There's a First Time for Everything

When Ken and I retired to start off on our new adventure of full-time RVing we bought a Four-Wheel camper. We bought it for two reasons: to be able to have a place to stay while visiting our daughters, and to be able to go up to places where it would be difficult while pulling a travel trailer. Now we live in a house and no longer travel in the RV. We live in the country and it's time to sell the camper so we can have full use of the pickup.

We have lots of fun memories from camping out with our Four-Wheel camper. Many times it's really been convenient in our travels.

We needed to build a couple of saw horses for the camper to rest on. Ken found the plans for these saw horses online. They took nine 2 x 4s and the stack beautifully when not in use. Pretty cool, eh?

The camper has four hydraulic camper jack.

The part we were most anxious about was actually pulling the truck out from under the camper . . . but it was absolutely a piece of cake.

The saw horses will work fine! Now it's time for Craigslist to help us sell it.

Life is good!

Plum-tuckered-out!

Twenty pounds of plums + twenty pounds of sugar + fourteen lemons + seven +/- boxes of pectin + fun time with Jen and Karah showing them how easy making jam is = 25 pints of delicious plum jam

Post No. 500
Life is good!

Weekend Project

Three weeks ago a weird storm blew through and caused some damage in our yard. A huge tree limb crashed down, landing within an inch of our newly built chicken coop. We are so thankful it not only missed the chicken coop but did no harm to our "girls." They didn't seem traumatized in the least bit.

A large oak right next to our garage is the culprit. Apparently it has been attacked by some kind of bug because the limb was quite hollow inside.

We were shocked to see this mess when we woke up the next morning . . . too close for comfort to the chicken coop.

Nearly three weeks later it's dried up so we can see where to make the cuts with the chain saw.

You can see by the log on the ground the hollowness of the limb.

The good thing about this whole project is that we're getting a new wood stove next week so we'll be able to use this wood to keep us toasty warm in a couple of years.

Now Ken's looking into obtaining a log splitter since we have lots of trees that need a good trimming on our four acres.

My job was to gather up the slash.

Load it into the golf cart . . .

And haul it up to our newly created burn pile . . .

The girls love their new perch we salvaged from the tree limb.

A much cleaner side yard, don't you think? And now the girls have a better view too!

Life is good!

Summer & Peach Preserves Go Hand-in-Hand!

I love summertime when the Central Valley in California is bursting at the seams with a bountiful harvest of scrumptious fruits. Over the weekend I picked up 15 pounds of Yellow Peaches on sale at Von's (77¢ a pound) and let them ripen up on the kitchen counter for a few days. The fellow in the produce department said they put their order in and the farm just down the road in Kingsburg picks and delivers them the same . . . now that's pretty darn fresh I'd say! Next week Jen and Karah are coming over for a canning lesson . . . we'll put up some plum jam!

Three ingredients necessary: Peaches, sugar, and pectin . . . that's it!

Three batches later: 13 pints of jam!

The color is gorgeous, and in my unbiased opinion . . . it's delicious too!

Life is good!

Black to Silver

We've been busy this last week moving more stuff from our park model at Park Sierra into our new lovely abode in the country. Well, actually, we've been in the process of schlepping stuff from there to here for nearly five months now . . . which really has nothing to do with this post. 

What I've been doing the last couple of days is washing by hand some beautiful pieces of crystal which we've not used for ten years or so. It's amazing how things can get grimy just sitting in your cupboards! I've also been polishing a few pieces of silver that have become quite tarnished. I've been inspired to do all of this since now we have a pretty corner display case in the dining room. The smaller pieces of silver were no big deal . . . but the large pitcher that was given to us for our 25th anniversary (which was nearly 23 years ago) needed some real TLC and lots of elbow grease. I wish I had taken a true "before" picture. The tarnish was nearly black it was so bad. After working for a couple of hours using Wrights Silver Polish and Weiman Silver Wipes I was able to at least get the color down to a brownish tinge after a whole lot of rubbing. I got on the computer and googled how to clean badly tarnished silver and decided on the following method.

Get a large enough pot so that the piece can fit and be covered with water, so I retrieved my canning pot from the pantry. Completely line the inside of the pot with aluminum foil with the shiny side out. Fill the pot with water and heat to the boiling point.

Add to the pot of boiling water a cup of baking soda for each gallon of water. Then I put the pitcher down into the boiling baking-soda-water and let it sit there for ten minutes, turned it over with tongs and let that side sit for another ten minutes. The silver has to be in direct contact with the aluminum foil and somehow the chemical reaction with the aluminum foil and the soda water causes the breakdown of the tarnish.

I washed the pitcher in warm sudsy water and rinsed it in clear warm water. As you can see, well no you can't see because I forgot to take the picture where the pitcher is black as night, although it's a lot cleaner it does need further attention.

You can see the all-over residue of tarnish here.

WIth a bit more rubbing with the Weiman Wipes I was able to get most of the tarnish removed. That's as good as it's gonna get today.

I think I'll have another "go" at it another time to see if I can get it even shinier. But first I'll have to get some more polish. It looks a whole lot better than it did earlier today.

Life is good!

First of many to come!

Waiting on the kitchen counter this morning as I sauntered out to make my cappucino were two perfect zucchinis . . . the first harvest of the season . . . exactly one month from when we tucked the plants into the newly made beds.

About seven inches long, just the way we like them!

Friday Ken discovered that a critter (we're now thinking it may have been a ground squirrel) had tried tasting the zucchini and decided it wasn't for him. Darn it, here we prepared for deer and do leave our "scarecrow" sprinkler on at night. This zucchini attack must have happened in broad daylight. So now the scarecrow stays on duty 24/7 plus we've ordered an "electric fence" online to keep out the little critters. We are blessed with squirrels, ground squirrels, chipmunks, and marmots living in our back yard along with oodles of gophers.

I love checking in each morning to see how fast the zucchini grow.

Life is good!