The Hill at Oso Lago.

As you may know (or not), we are planting a church in rural Pa.  It’s been a slow process, moving here from a different state, becoming acclimated to the snow belt, being “the new people”, and not knowing anyone when we first came here.

We’ve been meeting in our house, a small group of us, and have been praying for a place to meet.  We went to look at an old church building that isn’t used in our small town.  You may look at it and wonder why in the world anyone would get excited about something like this… but it’s exciting to us.  It doesn’t have water (it was build in 1873) but it has an incinerator toilet. (hey, it’s “green”) but we think we may be able to come up with a solution for that problem.

Please come along side of is in prayer and pray that God’s will be done.

PRAY!  More details to come.

I took the day off from my day job on Friday to give myself a four-day weekend and to go to the local Produce Auction that I’ve been meaning to go to since we’ve moved over here.  The Chautauqua Produce Auction is a local point where the Amish can sell their produce at wholesale prices.  It’s a great outlet for the small farmer and a great asset for the community and surrounding area in general. This particular auction was opened and started based on the Homerville Wholesale Produce Auction in Homerville, Ohio.

The interesting twist to this story is that I’ve been to the Homerville Wholesale Produce Auction many times as it was within one-half hour of my house when I lived in Ohio.  So I thought it was a great synchronicity to find the Chautauqua Produce Auction and find out that it was based on the Homerville auction.    The one thing I like about the Homerville auction is that it starts at 5:30 PM and I could usually work that in outside of normal work hours.   It was just one day a week, but now it looks like it’s 3 days a week.   The Chautauqua Auction is on Tuesdays and Fridays and starts at 10:00 AM.

Friday morning we got up and drove over to pick my Mom up.  It was a foggy morning as we drove the twisty roads. We got to her house at 8:30 and headed toward Clymer, NY on the way to the produce auction. I figured I would buy Amy and Mom breakfast at The Dutch Village Restaurant.  The Dutch Village is one of those places that has a local clientele that consists of neighbors, farmers, local school teachers, mail men and an array of other regulars. Besides a reasonably priced menu, and good food, The Dutch Village’s claim to fame is that they use all home backed bread in their meals.  So that means if you buy something simple like “eggs and toast” you can plan on a whole meal with just those eggs and the two gigantic pieces of home baked bread.  French toast is a whole new experience when home baked bread is used. It was Mom’s first visit to the Dutch Village and she liked the food and the 3,000 square foot craft shop that it also houses.

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The church is the people. It’s not the building. Remember that.  The church gathered for some Barbecue at our house a couple of Sunday’s ago.  We had some of that famous Baptist Bird (AKA Chicken) and a lot of other food.   A few pics of us celebrating God and our church family, small as it may be…

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When I logged onto Facebook, I saw a lot of feedback on the shirt about how degrading (certainly) it was and how much in poor taste the shirt was.  I agreed with all of that, but I also noted that a some of the folks who think that this shirt was in poor taste also believe that it’s demeaning to say that ANYTHING is a “girls job” or that a girl should learn anything specifically because they are a girl.I believe that there are things that every girl should learn and there are things that every boy should learn. I believe the two cross over quite a bit, but that girls and boys are different and their depth of learning should be different in different areas.

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Amish Produce Sign

Since the written word has existed, there have been signs. Signs have been used for both informative purposes and advertising purposes from early on. The discovery of Pompeii shows that even in the ancient world that signs were used regularly. Sometimes a sign can be as simple as a picture, sometimes it’s a long description of words stringing a thought. Sometimes it’s a basic combination of both. Like

I made a sign for our homestead. Why, you ask? Why do you need a sign? Well, the simple answer is that I don’t NEED one. I wanted one. We will be selling eggs, produce and other services (sign making maybe?) and we wanted a way to communicate that. Sure, simple signs are probably just as effective, but I wanted something a bit nicer. The Amish use simple signs and they are effective to some extent.

I’ve never made a sign before, but I had and idea of something I might like. So I decided to go for it.I wanted a sign that captured the essence of our homestead.  We live in Bear Lake but picked the Spanglish version “Oso Lago” so it was not just a simple “Bear Lake” sign. (Thus the name of the Blog). I was determined to use simple, cheap and readily available materials. In other words, I had sticker shock at the price of “nice” wood at the stores.  Have you seen how much oak, prime pine, or even #1 Poplar costs, let alone if I get all exotic with cedar.  So I began to make my sign using pieces of 2×4 that I had ripped while making my Garden Tool Organizer (hmmm… I guess I need pictures and a write up on that now too). The pieces were ripped to about 7/16 thick.  I stacked 5 of them on top of each other, used 4 more pieces of ripped 2×4 as uprights and then used finish nails to join them together.  This was the base of the sign.

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I bought the Little Giant 9200 Incubator with the fan and the egg turner for around $115.00 shipped from ebay. We have an older version of one of these but I wanted to get the egg turner and fan so I went ahead and just bought the unit all at the same time on ebay from www.incubatorwarehouse.com. It hasn’t paid for itself completely yet, but it’s well on it’s way with it’s first hatching of 13 chicks and the next batch cooking now.

Chickens hatch in 21 days from incubation and I don’t want to focus too greatly on the incubation (maybe on another post at another time) but I want to focus on the incubating.   There are a lot of  possibilities for incubating. Some are simpler than this, but I like something that is readily usable when I want it and that’s sturdy and proven.  So, that said, this is just what I’ve done.  It’s not “right” or the “the best” but it’s right for me and the best for me.

So, enough about hatching the chickens, let’s assume you get some chickens hatched but then have to figure out what to with them?  they are o.k. for a day or three in the incubator, but eventually, they get messy and have to go to a nice safe warm place.

Now is you are like me, you may have, just occasionally, bought, hatched or otherwise secured animals without having proper shelter made for them.  Well, that trend carried over with our first batch of chicks that we picked up from Meyer’s hatchery years ago.  There are tons of options for quick and easy brooders that include simple things like rolled cardboard in a circle, plastic swimming pools, etc.   They always say to avoid using boxes or things that have square corners to avoid “piling”. Piling is when chicks are cold and attempt to cuddle together for heat and they can crowd each other into a corner so tight that the innermost might suffocate from not being able to breath.

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If you’ve never heard of a Mosin Nagant, it’s a bolt-action Russian Rifle that was used in WWI and WWII and gained some notoriety during the winter siege by the Nazi’s as being a sniper rifle in the hands of the Russians.

They were made from 1891 – 1943 and use the 7.62x54R ammunition.  They are an excellent homesteading rifle as they are inexpensive and plentiful, and can be used to bring home meat for the table or used to defend the home.  They can be had for anywhere from $85.00 and upward. The more expensive rifles being rifles that can be traced to being the actual “sniper” version used during the winter sieges in Russia. Most of the inexpensive rifles are the M91/30 which were produced during, or after 1930

So aside from trying to convince you they are a great gun, blah, blah blah, I’m just going to show you what I did to mine to lighten it up a bit and get a scope on it.

I bought the rifle (2 of them, I gave one to my neighbor who is a vet that is wheelchair bound) for $89.00 at Fin, Feather, and Fur over in Ashland, Ohio (Now selling in their flier for $99.00). I bought this fiberglass stock and scope mount for the rifle, and I purchased a scope for it. Now some folks say (and it CAN be argued) “Just buy what you want, spend the money up front and get a good gun at the start”.  I think that’s a valid argument, but let me argue another way for a moment. If you’re like me, you use only cash (or debit card) to make a purchase. If you’re also like me, it’s easier to break up purchases at different times of the year. Example: I purchased these rifles months earlier, and then the stock and scope mount, later. If you want to learn some minor gunsmithing and modification, it’s far better to practice on an $89.00 rifle than $389.00 rifle, and finally, there is  a satisfaction when you do something for yourself.

Here’s how I went about making the changes that I needed to make:

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Sometimes you do it.  You know you shouldn’t, but you do it anyways.  You get attached to a thing… an inanimate object… something silly or small or that gives you comfort. It could be because you use it all the time, or that someone gave it to you, or it could just be some quirky, weird, emotional thing… regardless of all that, you’re attached to it.

Then the day comes… that attached object goes missing, gets broke, or just plain wears out.  C’mon, don’t look at me like that… you know you’ve got something like it in your life. For me though… it was my mug.  My mom gave me the mug. She had received it as some promotional gift somewhere at a truck show or something. She never used it.  I was in need of something to carry my coffee while I traveled.

Most of the travel mugs are poorly shaped and made to just fit into a standard “cup holder” in a car.  Which, you know, seems nice and all, but usually that small, can sized slot doesn’t have the height clearance for the cups.  It’s really a perfect example of disharmony in the world.  But I found harmony in my travel mug.  It was a fat-bottomed mug (hmmm… isn’t there a “Queen” song something like that?). You know the kind, the kind that look like the space capsule from the Apollo space program?  That mug served me well, for years… while traveling the country in a truck and while steering my desk at my current job.

Then one day, I noticed that I would periodically find a spot of coffee left where Mr. Mug had just been sitting.  I thought that it must be because Amy had set the bottom in some coffee on the counter and it had soaked into the sure-grip surface, or that, in my excitement to touch that sweet caffeinated nectar that I had let a drop escape. I knew deep down that neither were the case.  It was like watching your elderly-grandpa-like neighbor, who used to go to the mailbox religiously, begin to falter, get the mail later, and then sometime not at all for a few days.  It was painful… Mr. Mug was dying.

Then came the fateful guardrail crash.  The crash had thrown everything around in the van, but Mr. Mug did his job.  He held that coffee so it didn’t spill.  In fact, after I limped the van home, I came back to the house and finished my coffee. I was sore, but me and Mr. Mug had pulled through.  Amy had filled up Mr. Mug with a fresh batch and set it down on my table… I took a drink… and there, on my table… was a ring of coffee. I dared to hope I was wrong. I asked Amy… “Did you set this in coffee on the counter?”  I knew the answer before she spoke it… “Well, did you spill coffee while filling it???”  Again, I knew the answer before it was said… no. I went to take a drink and then… the dribble… from the bottom.  Mr. Mug’s day had come.  He had died.

Mr. Mug's Last Day

It was a sad day.  We I had a brief moment of silence and we ceremoniously put him to rest.

It was hard to do, but I persisted.

Because of Mr. Mug’s lasting impact, I began to look for another mug.  I searched high and low. Sure, I had skinny-bottomed mugs, and tall mugs and plastic mugs and stainless steel mugs… but none of them were stable. None were skid-free.

So I did what you would do… what anyone would do.  I began to search the internet for a replacement.   But can you really find a replacement for something like Mr. Mug?  He was free, fat-bottomed, and stable… honestly, those are three characteristics I look for in friends, and I had just stumbled onto them with Mr. Mug.

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sprung paused.

Tomorrow I turn 40.  God likes me snow much, He gave me this:

In other related news, since this I was NOT expecting precipitation today, I left the ez up shelter over the evaporator (rain you know) and was going to evaporate tomorrow… but the snow cause the thing to buckle. I hate cheap steel.  Just saying…