Snow time!

November 6, 2007 (5:01am)

28º F, Snow, NW Wind, 25 mph, 40 mph gusts.

Good morning,

Finally - it looks like winter may get here yet. From what I can see, with the help of the door light, there is a couple of inches on the ground at the moment. The wind is really howling and has been all night and since noon yesterday. Most of the snow fall is to the north of us in the “highlands” or “mountains” a bit inland from the lake shore. Some places up there have 8-10" so far and are expecting more to come before this ends about noon. We have sever storm and storm advisories up for all of the U.P. until this afternoon. The wind is causing some problems and closing a bunch of schools. Don’t think we will go very far from the house today, but I may take a walk in the woods later. We intended to head to FISKLAND yesterday morning, but with the prospects of a serious storm, we postponed it a bit.

If you want to see what is happening here, check out http://www.yooperland.com/ as there are a lot of webcams available at this site. Most of the webcams are somewhat near the lake and many are at various businesses, but you can get an idea for the conditions here. They are some interesting. Also on the site is a listing of many of the newspapers in the U.P. if you want to get caught up on the latest of the really important world news - our world.

Finally got the furnace in the main house connected and working yesterday. None too soon. I had to stretch the LP line (copper line) yesterday to it, but had the necessary parts on hand. Think I need to check my supply though and keep it more complete then it is now. I had finished the installation of the chimney on Saturday afternoon. Happy to have that finished. After checking everything over twice, and getting the air out of the line, the furnace worked! It will take a while for the furnace to warm things up, but it was warmer when I checked it before going to bed last night. When I carried out the old furnace yesterday, I discovered it was about 3 times the weight of the new one. So now I have more “iron” to use for other projects - someday.

Decided to build a barrel stove for the shop to take the chill off until I get the wood furnace out of the main house and into the shop as the central heat supply. I talked Eli into letting me have one of the barrels he had sitting outside to make it from. I got all of the cutting of the barrel done and noticed there was a spot on it that was rusted through. Not good. Have to get a different barrel. It probably would work for a while with a patch on it, but will burn through in a hurry and be hard to control the intake air with the present hole. So .... another project yet to do.

We went out to Eli and Pat’s on Saturday afternoon. He had invited us when we brought Mick’s truck back. They really do live in the boondocks on the family farm that his Grandfather homesteaded. Their youngest daughter still lives at home and is in charge of the animals - four horses and an equal number of beef heifers, along with a couple of rather large Pyrenees dogs to keep the wolves and coyotes at bay. Margriet made a real Dutch apple pie to take along with. We did some serious damage to it while sitting around the table and solving the world’s problems - at least our corner of the world. I called Mick yesterday afternoon and Pat’s surgery apparently went well, but she was still in ICU at the time. Good to hear so far.

It is now later and I am including a couple of pictures Margriet took through the window a bit ago. The world changed over night. The first is out our gathering room window looking at the driveway to the south. The second is the picture we see looking out of the eating kitchen window to the north. Wind is still howling, but the sun is now out. Don’t expect the show to last all that long as the temperature rises.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><