more snow, more storms, more shore birds

i guess the ever growing snow mounds have inspired my flooding fears
as i dreamt that there was a HUGE wave/lake out back..... and that it came down the hill and across the front lawn into a lake that was dug right next to my driveway
however apparently i am dreaming in some sort of mirror ...through the looking glass way cause it came down the right side (as i watched through the front windows) and went over to the left......
in the dream THAT was downhill!

shorebird/gull 4

(and the back yard was UP hill in the dream.....)
but it goes to show..... how utterly pervasive this snow pack is for me
HEY you try getting up every few hours for the woodstove and see how your dreams hold up.

meanwhile we struggle with wet wood..... bored poultry
and quail tails
(still not done with that painting)
however i am doing a series of fast shore bird/gull paintings- some good......some not so good.... all
fast.
it takes less time to do the birds then it does to do the backgrounds which are just sort of random
with speckles added -it's to keep my hand/eye going while the quail resolve themselves-- they make me want to do a few 'big paintings'
i also came smack up against some of the limitations of this studio at the moment, no place to cut paper during the winter.
it's not easy during the summer either but i use the woodstove- i don't actually have that option in the winter..(not if i would rather not burn the house down)
so i was looking on craigslist and found flat files.... but right now there are a few marks against them
1) i don't have the money
2) i don't have a way to get them home (they are huge)
3) i don't have a place to put them
4) i don't have space to refinish them in

oye.....but they would solve a few problems.... like taking the bulk paper off the top of the bird cage and the big shelves (where i can't reach it) .....and the top would be the right height and size for cutting paper
(cause i was drooling over a 10 drawer unit)
if i put it on a rolling base...... i would have it made!
i could even mount a roll of water color paper on it and be able to cut that too!

now we are to be getting a few storms over the weekend and next week...with the already over burdened electrical grid... we may lose electric. although ppl has been reinforcing the grid here since sandy.
for me that means keeping cooked foods in the freezer that are easy to reheat and keeping stock pots etc filled with water for us
water for the poultry will be melted snow if the electric goes out
we really need to get the switch put into the circuit breaker box for the gen so we have water-
and i really need to get back to sleep even for an hour or  so
i think the woodstove is going to be ok for a while now

keep safe everyone

a week of meals....*** almost

bernie moves to his new schedule on wen.
he had last night and has tonight off.... goes in tomorrow
then has monday and tuesday off
so since i don't do well with schedule changes, i cooked today
here is my list (don't be too impressed )

• pork stew (from scratch today)
• honey mustard chicken legs (froze the chicken in the honey mustard sauce two months ago or so)
• stuffed peppersn ( from scratch today)
• parmesan chicken (from scratch yesterday)

i am going to root around in the freezer as i am pretty sure i have a chuck roast that is just begging to be a stew

and i am going to most likely roast a chicken as well......

possibly a turkey 

and i sure need to bake soon... 

i may also make him a few pizzas and freeze them already made and just ready to reheat

we'll see

now the weather is supposed to again take a nose dive

bernie was home last night so he baby sat the woodstove

today we got another back up kerosene heater...... this one for the front room- we did the prep today and will set it up most likely monday (maybe sunday if it seems it's going to go down to 0 or below then)

and we did some more work on the winterizing downstairs, since i found the water buckets in the duck room frozen

oh and one of the quail got out.... bernie was chasing it through the basement

and i know i shouldn't laugh but it cracked me up to watch that quail run

i cleaned the woodstove today as i have discovered that a coal bed makes for a very inefficient burn in there----

i am really longing for a new house now......all one floor and much more draft proof and energy efficient

i would like a few sources of heat too..... passive solar, geothermal, biomass........

and possibly if we are in an area for it...natural gas

i really would also like tankless water heaters

i would LOVE 14'' of insulation in the walls and maybe 3 feet in the ceiling!

i'm a bit tired of drafts now on my old bones

okey dokey now...

bernie's out of the shower, so i am going to feed him now....stuffed peppers!

saturday is the new sunday...

or at least it is around here!
friday was bernie's saturday, he took me to the doctor for my eyes
the doctor said i am doing better- but i have to continue the drops for a few more weeks if not months
and it's slow
really slow
right now they are killing me, hot, tired....... and painful
a few hours sleep will help too
i renewed the drops but they won't have them at the pharmacy until monday i was told.... i hope i can hold out that long

i cleaned the woodstove while it was HOT....i had to, it had a 4'' coal bed in it and this stove hates a coal bed like that, it won't heat with that large a coal bed.......
so i left the door unlatched, and burnt down the coals... every 1/2 shifting out the hot coal from the ash and dumping the ash in the ash bucket.

we went to town, (this was today but when you read this...it will be yesterday)
we got a LOT of errands done, cat food, quail food, mailers for the prints of my work, hit a sale at the grocery and stocked the pantry on stuff we'd run down on.
i have to mail out some prints this week.....

now.....shhhhh don't tell bernie but i am probably getting another duck....a girl duck.... i need the eggs.....
this one is technically a grand duck of mine!
just what we need right?
but i'll be freezing duck eggs from her -it's not totally decided yet but it's most likely
now the only errands we didn't get done was the post office, and i forgot eggs...... all this poultry and i am buying eggs?????????? oye

this coming week i am hoping to start mailing stuff out..... i have a few things that were supposed to be mailed two months ago but then we had the test of the emergency preparedness system....
which means NON ESSENTIAL stuff.......stopped dead.

btw, i can recommend an occasional test of your emergency systems, prior to maybe having to deal with things like no electric for a week.....or no money coming in...
i did discover that i needed to put away gift cards to grocery and other stores, that don't expire and have no administration fees... so the art supply store and some grocery stores have cards like that..
i haven't looked into amazon or home depot or even the pet store but i think it's a good thing to do

ok i'm going to run now.....i may update this if i get time to paint
if not well you'll have to wait until YOUR sunday (which is our new monday)

take good care

count down, to the holidays, winter cold and keeping warm

are you all ready for the thanksgiving holiday?

we mostly are, since there were the turkey breasts on sale for .99 a pound.
i have to make cranberry sauce.. which i most likely will some time between now and thursday...or maybe not..if i find a home canned jar on the shelf then we're good to go with that.

i've taken to roasting poultry breast down for the majority of the time- i can recommend it.
i flip it for the last maybe 1/3 of the time, really just to brown the skin
i have found that the meat doesn't dry out.
i like doing breasts instead of whole birds because legs take longer and when they are done it seems that the breast can be dry... but really try a breast down bird ...( try it in an off month, see if you like it)

today was an insanely busy day for me, i had a lot of stuff to do for bernie, then a lot of stuff to do for 'the family' financial stuff, getting the elements that didn't fit returned, tracking down where the other elements are ...all sorts of stuff like that
i managed to print the polar bears, (the wider one) and it looked good but is a bit crooked on the paper...so i have to make sure that the paper is loading right for the next print.

the weather warmed up a bit (yeah all things are relative...it's not above freezing), i was up with the woodstove several times last night.... today i shoveled a coal bed out of it and let it burn down too.
now for those of you contemplating a woodstove or pellet stove, i can tell you some of my reasoning behind what we got (prompted by a conversation i had with someone recently about non oil heating)
i had a list of things i needed/wanted/expected

1) warm/cook food in an emergency
2) radiate heat for a while after it burnt down
3) be safer at around 400 degrees instead of 800 or more
4) non catalytic (the catalytic converters cost a LOT of money to replace )
5) burn something easy to get a hold of
6) easy to maintain

the few years before we got our woodstove, while i was ruling out things like pellet stoves, coal burners, heat pumps, solar.......

Pellet stoves---there was a pellet shortage...no one could get the pellets as at that time i believe, there was only one place making pellets and something happened- (now a lot of 'pellet' stoves also burn 'biomass' so you can burn cherry pits, corn, barley etc... not just pellets- you can't cook on them, and you need a battery back up to run the hopper incase of electrical outages- plus you need to shovel out the ash daily)

Coal or duel fuel coal/wood---i looked at coal or duel fuel coal/wood.... coal burns HOT, too hot to be in the studio. and i wasn't at that time interested in a whole house duel fuel furnace.
i didn't want to shake the grate down and remove chinkers either.... the technology is very good however, they don't pollute like they used to and you can cook on them- but they aren't soapstone so they are HOT

Catalytic wood stoves--- the only thing against them was the need to periodically replace the catalytic converter

Outdoor wood furnaces --- not very fuel efficient, have to go outside every 12-ish hours to stoke them- can't cook on them but they will heat a few buildings, and heat water all outside!

so our choice was a soapstone woodstove.....the hearthstone phoenix-- and really it was the right choice for us.
when we move i swear i am going to carry this stove on my BACK if i have to and take it to the next house!
however if i get a crack at a soapstone masonry heater..... i may reconsider
we burn about 4-5 cords (@ about 500 per 3 full cords of seasoned hardwood) in a bad winter, but we also have very poor windows and insulation in the studio where the stove is...
it does keep the whole house pretty warm, with the exception of those couple of weeks in dead of winter. but still so far (since 05) we've never had any thing actual freeze except the front door a few times ....but then we don't have a storm door