed with the bluetooth BBQ thermometer app on my iPhone sitting next to my bed. At 3:30A it went off! Internal temp at 205F target. Rolled out of bed, mumbling the whole way downstairs, and yanked the meat off the smoker. Didn’t even LOOK at it really until I got up for good at 6A.
The final results will be featured in tomorrow’s FCL update video. Suffice to say, the “pulled pork” came out great.
Welp … we survived Tropical Storm (Hurricane) Michael.
Rained pretty heavy most of the morning and into the afternoon. I was watching the center of the storm (the ‘eye’) heading right at us on the weather app on my phone. The NWS posted severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for my county.
At just before 4PM, the ‘back side’ of the eye hit us with heavy rains and VERY strong and gusty winds. A tree of about 14+ inches in diameter, just off our front porch, snapped in half about 10 feet off the ground and fell onto our barn. Thankfully, it looks like it fell at a sufficiently oblique angle to glance off the barn without doing too much damage.
We (and about 23,000 other households) lost commercial power. I have a whole-home propane generator that automatically started with power dropped. We’ve been running on backup power for almost 30 hours now. The power utility company estimates having power back up sometime over the weekend.
The backup generator powers all of our critical infrastructure (well pumps, septic systems, hot water heater, refrigerators and freezers, etc.) and about 30% of the wall plugs. Interestingly enough, no lights. So, we have kerosene hurricane lamps, battery powered lanterns, and tactical flashlights to get around at night.
When the winds were at their highest, for about 5 minutes there, I thought *maybe* a tornado was in the vicinity. Pretty scary there for a few min. Poor Hunter short-circuited for a bit … making crazy eyes and looking like she was going to crawl into my back pocket or something.
When the sun came up this morning (next day), we had blue skies, very cool weather, a few trees down, quite a bit of water runoff, but everyone (animals) was okay.
From my perspective, the Michael storm was more intimidating than the Florence storm a few weeks ago. Less water dropped, but the Michael winds were pretty fierce.
First few ‘bands’ of Hurricane Florence passed through. Not much rain, just fast moving, dark clouds and moderate, variable and gusting winds.
Watch the black duck segment closely. Watch how she keeps tilting her head up to watch the high speed clouds passing overhead. Interesting.
Used the Mavic Pro drone to monitor storm conditions from about 300 to 400 feet AGL (above ground level). Always impressed with not just the 4K video shot by the drone, but almost more so its onboard flight management computer. That damn thing will hold a perfect GPS-based position fix (aka ‘hover’), even in high, gusty winds. Truly amazing piece of consumer technology.
Had to arm wrestle (wing wrestle?) the young chickens into their coop tonight. The bone-heads wanted to stay out in the approaching storm. Young and dumb … just like human kids. 😉
Found mamma hen’s (not the best of names, but she answers to it!) pirate nest, which made my day. She’s the hen that hatched about 14 chicks in a compost pile earlier in the Spring. She’s a natural!
Got 550 gallons (2000 liters) of fresh drinking water stored in the two IBC totes.
After Hooey and I got all the animals bedded down for the night, we sat on the patio with a bottle of wine and watched the storm clouds race by … without dropping much rain.
Decided to move the badonkadonks back into the barn pasture to provide them with more shelter during the upcoming hurricane. Had to clean up the barn pasture, fix a section of fence that I crushed with a felled tree earlier in the summer, and move the winter hay bales into a different pasture.
After all that work making room for a 18-wheeler to deliver a shipment, the truck driver chickened out, so I had to meet him down on the paved road and tractor the pallet myself. Same driver that delivered a shipment about 9 months ago … and he pussed out then too. I should have known when he called me from an I-40 offramp about 10 miles away and said … “I need you to give me directions to your place.” I replied, “don’t you have a GPS?” No. “Do you have a map book?” No. “Think maybe you should have researched your route before you left the warehouse?” Lemme call my dispatcher, maybe he has a GPS.
Then I get a second call from him … “I’m looking at a dirt road.” Me: “Yup, I told your dispatcher I live on a rural farm, dirt roads, long gravel driveway, tight turn or two.” Him: uuuummmmm…
Whatever. No harm, no foul. Got the shipment (new Caravaggi stump grinder for the BCS 853 walk-behind tractor). Good sized thunderstorm moved in late in the PM. Got a few good shots with the Mavic Pro drone. Heavy late PM rain showers, but not Florence. Not yet. 😉
Woke up to overcast skies, ground fog and cool temps. HOT DAMN. Got the animals up, out and on their way, then fired up the tractor and got back to work plowing the field. First plow furrow, half-way down, I hit a 50-60 pound rock and sheared the plow blade off! AAAHHHGG!
Spent the next few hours running around getting parts and a few new tractor implements (e.g. 5 foot landscaping rake, post hole auger).
Took the opportunity to salvage about 10-12 telephone poles from the neighbor’s property, then got back to work plowing the field.
Got about half of the field plowed, one 18 inch wide furrow at a time. Exhausting work, even just riding on the tractor (for that many hours). If I didn’t have hemorrhoids before, I very well might now.
We mowed the ‘park’ next door, then I decided that with Hurricane Florence forecast to dump about 50″ of rain on us later in the week, it might be a good idea to plow the field under to allow it to absorb more water and shed less water into our neighborhood drainage ditches, which tend to flood my neighbor’s property.
Bought Hooey a whole roasted chicken for being such a good ‘helper’ while I was running the tractor. She’s good about chasing the chickens away from in front of the tractor, cuz those dummies are prone to letting the front wheels get about 3 inches away from them before flittering way. I guess you could say they like to ‘play chicken’ with the tractor.
Spent some ‘quality time’ with my woodlot thinning tools today (e.g. hookaroon, chainsaw, choker, skid tongs, boom pole hoist) working to bring down and haul away a bunch of trees, so I took the opportunity to share some of those experiences via GoPro to … perhaps … give others some ideas re: wood lot thinning.
Ended up getting some sort of nasty allergic response to something I was exposed to, and since I was more or less offline all last week with a head to toe ‘contact dermatitis’ outbreak, I called it a day early and spent the rest of the afternoon in a Benadryl haze, watching Season 1 X-File episodes on Hulu.
I left the badonkadonks in the garden pasture overnight, so let’s see what sort of damage they did when the sun comes back up.
Found a 6 pound cantaloupe in my compost bin, which motivated me to get off my butt and actually transplant 25 cantaloupe seedlings from the soil block greenhouse into the row garden.
Then, I got a wild hair and decided to build a hugelkultur-based rabbit habitat out in the woods, so I can start migrating my young rabbits out of their cages and back into a more natural setting.
Beautiful day. Forecasted thunderstorms have not arrived (yet).
