No grass yet

We haven't yet gotten the grass planted for Angus. I've no idea why, I just haven't yet gotten to it. Our days have been pleasantly full in any case. Like yesterday, we bottled a run of an oatmeal/coffee/bourbon stout, then re-racked a blonde imperial beer into a secondary carboy, then we kegged an imperial IPA. That was around checking the greenhouse, going for a bike ride and cleaning up around the house.

Today was dirt work for me. I spent 4 or 5 hours on the tractor moving old piles of rocky sand around, mostly to shine up the driveway a bit. Then I hooked up a drag behind the tractor and smoothed out the driveway. Crystal spent a good bit of the day planting and working in the greenhouse.

We think tomorrow will be brewing another 10 gallons of beer, 2 batches of 5 gallons each. One is a hoppy beer, the other is a watermelon beer (for summer days).

Now dinner is cooking and life is calm and good.

Working on the greenhouse

We’re working away on the greenhouse. I got all the frames built for the grow beds, then we all worked together to get the dirt moved back into there. Got 12 yards of dirt delivered one day, and two days later we had it all moved in. I was pretty happy about that. Crystal has now gotten so much planted out there that I have no idea what the heck all is in there.

We also decided to work up an outdoor grow bed by the battery building. It’s about 15’ X 25’ and I’m working on getting a fence put up around it to keep the deer out. We’re playing with the idea of putting a cover over it that’ll do a better job so our hard work doesn’t get all et up. (That’s not a typo, it’s how I say it).

Part of that was laying out some of the ground out there for a little bit of grass for Angus the pup. It’s not too big, since we’ll have to water it to get it going. If it all works out we’ll make it a little bit bigger next year. That’s if we haven’t moved to San Carlos and taken off on the boat for good.

Don’t laugh, it sometimes sounds pretty appealing.

In general, things are going well. We’re all healthy and life is going well.

A busy day of staying at home

Today, we managed to keep busy most of the day. We started the day with some internet, then Crystal and I went for a nice little bike ride. Then we got together on some seeds and what we might want to grow in the greenhouse.

BTW, the dirt for the greenhouse beds I built over the last week will be delivered on Wednesday. Then we get to move 13,000 pounds of dirt into the building :D.

Tonight we're making dinner and drinking.

Life is good.

Moving forward an inch at a time

Well, the Pliny the Elder beer and the Kentucky Oatmeal Bourbon Coffee Stout and happily in their secondaries and getting prepped. In the meantime I've made a car trip and picked up some beer "stuff" that will make our beer drinking a bit more fun. I lucked into a batch of beer equipment. Some of it is a little better than what I had, and it included kegs. So my buddy and I have purchased a kegerator (it's still on the way) along with a few other bits and pieces that we'll end up needing as we move forward.

So we'll have draft beer for 2 kegs at at time in the house.

pray for us

Also I've been working on the greenhouse like a crazy person. At this point the grow beds are all built and I've cleaned up the construction mess along with making the space useable. The topsoil/grow dirt is ordered and will be here in less than a week. I'll take pics when we get the dirt in there. It's been fun, a little hot, and a bit more work and figuring than I originally planned. But we're pretty close to planting stuff.

I've also ordered tires for my pickup, rewired the trailer lights on almost every thing, and continued cleaning up around here.

It feels good to get some stuff done.

We're still hoping to get to go to our sailboat docking class in May. We shall see.

In the meantime I'll keep brewing beer.

Working our way through the quarantine

We're still working away on projects and such to distract ourselves, and because they're fun.

Like today.... we started out, after tea/cacao, on re-racking a beer that we brewed about 10 days ago. It turned out pretty well, already at 7.2% alcohol. It'll be a little higher after bottle aging for a few weeks. It's a close of Pliny the Elder that Rich likes.

Yesterday Crystal and I brewed another beer, I Eat Oatmeal for Breakfast in Kentucky, from Boomchugalug.com. Man that was a crazy beer, started with lots of grains:



We've taken to brewing in the greenhouse, since it's super windy and there's nothing planted in there yet. That 6 gallons of liquid worked with all that grain, a fair amount of malt, coffee, a pound and a half of chocolate and a few hops. It came out dirty and oily and smelling like heaven. That beer is now happily bubbling away on the bar, as it will for a few days before we re-rack it and move it out to the battery building to sit in the secondary for a couple weeks. We're actively trying to collect enough bottles for bottling day.

That's the beer bubbling away

Stirring in the malt

Adding in some hops

Cooling down the wort so we can put it in the brew bucket

More cooling

Racking the beer into the brew bucket, look at that dark stuff!

The coco butter will float on top, when we re-rack we have to leave it behind

There was LOTS of trub left behind when we re-racked the Rich beer. Crystal saved it and is now making a bread starter with it. 

The rest of today? Worked on a motorcycle that needed some fuel system work and fixed a bum turn signal. Then I completely rewired a trailer I use for hauling stuff. Also put new LED lights on it all around. Finished with a little ride on the motorcycle and a good dinner.

Social distancing

We're practicing the social distancing, oh hell.... we always did. :D

Working around the house, waiting for a good day to get in a bike ride and playing outside.

Yesterday I watered the solar batteries, and cleaned the chimney. Crystal did our taxes. We also went for a middling walk, too windy to go out for too dang long. We also drank some beer and made some food. Really? This isn't much different than our normal lives.

Today I did a bunch of research on watermakers for Contigo (our 41.5' boat) and found some web sites by folks that have the same boat. It's good to see what other people have done and how they did it with the same volume constraints. I'm working through the paperwork on getting stuff done on the boat as well as I can manage through the online method, though that would have been how I did that anyway.

Mostly just checking in a bit. We'll all see what happens next.

Contigo is now our boat

The closing on the boat happened on Thursday around noon and the paperwork was sent out on Friday. It hasn't gotten here yet, of course. And there are still things to finish setting up. The U.S. Coast Guard paperwork got submitted but will take at least a couple of months to process. Then we can use that to apply for our Ship Station License for all the electronic stuff on the boat. WE already got our online FCC radio license. We'll also have to register all the emergency radio buoy stuff with yet another U.S. govt organization. Then we also have to process the paperwork in Colorado for buying the boat, our home port is listed as Del Norte, Colorado...... I think we'd need a MUCH deeper river to sail the boat up to the house. :D

We still have to set up for dry storage and work on the boat while we move forward from home with no way to get there to work on it. :D So I'll contact the sales guy at the Marina so I can get properly hooked up with the folks that own the boatyard where Contigo currently sits. And we have to work with the Marina down in San Carlos for the Temporary Import Permit that lets us keep the boat in Mexico for 10 years for the whopping sum of about $75.

We have to purchase insurance for it, required by Mexico to be on the water, it's liability insurance and not too expensive each year. And we have to get started working on our Temporary Mexican Citizenship application. Yes, there is such a thing.

There are several things we want to do to the boat for cruising and comfort there in the Sea of Cortez: Air conditioning, a blizzard of choices for that. We might go with something a little more expensive that uses half the energy so we can still use it judiciously while "on the hook"; I want a bow thruster on it for better/easier parking and that'll have to be done in the boat yard; and the boat needs an antifouling "bottom job" to keep the marine growth off it while sailing. We've found a place that does a copper treatment of the hull that has reliably lasted 10 years as opposed to the usual 2 years you get from ablative paint; I have to replace the house battery bank and perhaps upgrade the solar; and we'll have to install the fancy "MacPack" sail storage system that the previous owner (Chris) bought but didn't have time to install yet.

Of course, virtually none of that can get done while we're all on "lock down". So we'll get stuff in place and prepare. I'm taking an at home navigation class, we're both working on a Spanish class and there's a docking class we're studying for in May that we'll take on the water.

So we're sitting home but not sitting still.

How Y'all?