30/52 - Milk Truck Accident

We live in beautiful country surrounded by farming, with open irrigation ditches snaking through the valley along many of the roads. There are several organic dairies, so it is a common sight see Milky Way dairy tankers picking up the product multiple times per day. But sometimes things don't go according to plan, like when milk trucks and irrigation ditches meet.

This past Saturday, we got a call from our neighbor saying that there was a "milk truck accident", and that there may be milk leaking into the irrigation ditch. As I went out to turn off our pump in an effort to keep any milk from entering our sprinklers, I could already tell that it was too late; the yard smelled like milk. When I reached our settling pond, I saw the first visual confirmation.

This isn't supposed to be white.

I hopped on my bike to see if I could find the source of the spill. About a half mile up the road, the flashing lights lead me to the scene of the accident. It would have been hard to miss.

Somewhere around 1:30pm that afternoon, the wheel of a milk truck filled with somewhere around 7,000 gallons of milk slipped off the edge of the roadway. I imagine that the sloshing of the milk - around 25 tons - made it impossible to recover, and the entire rig rolled over, putting both tankers into the ditch. Before I arrived, the driver had already been taken away by Life Flight with a broken scapula and a punctured lung. I hear that he is expected to recover. But man, the driver compartment in that tractor looks scary.

The state police, county sheriff, county road department, and Milky Way reps were already on scene; the first wave of the emergency cleanup team arrived about an hour later.

The first tanker continued to leak its approximately 5,000 gallons of milk into the ditch for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. In high enough concentrations, milk can actually be toxic to fish, so we closed the headgate of the ditch and tried to pump as much of what remained out onto the fields rather than have it flow back into the White Salmon River at the end of the ditch.

The second tanker did not rupture in the accident, but both tanks had to be pumped of any remaining liquids so that they could be lifted out of the ditch. The cleanup crew worked through the night and had all of the vehicles and most of the detritus from the accident gone by morning.

A number of the ditch board members helped to coordinate getting the ditch cleaned up and ready to irrigate by the next day. It wasn't exactly how I planned to spend my weekend, but I guess that's a small price to pay for getting to live where we do.

- Mike, Corinne, Anders, and ??

41/52 - Stumps, Squash, and A Bat

Our neighbors have a flower and squash patch every year. They previously had a large garden patch they tended, but for the past few years they have seeded with flowers and squash as a low maintenance way to keep the weeds out. We enjoyed cut flowers a few times from it this summer, and now that fall is here the squash is overflowing.

We gathered a carload of various decorative and edible squash a couple of weeks ago, but it barely made a dent in their patch. They decided to load a trailer full of squash and put a "free" sign on it at the end of our road. Within a few hours, the entire trailer had been emptied. So a few days later, we gave them a hand loading it a second time. It disappeared just as quickly.

We are now properly prepared for the great pumpkin shortage of 2015. Thanks, Carl and Inese!

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Speaking of things you only see in farm country... Corinne was out for a walk to the mailbox when she encountered this coming down the road:

Watch this video on YouTube or
in the original post

This is one section of one arm of a pivot irrigation system, which we have throughout the valley. It's not every day that you get to see something like this. And this was actually the SECOND one in a row to drive by, so Corinne had enough time to get her camera out.

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As summer fades into fall, our time for doing outdoor improvement projects is closing down. We have a BIG one starting very soon (more on that next week), but I did accomplish a smaller one that was particularly satisfying.

In the almost 10 years that we've lived in Trout Lake, we have thinned out the plethora of trees in our yard. The previous owners loved trees and planted a variety of interesting trees in what was then an empty yard: Butternut, Quaking Aspen, Elm, Oak, Maple, Cherry, Giant Sequoia, Port Orford Cedar, Hawthorn, and more. But as the trees grew, they started to crowd each other. So we have gradually started to thin them out. But without a good way to remove the stumps, we just left them.

Until now.

Last weekend I rented a stump grinder and spent a few hours grinding out many of the stumps we had accumulated. We didn't quite get them all this go 'round, but one more day and we should be able to check this longtime property management task off of the to-do list.

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Walking back into the house after practicing soccer in the yard, Anders suddenly called out: "Mom, Dad, look at this!" When we got closer, we saw what he did: a small bat was lying face down on the grass. When we leaned over to get a closer look, it turned its head and opened its mouth.

Something wasn't right. We have little brown bats in our area during the summer months, but we don't see them this late in the season. And we'd never seen one just sitting on the ground in plain sight. We couldn't see any obvious signs of injury. We know that white nose syndrome is a major problem for bats, but we didn't see any of the telltale white coloring on his nose, and the experts haven't reported any cases this far west yet. When we checked on him after a short while, he had moved about a foot from his original location, still on the ground.

Not knowing what to do, we made a call to our local conservation district. They referred us to the local Department of Fish and Wildlife office, who then called their bat specialist in Olympia. The best hypothesis they had was that this bat could have been one of this year's pups that somehow got left behind when the rest of the bats migrated at the end of the summer. There aren't any wildlife rehabilitation facilities anywhere near us that would take bats. They suggested that he was probably cold, so the recommendation was to give him a place protected from the elements and see what happens.

We found a small cardboard box, lined it with fleece, and wrapped the outside with a towel. We used two sticks to transfer him to box and placed the box at the base of the closest tree to where we found him. He seemed more active when we picked him up, spreading his wings once. Once we placed him in the box, he appeared to snuggle into the inside corner on the fleece.

Survival seemed unlikely, but it didn't hurt to try. Now we could only wait and see.

We checked on him every day, but he didn't show much activity. By the fourth day, we confirmed that he had lost his battle for survival. We hope he died knowing that someone cared.

We put the whole box - bat and all - into a ziplock bag and put it into our refrigerator, hoping to bring him to Anders's school for Show and Share day. But the school was concerned that it could give the kids nightmares, so they said no. Seems to me like this would have been a perfect opportunity to de-mystify bats so that they aren't scary, particularly given that several of the students did a bat writing project.

Oh well. Anders got a good look and hopefully a better appreciation for bats as a result.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

18/52 - Official End of Winter

Now that we've had two straight weeks without lighting the wood stove, we can declare officially that we have survived our Winter Without A Furnace!

It was a very mild winter in Trout Lake, both in snowfall and temperature. In fact, we didn't have to clear snow from the driveway even once this year, a first in the ten winters we've lived here. While we missed the snow, we did appreciate the moderate temperatures.

The wood stove held its own keeping the house warm on most days, with only occasional electric heater use. The default house temperature with the wood stove seemed to be 2-4 degrees cooler than our furnace setpoint (68°F), but we decided that it was easier and more economical to wear our down vests in the house than to fight the natural order. In total, we burned about 2.5 cords of maple, doug fir and oak.

We fell into a pretty regular routine. Starting the fire each morning was job #1. The indoor wood storage area near the stove holds about 3 wheelbarrows full, which will last about 6 days (give or take). Having to haul wood in only about once a week definitely made me happy. Occasionally we would have to read an old (but previously unread) issue of the White Salmon Enterprise so that we could use it as a firestarter. Once the fire was going, it was a relatively simple matter to check the fire hourly and adjust as needed. Having a fan next to the stove also made a huge difference in how well we were able to distribute the heat throughout the house. We woke up through the night to feed the fire exactly ZERO times this winter; we just like our sleep too much, and it was easy enough to start a new one in the morning. I think the coldest morning we had was around 54°F, but that was a bit of an anomaly. The average morning temperature was in the upper 50s.

The weeks we spent away from home this winter were the most trying. We used our "smart" thermostat as a remotely-monitored thermometer, while two electric space heaters successfully kept the indoor temperature out of the freezing zone until we returned.

We did wear out one of the metal grates on the bottom of wood stove, and I'm sure our chimney will need a good cleaning before next year. But overall, it wasn't as difficult or as tiring as we feared. So while we don't plan to repeat this winter anytime soon, it's good to know that it's possible.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

46/52 - Winter Without a Furnace

With the temperatures dropping and winter approaching, we finally broke down and turned on our propane furnace in October. But within the hour, it started emitting some loud banging noises. Not good.

We hate our furnace. Every several years, it seems to have one problem or another, requiring expensive parts ordered from the east coast. The majority of the local heating service contractors don't seem to have much experience with this brand (Heatmaker), so either they can't figure out what is wrong or they have to make multiple trips - one for diagnosis and a second after replacement parts have arrived. This time, I was going to try to diagnose and fix it myself.

Over the next week, I disassembled various parts looking for the culprit. I figured that there probably aren't too many moving parts that would cause such a loud noise. First suspect: blower fan. I ordered a replacement, and a week later when it arrived I successfully replaced it. But the noise was still there. My second hypothesis was that something was banging around inside the combustion chamber, possibly some buildup on the heat exchangers. But when I started to disassemble the chamber and realized that I wouldn't have any confidence that all of the seams were sealed up properly, I decided it was time to call in a professional.

After a week and a half calling contractors and getting nowhere, I finally got one to come out and take a look. (What is with contractors in the Gorge? You should at least answer your phone or return phone calls. Sheesh.) After 2 hours exploring, the prognosis was not good. Sure enough, it was buildup on the heat exchanger coils, but on the INSIDE. He described it like kidney stones, rattling around in the pipe and obstructing the flow of water. With no good way to clean it out, it would need to be replaced. The cost of the replacement part? $2,000 for the part alone.

This was it. This was finally the end of this furnace. We would pump no more money into this monstrosity. But what now?

With winter still on its way, we decided to take a chance. We're going to wait until spring to research and design the replacement heating system. So for this winter, we will have no furnace. We would heat the house with our wood stove, supplemented by several electric heaters as needed. We have some wood seasoned and split, but we had planned for "ambiance fire" wood, not "heat the whole dang house" wood. So we will be buying more this year, at least once.

Other than during power outages, this is the first time we're attempting to heat the whole house solely with the wood stove. And it is only our work-at-home jobs that makes this feasible at all. We can start a fire in the morning and tend it all day to get the whole house warmed up. I don't think we would be attempting this if we had to drive to an office.

Coincidentally, the first snow arrived at about the same time as the furnace death knell.

Here's hoping for a mild winter! Oh, but still with lots of snow, of course. That's not too much to ask, it is?

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

Monster Tracks

For Christmas this year, our friend Jaime gave Anders, Bridger, and Lauren each a pair of "monster" snowshoes. They are a kids snowshoe in the shape of a giant monster foot. We've had plenty of snow this winter, and Corinne and I have been able to take a few snowshoe walks around our property. But now that Anders has his own, we can take the whole family out. (At least in theory...)

Jaime and Lauren came out one snowy afternoon, and all five of us ventured outside for our first big snowshoe walk.

There was quite a bit of falling down from both kids. A lot. Much of it was on purpose, of course, because falling into the snow is pretty fun.

It took a while for them to learn how to get up on their own, but once I convinced them that if they fell down on purpose that I wasn't going to help them up, they were pretty motivated. Before too long, they could fall down and get up themselves as much as they liked. I think Lauren fell into the snow so that she wouldn't have to go as far for a snack. She ate a lot of snow. (Good thing it all appeared to be white snow.)

The snow was fairly deep, so the kids would follow in the trail of at least one adult ahead of them. Anders' endurance for snow shoeing has far surpassed his endurance for all other snow activities so far, but that really isn't saying very much. We need to get him outside in the winter more so that he gets used to it.

Before we had made it a quarter of the way around our property, the two kids were ready to head back inside. So I lead them back toward the house while Corinne and Jaime continued on their walk. I walked them back through the woods and tree wells, partly because I thought that it would keep them interested, but at least partly because I thought that it might be funny. As it turns out, I was right.

Watch this video on YouTube or
in the original blog post.

My help came in the form of 'words of encouragement.'

The monster snow shoes were a big hit this winter. We hope that this enables us to get the whole family outside into the snow more often!

- Mike, Corinne and Anders

Jumping in Mud Puddles

Today was a beautiful day, and seemed even more so because it came right after several weeks of nonstop rain and snow. In the late afternoon, we decided to take a walk to enjoy the last bit of the day's sunshine.

Sometimes on these walks, Anders will walk between us and hold our hands. He then wants us to "jump" him, which is basically lifting him into the air by his hands as he jumps. We did this several times on this walk. But as we were "jumping" him over a big mud puddle, his right mitten - through which I was holding on to his right hand - slipped off. So instead of jumping over the puddle, he landed right in the middle.

Since he was already dirty at that point, he had fun jumping, running, and walking through the puddles for the next 15 minutes.

Thank goodness for bright lighting that enabled high enough shutter speeds to freeze the action! These remind me a bit of Doc Edgerton's famous stop motion photography. Of course, he was doing it 60 years ago and a lot more scientifically than we did.

At the end of it all, Anders just stopped and said simply: "Now we need to get me some dry pants." Indeed.

- Mike, Corinne and Anders

Silver Thaw of 2012

The snow took a while to arrive this winter, but January tried to make up for lost time. While the overall accumulation of snow was not particularly noteworthy for this area, several characteristics combined to produce a storm event that will be remembered for years to come.

It started on Sunday, January 15. The snow came down pretty heavy at times and continued to fall over the next several days. By Thursday, we had around 27" of compacted snow on the ground.

Snow accumulation by Thursday

Wednesday gave us our first taste of what this storm truly had in store for us. We experienced our first power outage, lasting approximately 4 hours. The next day brought a second one, this time only half as long. After the power came back that second time, Corinne scrambled to do laundry and run the dishwasher, just in case. That readiness paid off. Later that same evening, the power went out again. And this time, it would be out for over 5 days.

Going without power for a day or two is a fun adventure. We cooked on the wood stove. Anders played by headlamp. We sang songs around the piano. We enjoyed the romance of the candles.

Speaking of candles, we never really appreciated why there are so many different types. Votives can create a nice atmosphere, but tapers produce MUCH more useful light. Because tapers light from above, they do a better job of lighting a work space or dinner table. I'm sure this was obvious to everyone in the 17th century.

Mike's headlamp (high) and Anders' headlamp (low) zipping around in the darkness.

On Friday, freezing rain added about 1/2 inch of ice to everything. Conditions became so bad that Insitu even closed its facilities, which is a first in the 7.5 years that we've been here! The ice sure was beautiful.

Saturday morning, we were hopeful that power would be restored, but then we started to hear the noises coming from outside. With the power out and no one on the roads, we had the perfect conditions for listening to mother nature. The temperature warmed and the wind picked up, sending ice, snow and snapped branches crashing to the ground. The noise was so loud that we thought the trees themselves were falling. After listening to that commotion, our hopes for the return of power disappeared.

On the plus side, all of that time at home with no power to distract gave us ample opportunity to play outside in the snow.

By Saturday night we had started to tire of oatmeal for breakfast (on the wood stove) and grilled cheese and soup (on the wood stove.) So Mike went all out and we had ground beef tacos (on the wood stove). The beef didn't brown terribly well, but it was a nice change of pace.

Sunday morning we were finally ready to give in. Power had been restored to White Salmon on the previous day, and the hot water and electric stove at Donna's house were calling to us. On our way out we passed a series of utility trucks working right down the street from us, so we briefly flirted with the idea that we would be getting power back that day. But a quick chat with the flagger dispensed with that idea, and we continued on to White Salmon.

It would be several more days before our power returned. During that time, the snow continued to fall. Every other day during that time we would return to Trout Lake early in the morning to clear whatever snow had accumulated and light a fire in the woodstove. We lost track of the total accumulation.

This storm was even given an official name, the Silver Thaw of 2012. The aftermath of the Silver Thaw will take quite a while to clean-up, with downed trees and branches lining the roadsides. The consensus among many of the long-time Trout Lake residents is that there hasn't been a storm with this impact since the late 60's.

All in all, we didn't have things too bad. We had friends who were without power for 7 and 8 days! There were also many without water and heat. Our domestic water is gravity fed Trout Lake town water, so we don't rely on an electric well pump for water. We have a wood stove that can provide heat. And we borrowed a small generator for a day so that we could keep our upright freezer sufficiently cold.

If we were afraid of a little snow and ice, we wouldn't have moved here in the first place!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

Tube Sledding

With all of the January snow, we decided that it would be a good opportunity to get in some sledding with Anders. We have an inflatable tube sled that has been tucked away in the garage for several years, just waiting for just such a moment.

Anders hasn't done very much sledding, so we started off easy with a walk to the mailbox.

After that, it was time for a little downhill action. Our driveway ended up being the perfect sledding bunny hill: Given a little push at the top, there is just enough slope to allow for continuous downward motion, and convenient bumpers on either side to help stay on track.

As Anders became more comfortable with the sequence, I would gradually increase the force which I used to push him down the hill. By the end, I was pushing as hard as I could, and he loved it! Thankfully, the sled was small and light enough that Anders could carry it back up the hill all by himself.

Watch this video on YouTube or
in the original blog post

For some reason, Anders decided that he needed to have a snowball with him in the sled, too. Don't ask. After each run, he would replay the action with some sound effects, pick up the snowball and bring it back to the top with him.

Snow is fun!

- Mike, Corinne and Anders