Garden Update

Our garden continues to do well. We planted a variety of things just to see what happened, and most everything is responding well. We've had several squash from it so far, and even a bell pepper. There's a lot more veggies coming on, and now we just wait from them to get big enough to pick. No apples this year, strange, but more grapes on the vine than we'll ever know what to do with. We've discovered lots of things that will help us to have a better setup for next year, but for this year what we have, is what we have. The yellow cherry plumbs in the front have gone nuts, and there's 3 times as many this year as last...and they're much larger. 

We also picked up the newest fruit trees...two 4 in 1 pears, a 4 in 1 plumb, and two persimmon trees. Additionally we finally got the three fruiting mulberry trees planted. We're going to have a regular farm here before long. 

 More Music

The last week and a half has seen much activity with us, And that has equated to me not posting. Previously, you saw what I was doing with our cargo/camping trailer in preparation for the bluegrass festival. I'm happy to say the new layout worked quite well! We were much more comfortable, and the things we brought were neatly stored in the new cabinets and dresser. Although we had two dogs with us this trip, instead of the usual one, we actually had more room to maneuver inside than we did before. We have a few more improvements to make, but since I'm back working for the summer, those will have to wait a bit. 

We left for the festival on the morning of Friday the 19th, and were fully set up at the fairground by dinner. The next morning we headed downtown, and we put up a booth at the farmer's market to advertise for the event. The market was open from 8 - 12, and we played music, handed out fliers, and talked with folks for a full four hours. We met a good number of local folks who had never been to the festival, and several of them ended up coming, so us being there was well worth the effort. The people liked what we presented, the other vendors enjoyed the music, and in the end the organizer waived the booth fee because he too enjoyed the music, and he said we contributed far more to his event than he expected. We thought that was very classy.  

The festival ended up being more of a working week for us than we had anticipated. Not only did we do the farmer's market, we also ended up working at the gate all days except one, we played onstage on Saturday and Sunday, and I emceed on Saturday evening. The audience responded quite well to our shows, and we got invited back to play again next year. The first part of the week was hot, with daytime temps in the mid 90's, and the festival weekend was cool with highs in the low 60's. Quite the difference.

On Friday night, we were inside the trailer, and I decided to have an otter pop. I was opening it with my teeth, when I heard a snap! Then I felt something odd. I reached into my mouth, and pulled out a front tooth. As it had been rebuilt 30 years ago, it didn't hurt, but it sure looked funny. However, as I am a banjo player, it was kind of fitting. LOL! My wife, bless her heart, laughed until tears flowed down her cheek. My middle daughter sent me a text that said, "Hey Cletus, how's it going?" All I could do was smile. The next day the audience got a big kick out of the story, and it fit very well with our show. I have an appointment to get it replaced on the 23rd, so no big deal. 

A friend of our used his cell phone to capture on of our songs, so I put it into a video, and I'll post it here for you. The footage is grainy, but you might like the song, and it's intro.

Ah yes, the adventures of a bluegrass festival!

Cumberland Gap

 Another piece to the puzzle

Yesterday we picked up a 6 drawer dresser for the cargo/camping trailer. We have been adding storage, which enhances convenience, and what we really needed was somewhere to put toiletries and such. However, since we are dealing with a small area, it couldn't be too big. After measuring, I decided I could go a maximum of 24 inches wide, and no more than 60 inches tall. My wife's request was a shelf of some sort to put a curling iron. This piece is 22 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and 54 inches tall. Inside the rollup door is a nice shelf, and a mirror. The drawers are shallow, but there's 6 of them, so in the end there's a lot of room for things. We think it will work very well for our purposes. There's still a couple more pieces of the puzzle to put in place, but it'll be quite functional until we get those. Next week we'll load it up, and then we'll head out for a week and a half of camping at the bluegrass festival, so we'll see how everything works. 

Cargo trailer/Camping trailer

When we left California in 2017, one of the first things we did was to by a 16ft, v-nose cargo trailer. It's first purpose was to haul things from California, to South Dakota. Later, we decided to turn it into a combination cargo trailer/camping trailer. The idea was to be able to set it up to camp in, but be able to take things out when we wanted to haul cargo in it. It has seen a LOT of use for both purposes, and now we're starting to make it even better in the camping department. 

It didn't take long to realize the trailer was a bit under built for hauling, and that it sat too low. First, I took it to a good RV shop, replaced the 3,500 lb axles and springs, and 15 inch 6 lug wheels, with 7,000 lb axles, 5,000lb springs, and 16 inch 8 lug wheels, and put 14 ply tires on those. Then they installed a spring bar hitch. After that, I removed the 1/4 inch interior paneling and insulated the walls and ceiling with 1 inch ridged foam.  Then I installed another layer of 3/4 inch plywood flooring over the existing 3/4 inch plywood flooring, put the 1/4 inch paneling back on the walls, installed 1/4 inch paneling on the ceiling, then installed a layer of 3/4 inch plywood over the 1/4 inch plywood on the walls. I then took it back to the RV place, and they wired it for 30 amps of shore power, installed a 3 speed fantastic fan in the ceiling, a roof mount air conditioner, windows on each side wall, installed a window in the door, and installed a roof mount air conditioner. 

After all that was done, I built a bed frame, installed vertical E-tracks in the back, got clips to hole 2x4s, installed 3 of those with a half platform, and built a clothes rack over the open slot. I made some other shelves, and put a full width shelf across the v-nose. 

Last year we spent 4 weeks in the rig traveling, and decided on some mor storage type improvements.  The last couple days I installed a couple overhead cabinets, and a narrow 3 drawer dresser, and I'm looking for a 3 drawer night stand of the right size to go next to the door. We had a retractable screen door in there, but it was kind of flimsy, and last year our dog went through it because he couldn't see the screen, so today we bought a residential screen door, and I'll install it tomorrow. I also built, and installed, a new shelf/spice rack in the front V. When I'm done we'll have a ton more storage, and be much more comfortable. We have a lot more planned for the trailer, but these improvements will make our 2 week camping trip at the end of this month much more enjoyable. 

I'll put up more pictures when we get it loaded and ready to roll. 

 And the business continues

If you're going to garden, springtime is a lot of work. If you're planning to garden long term, it's even more work. And, if you're going to garden long term, and you're starting off with a place that hasn't been taken care of in years, all that work increases exponentially. Thankfully, this winter I bought a tractor, and that has come in very handy, and this week I sprung for a 4 stroke mini tiller. With that I can do a lot of work, but I can get it into much smaller spaces that I can with a full size tiller. Right now I'm concentrating on weed removal/control, and that small tiller is getting in a lot of digging time. Yeah, it's a lot of sweat equity now, but it'll pay big dividends later. The ultimate goal is to create and awesome gardening/landscaping space, but make it as low maintenance as possible. That will take time, but small steps daily equate to long stride in the end.