Snow

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4

Ran up to the Beta Site this weekend to swap out the Jackery 1500 for the Jackery 3000. I wanted something with a more capacious battery to compensate for the upcoming overcast days of winter and the resultant effect on solar panel output.

So, headed up there and swapped out the battery and updated the panel to two 200w panels. And, of course while I was up there I swapped out the SD cards on the static cameras and am sharing the interesting pics with you savages:

First off, we have a rare hoverdeer:

Next up, check out this utter unit of a deer:

Once I had gotten done the things I went up the for, the weather started to turn. The rain to to sleet, which turned to snow, and we get this:

Usually October, and sometimes November, has a couple very summery days left it but I suspect this is the closing of the ‘outdoor construction’ window. It also means that my trips up there will probably be reduced since there’s really not much need for me to go up there once the snow falls. I absolutely will be trying to get up there at least once a month until spring so I can evaluate accessibility throughout the winter…truck, sidebyside, snowmobile, whatever. The only needs that I see for me to be up there, other than that accessibility evaluation, between now and spring is for either camera issue resolution or security issues. Now is the time to start planning on spring, which I am going to plan around a June 1 date but I suspect I may be able to get in and out of there easily as early as May. But for planning purposes – June 1.

I should mention that I will, as best as I can, be up there during hunting season.

I suppose now is a good time to evaluate how the year went. By most objective standards, it was….okay. I got a few of the big expense items done – got the survey (which was a big deal), got the storage tanks buried (another rather un-cheap expense), got Starlink setup, got cameras installed, and got the cargo container situated. I like to think of it as laying the groundwork for next years more major adventures – well, septic, and solar system. And, of course, the actual ‘real’ structure of residence.

But, for now, it’s time to put things away and go dormant for the winter. For the next several months it’ll all be theory…planning, scheduling, saving, etc…in preparation for the spring.

 

All American 25q at CostCo

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For those of you who are local to Missoula: CostCo has the AA 25 qt pressure canner marked down to $199.97 with the ‘death star’ on the price label. Sez Google:

The Costco “Death Star” is a small asterisk symbol printed in the upper corner of a price tag that indicates an item is being deleted or will not be restocked in its current form.

What It Means

Pending Delete: The warehouse supervisor or corporate system has flagged the Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) to stop reordering.

Not Always Permanent: While some items are gone for good, others may return as seasonal products, package or size updates, or with a new model number and SKU.

Inventory Clear-out: Once the remaining stock on the floor sells out, the space will make room for new inventory.

Related Price Tag Clues

Price Ending in .97: Indicates a manager markdown or clearance price, which often accompanies the asterisk.

Price Ending in .00 or .88: Signals a rare manager special used to clear out the final few items or floor models.

Price Ending in .99: The standard full price, meaning the item has plenty of inventory and is staying put for now.

Sooooo…..

I just bought one of these a few weeks ago for a friend and it was about $35 more back then, so this is a great deal on a top-of-the-line pressure canner if you don’t already have one. Ive had one of these All Americans for a while now and haven’t had a lick of trouble with it. Good, solid, built-to-last build quality.

Freedom seeds

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16

Buddy texts me and tells me that a guy is bringing in a bunch of ammo to sell and would I be interested? Well…you had me at “.308 and .223”.

Lets see….

  • 1000 rds. Lake City 62. Gr Green Tip 5.56
  • 1000 rds. Prvi Partizan 55 gr. FMJ 5.56
  • 500 rds. Federal 55 gr. FMJBT 5.56
  • 500 rds. Norma Tac-223 55 gr. FMJBT 5.56
  • 500 rds. Federal American Eagle 150 gr FMJ 7.62×51
  • 500 rds. Federal Gold Medal Match 168 gr. SMK .308 Win.
  • 200 rds. German battle pack FMJ 7.62×51

Price? Well….let’s see… $0.25 for the 5.56 and $0.40 for the .308. Yes, thats a case of Federal Gold Medal Match for $0.40 per round.

I have a friend with a nice little .308 rifle and they do not reload for it, so the Gold Medal will go to them at my cost (because I’m nice that way) and the rest will be kept for Der Tag. Probably take a case or two up to the Beta Site.

This is fortuitous…I’ve been wanting to have some ammo to stash around and this should help with that.

Right place, right time, but it still hurts to fork over the hundos.

 

 

 

Candid Camera XVI

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6

It occurred to me that, other than moose, the only other animal that I seem to be missing from my zoo is some turkey. And while I have a policy of ‘you leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone” when it comes to the wildlife, turkeys may be excluded from that treaty.

In other news, went up this weekend and did some re-arranging of the Jackery battery unit as well as an upgrade. More on that later.

Starting the well research…

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20

Did you hear the joke about the three holes in the ground? No? Well, well, well…..

One of the things on next years agenda is a well. Drilling a well, as I understand it, is like buying a lottery ticket with a blank check. Maybe you drill 50 feet and hit 35 gallons per minute, maybe you drill 350 feet and get 10 gallons per minute, or maybe you drill 1000 feet and hit nothing except a very expensive hole.

New wells have their data submitted to a state database. I did some searching and found a well that was dug within the last two years about a half mile from me. They appear to have had to go down between 150 and 175 feet and are getting around 20 gallons per minute.

Is that any guarantee of what the situation will be on my side of the fence? Absolutely not. No guarantees. But I like to think it’s more hopeful than if they had to go down 1000 feet.

I know quite a few people in the local plumbing industry and have asked them to recommend a driller who is willing and able to go a little off the beaten path. I need to talk to them to get an idea of what the financial side of this production is going to cost. I’m thinking around a hundred bucks a foot, and budget for that. While I do have surface water on the property in the form of a creek, it appears to wax and wane with the seasons and does not seem as reliable a source as I would like.

So…its off to the well driller’s to ask them about pricing and that sort of thing, as well as seeing if theyre willing to take on such a job. I’ll need to start saving up money over the winter to make this happen when spring gets here, but thats fine…just as long as I get it done next year. Then once the well is in, its time to worry about septic…and to save up for that.plan

Camera catches

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15

Well, its gonna be a long weekend at the Beta Site, thats pretty much a guarantee.

As you know, I installed some new cameras up at the Beta Site, but I left the old ones in place as well. More is gooder, right? So last time I was up there I did my usual circuit of taking out batteries and SD cards, downloading the SD cards to my laptop, and then replacing the cards and batteries.

Other than the usual stuff on the cameras were two episodes of intruders. One was my neighbor who lives kittycorner from me. He apparently came up the driveway and then left two minutes later. Later that day a white Dodge Ram came up, and then two minutes later it left. I didn’t spend all that money to not have privacy. Need to fix that.

What does that fix look like? Well, it looks like a 14′ panel gate from Murdochs. Trouble is,m the gate is dang near the length of my little pickup. So, I bribed a guy from work who has a larger truck with a pipe/lumber rack on it to haul it up there for me. I’ll pay him, comp his gas, and take him to Buffalo Wild WIngs afterwards. In exchange, I get the first of several gates that are going to wind up up there.

So, assuming all th is goes according to plan (ha!) I’ll get the first of what I imagine will be four gates installed.

For the record, I may (I don’t recall) have told my neighbor he could zip his 4-wheeler across the place from time to time to make sure nothing was amiss, but now that there’s more stuff up there I need to rescind that. Hopefully a closed gate will get the message across. Sentry guns are the next step.

But it wasn’t all annoying news on the cams. Our buddy the fox got caught on video:

I finally figured out how to set the sensitivity and ‘action areas’ for the newer wifi cams, so I’m expecting some more interesting intel updates from up there than just what single still images provide. The tradeoff, of course, is power.  The wifi cameras come with some small solar panels to keep them charged up and transmitting. I’ll be swapping those panels out with larger ones in order to get the most charge out of the shortest solar exposure. So far, though, I’m liking these new cameras.sec

Five ton

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7

I used to know a guy out near Hamilton who had a wonderful piece of property that butted up against the rifle range. Like a lot of people who came to Montana before it became the trendy thing, he had come out here for one reason or another and fell in love with the place. As a young machinist, he didnt have a lot of money, so he went back to California and worked himself silly for two years until he had what he thought was enough to come out and buy a piece of dirt. He found this piece of property that was being sold by an old widow. Being young and a bit inexperienced in the ways of real estate, he didn’t necessarily ask how big the piece that was for sale was. He just saw the “For Sale” sign, saw it was in his price range, and knocked on the door. He made the deal with the widow and right before they shook hands she said she’d take the money but “He had to take all the land.” Waitasec..what do you mean ‘all’? Turned out the offer she made was for the entire chunk of dirt…something like 36 acres or so. He thought it was just for the little chunk he saw that was immediately around her house. So, he wound up with a lot more land than he had thought he paid for. Good for him.

I was reminded of that story today when I went and bought another Beebe Bros. winch. A friend of mine was nice enough to ‘indefinite loan’ me his 2-ton Beebe Bros. hand winch. Awesome bit of old-style tool. But, while his loaning of it to me was generous, it’s still a loan and while I am grateful I also want to make sure he gets it back. So, I went hunting for one for my very own.

I lucked out and found, locally, a 5-ton that was in great shape and reasonably priced. Yay me! But I still wanted my own 2-ton so I could get this one back to its owner. So a month or two back I found on one Facebook for sale out near Ovando (40~ miles away). They wanted more than I was willing to pay. I told them, hey, I’ll give you 2/3 your ask on it. They demurred. I said no worries…if you still have it in a few months, let me know and the offer still stands. They contacted me the other week and I picked it up today. As I was driving back I was thinking how I was going to have to take it apart and clean it, and I was thinking about getting the 2-ton back to its generous owner. But something in my head wasn’t quite settling properly. And then I had the a-ha* moment: 

 

Yeah, that wasn’t the 2-ton model. Like the aforementioned friend, I thought I was buying the small and would up buying the large. Not complaining though. The difference between this and the other 5-ton is the drum on this one is a bit narrower (8″ vs 12″) making it slightly more portable.

It’s purpose? Hauling downed trees out of where I don’t want them and into the places I do. And I plan on moving a buncha rock next year, so it should be handy for that as well.

 

* = Trivia: “A-ha” means the same thing in every language.

Forest for the trees

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22

There’s the old saying about ‘not being able to see the forest for the trees’. Lately, I’ve been so busy posting about the goings on at the Beta Site that I’ve pretty much ignored the other things going on in this world. I mean, look at the blog posts before I got the Beta Site…then look at the posts after. Big change in content and frequency of particular types of content.

It was kind of to be expected, I think…but that sort of narrowed vision is not going to do anybody any good. There’s the increasing chances of Big(ger) Bad Things happening on the international level, Socialists are actually starting to win elections that matter, inflation is continuing, and there’s just a more pronounced mood of uncertainty. But, thus far, all those ‘funny feelings’ about the current situation, going as far back as the beginning of this blog, have turned out to not really lead to anything. But, thats no guarantee that things will ‘work out’ this time.

Believe it or not, the Beta Site has actually lowered my level of preparedness. How, you may ask? Easy. My primary residence, which contained 100% of my preparations against the uncertain future, now contains a good bit less since a bunch was moved to the Beta Site….which means I went from one location that was 100% of what I thought I needed, to two locations that each had less than 100% of what I needed. Thus, being at either location is an exercise in being less prepared than I was when I had just the one location.

I need to ‘re-stock’ my main residence on some of the things I’ve moved to the Beta Site. Mostly things like tools, clothing, camping gear, and that sort of thing. But, for example, my Sawzall is up there which means I am without a Sawzall down here. What I’ve been thinking of doing is keeping the cordless stuff at the Beta Site an keep the corded stuff down here. Milwaukee M18 7.25″ circ saw? Goes to the Beta Site. Makita corded 7.25″ circ saw? Stays here in town.

One thing that is definitely non-negotiable is that I need to pick up another Honda EU2000. I cannot be without a generator here in town. The risks are too high. A generator in town is generally just relegated to emergency use, a generator at the Beta Site will get a good bit more use since there’s no electric up there. As a result, right now, the generator sits at the Beta Site, leaving my primary residence without.

Since winter is going to be a time of minimal development at the Beta Site, I’ll be using the time to financially heal up and get ready for next year’s big purchases – well and septic. I was lucky this year in that the Beta Site was able to ‘open for business’ around the beginning of May. Im going to lan on a June 1 “opening day” up there but I suspect I’ll be able to get in there and do stuff before then. But for financial planning purposes, Im going with June 1. That gives me about 24-28 weeks of no major activity at the Beta Site to heal from this years expenditures and save up for next years.

In the meantime though, definitely gotta fill in the gaps here at the primary residence.