Things are starting to wind down on this years project.

Much was accomplished this past couple days up at the ranch. The shop building was back filled around the foundation. This might look flat but it actually is shaped in a slight vee and drops straight to the intermittent creek that lays between where the house is going to be and shop building.




This side of the building will drain either toward the back side of the building. (First picture) or drain hooking around away from the from the front of the building and then to the intermittent creek.






Or just away from the fill material we spread here. Sort of there in the grassy area it breaks to the creek. All this to say we do have darn good drainage.



Pat the guy with the equipment stock piled Ellen and I huge hill of top soil for around the house when we build it.





The building crew (I sort of helped) did get the tar paper on the roof in between rain squalls.



John Landers has a local laborer working for him. His name is Joseph and a great kid. He is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. His is a hard worker and a good learner. But there is no future there for him at Smiths Prairie. Other than it costs him very little to live there at his uncles ranch.



He takes a joke very well so when he cut a piece of tar paper off about twenty inches and it floated to the ground. I went over and made a big deal of not wasting my valuable building materials and stewardship. I rolled it up and placed it on the burn pile. I carried them the last roll of tar paper and they started to unroll it. It got less and less and then came with in fourteen inches of making it. So I had to get the piece off the burn pile and hand it up. So thanks Dave at Kuna Lumber for sending us just the right amount of tar paper.

When the day was done I was done. I came down with the flu, I think the grandkids had - had it and boom I went down. My voice was shot, I just was done. My logger, excavator, friend was done also. I had him trim up about another 40 yards of materials up there at the 'pit'. He is just going to stock pile it there in case we need it in the future. So he pulled out his machinery.



The excavator first, then came back for the crawler, then got his back hoe. His is busy from dawn to dark from the time the snow is gone until it comes back. He has not had a moment of recession. He had another septic system to put in and I think did a clearance or a new home about three miles away from our place so we well be getting new 'neighbors'. This summer he has put in four septic systems I know of. He is licensed and very good at it.

Better give you and up date on the shop building

I have forgotten how long it has been since I posted anything to do with the shop building! This is what it looked like from the public road September 25, 2010.



This has been a real blessing to see this all come together so well and to a certain degree easy. It is a testimony of what I feel is good communication and great work ethics. John Landers he is the builder we hired. His dad is the one that owns the sawmill and the excavating equipment but that is not why I hired him. Though his dad is very handy to be able to give him a call and he is right there as much as possible. For example he brought over his self loading logging truck and swung trusses. I can only imagine what is would cost to bring a crane up there for thirty thee trusses.




I hired him for several reasons. He designed a shop or building this is patterned after. However not with the same construction methods. Ours is a conventional stick built building. The one I seen him build last year was a pole building. He had a method for doing the door ways that did not take up room but actually made the doors taller and more useful. This was done by setting beams on top of the wall rather than a conventional header, and the trusses had to be modified to accomplish this. Thus comes in good communication. Conveying to the truss company exactingly what he needed was done with very little tolerances. True carpenter craftsmanship.



You just do not get this type of craftsmanship much anymore. Not in less the Amish will take on your project.



This is the back side or the east side. It is house wrapped and boards started on. Note how straight the bottom is all the way across.



I have so much more to say but best stop here.

Blessings from us to you all....

John Raabe's READ ME FIRST

I can not say enough good about John Raabe's booklet titled READ ME FIRST that comes with the his whole Whole Enchilada Plans. John is not an engineer nor architect but he does bring to the mix a very good bases of self building and self design. Facing reality there are so many here in the USA that can not afford a engineer or architect or general contractor to take a hold of a project for them. For some of them the last thing they want is two thousand sq ft. Two thousand sq ft in the winter and heating with wood is a real nightmare for some.

Here in my world there are many dumping five or ten dollars at Starbucks and not thinking twice about it. Real facts of it are there people that can not do that. Shocking as it might be. They are looking for a well constructed small home. How plain is determined by how good at Craigslist they are. I became aware of him and his work when I started researching for a simple cabin Ellen and I could build at the ranch. Then I got connected with a forum there and they are sort of family now. But that is another thread.

After reading and rereading and digesting READ ME FIRST several times I have had a whole different attitude biting off this project. Number one I have had to come to terms I have to hire it done. It is that simple. Because of time constants and other items on my plate it just was not do-able. I might have the foundation poured by now if it were just me. So in effect I have had to act as the general contractor. I have had to do so on several projects in the past. That 'aint hard' I guess and I gain more confidence in each of these projects. I am there some times to help - sometimes to just answer questions and some times to be the gopher. I have had to make the drive out and in and out and in in the same day over the years several times. (Mostly having to do with building.) I am not below cleaning up, toting boards or helping pour concrete.... I still love to do that....

This time around I have really taken it to heart from John's booklet and it really helped me get a grasp on this project. "Your highest use is not pounding nails or pulling wire but carefully controlling the money flow and getting the best materials and labor for the money you spend.

I still work full time for Union Pacific Railroad and am gone a lot. When I am here this time of the year I / we are up at the ranch. Yes it is a real ranch but until now bare ground --- well from the time Ellen and I tore down the last barn. (My dad built it in the late thirties) And I burnt down the last house a couple years ago it has been just bare ground with the exception of one small shed. Though we do lease it out, there are still certain things we have to do.

This shop is the first of the building steps we have to take to move up there full time next year when I retire. Up until now every thing has been underground. Septic is in, 1200 feet of poly pipe and frost frees are buried and is about that much direct burial wire and 500' of 220 conduit to our RV pads. A well of sorts is in, we are still questioning if we are going to have to re-drill or huge tank -- that is another tread in the future.

So last Saturday we took the last of the lumber package up. Then we came back down and I went to work that night. I worked home the following night got in Monday morning. I got a couple hours sleep and got up and headed off to the ranch again. This time stopping off at Costco picking up some RV batteries for the fifth wheel - those lasted huge - since 2004 - but they were done. The builder and his helper had made very good progress I thought.

Ellen and I took time to get the berries fertilized. They are coming along very well. I am hoping that the black berries we picked out will handle the winters up there. The blue berries I just do not know about. About four thirty I knocked off and ran over to the store and got the builder and his helper some soft drinks and ice cream. It was very hot and they had put in a very full day. We got our stuff loaded up and came out as well this time with the flat bed. We will have to haul up the metal roofing next.





I did get the metal roofing ordered today. We will be able to pick it up Friday morning. My builder says he can not believe how smooth this whole thing has gone except for one day with the building inspector who is sort of confused on code for what we are building. I think that all has been resolved. We are getting everything ready for the autumn - into the winter thing. As soon as we get a few storms we will get some more fire wood cut. If all goes correctly we will be living up there this time next year and working on the new house... cool

Seasons are Starting to Change

It is one of those things you notice in the air. The little chill that gives you a clue something is a little different. A change in the air. Or you happen to notice a tree that is looking a little different. Oh my word is that .... well it is just a hint of fall color.



I know that this is not one of those stunning Colorado golden aspen shots. Nor one of those shots that New England is so noted for with its maples and other hard woods erupting in yellows and golds and the reds some moving in to the purple range. Nor is it the best autumn photograph I even have taken. But it was more that just a hint, it was proof. It was more than getting fall, it had arrived. I did not need the newspaper or internet to warn me that fall was almost here.

I myself had seen the evidence that Mother Nature had come calling with her palette of autumn colors. Oh this just a hint, a teaser of what is to come. She will continue to visit and paint though no one - at least no human ever will notice her. Oh I have heard that the deer and elk know her. The beaver and the chipmunks talk to her. The sly fox and coyote will even carry her paint on occasion. Indeed she has tricked them and used their tails from time to time as paint brushes. Thus the dark spot on a coyotes tail and the white nib on the foxes.

Mother nature and fall are so strange. It is such a brief time. A time where she Mother Nature puts on the most unbelievable art show we ever see. On the calendar autumn is three months. Oh how I challenge that, at least in the north country. Fall or autumn is that time when the colors change to the reds and golds. Then the leaves fall as does the snow. The snow that white washes and cleans the canvas.

Yet my calendar says Autumn shall continue until the shortest day of the year in the north country. This is wrong. Where is autumn when there is snow and no color. Where is the magic of the color. Gone and buried under the robe of white. Yet the calendar says we are still in autumn. I say it is winter that season of intermission of color. Winter! In the winter her palette is changed to north country to whites and bold contrasting blacks. To me and my world fall or autumn lasts about a month and a half. It stops being autumn when the frosts and the snows go to war and cover the golds and reds.

Lumber has arrived

Dave Browning a lifetime friend - well almost a life time friend. We met when I was twelve and I think he was thirteen and we were deer hunting. He and his wife started Kuna Lumber. They have been good friends over the years. So when it came time to order lumber ..... Here he is taking the warps off the lumber package.



Hey Dave you did not leave any instructions.



This is a road that we put in that goes around to the orchard.



This is a entrance to the property now. We put this in several years ago. My brother Bill asked that we find a easier way of getting access like a cattle guard or a metal gate rather than the old hard to open, harder to close wire gates. I think the neighbors backhoe got our sign when they were clean out the snow on winter. With all the new road road topping we should not hazard getting stuck in the 'wet season'. Although we never really seem to sink down it was more just throwing mud and gummy stuff.



The old way was to continue up a hill and get on a old logging road and winding around through trees and things. Then continue back on sort of a loop. It worked well but there were several things that did not. One was two huge snow drifts the occurred every year. (Excluding the drought years of course.) The other thing, once you got off the old logging road there had never been any decomposed granite applied to those roads or trails and so there was mud and a chance you just were not going any where if it was wet.

Nature Abounding

On the seventh of September 2010 we were coming out from the ranch. It was dusk and were in Ellen's car. Ellen yelled stop and I mashed down on the brake and there was a yellow calf standing in the middle of the road. About a six hundred pounder that matched the road very well in deed. Adie and Tig wanted to jump out and give chase to the calf. They live for a chance to do so. We did not allow it, they pouted. I sort of took this as, 'this is going to be one of those trips.'

We were very near the mouth of Smith Creek and there is something small yet tall in the road. I once again did a panic stop. As we were siding at it we identified as an owl. There is this owl on the road. It will not move, I slid to a stop. It is so close it has now disappeared from view. It is now under the car or about under the car. I threw it in reverse and back up. There it still is standing in the same place. It begrudgingly sort of gives us a dirty look and flew to the side of the road. Adie and Tig still want a chance to go after some thing.

We get to the river grade where you go down to the river bridge and there where you make the first hair pin curve there is more deer than I have seen in years. Does and fawns and fawns and does but no bucks did we see. Adie and Tig once again offer to get them out of the road for us.

This morning September 8, 2010 I did not plan on returning to the ranch. But I was so far out on work I decided to make a trip up there. The building package or lumber was going to show up. It is also the last day they were going to pour concrete up there and I needed to talk to the finisher so up I went again.

Along the canyon rim next to the river there at the Dawes Flat. There in a fir tree growing up out of the South Fork Canyon was an eagle perched there. I stopped and watched. The smaller birds were pestering it like they do. They flit in and squawk tease and just seem to make life miserable for no reason other than they can.

It seemed so applicable, the great symbol of our nation and these small harassing birds. A couple jays and magpies. (No the West Nile has not killed them off.) They always remind me of of those nations who have a Gross National Product below that of WalMart. Totally disconnected to the USA but always there for no known reason harassing and jabbering at it.


It has been a great week for wild life up there.

That evening driving out. There in a draw in Grave Creek was a group of about ten or twelve young bucks all all spikes or small forked horned bucks. The older bucks must have put to flight. Indeed the season is starting to change.

When you make as many drives in and out of there as we do collectively. We will go days with out seeing much even wondering if there is anything left in the country. Then there are those days when nature does abound!

Shop is Coming Around

The shop at the ranch is coming along very well now that it is all in motion. Footing or footer is formed here. If you notice Tig has taken her supervisory roll here very well.



Here the footings have been poured and the walls formed except for the one end that we left open to get Pat's backhoe in and fill the center and level it all out.



Pat did such a great job he was only high one spot and we work it down and compacted it after we got the walls poured. Here is a photo of it up to that point with the reinforcing wire down. The reason it looks so un-level is the wire not laying down flat.



Ellen looks so good here this place does her well.



Me and John Landers discussing business. High level stuff we will not even allow the dogs to come around. Note them in the car.




Second week of September and the finisher brought up concrete blankets. He said as much as this is costing up there for concrete he was not going to take a chance. I really think he has done 110% for us. We sort of just meshed very well.

Forest Cattle

What few cattle we do have are out on Taylor Grazing or on a Forest Service Permit. The last we had seen them was early last summer or late spring. They were down on an allotment called the Lower Bench.

The Lower Bench is not an easy place in and out of. The road is one of the few on the Prairie that you would call a jeep trail. It is sort of straight down over the South Fork Canyon rim. There is no dirt left on the road all. So you are sort of ricocheting off of rocks and boulders concentrating on that going down into a seeming primeval canyon that very few have ever been to. Conveniently about half way down you have to stop, kick the rattlesnakes out of the way, open a gate and that is sort of suspended over thin air. Ninety percent of the time the gate is fool locked. Most people see this huge padlock. They have flipped rocks up and dented their pick up and had a flat tire or two and are glad to use it as an excuse to turn around and go back up. This a good thing to do because it does get worse. So they shimmy their rig around and return the way they came. Cussing the padlock out loud and praying silently under their breath thank you Lord for an excuse for bit of saneness in my life.

Once you are past the gate you continue your free fall to the bottom. It is diffidently the hardest ride Ellen had ever tried. Going up is not so much better. Other than you don't have to see the rocks you are falling in to if the machine flips over with you.

When we arrived at the bottom the cattle looked good, but the grass was about gone as was the water. There is water there all the time, but the watering holes at the far end dry up early and they have a long walk to water. It was time to move them. They were all bunched at the proverbial coffee pot (the watering hole) gossiping with each other. We could almost hear them complaining and carrying on. Anyone would know we deserve better than this... I am telling you they have forgotten about us... We are going to die down here.... How the heck do we get out of here anyway....

I sort of sensed a prison break. I almost feared for our very lives. Knowing that they might force us off our four-wheelers and storm the gates. I then knew they did not know the secret of the padlock....

Ellen and I the other day when we had the four wheelers up at the ranch decided that we would take the opportunity to see how the cattle looked. We rode through our place up into the Woods place. Part of the allotment they are on now. The Woods Place is now owned by the US Forest Service. This allotment is quite large and they will be there until they are gathered or they decide to come into the Prairie. This happens when the feed starts getting sort as do the days. The temps start to fall as do the leaves and the old cows lead them home.



I came back feeling very good. The grass was superb. The cattle looked great and the calves now coming fall are near eight and nine moths old and fatter than I think I have ever seen them.



Lord I know we have have to take the bad with the good. But this is goooood!!!

One of Those Blessings You Never Know You Are Receiving at the Time

We were driving out from the Prairie last year. The skies turned black and the winds hit. I had never seen any thing like it. It came on us so suddenly we had to stop because the blowing dust. It was blowing so hard the sage brush was being up rooted and blown across the road. The pick up was rocking, we would go just a few feet because it was almost zero visibility, and then we could not see at all. We would have to stop. Then it would lighten up slightly and we would sort of start again only to have to stop.

Then as quickly as it came on us it was done. It was so strange because it was like some one threw a switch and turned off the storm. But the sky was still black yet light penetrated it. It was as if light and dark were fighting to give it up. The lighting became so surreal, it was as if it was not of this world. It was a real KODAK moment. I jumped out and started taking pictures.






That night when we got in Ellen down loaded the camera and was so surprised not that we did not know where the old picture was taken. But the closeness to the exact location. We had never tried to pair them up. A picture of my family out on a Sunday drive circa 1890's. The young man on the rear end of the horse was my grandfather George known as Rawhide born 1887.



This is the image I took when the storm ended

Why a shop?

I know what you are most likely logically thinking why a shop and not get started a cabin / house. Actually the shop is a real part in this building project. A lot of the interior will be hand made by Ellen and I from lumber we harvest this fall and winter from the place.

Not only so we can make things there for the house. We will need to stage and store things there as well. It is fifty miles to a supply house in Boise. So logistically we will have to have some stock on hand. Electrical and plumbing, windows and doors. We also will be best able to 'shop' Craigslist and the big box stores for buys and have a place to put things from windows to the kitchen sink even that huge stained glass window we have been storing will go in to the house.

Remember also Prairie does not have a Home Depot, Lowes or even a Do It Best. There sort of a network of they might have it there, well if there is one up here. Meaning drive around from ranch to ranch, cabin to cabin and asking. It is also the foundation of I will make one myself. Believe it or not God did give us the ability to modify and change things.

Somethings however can not be changed nor modified so the treasure hunt begins. Sometimes this requires going out in to the fields and finding a trail of dust coming up from a lonely tractor. Or looking for a herd of cows being driven some where. The standard answer is 'Ya I have one but I can not remember just where it is. Lets go look for it." That coupled with the other conversation involved, the protocol that is ever bit as important as the meeting of two heads of state, or CEOs or CFO's.

Somewhere there it dawns on you as you are looking through old dusty boxes in a storage shed or barn 'This takes longer than going to Lowes.' But then more importantly it is part of being a neighbor. One of the many lost arts of the latter part of the last century. The lost art of helping out and allowing others to help you. Maybe not a whole day of hard toil but lending a hand and an ear now and then. Showing you care... Tragic as is is when part of America moved from being faith based to more humanistic we also became a lot more centric.

Breaking ground for new shop at the ranch

We broke ground August 10, 2010 on the shop! Pat and his helper worked at that while I fell some trees. A couple real crooked ones we were afraid that would go down in a wind storm on the RV area. Then there was one beetle killed one, and one that was very sick. All that will go to the saw mill at Pat Landers the guy below with the crawler and the transient. They will be turned into siding for the shop.



Then about the time they were ready to do the fine grading the heavens open up with lighting and then it rained - no make the poured. Pat and Randy had to shut down and take off. Pat had to load logs the following morning and had to work on his log truck with the self loader. This seemed to presented a very good opportunity.

They had to go to four wheel drive to get out. Pat has been going to do some road work there these past three years. It is not yet done; there just is never enough days in a year for him to get it all done. I complain to him about it when it rains. We do not sink but it is so slick on top you just spin and throw mud. It is not so bad where we have the fifth wheel but there and around by the orchard sometime you think you are going to have to walk out.

I too beat a hasty retreat to the fifth wheel and repaired the shower. Then the sun came out in about an hour and I finished 'bucking logs' so Pat can now skid them to go to the mill. Ellen and I carried the limbs and put them in a pile in the pasture to burn after the first snow or if we get enough rain in like Oct or Nov I might set them on fire then but I really like it when the snow is on the ground. I know we are not going to have any surprises then.



Tig has been named supervisor in charge over the whole project. This due to litigation she has threatened on me. Her brief brought to my attention she does not trust me with a chain saw at all anymore. She of course most of the time per her assignment and job description is to be very near me. However if I grab a chainsaw now she disappears due to mental anguish she cites when I almost dropped a tree on her. She claims I had no regard for her well being nor consideration fore her general welfare which indeed I will prove false herein. She therein her brief asks for a change in position due to extreme mental trauma that occurred last year when we were logging up in the Farlow Place. She claims I purposefully almost dropped a tree on her. Myself I feel I should counter claim she indeed was negligent. After all she was laying in the shade of a tree that the snow had over the years crushed down and they really start to grow side ways. I was falling it because it would never make a tree to harvest. I noticed it starting to go down. I stopped for a millisecond and hit the kill switch on the saw and yelled in a very panicked manor TIG!!!! Okay I girlie screamed TIG!!! She some how got out from under that falling tree sort of flew - sort of levitated as it was coming down on her. I did not see her again for hours. I put the tools up in the pick up and here she came. At the time she pretty much told me no more chainsaws. This current litigation was a total blind side yet in my good graces has caused me to offer a olive branch in the form of a title of Supervisor of Construction. This and a dog biscuit in hopes of bribing her to drop her current case.

Alas Poor Elmore County bastion for.....

Elmore County, poor Elmore County where our small ranch is at, went from a place where literally you could turn in a house plan drawn on the inside of a Miller Genuine Draft cold pack to actual planing and zone and real building inspectors. It went seemingly over night from a place indeed you could turn in a card board box turned inside out with a hand drawn floor plan and be granted a building permit. Now they have to be submitted --- Plans (drawings) shall be drawn to a professional standard, to scale, upon substantial paper, and be of sufficient clarity to indicate the nature and extent of the work proposed. Elmore county a place where building inspectors at the time seemed to be in love with or at least happy with the idea of when in doubt build it stout. Now a place of being codified and national building codes. What next shall happen we all ask ourselves.

However because there were several building failures. Apparently it came to light that what some peoples idea of building something stout sort of deviated greatly from one builder and homeowner to another. So this idea of doing it my way has gone 180 degrees to that of normal building practices complete with engineering data. Particularly in areas that required one hundred and twenty five pound snow loads and winds howl unmerciful in the winter time.

So Elmore County alas poor Elmore County long the bastion for those who wish to do it their way now has become codified. And for a period of time they were a revolving door for new building inspectors and managers. Now a new crew has signed on vowing to make buildings and zoning safe and sane. Or safer and saner for those who build or buy in that county.

So true to everything Ellen and I seem to do being a dollar short and a day late in all things have fallen pray to modern day building practices. Though we have not yet turned in plans officially for our retirement home. I too was tempted to draw some up in crayon and magic maker free hand on the inside the lid of a Justin boot box and submit that wishing to be a traditionalist and not wishing to make waves with the local people going against the grain.

I however felt with my problem with alcohol and being clean and sober since 1990. I thought that might be a little tacky going the direction of a Budweiser box turned inside out. I guess even ex alcoholics have some form of drawing a line in the sand. Though as of yet no one in planing and zoning really knows me or my families very storied history in Elmore County or for that matter Mountain Home the capital seat of Elmore County. Well okay I guess that is the county seat of Elmore County.

So it would have made little difference if I would have chosen a Bud box or the more traditional Miller Genuine Draft box or for that matter the lack luster Justin Boot box lid. I too would just have been seen as another in a long line of those who seen Elmore County as one of the last bastions of those who wish to just do it their way....... Sad but times change in all things. All the changes I seen in the railroads in thirty some years. Now the place we choose to live out our retirement. Sad....

Operation Livesaver

Thought that I / we could give Blogging a try. My e-mailing has become a chore of sorts as of late. Strange because it certainly is not because I don't want to. Maybe it is the fact we seem right now we catch ourselves coming and going a lot. The ranch at Prairie and the home place. My work on the railroad and a thousand things in between from being Pa Pa to three grand kids. I am also the Labor Member to the Idaho State Operation Lifesaver Committee.

For those of you that have never sat in on an Operation Life Saver presentation please do so. It is nation wide. In fact international now. Operation Lifesaver was started in Idaho on the Union Pacific thirty some years ago. About the same time I went to work for the railroad. It has been since its inception working in three areas.

One: education, educating people, please do not take chances around or on the railroad tracks. That is pretty simple and straight forward.

Two: engineering finding a better and safer mouse trap if you will. It might be as simple as redesigning signage or as complex as reworking a whole crossing because the basic design is flawed from the inception. Longer trucks, more traffic are hardly equal to the days when a crossing was visited by an old farm truck and the driver did not have to wait for traffic to clear because there was no traffic.

Third is none of our favorite thing and that is enforcement. If there is a location where the public refuses to be safe and considerate to themselves and others then enforcement is needed to change the mind set. This can happen with such things as adopt a crossing and or trooper on a train complete with radios and lots of man power to write tickets. They will target and area and make several runs through the area.

I really feel this is a great program. I receive no compensation for my time I spend in this. But if I can help stop one senseless death or injury I have done a lot. Be it a crossing incident or a trespasser. I hope because of my time I have donated someone, somewhere will not have a police car pull up in front if a home and the trooper making the long walk to the front door. I hope my fellow railroad workers will never experience the pain and trauma I have experienced more than once when I have watched the trooper climb up on my locomotive. I hear that big heavy door open only made heaver by what has just occurred. He enters the cab he extents his hand and introduces himself. I shake his hand I introduce myself. He looks in my eyes and and tells me, "Sir there has been a fatality."

Please friends never let this happen to you. Look Listen Live!!!