Hair of the Dog

We came home Friday evening to find that Sprocket had a large, red, swollen bump on his hind leg.  Fang marks are obvious, as you can see in the picture below, but the perpetrator is still a mystery to us. punctures are spaced just a half centimeter apart, so it was small - whatever it was.  Possibly a small snake or a tarantula?

Any one have any clues as to what this bite is from?

Thanks,
Sara

Wild as the West Texas wind

The wild West Texas wind rolled in today.  Haven't heard of any damage from it yet, but it sure seemed to wake up a lot of South County.  But given the way the day started today, we thought we should finish with it too.

We finally got our PhilMax blades up and spinning this evening, and so far they seem to be doing great.  They seem to love the erratic gusts of wind we've been getting today, and spin up to charging speed quickly.
 
The wildlife out here is getting active.  We've seen lots of javelina, mule deer, and other critters out along the roadways over the past few days (though still not the primate who left his bag of feed; see previous post).  The local quails had two clutches this summer, and the babies are like tiny copies of their parents running around.

Our animal is doing well too.  Sprocket is back at his post as guard hound and loving it, though sometimes he barks too much at night.

A chicken got et while we were away, so we're down to nine.  They're getting pretty hefty though.  Finishing the coop has been on the back burner lately, but I wan't to get some work done on it this weekend. 

I will take lots of pictures for the next post.

Lately

We
drove and ate road food for 2 1/2 days.  On the second day we stayed with
our good friends Sandy and Charlie in Midland. We made sure we got the
maximum payload out of our small car: I packed a tabletop drill press, a
12 volt cooling fan, a reciprocating saw and many other tools (pretty
much the remainder that had been left up North). Sara also got to bring
some of her stuff as well.

In
energy news, the fossil fuel industry has had a year full of disaster
and negligence. The Massy Energy mine explosion,demonstrated that to
some, production value outweighs safety and lives. With BP the cost of
redundancy was just too much, so instead it cost lives and tainted our
waters. Maybe BP should focus more on their solar panels -- on second
thought, maybe not. We all need to be more serious about the research
and application of alternative energies, and this is a commitment Sara
and I take very seriously.

On my way to the Ranch Lodge, I ran into this interesting sight along the road:

The
bag says "Primate Feed," and behind the bag are about 80 jars of peanut
butter. Next to that, a jug of wine and (out of the photo) ten 2x4s.
Obviously there is someone with interesting plans ---  your guess is as
good as mine!  

Only in Terlingua.

Travel

In our short time up north we manged to have a gathering of friends and family, most are excited about are new home and some don't quite get it. As far as far west Texas goes, you really need to go there to fully understand. We will be on the road tomorrow headed back and really can't wait to get back to our little off the grid home. I have both solar and automotive related customers waiting and Sara has here job at the ranch to get back to as well. Many new and existing allenergies.net projects are coming we promise.
Well if you see a red suzuki aerio with an allenergies.net bumper striker, give us a wave.

Set in Stone

Its been busy here. We poured our bathroom floor/ foundation yesterday in about 3 hours of hard work. Of course the preparation took up a bit of our spare time over the past few weeks, digging into the hillside, setting the plumbing, laying the re-bar, and gathering the washed river gravel.
   The pour turned out great and we should have our bathroom closed in by winter. Just used a single drain with the whole pour sloping to it for the shower, and we used dedicated gray water lines for the shower and sink.

    Business has been busy and we have two solar installations already scheduled for September, along with plenty of automotive and electrical jobs. We met some of our neighbors for the first time yesterday (they had been away) and today we gave each other tours of our houses. Very nice folks. Sara has been working at the ranch office for the past few weeks, which explains why the blog entries have been so sparse. We are going to do a quick trip up north to see our family and tie up some loose ends -- should be fun.
 

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Adventures

Well, we finally got some hands-on
experience with large concrete pours, and at the hands of masonry
masters P+R. 1^st Biggest Lesson:
prepare everything in advance, even the little rut under the concrete
mixer so the wheelbarrow can fit easier. 2^nd
Biggest Lesson: get more gravel/sand than you think you will use,
then go get some more.

The magic ratio? One shovel Portland
per five shovels aggregate (no magic really, just a veteran's experience). Mixer
maxes out at ~25 shovel-loads, so that means 20 of aggregate and five
of cement. Three giant coffee containers of water at first, then
season to taste. Too wet makes the concrete weak, but too dry makes
it weak also. Is your gravel full of sand or dirt? Sand is better, so
pour a shovel-load from arm height and watch for a dust cloud. The
smaller the dust cloud, the less dirt.

Also spent a large chunk of time
working on our solar gig. Welding is always fun, though hard on your
skin and clothing. The rack turned out very nice, though sometimes it
felt like every weld was a battle (against wind, or inexperience
[mine, not Casey's], or indecision). Personally, my biggest dilemma
was how high to mount it! Our client is not over-large in stature,
but she does have horses, and horses will rub against anything if
they feel like it. We opted to make it easier for the client to use,
instead of so high that the horses wouldn't bump it. Perhaps the
equines will leave it alone, anyway.

This friendly little snake was found in
the barn, and I couldn't resist the chance to hold him/her. Anyone
know what kind it is? Some kind of garter snake, to be sure, but
there are so many kinds!

We got a little bit of rain off
Saturday's storm, which means a few extra gallons in the tank thanks
to our new gutters. No real flooding, thankfully.

Sprocket got his first real swimming
lesson this weekend, too. He can swim just fine, and he even has
webbed toes, but he was still scared and wheezy after one go around
the pool. Once he let me buoy him up, he chilled out and treaded
water. It was fun for all of us, though the skinniest among us found
the water too cold and got out after just a minute! We thought the
cooler temperatures were wonderful! One thousand times better than
in NY, where the water flows from mountain springs year-long, and at
a constant 45 degrees Fahrenheit!

Swimming truly is medicinal, and
perhaps more-so in the desert. We all felt invigorated, and the
water-wary pooch lost his persistent aches and spent the rest of the
day running laps around the rest of us.

Early in the week, we got to show our
neighbor around the homestead. We love to show off our place, mostly
because the views are amazing! At least once a day, the raw beauty of
this place takes my breath away.

The past week has left us a little
tired and a little sunburned, but overall very satisfied with our
accomplishments, small and large.