Preparations for departure

I have a train ticket for my journey to North Dakota this Wednesday. Jan is returning from Portland Wednesday morning via the train. I will drive her vehicle to the train station, check in and wait for the train, and after she arrives she will drive her vehicle home. Win-win situation for both of us if all goes as planned.

In the meantime I continue to prepare for my departure. Saturday the temperatures were in the teens all day and the air had a bite to it. Overnight a warm front arrived and I awoke to temperatures in the 20s and rising rapidly. It is near 40 degrees now at midnight.

I removed my last two pocket gopher traps for the year as I haven't gotten any more gophers the past few days. My final total of pocket gophers for the year is 226. Amazingly enough that makes exactly 900 pocket gophers trapped since I started five years ago. The Victor Blackbox traps are wonderful and highly recommended by me.

Today I mended and washed clothes - a big chore for me as I have numerous pants with holes and tears. For a few of them this will be the last time of mending.

I lit the pilot light on my gas furnace and ran it today. Seems to be working correctly. As I have mentioned before, I prefer heat from my wood stove over the natural gas furnace as the wood stove heat feels warmer.

I took apart and cleaned the soot from the pipe that leads from my wood stove to the fireplace chimney. While I believe I have burned less wood this Fall I still had enough soot to shake and scrape from the pipe. I was filthy by the time I was finished.

I spoke with my neighbor along the creek. He was out removing part of a beaver dam flooding his lawn. He has three traps set and had trapped three beavers so far this Fall with signs of more beavers around. He also trapped a number of muskrats. He said there are five beaver dams in this area of the creek.

I had supper with Bob tonight. He had made a turkey mulligan stew/soup. Yum!

This morning I heard a thump against my garage window as I walked by the front door. I recognized the sound from when the Flickers broke my barn windows this past August. I opened my garage door to find a large Flicker inside. *argh* He would not fly out the large garage door opening and instead flew around the upper part near the roof. I put a board over the window to prevent him from trying to go through it again and breaking it. After a couple tries of "shooing" bird back and forth he eventually swooped lower and out the door. I checked a few times today and he had not returned. Due to the how the garage door is slightly larger than the garage opening, the door does not completely close leaving a gap for animals to enter the garage if they so desire. This is the first time a bird has entered the garage. Hopefully it will be the last time.

I have two days to finish preparing for my trip to North Dakota. While I am on track, things are taking longer than planned to complete each day.