The Hunting Times

 Alex towed the log splitter to a buddies' house to help split some firewood.  Said it would not keep running.  I had him put in a new plug and they got the tree split. Now it's our turn to split up some wood.  The darn splitter would run, but ONLY if you kept the front end lowered to the ground.  That's odd!  So we split Nick's entire barn full of wood with the splitter angled down.  It was inconvenient, but not insurmountable. Thus starts the cogs inside the brain.  It can't be the gas as tipping the splitter DOWN moves the gas away from the carburetor.  Maybe a filter is clogged?  Maybe the carburetor is gummed up?  Time to start eliminating possibilities... I had Sandy purchase a can of Carb & Choke Cleaner.  I tore off the air filter and the carburetor after shutting off the gas line.  I cleaned everything and all parts appeared to be functioning properly.  Reassemble. Next I drained the gas tank (there was not even 1" (2.5 cm) left in there).  I found

 After all the snow that fell, we figured the coyotes would be out and about trying to find some food.  We were wrong.  Kruger and I left at 0700 on Saturday, February 5 to try our luck. We drove just into the lot on Marshall's South Farm from the N.  Again, due to the snow, we parked just off the road and hiked in from the N.  We stayed on top of the hill hoping to call some in from the swamp.  There was a slight breeze that was supposed to be coming from the W but changed on us and came in from the E.  We saw four deer, but no 'yotes. We drove over to the fertilizer plant, hiked across the creek and set up in the bottoms.  We heard a blue jay and saw one crow, but no deer nor coyotes this morning. It was chilly enough, -1 degree F (-18 C) that any exposed skin was getting frozen in 30 mins.  And even my fingers inside my gloves were chilly.  It was a pretty day but very cold. The set up behind the fertilizer plant. There is a call and a decoy directly to the right of the cent

 A very slow-moving storm came across Indiana the past week.  Everything was shut down.  We ended up with 13" (33 cm) on the farm over the course of two full days.  And then the wind picked up and blew drifts of over 3 feet (0.9 meters). I buried the Gator trying to get it out of the barn so that I could use the tractor to push snow.  So I used the tractor to push the Gator out and pushed snow for an hour.  It was quite chilly. Then the kids came over to play - build snow forts, ride sleds behind the Gator, take tractor rides, and of course throw snowballs at Papaw! This is the first wave - about 5" or so (12.7 cm) The three older kids playing in the piles I pushed off the driveway Wes and a kitty headed into the barn. We're fixin' to ride the tractor! To the left of the picture you can see the remains of the drift that buried the Gator.

 Of course it is VERY Subjective to what rum any one person will like the best.  That did not stop us from grabbing 9 different types of rums and doing a blind taste test. Our methodology was flawed.  We did not measure the quantity of rum in each cup nor did we measure the amount of coke we poured into the mix with each rum.  We probably would come to different conclusions if we followed a better testing method.  Oh well. Kathy, Alex, Shelby, Nick, and I all had 9 Dixie cups with a different rum in each one.  We tasted them and then ranked them in order of preference for taste.  We had a few other rums we could have used and probably would if we were to repeat this test.  The rums we used are pictured here.  Missing, that we should have added into the mix because we had them were:  Bacardi white, Kenny Chesney's Blue Chair Bay Vanilla, and Myers. Each person rated the rums in order and then we compared.  The top 3 were pretty unanimous:  Captain Morgan Private Stock, Kraken, and C

 So yep, we planted 130 or so trees.  Some we dug by hand (very few) and others we borrowed Uncle Andy's gas-powered auger - which, when it runs, it runs great.  But don't shut that thing down and then try to restart it.  You'll blow out your shoulder pulling on the start cord.  However, we got the rest of the trees planted using that thing. I gave in and used the income from the farm to purchase a PTO-driven auger for the back of the tractor.  Mama questioned my sanity as the trees are already in place.  Alas, when the highway gets redone this summer, we will lose at least 11 trees.  Plus, any that don't make it will need to be replaced.  And, we had four more coming in to replace some that had perished. I purchased a CountyLine brand from Tractor Supply ($530 for the unit plus $120 for the auger)  because they had it in stock.  It came in a crate and required assembly.  The directions recommended that TWO people assemble the unit so that it does not drop on anyone and

 We woke up to chilly 25 degree weather (-4C) on Sunday, January 2, 2022.  Krueger picked me up and we headed to Marshall's S farm to call coyotes.  It had been raining and the ground was saturated but not yet frozen.  It was difficult to find a place to park the truck and then we had to wade across standing water to get to our hunting spot. The wind was out of the NE, so we walked in from the W and called at the edge of the creek, facing to the E.  We pushed 4 deer out on our walk into our setup. We used a distress call with no luck.  We switched to a challenge howl and got a ton of response from the swamp.  Then we played coyote pups in distress and that brought in two - probably a male and female and probably the Alphas. I put a super-sonic 300 Blackout round into the lead dog out of my AR-platform suppressed rifle.  He yelped and headed E to die.  The second dog spun around and bolted without me having an opportunity at a shot. We drove over to the golf course and repeated the