Washingtonians

[Chicken Rustler]

Quote:
Explain to the flat lander please. Avalanche Control, do they stop traffic, cause an avalanche, clean it up and make everyone wait? That could take hours. Don't they detour the traffic?

You post this at 4:25 why would they do this during rush hour?





Edit - added a question.

Yes, they stop traffic and make everyone wait. Yes, It takes hours. It is a mountain pass so there is no detour. I've only been over the passes a few times and not in winter but I would suspect that there is no real 'Rush hour' since most people usually work on the side they live on. I also don't know what makes them decide it's time to do it but when it needs done it better get done! I think they try to let people know as far ahead as possible so you postpone your trip a few hours. Maybe wanted to get it done before the Thanksgiving rush! I'm sure others know more details about it than me.

Yup what she said. I think they do try to plan as much as they can to do this during late night hours. There are kind of detours but they would involve going over other passes or the Columbia River Gorge. All of which would add hundreds of miles.

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

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These kinds of things so depend on the child..

Thanks! That helps a lot. I do need to find more time to spend with Olivia. I think she feels left out.

No need to explain "seeing math". I was one who always had to turn every math problem into a word problem so i could see how many cows were standing in a field in grade school or how much radioactivity is left in an isotope when I got to higher level maths. If I can't picture it, it is just numbers. I also see numbers in colors. Alex's math teacher yesterday said that Alex thinks way out of the box. How he reasons to solve problems is completely different than what he teaches, and he thinks this is great and it shows that Alex really thinks about the way numbers interact. Alex does not need the cows or the isotopes to learn, but for him math is also very visual. He read "Born on a Blue Day" a couple years ago, and though he is not a visual learner to quite the extent of the author, Alex was thrilled that there was someone who he could relate so well with. Alex's math teacher made a very interesting discovery this week. He was introducing a new concept in Algebra. and most of the kids missed the problems in their homework. He asked if any student could come to the front of the room and do the problem on the white board. Alex was the only one to volunteer. The teacher said he was hesitant to let Alex up as he had NOTHING on his paper and he thinks so far out of the box that most of the students are totally confused by what he says. This was the first time he was up at the whiteboard, and he said Alex wrote the problem out beautifully, step by step, not missing anything, and when he explained it, it made perfect sense! He said he was floored and wanted to call me right then and wished he had it on video. Even the studentswere able to follow him! In all these years, I never thought of having him write out his work on a big board! Years ago, I did marvel at how he writes in the sand at the beach with his feet just beautifully, yet he can't do with his hands what he can accomplish with his feet. Maybe it is all a fine-motor coordination thing, but he did OT fine motor skills for years with no success.

This is part of our problem too. DD is looking for more attention. Unfortunately, oldest son was very much attention seeking. And unfortunately, if he did not get enough then he sought out negative attention. My DH is not the greatest .... he is actually very selfish and I have had to guilt him into spending/doing stuff with kids. Well oldest DS and I had a blow out...he was 18...so he moved out. He is actually doing okay. He is coming up tonight to spend the night and have Thanksgiving with us. I am kind of glad he moved out. Our house is not in constant turmoil and has done some healing. Anway - about DD - because oldest DS needed so much attention...and was turning everyone's day upside down on a regular basis...I think that over the last few years 10 yo DD has not received as much positive attention that she should have...now trying to make up for this. And unfortunately she has sought out attention, also, even though it has been negative.....trying hard to do damage control now.

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

Quote:
Explain to the flat lander please. Avalanche Control, do they stop traffic, cause an avalanche, clean it up and make everyone wait? That could take hours. Don't they detour the traffic?

You post this at 4:25 why would they do this during rush hour?




Edit - added a question.

Pretty much. On Snoqualmie they are also cleaning the "shoots" that are across from the highway and there is a valley at the bottom, but the snow could potentially come up onto the hiway (I guess). But it is my experience that YES...this is what they do. Stevens and Snoqualmie both have spots that are pretty bad. Some of the shoots hit the hiway, others I don't think they do.

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

Quote:
Explain to the flat lander please. Avalanche Control, do they stop traffic, cause an avalanche, clean it up and make everyone wait? That could take hours. Don't they detour the traffic?

You post this at 4:25 why would they do this during rush hour?





Edit - added a question.

Yes, they stop traffic and make everyone wait. Yes, It takes hours. It is a mountain pass so there is no detour. I've only been over the passes a few times and not in winter but I would suspect that there is no real 'Rush hour' since most people usually work on the side they live on. I also don't know what makes them decide it's time to do it but when it needs done it better get done! I think they try to let people know as far ahead as possible so you postpone your trip a few hours. Maybe wanted to get it done before the Thanksgiving rush! I'm sure others know more details about it than me.

Oh, trust me, there are some that work on one side of the "mtn" and commute others. Also, big rigs coming back and forth regularly. Also...this time of year - holiday travel. They are figuring 3,000 cars an hour (I think that is what it was - I will have to double check) during the highest level today. Lots of traffic. No detours. Sit and wait.

 

[Chicken Rustler]

With all the talk of kids, school and learning I would like to share something OK? if oh well

See I struggled through high school as I am sure many of you can tell by my postings. One interesting thing that happened for me is that I had never been able to grasp the concept of fractions. Well when I hit college (at 40 something) I had a math instructor who put fractions in terms that made sense to me. This guy actually made math fun for me and I looked forward to his class. I enjoyed it so much that I would leave class and do my HW before I was due in my next class in 40 min. The instructor was also a bit amazed at the system I use to solve some math problems.
I guess my point here is that we all learn differently and that is the key. FIND what works for each person to learn in away that works for them.

 

[HoneysuckleHills]

Quote:
Yes they do but it is not easy to describe. It is mostly in the bark and the shade of grey the wood is.

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Lets start with CLEAN the flue. Then yes a good hot fire daily wll help. Also to reduce build up make sure that you only burn well seasoned wood. Seasoned wood by WA law is wood that has been cut AND split for a min of 90 days. It really needs longer to be real good. Also try to maintain an internal flue temp of 300-500*F. I am really curious about the size of your stove and the settings, based on the burn time you report.
Hope this is a little help. feel free to ask any more questions. I don't know all the answers but am willing to share what little I do know.

Love the help. Thank you!
I had my flue professionally cleaned and they said they were very clean and if I kept burning the way I do (hot) that I could wait 2 even 3 years between cleanings.
I only burn wood that's 12 months or older.
I have a thermometer on the outside of the stove. When it's up and running it usually reads 350 - 400. (But I noticed with maple it was 400 - 500.)
The website (link below) claims "up to 8 hour burn" which makes me wonder if I just don't put in enough wood.
I usually just add a couple pieces- maybe 1/3 full - because I don't want the wood to fall forward and rest on the glass.
One thing that may be different about my set up but I don't know if it would make a difference: the woodstove's flue is on the north side of the house which is on the north side of a hill. The air can swoop down the flue something fierce. Also, the pipes have two angles going up (it's not just a straight shot up and out the roof.)
Any ideas? Thanks for your help!
http://www.jotul.com/en-US/wwwjotulus/Main-menu/Products/Wood/Wood-stoves/Jotul-F-400-Castine/

 

[Stumpfarmer]

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Farms that get well maintained are almost always farms with multiple people working in jobs that have health benefits, or ones where there's a crop which is supported by some kind of price controls, or where there's a close relationship between maintenance and ability to keep farming (dairies and egg and fryer factories). Or hobby farms of one sort or the other. Beautiful wooden barns fall down and get replaced with steel frame sheds or with long piles of round bales under big tarps: there's not the money in raising most crops anymore to put out the time and money good buildings take.

We were not farming this parcel when the barn came down (when I was ten), beyond feeding up a dozen or so Holstein replacement heifers: that was when Dad was working as a union carpenter. There was no well here then anyway, we had to haul water or use the neighbor's trough. When we lost use of the old dairy barn Dad was already dead, we switched to putting all our hay at the BIL's family place, and there was nobody to push through a replacement anyway.

This isn't a sob story, I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm mostly pointing out a situation which gets repeated on small farms all over western Washington and Oregon. I know other beef people who have lost all their barns to floods along the Chehalis, replaced them with a loafing shed and piles of tarp-covered round bales, and kept farming, and I know people who have lost everything they owned to the real-estate developers because they got hung up on keeping buildings, including homestead houses that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs and reroofing and rewiring and replumbing, drip drip drip wears away the stone. I have friends who have half a million dollars in cash flow on Farmer's Market operations who live in travel trailers parked inside of steel shop buildings.

It depends on priorities and budget; if your priorities are to keep farming and your budget is such that you have to let barns fall down or you pull them down and sell the barn wood to people who make stuff for eBay, well, you do that. It's got no moral dimension beyond the commitment to a single piece of land or a group of neighbors or a way of life.

I think it's better than selling out and losing one of the few open places to more boring pale-grey houses with big complicated roofs and not enough yard too grow a vegetable garden. I know it's better than the great emptiness on both sides of I-90 in Lincoln County Washington, where all the farmsites have been replaced by more wheat, the few yard lights left shining over equipment sheds with no residences nearer them than a mile in any direction. The first time we took my daughter to Missoula I was shocked at the difference everywhere east of Moses Lake, houses which were landmarks to me when I was at WSU gone completely, farmsteads of house and barn and shop and sheds and windbreak replaced with ploughed ground.

We've been here since before 1900. We are still here now. These are the buildings we have right now- things may change. They've changed before, they will change again.

Hey, no problem. Don't sell wood on ebay and not talking about 'moral dimension', just was curious about animal housing. Nice you are committed to your land. Your situation is so depressing to me it makes mine look like a piece of cake. I guess I have lots to be thankful for! Hope your Thanksgiving is full of thanks too!

In many ways my family is a ground test of Tolstoy's "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" except for the most part we find amusement in the stuff. And we love to be here, which sets us apart from some people I know who keep farming and hate it. Buildings or not, that's what's depressing: living with the results of bad luck, bad weather, and other people's bad choices is pretty much life in general, is how I see it.

It does, however, give one an appreciation of the force of history: the place next door, with the barn we used for decades (and which my father, his father and uncles and brothers pretty much built, their names written in the poured concrete foundation) went from being a beautiful fifty-cow Certified Guernsey Dairy to a derelict huddle of buildings to a subdivision full of the kind of houses that get built to justify the price of the lot rather than to provide a pleasant and convenient place to live, because the owner then a young married man with a baby daughter volunteered for the AEF and got gassed in northern France in 1918, an invalid the rest of his life, too frail to farm after he turned sixty, his only child married to another farmer too many miles away to manage two properties.

Or as I sometime put it "it resembles the kind of novel I never read."

 

[Stumpfarmer]

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Awwe, what a perfect evening. All is well with the world (almost). Enjoy!

The DH keeps making comments about a house chicken.

She sure thinks she is a person with feathers.

Bacchus thinks he's at least a dog and possibly my favorite child, so why do I make him sleep outside in the rain? I tell him that he shouldn't complain, that he's made of 100% pure virgin wool, but he is not convinced.

 

[jbear]

Quote:
Explain to the flat lander please. Avalanche Control, do they stop traffic, cause an avalanche, clean it up and make everyone wait? That could take hours. Don't they detour the traffic?

You post this at 4:25 why would they do this during rush hour?





Edit - added a question.

Yes, they stop traffic and make everyone wait. Yes, It takes hours. It is a mountain pass so there is no detour. I've only been over the passes a few times and not in winter but I would suspect that there is no real 'Rush hour' since most people usually work on the side they live on. I also don't know what makes them decide it's time to do it but when it needs done it better get done! I think they try to let people know as far ahead as possible so you postpone your trip a few hours. Maybe wanted to get it done before the Thanksgiving rush! I'm sure others know more details about it than me.

there is no 'real' planning for avalanche control... it completely depends on the snow. All the snow the mountains got the other day, then the rain on top of it made it very heavy. There are AM radio info spots -- you know -- tune your radio to this fuzzy station, and listen to pass updates. We ALWAYS check the pass report before leaving, but I know this isn't always feasible for some people, especially if you're coming from 3 hours away.. weather is likely to change blah blah blah...

And CGG is correct.. there is no detour. Just sit in the car with your family and wait it out!

Also why you ALWAYS have a full tank of gas, blankies, food and water in the car

I do have to say they are actually pretty fast about avalanche control.. It can be the traffic that makes it all slow down

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Quote:
I knew you'd like that.

and I would have offered eggs except you said I was too far away, and my girls were tapering off rapidly on the egg laying == only Ginger is still laying, and her eggs are still a bit smaller than usual chicken eggs, Julia managed to hatch one of the ?four? she had, and I think Dana got zilch out of two or three of hers

but in case mine start again, after Christmas, think of me ...

I only tried to hatch two of Gingers, since I was actually looking for blue-egg-gene pullets and wanted to maximize my probabilities. Of course I ended up with probably eight cockerels out of fourteen chicks, and Ginger's one offspring is on my "probable pullet" test keepers.

I'm considering going back to bed for a bit, because yesterday was what my dad called a "blue SOB" and included such extra attractions as putting the sheep's pen back together and cleaning off the bed my daughter (currently in Europe) uses so her brother could sleep in it. That was the kind of fun that's not.