Grain Run, Fireplace Going, Pit Bike, Batch 74 Started, Batch 75 pr...

Another stupid early morning yesterday for Veteran's Day. I was out the door by 5am and soon was parked beneath the Steam Plant stacks dropping off empty barrels.

Then I stopped to load 2 barrels of grain at the smallest of the breweries. I tried my luck with the uneven height barrels on the trailer and managed to make it home without losing them.

I am using my soaking times to plow through Spanish lessons on Duolingo and am getting about an hour a day that way. Words and phrases are starting to stick in my craw and I am waking up in the morning with Spanish words in my head fairly often now.

The boys were off school for the day so my morning was a bit disturbed. By 9 I had the barrels emptied out and spread in the garden. The birds were all anxiously milling about as I spread it out then they dove into the freshly spread grain. Likely they were digging the still warm grain on their cold feet.

I did it, I got the fireplace cleaned around and ready to go finally after a 3 year hiatus.

Before I could get a fire going I had to make new handles for the door. The old ones died over the years and I don't want to be grabbing bare metal to open the door. I have a bunch of balusters that were given to us years ago and they worked perfect to cut down for the handles.

I used the band saw to cut them down then drilled a 3/8 hole into the fatter end and sanded the smaller ends to rounded.

I hammered them onto the handles and they fit perfectly.

I then was able to get he fire going and kept it going all day long.

I forgot just how nice the heat from the fireplace is. We have central heat and have used that exclusively the past few years. The warmth of the fireplace is a lot different feeling than the heater.

My oldest friend stopped by on his way to the airport to pick up his wife and he dropped a pit bike off for the boys. His daughter was given it but it is too small for her and first he thought of was my boys.

Tossed some new mix in the tank and after a whole lot of pulling the starting cord it fired up.

J rode it all around the lower property and by the time he had made a few laps the old gas had worked through and the new gas had the motor working pretty well and it had picked up speed a good bit. The boys aren't able to get it started yet on their own and still need me to but I am going to do some tuning on it and try to get the thing to start a bit easier. For now J is able to ride it but soon R will get a chance to try. He doesn't yet know how to ride his bicycle but it may be a bit easier for him on the pit bike without the pedaling.

My afternoon was spent cutting up the rest of the chard. There was a full bag of perpetual spinach, partial bag of Ford Hook, and then the 2 bags of stems. I started with the perpetual spinach and filed trays, covered with the liner, then put the tray covers on and set the trays outside to freeze.

I got 4 trays filled before having to start ion the stems. This filled the 5th tray and I then set in on the stems.

I filled 4 trays with stem slices and by the time I was done I was left with not quite enough for a full tray so I left those last ones to have with dinner.

I grabbed one of the trays from outside to fill the last spot in the freeze dryer. I will have to cut up a tray of celery for the next batch but I have at least a day to worry about that. Though I probably should do it today so it has time to freeze so all the trays will be frozen going in as a single unfrozen could skew the run time.

Being up so early I was able to get a bit past 9 pm before I was done.

Today I have to get the butcher area all ready so we can lop heads tomorrow morning first thing. The basement is close to being finished so I want to get it done today as well.