Ted’s essays

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hammered by early winter blizzard

Two weeks ago I was photographing Autumn in The Bitterroot. It is typically a short season, but we do not normally, naturally get much snow until Thanksgiving – a month or so from now. The Blizzard of October 23-24, 2020 will stand out for a long time. I can count on a number of light snowfalls my Sportsman plow will push away along with the gravel that worked its way to the surface over the summer. Not this time. Thirteen and a half inches is WAY MORE than my little plow can push anywhere. This season started with the snowblower as my only snow management choice. It had two problems dealing with the overload. One was the gravel beating […]

October 25th, 2020 | Category: farm and garden, nature |

Autumn on our homestead

With four days of rain predicted and reasonable certainty that both the summer and the Indian Summer are history, I saw this morning as my last chance to seed the areas my construction projects this year laid bare. I have been trying to buy or borrow a real harrow to work the seeds under cover, but nothing worked out. So I made my own along the lines of cheap, scrappy farm yard stuff. Old boards. Fence scrap. Screws. Chain. Ingenuity. It worked just fine. It has been almost a decade since I sold off my 20-year business, The Gentleman Farmer with tractors, implements, good-will and customer list. Our Bunkhouse homestead demanded a snow plow so I have a Polaris […]

October 10th, 2020 | Category: farm and garden, nature |

You have 34 days left in this world

We are between TEOTWAWKI and TSHTF. That is to say that the world as we knew it at the beginning of this year will never come back. It ended. Forever. However the worst is yet to come – in BIG WAYS. Most analysts who have any credibility put the latter date on or around the USofA November election 34 days from now. It could easily be plus or minus a few days, but The Big Ugly is on the visible horizon. Warnings come to us from people studying their own specialties; all are converging in about a month: weather, environment, crop failures and numerous hits that the global food supply chain is suffering global politics, friction and threat of regional […]

October 1st, 2020 | Category: household, new world order, preparing |