NO PIPE REPAIR AFTER ALL

So last weekend we mentioned working on the pipe that froze over the Christmas weekend.  

When crawling under the house, I thought "let me turn the lights on that I hung up for the freeze so there's some light under there". That's when I noticed that this one was burned out.  This is also the light that was shining on the area of the pipe that froze.  Of course, we'll never know which came first.  Did the light burn out and that let the pipe freeze?  Or did the pipe freeze and leaking water caused the bulb to burn out?

I'd like to believe that maybe the lights worked, since all the other pipes were fine, and so when the bulb burned out, this pipe froze.  But whatever it was that caused it, here is the result:

It wasn't as I had hoped it might be, a small crack that I could patch up.  No, it completely split and broke into pieces.  Here is one side of it...

...and here is where it was attached on the other end.  It you click to enlarge and look at the pipe section near the cinder block, you can see another split.  It was like this all the way down the line.  When I removed the foam pipe insulation to check it, it just fell apart into  multiple pieces.

As I said, we were hoping for a simple crack that could be repaired or at least patched up but alas, I'll need to get more supplies for this project.  If we decide to do it.

It's not really urgent, we can now turn off the water to the house but the faucet on the front is still active because it is between the house and the shut off so I can still use it to water the plants on the front and the fruit trees in back.  With the house being replaced this year, we might not really make this a high priority.

The water faucet for watering is before the shut off valve (for this very reason) so that the water to the house can be shut off and we can still access water outside for plants. "R" from 2nd Family did it this way for us on purpose.  We still have the hose that runs under the house to the back so we have porch watering and fruit tree area watering.

PUTTING UP TAMALES

Chirstmas in Texas is tamale season.  With Hispanic culture so immersed in our state, their traditions become our traditions.  And a usual family tradition is making tamales for the holidays.  One of my coworkers made them and asked if we wanted to buy some

UM, YEAH!

I got our handy dandy insulated bag (with a tamale Christmas theme!) and took it to work.

We requested 4 dozen.

Pork (x2)...

Chicken...

Bean...

They are SO good.  She makes them large and filled with meat.  We used one dozen of pork (since we got two dozen of those) for dinner/lunch that weekend the rest we were putting up.

We sort them out and because of their size, we make packages of six each, vacuum seal and pop in the freezer for future meals.

Believe it or not, tamales (still in the husk) freeze well.  With rice and beans on the side, three large tamales each for a meal is nice and filling.  This will give us six meals of tamales to spread throughout the year. 

We can make this delicious Christmas tradition last a while longer, ha.

A CHANGE IN PLANS HOUSE UPDATE

A lot of you have asked about the house update plans so that's what we are doing here with this post.

We had a post ready to go all Spring and then into Summer about a possible special announcement, but, well, read on...

You may have noticed a few times last year we mentioned having people out to the house.  Well, we were having a couple of contractors out to work up proposals for a remodel.

Here's how that went:

One group set an appointment, we got everything ready, etc, and then the day before, they said they realized it was too far from their office and they wouldn't be able to supervise it well enough.  Um, maybe use Google maps sooner?  Whatever. 

A second guy came out and talked to us, made some measurements and then we didn't hear from him for a while.  He finally said he was not really going to do whole house remodels anymore but he'd be willing to try.  Um, better to find that out before he started!

Another company never came out but after we reached out to them and communicated back and forth a bit to reschedule, we found some really terrible reviews about them and we were just really hesitant.  So nope.

Another referral we got a couple of years ago we reached out to and since the pandemic, he is no longer doing remodels and then ghosted us.  His loss.

Finally, we found a good one.  He wrote up a proposal for us.  He came out twice to measure, take photos, meet with us, etc.  When he asked our budget, he said we could tell him or let him come up with an amount so it didn't look like he was just going with our highest amount.  He gave us his best guess and it was a little less than the high end of our budget we had in mind.  We were OK with that.

Of course, he still had to work up numbers to come up with an actual proposal.  He came out another weekend and measured more and we even gave him a folder with some ideas of things we had in mind that we liked.

This is kind of what the plan was.  A complete gut and remodel on the inside and removing the addition and replacing it bigger and better.  Of course also a new roof, new plumbing, new electrical, new septic, an enclosed foundation, new windows, central HVAC, etc.  

Two weeks later he came back with the proposal:

About $75,000 HIGHER than our highest end budget.  The general thinking on a remodel is to allow an overage of about 20% for unforeseen problems, expenses, changes in plans.  With an amount like that, we could be easily be almost $100,000 over our already large initial budget.

To top it all off, now the interest rates are higher and on home improvement/remodel loans they are really high.   Most big city banks are hesitant to do remodel loans on rural properties.

What we've also found this year, through this journey of ups and downs, is that many contractors compensate for being so far away from a larger city by giving a higher amount.  They'd rather just stay around the area where they are doing other projects.  That limits the contractors in the area that are willing to do it.

We weighed the pros and cons and it would just be too much for a remodel.

In the end, we realized that if we paid this large of an amount, we'd still just have a remodel when done with inherit potential future problems.  That same amount could give us something brand new.

This house is where we will move permanently and work from home/retire.  We want it to be our forever home and we aren't getting any younger, ha.  So, we have scratched off the remodel and now we're either going with a new build or a new prefab of some sort.

We have an appointment with a builder next week.  We are also going to be visiting a modular home manufacturer in a few weeks and then hope to go to a pre-fab log home builder in North Texas when the weather is nicer.  Then we'll decide which way we go!

We want to get out there and start enjoying ourselves...and this should be the year that we get the big step of a livable house out there.

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY WITH BONUS DEER

Sunday again.  Is this year going to go by faster than last year?  Sure seems like it.

We've posted before about the jalapeños we've put up and last week we posted HERE about the bacon we also put up in the freezer.  Well, we used some jalapeños to mix into scrambled eggs.  2nd Man made some homemade bread that we toasted and put the eggs on top of that.  Finally, we topped it all with some of the bacon we had put up a few weeks ago.

It was definitely a good and satisfying breakfast.

And here is Hobart.  Just hanging around.  Notice his blanket on the sofa table he sleeps on.  He sometimes prefers the arm of the couch.  Because...

#notspoiled

And here is a visitor passing through the front yard.  So pretty.  The new trailcam is taking some good pictures but the night pics are still not we had hoped.  There is a learning curve and I just need to figure out the proper settings so that they look better.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

SHORTAGES AND OFF TO THE FARM

Was at the store the other day and noticed something, then went to another store and saw the same thing:

At the second store I took a picture.  I was taking a shortcut to the checkout and this is the cold/flu aisle.  It (and the one at the other store) was depleted of almost everything.  Both sides of the aisles were mostly empty.

We're not sure if this is a supply chain issue, a sign of a really bad cold/flu season, or if Covid is making a comeback with the new variant.  Speaking of, the Houston area was upped from green to yellow a few weeks ago. 

We still mask up in crowds.  Have to say, even if we're in the minority now, it's actually been kind of nice not having any colds or flu for the last couple of years.

 

Today we're off to the farm to do a couple of things. It was brisk this morning, mid-30's but thankfully NO freeze, ha.  Speaking of, one thing I hope to do today is work on the pipe with the small leak from the freeze and 2nd Man is looking for a couple of specific cookbooks we think we have out there.

Not much else to do this time of year.  We will take time to sit on the porch and relax and stay warm in the sun.

This is last weekend, the big freeze definitely shifted everything into "Winter beige".

Looks like Winter now, but we're guessing the green will come back soon...and with a vengeance.

Hope you have a great start to your weekend!

HOBART MISSES THE TREE

 Last weekend, we packed up our Christmas stuff and put it all back in storage.  This was funny.

Here's a before and after:

This is the corner that we put the tree in.  The tree is big and fills up the space nicely.  Hobart ignores the tree but likes sleeping on the tree skirt (on the back side of the tree).

I packed it all up and went downstairs to storage to put it all up.  When I got back...

...this is what I saw.  Hobart sitting in the corner where the tree was.  Poor kitty.

We put our artificial plant back in the corner where it normally goes, pushed the wine fridge back down where it goes and put Hobart's bed back in its place.  He hasn't slept in it yet.

We think he's still mad. 

FIRST TRAILCAM PICS

The first pics are in.  Captured (figuratively, ha) a few deer pics.  Here's a good one:

This young buck passing through the front yard.  Pretty good and this one is at a lesser quality resolution to test out how much memory our card will use up.

Here's a night shot from a couple of days later.

A little disappointed with the quality but again, could be the settings I chose.  Will have to work on that.  There was also a video that recorded and there were FIVE deer in the front yard.  For some reason though, I can't upload that type of file to blogger so I'll have to work on that and see if I can change the format.  The weird thing was the video recorded but no still photos were taken.  I'm guessing there's a learning curve, and I'm still way down at one end of that curve, ha. 

The other camera is up and running now in the backyard but I just did that a few days ago so we'll have to wait and see what it picks up next weekend.

PUTTING UP BACON

After several of you mentioned freezing cooked bacon a while back. we started doing that.

Wow, it's wonderful and easy.

We lay on a foil/parchment lined baking sheet.  We did try it on a rack a few times but there was no real difference in the outcome and we don't want to clean a messy rack, ha.  For us, this works just fine, but feel free to use a rack.  We put it in cold and let it heat up with the oven and cook it fast at 400 degrees, about 20 minutes usually, or until your preferred doneness.

Missed the picture of pulling them off the pan after they were cooked on the batch in the first picture so the next time we did it, I got this picture.  Here they are, ready to go.  You can see, not oily or floppy, they are just how we like them.  We take them off the pan shortly after they are out of the oven and let them cool.  We also save any rendered bacon fat because, well, hello, BACON FAT!

After we pour off any fat we want to save, the heavy duty foil and parchment just fold up into a neat package, leaving the sheet pan shiny and clean and ready for another day.  Without using a rack, there is literally nothing we have to clean up after we are done.

I cut up some squares of parchment paper that are about the size of the gallon ziplock baggie and put them into layers (to prevent sticking and keep them flat).

Then I just start loading them in, layer by layer.

We ended up with three layers of bacon.  We don't vacuum seal of course (as we are fond of doing) because that would leave us with bacon bits, ha, so this is such a good way to have bacon on hand when we need it.  I popped this in the freezer on a Saturday and on Sunday morning, 2nd Man made some biscuits and I put 4 slices in the microwave for 20 seconds and we had fresh, hot, wonderful bacon.

It's the best way to keep bacon on hand.

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

Here is Christmas dinner.  With the holiday (and New Year's) falling on Sunday, we saved the pictures for this for this post after things calmed down, ha.

It's become sort of our traditional dinner at Christmas. 

We got a carver ham (we LOVE them)...

And then we make some broccolini sautéed with onions and bacon...

I missed the picture of it in the pan but 2nd Man made a batch of macaroni and cheese...

And then we put it all together into one glorious plate!

It was cold that weekend (record breaking) so Hobart stayed snuggled up in our his blanket for the better part of two days.  This picture was funny because his head was sticking out one end, a leg out of the side and the tail out the back end.  Feline equilibrium?  Because...

#notspoiled

CHRISTMAS TREE SCORE TRASH TO TREASURE

Regular readers know that I have a favorite place to look for bargains...our downstairs trash area!  Our building has trash chutes on every floor and they feed into a separate room, but for boxes and other things that people can't put in the chute, there is an area (indoor) near the loading dock where people can put the things they don't want.  I've found quite a few cool items over the last few years.

Here's another one (and several of you have wondered if we might find something like it again this year):

It finally happened, we scored another Christmas tree.  Here it is when I saw it just laying in the recycle area.  It was in sections so I had to find them all and carry them over to the loading dock to make sure it would all go back together.

I assembled it and it's all there.  It's not pre-lit but that's OK (we'll need white lights on a white cord).  It does need some fluffing, you know, the folding/bending branches were smashed up when whoever took it down tossed it in the trash.

I did bend some of the branches out and move them around a bit and it does fluff up nicely, ha.

Here it is outside our storage room.  Looks pretty good.  Now we know what you are thinking, another tree?  Well, if we had found another standard, green Christmas tree, we are going to give it away to a friend who asked for any we found.  We have enough of those and will gladly share the love with our finds, BUT... this is a WHITE tree.  

We have wanted a white tree for a long time.  Not as our main tree of course, but to put special ornaments on.  We're thinking this could be the "farm tree" for our farm themed ornaments.

Or maybe a food theme tree in the kitchen/dining room.

Or maybe we can start a Dia de los Muertos tree.

Someone else tossed it because they didn't want it after Christmas and now we'll gladly give it new life for many Christmases to come.

MY NEW ZEN MACHINE HAT

Here is another one of my Christmas gifts.  2nd Man found this great hat for me.

It's got a wide brim and the part that your head goes into is ventilated.  There is even a drawstring to hold it in place on windy days.

The cool part is on the back, it has this long, wide flap that completely covers the neck and upper shoulders.  2nd Man always worries because I get the back of my neck sunburned while mowing or working outside.

Of course, when I first put it on, I was reminded of this classic scene from Titanic:

OK so I won't be THIS fabulous while working outside at the farm but I'll give it a try!  😂😂

NEW TRAILCAMS FOR CHRISTMAS

This was my big present...

A set of two new trail cams!

The other one we have was starting to wear out, probably just being exposed to the elements for a few years finally took a toll.  These have much higher resolution, have the ability to do time-lapse photography, better night vision and will even pick up sound.  There's also an optional solar panel so it can be battery free.  For now, we're OK with batteries.

I put one up on the porch where the other one was and the second one will go near the back to see what's going on in the orchard area and the big empty land behind our house.  Of course, I didn't have enough batteries to get the second one up so that will be turned on next weekend. 

Stay tuned, hopefully we'll get some fun stuff.  Maybe the ever elusive bobcat?

 

NEW YEAR 2023 AND HOBART SUNDAY

Here's to a new year, out with the old and in with the new.  2023 promises to be an interesting year for us as we embark on some new projects at the farm and work toward getting something new out there.

Since the holiday falls on Sunday, we have to have some Hobart.  So here he is, in a post-New Year's Eve catnip hangover.  He got some new catnip at Christmas and he loves it.  We put it all over this striped sock toy, one of his favorites, and then he falls into a deep catnip sleep.  Because...

#notspoiled

HAPPY NEW YEAR!