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.

 

It's been another busy week

I have been working in the dispatch center 3 days a week this month, and then I come home and try and catch up on the project time I missed while I was gone. That's rough on an old fat guy like me, but since the project elves aren't going to show up anytime soon, I suppose I just have to keep plugging along. I don't know, but this all seemed a lot easier 30 years ago. 

My number 1 project yesterday was to replace a fruit tree that was dying. I've said before this place had not been taken care up properly for a good number of years, and there was a small fruit tree, of unknown type, that just wasn't coming around, so we decided to replace it. Mrs. Goodwrench said she wanted a nectarine tree there, so I located what might have been the last one left locally, and picked it up yesterday morning. I brought it home, and me and a shovel had a date with the old and new trees, and now Mrs. Goodwrench has her nectarine tree. Of course I had to put some protection around it to keep the two Bambis from next door from eating it, so after it was in the ground I grabbed the remaining fencing scrap and wrapped the tree. It'll work for now, and maybe someday we'll be picking nectarines from it.

We have one peach tree out there. Last year it was half a step away from ceasing to exist, but we tried to make it happy this spring, and it worked. If you zoom in a bit you can see that it's got a bunch of fruit on it. Hopefully they all mature and we can have a few to munch on later. 

And, in the dog world, the new puppy is getting along great with the old dog, and they have already become good buddies. I'm sure hoping old dog can help me train new dog.