Still working 

I'm leaving here for the month of May, so I've been trying had to get this place garden ready for my wife before I go, and that means doing some things to keep the deer from eating the stuff we plant. That being the case, I've been continuing to install fencing. Now, we don't have a lot of deer here. In fact, the only two I've seen are the yearlings that live on the wooded lot next door to us, but they still have mouths, so up goes the deterrents. Yesterday I started building the enclosure around the second set of garden boxes. No individual doors on these, unlike the other two raised beds, just a tall fence around them. In the morning I headed to town and got two 4x4 posts, two 80lb bags of redi-mix concrete, and a half dozen t-posts, then I came home and stuck all of that in the ground. Today I'll start stringing the wire. I have a partial roll of fencing left over from the last project, but I'm not certain it'll reach all the way around the new enclosure. I'll start with that, and if it's not enough, I'll get another roll of the fencing and just splice the two together. Yep, more work, but waste not, want not. 

While I was getting fencing stuff, I also picked up two apricot trees, and when I got home I stuck those in the ground. With the addition of those two, it gives us about 14 fruit trees, and that's a pretty good start. We have plans for a lot more fruit trees, and berry bushes, but that will all take time. My wife has informed me, in no uncertain terms, that one of the things I'll be working for this summer will be a big freeze drier. Between that, and all the canning she's planning to do, we should end up with a good supply of various forms of fruit.

The day before yesterday, I put the second coat of stain on the new planter boxes, filled them with some of the bulk potting mix I had delivered, stuck a flower plant in each one, and set them out in a couple locations. I really want to start adding color to this place, and these boxes are step one. As I clean out the useless bushed under the cedar trees around the front yard. I'll add in there flowering shrubs, such as azaleas, and we'll end up with lots of nice color all around that area. I thing it'll make a huge difference. 

 The Command Center 

For many years I was a full time fireman. There, I drove engines, worked on truck companies, ran inmate hand crews, And worked in the dispatch center. The dispatch center I worked in for 6 years had two agencies in it: CalFire, and the Forest Service. In 2009 I retired from full time on the CalFire side, got up, walked across the room, and sat down on the Forest Service side to work "on call". Counting this year, in which I have already worked a bit, I will have been on the federal side for 18 years. All told, at the end of this fire season I will have been in the command center for 24 years. I worked in there yesterday, and at one point I walked through the entire building, and I thought, "From the time I first came to work for CalFire, through today, I have walked these halls for nearly 40 years."  

During that time I have seen a great many changes. For one, the layout of the center has totally changed. When I first went there all the stations were in a "U" shaped counter space, and we (state and federal) faced each other. This made it very easy to talk back and forth during incidents, and that was nice. Now it's laid out so we all face the walls, and it's nowhere near as good for interactions. In the early days we had 4 computer screens...1 phone screen, 2 CAD (computer aided dispatch) screens, and 1 radio screen...now we have 8 screens. We've gone through 2 completely different CAD systems, and three different resource tracking systems. A few years ago the center added EMD (Emergency Medical Dispatch), which is a structured system of prehospital instructions we go through with medical dispatches that sometimes mean the difference between life and death outcomes. Now the CAD system "talks" to the resource tracking system, we have computerized aircraft tracking, and things have become much more complex. It's been quite the evolution to observe.  

Before I first went in, and for several years after, our side (CalFire had a total of three Captains to do the work, only one of which stayed at night. Now there are 5 Captains, and 4 Com-Ops, fully qualified dispatchers, but under the Captains for supervision. The Forest Service side has always maintained 7 dispatchers, plus 3 supervisors. At night there is always 1 CalFire Com-Op on duty, and 1 Captain on duty but sleeping. That person gets awakened in the event of fires of complicated incidents. That makes a great deal of difference in the amount of sleep the Captain can expect to get. Before the Com-Ops came to be, I can remember working a 4 day shift (24 hrs/day) and I got a total of 7 hours of sleep. That was a rough week. 

I think for now I'll end this post as an "introduction" to dispatch, and in the next post I'll go into more detail, and maybe even some "war stories". 

 More garden stuff

I had three projects in mind to finish yesterday: hang the wire fencing around the old berry patch, build/hang a gate for the new berry patch enclosure, and build/hang a gate for the old berry patch enclosure. However, the afternoon thunderstorms had other ideas, and they only allowed me to finish two of the three. My goal today will be to build the gate for the old berry enclosure, and if the weather isn't bad, hang that one. I may also be able to devise latches for the 2 new gates. I also still need to put the clips on the fencing for the new enclosure, but since that's 100% out in the open, the rain would need to give me a break, and I don't know if that's on it's "to do" list. 

I'm very thankful for the rain we're getting right now. It's been pretty dry, and with all the new planting this moisture comes at a great time. I'm not really a lazy person, but if God wants to help me water, I'm all for it. We're playing music next week at an assisted living center, so we need to pick an hour worth of songs today and start going over them. From that gig we'll make almost enough money to pay for a dinner out, but the dollars won't be the important part of that day: we just want those folks to have a time of decent music, so there we are. Someday I might be sitting in their chair, and I'd hope somebody would do the same for me. 

 

After all the work is done, I may end the same as I did yesterday.

 Working outside

The last couple days I've been hitting it hard outside working in the "berry department". We're putting in a lot of various berries, and also trying to work on structures to keep the deer out of them. Being old and fat isn't really in my best interest when it comes to working long hours. Whereas in the past 10-12 hour days were no issue, now I'm about all done in after 7-8. At 67 years old I just can't do as much as I did when I was 37. I understand the dynamics of that, but it still irritates me. 

Yesterday I bought 7 small cedar planter boxes off Facebook Marketplace, and I
started out this morning by putting the first coat of stain/sealer on them. I'll put one more coat of that on them, and then I'll apply a couple coats of clear waterproofing finish. These boxes are 15 inches by 15 inches, so not large, but they'll just be used for flowers to add some color around here, and that size should work great. Some folks wouldn't bother with the stain and finish, but I feel if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing right. Since the guy was just getting rid of them, I only paid $10/ea, but I still want them to last as long as possible. So, if I put some effort into the front end of the project, it should pay off for a long time at the back end of the project. 

After I did the boxes, I concreted in a couple of pressure treated posts to extend the fencing of one of the berry areas. Weather permitting, tomorrow I'll string the welding wife fencing around them, and at that point it'll be time to build a gate. When our son-in-laws were here this weekend I got them to help me string so 6ft tall welded wire fencing around posts I had already installed, and that will enclose berry area #2. I have the materials to build that gate, so maybe an hour's worth of work will finish that off. 

Additionally, I planted 22 various berry bushes today: huckleberry, lingdon berry,
blueberry, and raspberry. Oh yeah, in my spare time I relocated 2 thornless blackberries, 6 strawberries, and 3 lemon balms.  The nice thing is we have great soil, so the digging isn't difficult. Lots and lots of work, but eventually it'll pay off with lots of yummy things to eat. 

 More pickin'

Yesterday was our monthly jam here at the house. Sunny, blue skies, upper 70's, lots of pickers, and lots of grinners. We even had our 15 year old granddaughter join in, which made it even better. We're hosting this jam the first Saturday of each month, and having had three of them so far, I'd say it becoming a popular option for folks. The first jam was inside due to weather, and we had 17 people. Both the next two gathering have been outside, and we've had 40 people at each of those. We're hoping to keep this thing growing until our whole place is packed with folks playing, and folks listening. Having a musical sanctuary for us backwoods type folks has been a dream of ours for a long time, and now that we've got the perfect setup for it, we're moving ahead at full speed. We'll keep holding these events the first Saturday of each month, and they are open to anybody, so if you're in the Grants Pass, Oregon area then, please do stop by and join us.  

 The cost of doing business

I'm sure everybody has noticed the cost of most everything has risen greatly in recent years. Many reasons for that, not just any one in particular, and it's something we have to find a way to deal with. Fuel will drop eventually, always does, but it seems like the cost of food and general goods never returns to previous lows, so coping will be a long term road. Why it's happened, or why we "think" it's happened is relatively unimportant, learning to live with it, and discovering how to thrive in spite of it, is far more important. And, sometimes what you perceive to be a thorn in your side, is actually a blessing in disguise. 

The diesel prices here in our new town are currently $5.99 - $6.09 a gallon, while the price in our old Montana town is at $4.78. In Montana our place was pretty much done, and that left me with a considerable amount of free time to do other things. Our house was 5 miles out of town, so if I needed anything it was a minimum of a 10 mile round trip to get there, and the first half mile was over what was always a horrible wash boarded dirt road, and that caused a great deal of wear and tear over time. At our new Oregon location there is a never ended supply of projects to do in order to bring the house and property back up to what we consider to be a respectable condition. The work elves have been on strike, so that means my happy butt gets to do the work, and as slow as I move these days, projects take quite some time to finish. That means I'm at the house working all the time.

The other side of the coin here is our location, and the close proximity to cheaper  goods than we had in Montana. Our house sits about 2 miles from Winco, Costco, and other places to buy things. In Montana, our tiny town of 850 people had a really nice store, and I was always very thankful for it, but obviously the food was more expensive. We had a good hardware store, and a good lumber yard, but if you wanted/needed much else, it required a trip to Bozeman, and that was an hour away. The closeness of everything means far shorter, and much quicker, trips to get anything. We went to Winco yesterday and did a bunch of shopping. We completely restocked the pantry/kitchen, spent under $300, and were there and back in under an hour. Since much of my time is occupied working on the house, I'm doing far less driving, and I believe that last time I put fuel in the tank was over 3 weeks ago: since then I've used less than 1/2 tank of fuel. All of that together means I've spent less money overall.

Now, don't think that I'm all rainbows and unicorns about this...I struggle with the thought of being in Oregon, rather than Montana, on a daily basis. All I'm doing is trying to "look at the bright side" of things and understand that, "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." It's what I have to hold on to right now, so that's what I'll do, and I'll continue to "hope to cope". We'll see. 

 

 Camy Lobe

Well, I see I've been slacking and haven't posted anything for a few days, so today is the day!

I've noticed that several of the folks I've recently discovered are writers. Keeping that in mind, I decided to take the easy way out this morning and post a story I wrote many years ago. As I recall, I penned this in a college creative writing class I took with my mom one semester. Yes, with my mom, and I'd give anything for her to be alive today so we could do it again. So, here for you this morning is a funny story...at least it's supposed to be funny...and I hope you enjoy it.

How To Convert Your

Wheelchair Into A

 DUNE BUGGY

 

            “Why did I make that trip?” I wondered aloud.

             This was a question I had pondered a multitude of times in the last week.  One seems to have quite a lot of time to toss around questions like this, when one is confined to one’s bed in the traction ward of the local hospital.  Was it because I had really wanted to go see my old friend, Cammy?   Was it because the weather had turned nice enough to provide just the right amount of cure for my cabin fever?  Or was it merely a good excuse to get away from that shrew, I mean that, ah, lovely flower I’m married to?  I’m not sure really, I just know that I went - boy, did I ever!

            I well remember the start of that ill-fated day.  It was a Saturday morning, about 9:00 AM, 75 degrees with a light breeze.  I was out on the deck with my morning coffee

and enjoying the sunshine, when that soft, sweet voice came wafting to my ears,  “HEY DO-NOTHING!  Whata ya got planned for today?”

             “I’m not sure, my love, I haven’t quite finished my coffee yet.”

            “Well suck it down, slick! Ya got two choices.  You can stay here and cut the grass and trim the trees with me, or you can go to my mother’s house and cut her grass and trim her trees.  You also have to go say happy birthday to that old fart friend of yours down at the home.”

            “You mean Cammy Lobe?”

             “Well, moron, how many old fart friends do you have?  You can go before you start your work, but DO NOT piddle  around!  You have far too much work to do.”

            Being spoken to in this manner really infuriates me.  I gathered up all my energy, turned and looked right in her eyes, and as usual got in the last word,  “Yes, dear.”

             Cammy Lobe was a friend of mine who lived down at the  Sandy Dunes Rest Home.  Although Cammy was 86 and mostly confined to his wheelchair, he had no lack of energy or enthusiasm.  I suppose that’s why Cammy’s kids had chosen Sandy Dunes. After all, it did have a swimming pool, an aerobics class, and a full service machine shop.

             The head nurse looked up as I came through the doors, attempted to smile and started to shake her head.

             “Good morning, Nurse Needlestick, I’m here to wish Cammy a happy birthday.”

             “I’m sorry, Mr. Bach, Cammy isn’t in his room right now.  I’m not exactly sure where he is, but you might try the machine shop.  He’s been spending a lot of time down there lately.”

             I shuddered at the thought of some of Cammy’s other machine shop adventures.

             “He’s not still trying to develop a reinforcing mesh for Mrs. Bulgey’s corset, is he?  We almost didn’t get her out of the last one before she went from blue to purple.”

             “I know ,Mr. Bach, I know.  Thank God you had those bolt cutters with you!”

             “Well, nurse, when you’ve known Cammy as long as I have, you learn to be prepared.”

             The machine shop was empty, except for the instructor, who was sitting on the floor against the wall while rubbing the temples of his aching head, which was currently resting on his curled up knees. This appeared to be another Cammy reaction.

            “How’s it going, Oilcan?”

             “ Well, Mr. Bach, I may have had worse days, but I can’t remember when.”

            I nodded my head.

             “He’s not here, Mr. Bach.  He left just before you came in.  I tried to stop him, but you know Cammy!”

             I was afraid to ask, but I knew I had to,  “What did he do this time?”

             Oilcan slowly looked up and said, “I’m afraid he converted his wheel chair into a dune buggy!”

             “This,” I thought to myself, “is not a good thing.”

             I just prayed this wouldn’t be as bad as the time Cammy “tuned up” Mrs. Peterson’s hair dryer.  However, I was surprised at how quickly an 84 year olds hair can grow back.

             “ I’m afraid, Mr. Bach, that I don’t know how in the world it could get any worse.”

             I thought of this morning’s conversation, and said,  “You want to go cut some grass?”

             Upon my arrival, the sand dunes just behind the ‘home’ were nearly empty.  I say nearly because there, right out in the open, just to the left of the his-and-hers port-a-potties, was Cammy Lobe.  Cammy was smiling at me from beneath his World War II Flying Ace helmet when I stopped about five feet from him and his... his... dune buggy?

             “Cammy, what is this?”

             “Speak up son, you know I’m hard of hearing!”

             “WHAT IS THIS!”

             “This, Buckwheat, is the only V8 powered, supercharged, twin paddle tire wheelchair in existence!”

             “But Cammy, why?”

             “You bet it flies! Does 0-60 in 5 seconds!”

             “No, no Cammy, just look at this thing!  Do your kids know?”

             “I just told you it goes!  Didn’t you listen?”

             “Yeah Cammy I listened, but you’re too old for this.  You need to get out of that thing before you get hurt.  You better listen to me!”

                         “What’s that son?  You wanta see?”

             Before I could say anything else, my voice was completely drowned out by the roar of 650 horses of wheelchair mounted V8.  At this point my brain was screaming at me to run, but my feet refused to respond.  The next thing I saw was the huge roostertail of sand as the wheelchair, buggy, dune thing rocketed into motion.

             Had the wheels of Cammy’s buggy been pointed straight ahead, things may have gone alright.  However, they were turned just enough to send Cammy and his invention on a collision course with the , thankfully vacant, port-a-potties.  Cammy and his fire-breathing monster dead centered John and Jill at about 80 miles an hour.  This caused the port-a-potties to shoot up in the air, and slightly back, toward  me.  The crash had also not straightened the buggy’s wheels. It’s course had changed,  just a bit.  The circle had widened,  just a bit.  To the best of my calculations this put the buggy on a direct pathway, to me.

            I’m not sure what hit me first, Cammy, Jill or John, but I do know that I felt three distinct  ‘contacts.’  The last thing I remember seeing  was the face of a wild, crazy, smiling old man, a whole lot of roll bars, a very large sand roostertail and long, streaming trails of toilet paper.

             I’ve not found out for sure what happened to Cammy.  Rumor has it that after hitting me, the wheels of the buggy straightened and the whole combuberation headed east, running out of fuel somewhere south of North Dakota.

             Oh well, it is nice and peaceful here at ‘traction city.’  The nurses are nice, I don’t have to cut the grass, and ....

             “HEY DO-NOTHING! What are you doing lying around while the grass gets taller?”

            Oh no......

---

 [GSB1]

 Edenfield Picking Party, 3-22-2026

We had our second bluegrass/old time jam here at the house last Sunday, the 22nd. I didn't pay attention, but my wife kept track, and she said between pickers and grinners we had nearly 40 folks here during the afternoon. The day started out fairly nippy, with the early morning temperature around 39 degrees, but by the time the first musical note drifted through the trees it was 67 degrees and blue skies. We figured that was about as perfect weather as we could have hoped for, and everyone seemed to have a good time. In April we'll move the jam to the first Saturday of every month, as that seems to be the day with the least amount of other things going on. Eventually we're hoping folks from out of town will pull RVs up and just stay for the weekend. That will take time, so for now we'll just keep working on building the local attendance. 

Sometimes beginning musicians feel intimidated about playing in a jam setting, but

what they need to realize is that every single good musician started out as a bad musician, but they worked on it and improved. You can only get to a certain level playing by yourself, and if you really want to step up your game it's vital for you to play around/with others. Things such as keeping rhythm with a group, starting off a song, getting in and out of a song, and improvising lead breaks on the fly to songs you've never heard before can only be accomplished by jumping into the pond and learning to swim. You also have to get over the fear of making mistakes...every one of us has crashed and burned at some point, and we're all still alive, so you have to "just do it". 

Remember, this is all for fun. 

Farming

Here at our new place I have lately been working on the gardening situation. Someplace my wife can grow lots of "stuff" has long been a dream of hers, so I am duty bound to try and provide her an opportunity to make that happen. We aren't totally starting from scratch, as when we bought this place there were a dozen fruit trees, 8 old table grape vines, 4 blueberry bushes, and 7 strawberry plants. However, rather then keeping things in pristine condition, the past owners of this house adopted a policy of neglect, thereby ensuring that I would have plenty to do when it came time to restore/expand things. 

For the last week I have been concentrating on cleaning up around the existing trees and plants, as well as starting to install fencing around new plots in order to keep the deer out. I'm hoping to finish fencing several areas this week, and at that point we can plant the additional 24 berry bushes we have waiting, as well as all the stuff my wife has started here in the house. It seems she has an entire laboratory experiment under the grow light in the utility room, just waiting to escape into the raised bed boxes. And, I might add, Mrs. Goodwrench is chomping at the bit to get stuff in the ground, so my happy butt had best not dally too long. 

"There is no rest for the wicked"...a truer statement has never been penned. 

Fruit tree and berry area

Carport planter box

First four raised beds