Mud season begins

Despite the fact that I can't shake the little voice in the back of my head reminding me it is only February and that winter will return, it looks like mud season has begun.

Thanks to the warm days of late, The driveway is now impassable (at least with the car, I haven't tried the truck yet).  The mud in the driveway was deep enough that my car was scraping in spots.  I guess it is time to call the gravel guy I wanted to call last year.


Soup at the end of the driveway.


Deep ruts.  The ruts from trying to drive my car up it are now serving as run off creeks.


The other paths that I cleared are also bare.  That means once the driveway is passable I can call the electrician.




What I did clear on the slab is also barren.  I think I could easily get the trailer out for the welding guy.


Even the path to the shed is mostly clear, which gets the least sunlight


It looks part of my restoration last fall didn't take.  I noticed that it was only the part I did with the rust converter that had this problem.  The part I did with the wire wheel was all good.  I will have to do some touch up this spring.




As you might expect, the creek is ridiculously high.  We have been getting rain, and it is warm and sunny (when not raining) so everything is melting off at a rapid rate.


This is almost knee deep.  It is the deepest I have seen it, outside of the flash flooding a little over a year ago.  Even compared to that, this is pretty close to as deep.


I did go up and visit the welder today, he is closer than I thought, only about 5 miles north of the property.  Unfortunately Google lied to me and said he was open today, but that wasn't the case, so I will have to try back some other time.  I did notice that he is portable, he has a big van, so he might come to me to do the work, instead of me taking the trailer to him.  We can work out those details after I get a hold of him though.

Nice warm day.

I went up to snowblow the last little bit from the snow marathon, and most of it had actually already melted.  When I was up there yesterday, the snow was melting faster than I was clearing it.

For starters, I am not sure who did it, but thanks for pushing the banks back.  These banks were approaching the point where the snowblower would no longer throw over them.


They also push stuff back on either side of the mailbox, which I finished clearing out.  I don't get mail up there yet, I haven't forwarded everything since my PO box doesn't expire for another couple of months, and since I am not consistently up there enough to clear, I haven't switched everything over.


I got all the normal clearing done, and a little extra.  Among the extras that I got done this time is a path to the electric panel so I can call the electrician and get him out there.


I also did a path to the creek.


The creek is quite full, as you might expect from a 40's and sunny day.


I also made a loop around the trailer, with hopes that I might be able to bring it somewhere to get the welding done before May.


Each time I have cleared up there I have cleared a little bit of the ice that has built up from not clearing it right away.  In a few spots, I am finally through it.


All this came at the expense of the snowblower though, the slope has never been kind to the snowblower, and this time the tire came off the rim.


I started working on the bank on the side of the shed.  The metal seems to relocate the snow quite well, but the ridge cap doesn't seem to be as big a fan.


I found the shovel to work the best.  I will be finishing it up today.  The good news is that I will probably only have to do this once for the winter.  Unless we get another few nor'easters in a short time span, this should hold it until spring.

Ahead after the second leg of the marathon.

Happy Valentine's day.  I had a nice moonlit feast under the moon and stars... with a 5HP MTD snowblower.  It ate more snow than I did though.  

After the second round getting 8 or so inches of snow, I spent the last couple of evenings snowblowing.  It is all done though, (sorry, my camera was left at home).  I even got a path to the electric panel and the creek cleared as well.  Tomorrow's snow has been downgraded to 1-3, so I may not even bother clearing it.  

I have been feeding the snowblower a lot of carburetor cleaner, but I have noticed that the various cleaners behave very differently.  The mechanic in a bottle stuff worked the best (as I mentioned in the previous entry) but I am noticing that the STP cleaner is inducing some very strange behavior.  With the mechanic in a bottle, the snowblower ran best with 1 click of choke, and sputtered a bit with 2 clicks.  It ran with no choke, but you lost some RPMs and power.  With the STP cleaner, the machine runs noticeably poorly at first when it is cold, but once warmed up, it runs like a brand new machine with 2 clicks of choke.  One click runs, but with significantly less power, and no choke is worse still (and borderline unusable, it stalls nearly immediately whenever the engine bogs).  It produces the most power and throws the best with the STP and 2 clicks of choke, but that was not the desired outcome.  I will admit that despite running with extra choke, it was nice to be able to use 2nd gear for pretty close the whole driveway though...  Something I will have to ponder going forward, since I am not sure which is better for the snowblower (and minimizing the amount of time it takes me to clear).

While I was talking to Tim today, he brought up something I hadn't thought of.  I have a nice metal roof on my shed that sheds the snow quite well (no leaks yet) with its 6/12 pitch.  However, on the side of the shed that is facing uphill, I am having a lot of build up that is now pushing against the side of the shed.  A very crude paint special illustration (right side is the problem):

I am not sure what I can do about it, and as long as it doesn't push the shed downhill off the pilings I am not sure it is an issue.  It does mean that the siding is absorbing a lot more moisture than I would like it to, especially since it is unfinished T1-11 (I never got to urethaning/sealing or painting it), but I am admittedly mostly concerned about it pushing the shed since it isn't attached to the ground and is only held on the blocks by gravity.  So far there have been no problems though.  I guess time will tell.  I will certainly keep an eye on it.

Survived the first leg of the snow marathon.

We have a bit of a snow marathon going on.  We got 6-8" yesterday, and are supposed to get another 8-12" tomorrow, and then another 5-8" on Thursday.  The snowblower wouldn't survive trying to do all of it at once, so I will be snowblowing a lot over the next week.

I started it last night, just enough to get my truck parked.  It took around an hour, and since I was parked on the road, I left my four way flashers on.  That turned out to be a big mistake, since apparently my battery, while only a year old and a 750CCA battery, puked.  To add insult to injury, my jumper cables are in my car, since that battery is not large and is very old, and has started to struggle a bit in bitter cold.  Thankfully Anx was still up, so we stopped at Walmart and I have a second set of jumper cables now.  Interesting side note, Anx's car is a Dodge Charger, and the battery is not visible from the engine compartment.  The jumper posts for it are on the fuse box.  Needless to say, the truck will be getting a new battery sooner rather than later, the car can wait until next year.

Today went a lot smoother.  I have been running carburetor cleaner through it, which has helped quite a bit.  In case anyone is interested, the Mechanic in a Bottle from Home Depot seems to work a lot better than STP fuel injector cleaner.  While I am still running it with a single click of choke, I can change the throttle of the engine without it stalling out.  It still is lacking in horsepower, but it didn't stall out when bogged as bad as before.  Maybe by the end of the winter it will be running good.

The entire driveway is done.  I didn't break any shear pins this time either.  There is still a ~4" layer of ice underneath the snow, which is why it doesn't look well cleared, since it started to come up in spots, but it is good enough.  I still needed 4WD to get my truck up the hill, but I don't think the Nissan will have any issues.




Not sure how this happened, I must have parked in a snowbank or something...  This is stiff plastic, so it doesn't bend back readily.  I will have to do something with it, it sounds awful when driving down the road.


I tried to clear in front of the mailbox, but I think it is so densely packed that I will need a metal shovel to get through it.  I will need to do this soon, my PO box runs out next month, and I really don't want to renew it.

Nice pleasant day up at the property.

Despite all the ice, the truck made it up the hill with no issues, so I spent a good chunk of the day wandering about.  Turns out the ice is thick enough for me to walk on; I only broke through when I was trying to for traction, and in a couple of other spots that had apparently melted more, so I didn't need snow shoes.

Apparently we got snow at some point last week up there, the land looked undisturbed.



I followed some of the tracks, and found the nests.  They seem a bit small for rabbit holes, but I am pretty sure that is what they are.



Looks like my moose is still hanging around.  This is in the same area that I saw the tracks during the summer.



He was headed through the Archway leading to the creek.


The creek is still running, a couple of the wider spots had started to freeze over, but it is definitely still running.






My cliff face has largely cleared, though I still have the icicles stuck to the rock.






I also found what would appear to be a major game highway.  It wasn't that far from the back yard either.  I am not entirely sure I could have seen something like this from the porch, but I could still see a sliver of red from my truck from here.  This is unfortunately not where I was hunting the couple of times I went out this year.  Looks like I picked the wrong spot.


There were some sizable deer prints in it too.


Including one deer who appeared to have a crash landing or at least lose his brakes.


A little further back on the creek, I found it gurgling.  It did it every time an air bubble passed through.


It kind of looked like my rock was leaking.


I also took a video since it is hard to see in the pictures.  Unfortunately Blogger doesn't upload in HD, so this might not be any better.

Mushrooms.  I never studied mushrooms enough to know what kind they are.




This is where I was overlooking during hunting season. The picture is too zoomed out, but I can tell you that there are a lot of rabbit tracks, some squirrel tracks, but only a single set of deer tracks.  Definitely not the best place to sit.


And the rock I was sitting on.


These are back there too.  Pretty sure they are raccoon.


If Aunt Lisa wants any, I have some rocks.


The end of the stone wall.  Looks like they just stopped caring...  Not sure if this is the end of my property, I haven't measured it out, but I was a ways back in the woods, I think this is past my property, so maybe the marker for the lot behind mine?


One problem with going up the property line:  that put me at the highest elevation on the property.  And I didn't grab my creepers...  So I got a nice fun slide down the hill when I reached the front of the lot.  At least the slide was intentional, not surprise.




On a more work related note, the software for the mixer valve controller is completed, I just need to test and debug it.  I also have some of the designs done (mostly still in my head at this point, I need to write them down), so I am making progress on the winter projects as well.  Hopefully I will get some of them finalized and get more posts soon.

• Valve controller for the washer.
• Parts acquired.  Software complete.
• Build the desk/entertainment center.
• Desired layout/design complete.
• Design/build the platform/loft
• Design nearly complete, linear actuators spec'd.
• Complete the detailed trailer design and BOM