5/52 - Everyday Life

This was a "slow news week", as they say. But here are a few snapshots.

Anders is obsessed with the show Octonauts. It's an animated show about animals living under the sea, interacting with - and usually saving - a different marine animal each episode. He keeps asking me when the next season is going to be available on Netflix.

For Christmas, he received several Octonaut toys suitable for bath play. He switched to showers quite a while ago, but the new toys enticed him to take a rare bath. We won't get opportunities like this with Anders for much longer.

Anders is reading the book Wonderstruck, which is an interesting combination novel and graphic novel. When he finished, he said it was "the best book he ever read."

In addition to Octonauts and PBS's Nature, Anders has decided that Ask This Old House is one of his favorite shows! He probably already knows more about home repair than I do.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

4/52 - Cat Stories, Big Rock Candy Mountain

Anders's class recently did a narrative writing project. The original assignment was to tell the story of your "favorite family moment", but for some reason Anders took his story in a different direction.

The above was the final product but as part of the process, they drew panels to tell the story.

Every time I see those drawing, I get a little twinge in my eye. Somehow, he really captured it.

Anders was only 5 when Max died, and at the time he didn't seem to have a particularly emotional response to it. But apparently it made a bigger impression on him than we thought.

As a result of Anders' project, the bulletin board with the stories was change to "The Most Memorable Family Stories".

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Speaking of cats... Here is Anders's letter to Santa from this past year.

This is the letter he wrote in school, that in turn was sent to the newspaper for publication. He didn't put "texito (tuxedo) cat" on the list he made at home, so this was news to us.

Max was a great cat, but we have been enjoying our pet-free lifestyle. We're not ready to get another pet just yet.

Anders: I want a tuxedo cat for Christmas.
Corinne: I think you're old enough now that you can take care of it.
Anders: (blank look)
Corinne: You know, feed it, give it water, empty the litter box.
Anders: Well, you can help me with the litter box.
Corinne: No, I think you are old enough. Are you sure you want a tuxedo cat this year, or maybe you want to wait a year?
Anders: (contemplative look) I think I'll wait a year.

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For at least a year now, Anders has been asking to build a Big Rock Candy Mountain. This song was recently brought back to pop culture via the O, Brother Where Art Though? soundtrack, but Anders's primary inspiration came from the John Deere Earth Mover Action video. It's a mountain where you use construction vehicles to mine and transport candy; what's a kid not to love about that?

Gingerbread to the rescue!

And now, the finished product!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

3/52 - Visit from Grandma Lee

We've had a glorious month of perfect, snowy weather. But this week, it decided to rain. A lot. After several dry winters (and the resulting summer fires), we can't complain about the rain too much. But it is sad to see the snowpack beginning to disappear, while simultaneously being uninspired to play in the snow in the rain. We'd much rather have the snow.

While I was in NJ, about 7" of new snow arrived in Trout Lake. Unfortunately, since I wasn't around to clear it before the rains came, the driveway is now impassible. It will likely stay that way until it either dries out enough to not jam in the PTO snowblower, or it gets cold enough to freeze solid again. So when mom and I arrived in Trout Lake with our luggage, we had to trudge up the driveway through several inches of wet snow. Welcome to winter in the country, mom!

During her visit, the weather kept us inside most of the time. We played a few games, including Boggle. Anders has a great time and occasionally even finds a few words that we don't! When the precipitation finally broke, we managed to convince mom to go on a snowshoe walk with us through our property.

Way to go, mom! Thanks for the visit!

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This week, Anders and two of his classmates were moved to the next higher grade for reading. They are all really enjoying the challenge of 2nd grade reading but we are having to coach Anders a bit on expected answers versus accurate answers.

Apparently, the 2nd graders don't reliably turn in their homework. On particularly bad days, those who completed the assignments and turned them in receive prizes. Anders enjoys that, too!

Anders's plastic snake and lizard collection, courtesy of 2nd grade

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

2/52 - Happy Birthday, Mom!

The Anders quote of the week came when he saw Corinne's new sunglasses. She misplaced her previous pair about a month earlier and finally broke down to buy a new pair. When she showed her new sunglasses to Anders for the first time, he told her that the new glasses:

1. make her look cool,
   
2. are giant, and
   
3. make her look like a bug
   

So I guess looking like a bug is cool. (And 3 days after the purchase, she found her old sunglasses.)

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This year, my mom turns 70! My brother Drew and I planned a surprise birthday luncheon for her with some family and friends, and part of the surprise would be that I was flying in from the west coast to be there.

The party was on Saturday afternoon, so I found a flight to arrive in NJ on Friday evening. But when I arrived at the airport Friday morning, my connection through Denver was at risk due to bad weather. While waiting in line in Newark to receive instructions on my alternatives, I was unexpectedly whisked away to a neighboring gate to board a non-stop flight! Not only did they have a seat available for me, but it was an exit row aisle seat! About 5 hours later, I landed in NJ - 2.5 hours ahead of my original itinerary. It was truly a birthday miracle. (And it wasn't even my birthday.)

In order to preserve the surprise until the party, I stayed with my cousin Bev and her family on Friday night. All of the guests arrived and setup at the party 30 minutes before the guest of honor. When she arrived, she was suitably surprised.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Unfortunately, Corinne and Anders couldn't make the trip with me this time. I did have to torment Corinne with several photos of the delicious pizza that I ate while I was there, though. (Sorry!)

It was a short visit for me, in NJ for less than a week. But when it was time to head home I wasn't going alone. My mom had already planned a trip to visit us in Trout Lake, so I surreptitiously booked a seat next to her on the return flight. :)

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

Best Recipes of 2015

I did quite a bit of cooking this past year, but for whatever reason there weren't a lot of new recipes that ended up on our repeat favorites list. Several from last year's best of list, in particular the Whole Bowl and Sweet Potato recipes, made frequent appearances this past year. I did more experimentation this year as well, "making up" things based on the veggies we received from our neighbors and what we happened to have in the fridge. On the whole, I think my experiments were mediocre to good, but none worthy of this list (yet). Here are some new favorites and old standbys from the past year.

Russian Cabbage Borscht
Source: AllRecipes.com

Borscht is like the chili of eastern Europe: there are tons of regional variations and a wide range of different kinds. We happened to get a lot of beets this summer and fall (and actually had some leftover from last fall), so I was on the hunt for good beet recipes. This was one of them. Beets seem to elicit strong responses from people, probably because most people first experienced beets from a can and rejected them out of hand after that. You don't know what you are missing! If anybody has a favorite beet recipe out there, send it our way! We always seem to have some on hand.

Sausage, Potato and Spinach Soup
Source: Damn Delicious

As the author mentions, this has sausage and heavy cream, so it probably wouldn't be classified as "healthy." But it does have dark greens and is a good, warming soup for those evenings that call for just such a thing.

Bourbon Sweet Potato and Apple Casserole with Pecan Crust
Source: Fine Cooking

This is not a new recipe for us this year, but it did make an appearance at Thanksgiving. It's one of those dishes that is just enough work that you don't want to make it very often, but it's tasty enough that you do want to pull it out for those special occasions. Put aside your marshmallows and try this casserole next holiday instead.

Bildner's 5-Alarm Chili
Source: The New England Cookbook

This is also not a new recipe for us; I think we've been making this one since we still lived in New England. But I haven't mentioned it here yet and it appears in our house several times each winter. This is just a solid, beans and beef chili with a good level of spice.

Masala Chai
Source: The Kitchn

We've been enjoying weekend lattes at home for many years now, thanks to a simple stove-top espresso maker from my aunt and uncle many years ago. (Thanks, Anita and Lew!) But recently we decided to expand our repertoire to include masala chai, or what American coffee shops call a "Chai Latte." The specific combination of spices is fungible, depending on your spice preferences. Green cardamom seems to be the important base spice that holds it all together. If you use a red tea, or Rooibos, you can even make a caffeine-free drink to warm your mornings.

You can check out the recipes from other years through the recipes tag. Happy eating!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

49/52 - Wild Trout Lake

This past week, Trout Lake showed its wild side.

Last weekend, we got a couple inches of snow to coat the ground. But then it got a little warmer, and the falling snow turned to rain. A lot of rain. For the next several days, it poured continually. This is a bad combination. The rain quickly melted much of the snowpack that had developed on the mountains, and the combined deluge overflowed all of the local waterways. The worst came together on Tuesday night into Wednesday, when water flowed across the main road in Trout Lake, closing the school and rendering several places unreachable. Friends of ours woke up Wednesday morning to find themselves surrounded by water: their driveway and ground floor garage were already flooded, and the water was only a few inches from entering their slightly elevated first floor. They moved what they could to the second floor and were evacuated later that day by Search and Rescue.

This USGS White Salmon River discharge chart speaks for itself.

Near the peak of the flow on Wednesday, we walked down to the river. The water was as high as I think we've ever seen it, to the point where we had a hard time recognizing where we were along the river.

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Somewhere underneath all of that water is our sandy beach and several waterfalls, including Sidewinder/Kettle Falls. With this much water, it's easy to see why all of the waterways in town overflowed.

By Friday, the rain had largely abated, allowing much of the water to recede. We took advantage of a break to take another walk to the river on Sunday.

By Sunday, the river was back to a normal high level for this time of year. The difference between Wednesday and Sunday was striking. For reference, here is the water level at a bridge near the southernmost river section of our property.

Wednesday at peak flow / Sunday at normal "high"

Corinne and Anders stood at Wednesday's waterline, which was easily identifiable by the clean line of Ponderosa pine needles that were swept up.

Here is Anders standing next to a cluster of severed roots that were swept up by the currents and pressed into a ball against this tree.

Despite having the river as one of its property boundaries, we are very thankful that our property is not in a floodplain. It is incredible to see such a dramatic change in such a short period of time, and we are able to be an observer of the high waters without worrying!

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Trout Lake exerted its wildness in other ways this week as well. We've had a covey of quail (yes, I looked it up) around the house. They wander around the driveway until they notice us, then fly up into the trees.

When we first moved to Trout Lake, we saw turkey tracks all over the property. But we hadn't seen any in a long time until this past week.

Now we have a confirmed sighting of 13 turkeys! The rafter (group of turkeys - yes, I looked that up, too) has been wandering all around our place for several days now.

But the most unexpected exhibit was one that happened too quickly for a photo opportunity. On Thursday morning, I noticed some movement out our Great Room window and discovered a herd of Elk booking single-file through our yard into our forest! We've had elk come through our property before, but this is only the second time that we've witnessed it.

Mother Nature abounds!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

42/52 - Geothermal Installation Begins!

25 Oct 2015 This is a big week in the life of River Ford Farm. After losing our primary heat source last fall and weathering a winter with only a wood stove, we are finally starting the installation of our new heating system!

We had many constraints on our options. Our house has a water-based heating system, with a combination of baseboard hydronic radiators in the log portion of the house and in-floor radiant heat in the great room addition. Using a different heating mechanism would require lots of changes to the log structure of the house, something we wanted to avoid. There was nothing wrong with the existing plumbing, so finding a new system to heat and circulate the water was our goal. As it turns out, there aren't too many options. There is a company that makes a heat pump air-to-water system, but none of the local HVAC companies we talked to had ever dealt with it. We had LOTS of issues finding someone in the Gorge who knew how to work on our old, somewhat esoteric propane-based system. Finding a system that had some local expertise was also important.

In the end, it came down to two options: a new propane boiler or a geothermal system. We ran the rough numbers for the two systems: propane would be cheaper up-front but would have recurring fuel costs similar to what we had previously. When factoring in the 30% Federal tax credit for qualified geothermal installations, we estimated the payback time for the geothermal investment to be about 10 years. Geothermal it is.

Technically, what we are having installed is actually a ground-source heat pump. True geothermal heating systems require a high temperature source in the ground, such as a hot spring, and simply transfer the heat directly. Our system involves using the temperature of the earth to drive a heat pump. Water is equalized with the temperature of the earth by circulating it through long pipes through the ground. Drilling vertically to run the pipe requires minimal land but is expensive, since you may have to drill several hundred feet. But we have the land available to do a horizontal system with "racetrack" trench. Time for a call to the utility line locator!

We had a couple options for locations. We ended up choosing the open space north of the house, between our house and Mt. Adams. We figure that we'll never want to put anything else there that might obstruct our mountain view, so having piping beneath the ground would be safe.

The "racetrack" through which the water pipe will run will be about 800' long, with the water circulating through the entire length. Here is the quick rough sketch of the path that was marked on the ground.

Square is the house; drawing not to scale

Excavation was planned to start on Tuesday, so we arranged for the polyethylene pipe to be delivered to us on Monday. Corinne's father and step-mother run Superlon, a polyethylene pipe company in Tacoma. We'd have family-made, high quality pipe for our heating system!

But over that weekend, Superlon's delivery truck was totaled and wouldn't be able to bring the pipe to us. So we would pick up our 800' of ¾" pipe and 300' of 1" pipe ourselves. 1986 Dodge farm truck to the rescue!

Quick trip to Tacoma, in style (not)

Now that we had the pipe, it was time to start digging! We would need 800 feet of 5-foot-wide by 5-foot-deep trench. The biggest risk of the whole project was encountering large rock deposits. The installer spot-checked his proposed path by poking a metal rod into the ground, but there's always a risk of missing something. Thankfully, only once did the excavator find a spot that required using the hammer attachment.

We knew where the trench would be dug, but we didn't truly grasp how large it would be until we saw it. The main trench area covers about half an acre. Enormous.

Anders looking at giant trenches

Trench pattern

Early morning trench, with steam

The connection to the furnace closet in the house had to go right through a cluster of three Port Orford Cedar trees. One of the trees' branches had started to hang down on the roof, even after pruning them up 16'. So we decided to remove it to make room for the trench.

The path to the house didn't need to be as wide, since it only housed two 1" pipes, out and in.

So many roots! Oh, and the white things sticking out randomly are irrigation lines for our sprinklers. We'll repair that at the end. The last several feet of the trench to the house were dug by hand.

Each trench in the racetrack will contain 6 separate pipes, to maximize heat transfer between the water and the ground. These connect to the 1" main lines at a junction point.

Pipe in trenches with spacer

Junction between 3/4" track and 1" supply

By the end of the week, the trenches were dug and the pipe was laid. The trenches have been mostly filled-in, to be finished off with another piece of equipment.

The old furnace was ripped out and the new geothermal heat pump installed inside. But there is still much work to do on the inside. With any luck, in another week it will all be done, we can put the house back together, and we'll have heat!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

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
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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