Get to know your critter day

June 30, 2007 (4:58am)
41º F, Clear, Calm wind.

Good morning,

It looks to be another beautiful day a-coming. We didn’t get frost the morning before last, but it came pretty close to it I think. The weather has been exceptional this week by in large. Not too hot and not too cool during the day. One thing that strikes me here is the lack of wind in the morning at sunrise. We don’t have the lake to cause some wind most of the time.

Thursday must have been get to know your critter day or something. I walked around the corner of the house first thing in the morning and almost stepped on a 3' snake. I was about a surprised as it was, as it headed under the house rather quickly. Didn’t see it again. I didn’t recognize what kind of snake it was. About 1:0 P.M. or a little after, two very small fawns, about the size of a beagle with long legs, walked past the back door about 5' away, followed by their mamma, before retracing their steps and headed back into the woods again. I half dollar would have covered their footprints. Most deer are rather pretty this time of year in their orange coats. Of course the red squirrels are everywhere. They are getting more brazen the longer we are here. Think I am going to have to get a .410 or 29 gauge shotgun to lessen their numbers a bit.

We had a bit of a celebration last night - I finished digging the trench for the LP gas line! It turned out to be much more difficult than it started out to be. Where the sand wasn’t rock hard, there were tree roots to fight with. While the trench is only a foot deep, it was a chore. I hope I can get the line in the ditch and hooked up today. Maybe tonight we can actually take a hot shower! Then I can fill in the trench again. Suspect that will be easier then emptying the ditch out in the first place. The very first thing I bought to put this place in order was the copper line for the LP. Finally, I will get it installed already.

Margriet continues to go through the pile of boxes in the basement of the main house. She says she is making progress and I guess she is. I burned a bunch of empty boxes last night and some other things that are being gotten rid of. At least now we can walk from one end of the basement to the other again. It seems we have enough canning jars to start a grocery store and enough books to open a library. Not only do we each have a lot of books, but we are finding many boxes of them from Mom’s house too. She has commandeered a walk-in closet in the main house and almost filled all of the shelves in it. We are thinking of making the closet into a smaller, more normal closet, but am wondering if we should issue library cards instead at this point. Don’t know where we will put the books if we change it.

Since it was cool on Thursday, Margriet thought it would be a good day to use up some chicken backs accumulating in the freezer and make some soup from them. The result was excellent and we finished the last of it up last night for supper. She really made it a treat for me by making it with the big honking noodles from Mrs. Miller and then put dumplings on top. The soup was almost thick enough to eat with a fork. Talk about your good eating. Almost licked the pan clean!

I thought I would license the van and pickup in Michigan since they expire in Wisconsin today and save the extra cost of having them registered twice. Didn’t work. I have to have proof of Michigan insurance to do that, but since I don’t, can’t. Guess I will have to do the double deal anyway. I didn’t license the pick-up and won’t until I bring it here and then will insure it. I also found the laws for transferring my driver’s license here is more difficult than I thought. They are more strict here than Wisconsin is. That really surprised me. I thought Wisconsin laws were tough, and the are, but these are tougher. The Secretary of State handles the licensing here. That also seems a bit strange compared to what I have been used to. It is a different world up here in more ways than one.

If you are curious or interested in what happens in an around here, the city of Crystal Falls has a pretty good website, http://www.crystalfalls.org/. For a small city, it is very complete and informative, at least for us who live in the area. The big event for the city is the reconstruction of the sewer system, at present down the main drag of the city, and the difficulties that presents. The construction is really going rather quickly, and as one block is finished, the street is paved and opened again. They have started at one end and progress toward the other, rather than tearing up the entire length of the street, as they did in Kewaunee causing several business to go out of business.

There also are two news papers in the area who have websites: Iron Mountain http://www.ironmountaindailynews.com/index.asp and Iron River http://www.ironcountyreporter.com/index.htm. Iron Mountain’s is a much bigger and better site, as they are a much bigger city. Rather complete too. Crystal Falls also has a newspaper, The Crystal View, but is very small, without a website. In fact we have never read it. There really is a lot of stuff going on around here. We are looking forward to learning and participating in some of the events, as soon as we can take shower, that is. Most things are on a rather small scale, much to our liking.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris ><>