If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

How to get screwed over by an Alaskan!

When we last visited, you and I, (and that creepy girl over there who keeps staring at me)  were in the midst of a large undertaking.  Not the body preservation type of undertaking but the other kind where you.....oh sheesh forget it.  I was in the middle of a job.  Let's not complicate things with extra words and shiny letters.

I was playing with my wood, no... another guys wood, no.....hell no... why do these things always come out in such a masturbatory disturbing way.  I am getting way off track and I'm only on the second paragraph.
Better yet just go back and read the last post.   LAST POST 

OK now that were all up to speed. I will refresh you on the details of the wood stove bartering system.
We will just call the guy Alaska because that's where he lives most of the time and I hear the weather is crazy, cold and mind numbing.  (sorta fits).
Alaska tells me that I have to haul the firewood out of the woods, split it and stack it and when I reach 22 face cord then we are even.  (A face cord is a stack of wood cut 16" wide, stacked 4 feet high and 8 feet long).  He will supply: chain saws, tractor, trailer, splitter and gas.  I supply: My ability to work like a pack of migrant Mexicans.

First weekend is over.  16 of 22 face cord finished.  6 more to go.

I show up Friday, after working overtime at my real job, to get a jump on the last part.

Now before I go any further let's refresh the numbers of the job.  Last year he told me he paid $250 for the stove and he just wants to get his money back.  This year he tells me $375 plus $50 for delivery.  I know the delivery charge is a flat out lie because my co-worker is his nephew and he and another coworker of mine went and picked it up for Alaska and never received a dime in compensation.  So now we went from $250 to $425.  Not much I can do about that.  I didn't get it in writing the year before.  Chalk one win up for Alaska.

Alaska sells his wood for $55 a face cord.  That is roughly $1200 bucks for 22 face cord.  His only cost on that is the fuel involved for me to collect it.  His idea is that I receive a 1/3 of the profit on the wood sales which roughly equals the $425 number from above.  OK.  It really sucks knowing that I should only be working for the original $250.

OK back to Friday.  I show up and he is out on the splitter stacking wood.  He has finished stacking my pallets which I had set up to hold 22 face cord.  I didn't like this much because now I had to re-set everything to finish.

He has the tractor hooked up to the trailer, the splitter right next to it.  He has the crane on the splitter (which was magically vacant when I was splitting)  He simply lowers the grapple hook into the trailer full of firewood rounds, grabs one, hits the button and swings it over and places it on the splitter.  Exactly what I had wanted to do but of course when I was doing it the splitter wasn't available and the neither was the crane.
I shake my head in disgust as my back screams at me when it notices how easy this job could have been.
This is where it gets interesting.

Alaska looks at me and says, "I don't know why you didn't do it this way.  It's so much easier.  What you were doing was just plain stupid".

Dumbfounded I stood there.  I didn't know what to say.  It was like the time that kid hit a deer with his car in front of my house.  The cops showed up and put the deer out of its misery.  The kid didn't want the deer so the officer gave me a permit to keep it.  I drug it into the garage and skinned and cleaned it.
The next day the same kids shows up and knocks on the door.  He asks me if I can make jerky for him out of the deer that he hit with his car.  "I mean cuz after all it was my car that killed it".
That was the dumbfounded look I had on my face now.
Chalk another one up for Alaska.  Not too often that you can leave me speechless.

So with that said he looks at me and says, "what do you think about paying for gas?"
"It's only fair.  When I need a part flown in, up in Alaska, I don't just pay for the part I have to pay for the fuel in the plane too.  If you don't pay for gas then I'm losing money on this deal.  I should have just taken cash for the stove."

Once again the deer/car kid is knocking at my door.  This is like Stephen King wrote the movie Ground Hogs Day.   I'm speechless!  Again!!

After a few seconds, and swallowing a mouthful of blood that I had been collecting from my tongue where my teeth had just crushed it I calmly said, "No I don't think that's fair".
"You don't think that's fair?", Alaska says.
"Nope and I think the 22 face cord price is pretty steep too", I tell him.  (I'm starting to get my feet back)
"You do, eh?" Alaska torts.
I shake my head up and down, once again getting a firm grasp on the tongue with my molars.

He stands there for a minute, kinda looking me up and down.  Weighing, measuring me.  Reading me, which was quite easy at this point.  I'm sure my face was as red as the blood that was about to pour from this guy's nose.
"Well I guess we're even then", he says.

Mother F^&%#$!!!!!!!!!

If that kid knocks on my door one more time today I'm gonna lose it.

Once again speechless.  WTF did he just say?  We are even?

"Come again?", I say.
"All square", he says.

At this point I don't know what to do.  I still had 6 face cord to go.  Why would he pull the plug on the deal?  Was he going to try and take the stove back?  Did he realize the error of his ways?  Was he just trying to get rid of me so I wouldn't ask to hunt his land or cut anymore wood for my own house?

"Well I'm sorry it didn't work out the way you had hoped it to," I said to him.
"It's better this way", he responds.  Once again I am dumbfounded by what comes out of this guys mouth.
Why is it better this way?  You just lost out on 6 more face cords worth of labor.  I don't get it.

I turn and walk back to my truck.  I'm still a little baffled by the sequence of events but I have a wood stove.  He ended up with $1650 worth of sale ready firewood.  To me it's even.  I'm not upset about the 16 face cord.
I am upset about the fact that he would do that to me.  I had done nothing but work my butt off for everything we had bartered for.  I wasn't out to screw him over by any means.  Just doesn't make sense.

So in the end I learned a few valuable lessons.
#1 Get everything in writing before you agree to a deal.
#2 Don't trust Alaskans
#3 Don't think everything has to make sense (at least in your mind)
#4 Lastly, don't open the door when that damn kid is knocking!

OK Now I get it!


Stay tuned, Deer Camp is in two weeks.  Preparations begin today!

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Bushman Acre Updates

The day has come folks for me to say goodbye.......to a cold house!  Heck yeah!  The temperature finally dropped enough to give the new wood stove a couple of nights of burning

Last night when I got home it was 62 in the house.  I fired the stove up and within a couple hours the house was up to 72.  It was very warm.  So warm I didn't even put anymore wood on the fire.  I started it with 5 pieces and only added two more and the last one went in at 8:30 pm.  When I got up this morning it was 70 in the house and there were a couple small, glowing coals left in the bottom of the stove.  I added a piece of paper and two small logs and blew a little air at it and 'poof' back to life it came.  So far I am pleased with its performance.

Alas all things are never just good.  There is always a catch.  This time it was one of the worst.  I had made a deal with a guy to trade the wood stove for labor.  Well he is down from Alaska for his fall hunting.
Unfortunately we never discussed actual work/dollar value etc.  So he dropped the bomb on me last Saturday morning.  I had to haul 22 face cord of firewood rounds out of the woods and split and stack them.
That is a lot of wood.  176 foot long, stacked 4 foot high.  Man I was not happy.  I did not think that was fair at all but my dumbass already had the stove installed in the house.  Up shitz creek without a paddle I was.  That guy gave me the wood allright.  So Saturday morning I started hauling it out of the woods via tractor and trailer.  I couldn't split it right away because the splitter was in use elsewheres so I had to stockpile it.


The pile pictured above is less than half of what I stockpiled that day.  I didn't take a picture at the end because my hands were shaking so bad and I might have vomited if I looked at that pile one more time.
I started at 8 am and finished at 6pm  I stopped once for a sandwich.  The average round weighed in at 60 lbs or so.   The joyous part was I still had to split and stack it all.  I wasn't even sure if I had enough stockpiled to reach my exorbitant sum of 22 face cord.
Sunday rolled around and my step son Joe was going to help me.  He had no idea what he was in for and as a matter of fact I haven't seen or heard from him since.  Ooops!
We split and stacked that entire pile and finished at 5pm Sunday night.  Grand Total of 16 face cord.  Mother Fuc&%!!!!!!!!!!!

The worst part was picking all those pieces up three times.  Once to load them in the trailer, once to unload them from the trailer and once again to get them up on the splitter.  If Joe hadn't helped I may have........well I'll leave that to your imagination.  I have to go back this weekend and finish.  Then I'm gonna give that guy the bird and peel out in his driveway!

I finished cleaning and harvesting the garden as well.  Got a heck of a last pick on the peppers.

Also had another addition to the farm.  Honey Bees!


My friend needed a new place to winter his bees so I offered up the farm as a winter retreat for these little winged guys!

The chickens and the 2 ducks are getting along just fine.  Yes 2 ducks.  I had to get Louie a girlfriend.  Say hello to LuLu!


It has been very tiring around here .  I need to just get all this crap done so I can go hunting and relax and enjoy fall!

I'll see ya later,
-Bushman

Sunday, October 6, 2013

A Night Among the Trees

The orange flames danced their way into the sky.  Lifting the swirling embers high into the air where they courted each other in a brief but intense romance before disappearing into the dark abyss of the endless night.
As the fire began to diminish the two men inched closer to the warming flames.  It was cold tonight.  Every minute that passed the flames receded and the breath from the men became more and more visible.

"It's almost time to hit the hay", the man with the 4 day beard stubble said.
"Yeah, I suppose, fires just about out anyways", his companion agreed.

The two men arose from their perch near the circle of rocks that held the only warmth and light in an otherwise sea of cold darkness.  They entered into and older tent style camper.  Shortly after, the "woof" of a lantern could be heard and the camper windows began to glow a soft yellow.

"Turn that heater on, it's freezing in here", the older man said.
"C'mon Pops, don't be a sissy", the younger man said as he bent over and lit the heater.

Another "woof" and the propane heater came to life.  The metal heat reflector began singing as it warmed.
Within minutes the camper was warm.  The younger man remembered a time long ago when the older man was the one who lit the heaters and the lanterns.  He remembered the man making lists and planning the meals.  The times had reversed themselves and it was now the younger man's turn to run the deer camp.
He hoped one day  his son would be able to do the same for him.

As the old man rolled into his sleeping bag the younger reached for the heater.
"What are you doing?", asked the father.
"Shutting the heater off for the night", said the son.
"Leave it on, I'll freeze", said the old man's voice from somewhere in the mountain of blankets and sleeping bags.

The son turned off the lantern and crawled into his own pile of blankets.  He lay there for some time thinking about days gone by.  He chuckled when he remembered how his father used to shut off the heater at night because it was "too warm" in there.  He drifted off to sleep hoping for snow and dreaming of big bucks and happy times.





Saturday, October 5, 2013

Peeka-Boo

My new chickens finally made their way to my house.  They are awesome.  The prettiest birds I've ever had.  Also the friendliest.  You can walk right up to these girls and pick them up.  They follow me all over the yard.  They are very curious.  Yesterday as I was finishing up the coop they were free ranging and when I couldn't find them they were in the garage roaming through all my stuff.  It was comical.

They are still adjusting to life with Hubba the rooster and Louie the duck.  Not sure if Hubba is gonna be around much longer.  Normally roosters protect hens but he is wanting to beat them up.  I have had to intervene a few times now.  Hopefully he settles down.  It's a big change for all of them and I have been trying to keep them separate as much as possible until they get used to each other.

May I present Peeka and Boo.  Peeka is the lighter colored one and Boo is the darker.

Peeka


Boo.  She is not as camera friendly.  She just wouldn't sit still very long.


Peeka


Framing in the interior of the coop.


Finished the wood stacks on the patio.


This is how I moved all the wood.


This is where I picked them up.  Two black chickens in a sea of white chickens.  There must have been 60 white Leghorns running around.  They would surround me it was so funny.


Joe in his new treestand.  We need to paint it still.


The rewards from last weekends harvest.  The BBQ sauce turned out pretty good.  The pepper sauce is awesome.  I am not calling it hot sauce because it isn't very hot.  I used red jalapenos from the garden along with a few Bahamian chilies.  While it was simmering I put in a few of last years smoked and dried jalapenos.  It  has great depth to the sauce.  Just a tiny bit of heat but lots of good tomato, chipolte flavor with a hint of vinegar.  The three pints in the right are pepper sauce and the 4 on the left are BBQ.



That's it for now.  
-Bushman