17 Years . . .

Hi,

On the 27th of January, I turned 17. It doesn't seem like it was very long ago that I turned sixteen, but it has already been a year!

I had a enjoyable morning and received a few gifts from family. David and I shot a couple AQTs before lunch while Dad and Jonathan delivered eggs to town (it was Thursday, our weekly delivery day).

Usually, we have pizza for supper on a birthday, or lasagna, but I asked if we could have tacos instead. And we did! Very good ones too with plenty of tomato and lettuce, refried beans, chips and salsa and good fresh milk too.

I appreciate all of the gifts I received and one was really exiting to me. It's a book called "The Milk Diet As A Cure For Chronic Disease" by Charles Porter. It's a small reprint of an old book written in the early 1900s by a doctor who used a strictly milk diet to cure thousands of patients of various chronic diseases including arthritis, diabetes, and asthma. The book was written to his patients who were to read it before the treatment so it explains what and how to complete the cure. I talked to one person that might be interested in a cow-share, that was probably following this treatment since she had regained part of her kidney function because of raw milk.

Another creative gift was from Andrew. He put together this "dairy award" for me for my "valuable contributions" to Bartlett Farm. See below>>

It's a mini wooded milk tote with the wooden ribbons and tags glued on.

Thank you Andrew, and everybody else! I am truly blessed.

No, those books aren't all mine. Dad gave one to each of the family.

The day after my birthday, Dad and Mom and Jonathan went to Minot for a check up on his jaw surgery. Everything looks good and so Jonathan is able to get back into work slowly. While they were away we had an incident here.

We hadn't stoked the woodstove as well as we should have so it was mostly out with only a few coals in the firebox. David spent about 15 minutes warming up the chimney with newspaper and sticks until it caught the logs on fire. He left the intake open and the flu wide open to let the fire get established, and then he would close it down.

Andrew came in from picking up a UPS package outside and noticed creosote ash scattered on the snow all around outside. He called David and I outside, and we looked for the source of the particles. Then we noticed about half way up the chimney, the smoke was pouring out between the cracks in the two sections of new pipes. Figuring something was not right with the wood stove, I came back inside and closed the air intake and flu on the chimney. I put my boots on and grabbed a jacket and gloves and went outside again to look at the chimney. Now it was billowing out of two joints of pipe! Andrew and I ran to the shop and retrieved the long ladder from it's storage place. We rushed up to the house and ran the ladder up a few rungs and leaned it onto the edge of the roof. I didn't think of it, or tell him to do it, but David had a bunch of buckets of snow ready and waiting for me to take up to the roof. I took one with me and climbed twenty feet upwards to the edge of the roof. After safely footed on the dry shingles (thanks to the snow-tread on my bunny boots) I ran over to the top of the chimney and found pretty much what I expected. Sparks and ash propelled out of the pipe and a roaring sound. That confirmed my suspicions of a chimney fire. I dumped the bucket full of snow into the pipe and it sizzled its way down. I peered down into the smoke-filled black hole and saw that the pipe lining was red hot. A few feet away, on the north slope of the roof was a wide snow drift which I shoveled into the chimney pipe with the bucket. My right hand being bare, since I had taken two of the same handed glove out of my bin, was freezing now so I pulled one of the knit liners I kept in my pocket out put it on. I do not recall the exact procedure for putting out a chimney fire, but I did remember that our good friend Steve talked about using snow to extinguish one. It worked and not too long later the smoke peacefully drifted out of the pipe and water dribbled from the cleanout below. I climbed down and we gathered at the base of the ladder and thanked the Lord for directing us in extinguishing a potential house-threatening fire!

Just another one of those exiting adventures that we have around here.

Peter