Ted’s essays

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almost art

I’ve been laid low by my over-used lower back for most of a week now (wrenching on cars is a younger-man’s game). The last couple of days I found myself in my studio puttering with a paintbrush on my second-hand garden stakes. Years ago I used some rattle-can paint to dress up some cheap cut-steel garden stakes that were left behind at our Grangeville house, but this time I upped my game significantly. When I recently bought the little Testors enamel paint kit I was not sure I would use it enough to justify Blick’s modest $20 price for 8 jars of paint, but I have had plenty of fun – and have just begun, making almost no dent […]

May 25th, 2020 | Category: cultural |

solar power upgrade

When I set up my ham radio shack six years ago, I chose to go solar-powered 12-volt because amateur radio needs to work regardless of the grid up or grid down situation. Last year I upgraded to second and third deep-cycle lead-acid batteries. I added other uses to the system and last winter was frequently running low on stored energy. So I upgraded the panel and controller to modern, more powerful ones. The new panel overwhelmed the new controller. It should not have according to the specs on both, but there it was. Controller said, “Too much juice”. Readily admitting to my ignorance, I contacted a company with a long history of servicing the off-grid community and ordered a […]

May 16th, 2020 | Category: amateur radio, household, technology |

Bitterroot Mother’s Day Tour

Long on my ‘should do’ agenda was to take the old road from Darby to Hamilton. The ONLY route before the “new” highway 93 replaced it… with a primary north-south artery that at several points is lower than the 100-year floodplain. I wanted to familiarize us with the alternate route if that 100-year-flood ever happened our way. Better still, it was a calm, beautiful trip with hardly another car on the road. See for yourself. Oh, but if you are considering relocating from any USofA socialist population center, be warned that the winters here are brutally cold, snow shoveling is overwhelming, the growing season is too short for radishes, throughout the summers forest fires take out most of the homes, […]

May 10th, 2020 | Category: nature |

planting moon

The moon over Montana will be full on Thursday, March 7th. Bob Cannard, my organic gardening mentor encouraged us to plant on every full moon. He did not touch on whether or not he believed it cosmically favored the plants themselves. His expressed reasoning was that it organized us to do regular plantings whether that was seeds, starts, bare-root, or transplants. Get something started every full moon and you will always have a good garden. From long before there were computers, televisions and electric lights, people on nature-driven cycles have called the first full moon of May, “The Planting Moon”. Whereas in some environments planting and growing year-round is possible, here our growing season is short, but its days […]

May 4th, 2020 | Category: farm and garden, nature |

pistol range opens for business

Closing in on three years in this homestead and I finally get around to establishing my pistol range. We have a lovely hillside that is safe, secure and convenient. I had previously carved out a flat area and merely needed to build some target stands. Missy’s birthday was my inspiration. Tradition has me gifting a firearm on her birthdays, but we were two behind in actually shooting them. I decided THAT was the big gift this year. We shot mostly her Buckmark .22 pistol, my old grandpa High Standard .22 , but also gave hers and my .38s a small outing. I prefer to force myself to focus on the fundamentals by shooting from 25 yards out. That didn’t work […]

May 2nd, 2020 | Category: guns |