Gooseberry Season

July 20, 2007 (5:08am)
38º F, Clear, Dead calm wind.

Good morning,

It looks like another beautiful day a-coming. Don’t know how many of these beautiful days a guy can handle. It never did get up to 70º F yesterday, in spite of what the weatherman said would happen, and had a rather nice, stiff at times, breeze mostly from the north. Really nice weather for doing almost anything, but just a tad cool to go skinny-dipping!

We did get the truck unloaded and everything into one of the houses or the shop. Not everything put away, but at least off of the truck. We have been playing checkers with things to try and get them to fit in their proper places. The file cabinet is in and the contents of it is in about 6-8 boxes yet. Hopefully that will change soon-ly. I need to go through the contents and probably throw a bunch of it away, or at least put it into storage. Most of the computer system is in too, but not yet all hooked up. Hope to get the scanner up and running soon as I have several things I want to use it for.

I took an old door and put a couple of saw horses under it as a temporary computer table. At present it is being used for "Margriet’s desk." There is enough room on it so she can also put her sewing machine on it. That is once we get the boxes unpiled from around it! I had used an old door, a mate to this one, for a number of years at FISKLAND before Onno and I built a more solid one, using a new solid core door, when the kids were here for our wedding. This one really works well here. The old door lock hole is used as the wire pass-through. Works rather well! I think the desk that Onno and I built will go into the main house as it is 36" deep and this one is only 24" deep. Works better here. Will have to figure out some more permanent legs as I have other plans for the saw horses. The material for the horses came from the wall I tore down.

The last time down to FISKLAND, I picked up a lift arm, designed to be put in the bed of a pickup truck. I hope to install it just inside of the rear door in the truck, rotating the arm to stick out of the door to lift some of the heavier items into the truck. The arm extends on it and rotates, so should be able to grab some things and bring them on the truck. The arm also has a winch to raise and lower items and the arm also lifts, thanx to a hydraulic jack mounted on it. The lifting capability is ½ ton, which is much more than I really need. When we are done with this move, I will keep the lift when I sell the truck, mounting it on a stand of some kind, hopefully on wheels. I always seem to have something heavier than I can lift and have to figure out a work-a-round of some kind. It’s a pretty orange color too!

We also picked up the base for a new chimney for the Hobbit Hus. The chimney presently installed, is questionable. Looks like it was installed with a chainsaw and not much attention to detail. I see there are rain leaks around it. Looking at the support going through the ceiling/roof, it looks like the chimney is held up through the hole by four pole barn screws. I probably will need to do some enlarging of the opening, as this one looks to be a bit bigger. I did get a length of stack, but still need to get a storm collar and two more lengths, along with a chimney cap. Everything is stainless steel and insulated, so should last longer than I do. It is the same system as I used at FISKLAND, but that went through the wall and not the roof. That one has caused 0 problems since installation. One thing I really like is the lack of real cleaning of the chimney. There is little build up on the inside at all. A quick pass with a wire brush, and everything is done. That really will be nice here, since the bottom of the vertical section is inside, rather than outside as it is at FISKLAND. Less of a mess, we hope.

The folks at the realtor we bought this place through, invited us to come to a concert at their church. Cool! Apparently they have some kind of music every Sunday evening during the summer. This week is a mens Gospel group. We probably will go. I really like Gospel music and sang with a group at our church in Waupaca during the summers there. I also sang with a bunch of guys from Grace in Kewaunee for a couple of years, until we ran out of guys to sing. Many of them moved away. Karla also invited us to the rest of the concerts, but the next one at least we will miss since we will be in Chicago for the Churchwide Assembly.

Chatted with Brenda yesterday and she had made some gooseberry jam. Apparently Arnoud and Kalle like it pretty well, as it has disappeared. I told her she just didn’t make enough! She also made some other goodies, and they were on the path of disappearing too. The interesting part of the gooseberries, is that in Mom’s diary I read she had done the same, at about the same time frame, July, but in 1935! Suspect the results were the same, disappearing, with Dad around.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris ><>