The past two weeks, boy time flies when you having fun.

    Been a few weeks since I did a post, so I figured, its too hot to go sit outside tonight, the College World Series will start the final game tomorrow night with Coastal Carolina from Conway SC, will be taken on the Arizona Wildcats. It should be a good series as watching most of the games this year with the boys has been great. Its good to see a small school get to the final round. 

    I have been turning and burning up here moving all this red clay for the range improvements I have been wanting to do. I am proud to say I am almost done. I would be much happier when we finally get some rain so it can compact it down a bit. With that being said, our Corn has not done what we expected from the bounty-full crop we had last year of sweet corn in which we are still eating off of from the freezer. We switched varieties this year to the Silver King and I am not impressed. This weekend we will plant a few rows of Sweet corn with me installing drip irrigation on them. We have gotten a few bushels of green beans so far but after speaking with a regular at the farmers market, he has the same problem with a spring crop. The green beans seem to do much better in the late summer to early fall.

     A week ago Saturday, we took a drive to Charlotte to Hyatt's Gun and Coin. So for people who don't believe I went, well here is a picture just for you.

     I went there looking for an upper to finally complete an AR lower I have had in the safe for almost 3 years, like i need another one.Well they only had two and I was not about to pay $545 for a .22 lower. The 5.56 upper was much higher, but they were not cheap brands either. So as we were leaving, we grabbed a few bowling pins for the boys to shot at on the range, a real 50 cal ammo can for $12.99. We ran into the owner Mr. Hyatt and chatted with him a few mins about how business was going with the recent events taken place and he was quite pleased and I would have to agree with the crowd that was in there. After shaking his hand and going about our business,  I heard the voices in my ear, come here, come here. Well it was the knives calling me. As we were looking at all the knives, some ridiculously priced but of course they were hand made and there was my favorite brand, CRKT. I have had nothing but great things to say about them. They make a good product. So after looking at a few knives, I settled on this one, the

M21-14SFG - G10 Handle - Veff Serrations - Designed by Kit Carson

See, I did buy one

      If you would like more information about this knife click on the link to their website because I wasn't planning on doing a review on a pocket knife. I'm sure there are people out there that will.

http://www.crkt.com/M21-Special-Forces-Black-G10-Handle-AutoLAWKS-Veff-Combo-Edge

     Yesterday, I went an picked up an upper that was shipped to me in a neighboring town. As we were out, we found out there was an estate sale  for some guns. Well of course we went. With NW's birthday a few days away, damn he will be 11, where has time gone. I located something that he love, since a .22LR was on his list. I found a Glenfield Marlin Model 60 .22LR rifle for $100.00 in excellent condition. The only difference between this one and the one my dad bought for me 39 years ago was this stock had no engravings on it. Well I looked at JUGM and she agreed, so I told him happy early birthday. Now not to leave ND out, I announced to him that the one his grand paw gave me is now officially his. He was ecstatic and very happy. 

     Now of course, there was something still on the rack that I am surprised nobody has swiped yet. It had all matching stampings and was in excellent shape and had a great price of $200.00

Norinco SKS

      Today, we took it a bit easy.  I cooked up 3 slabs of beef ribs on the smoker.

 Went in the garden and cut some okra off which made a nice first mess. Also picked another 8 tomatoes and some corn off that was decent for supper tonight. After all the clean up was done, went and cut some more okra before with did some pickled okra tonight, along with some pickles. I place half a Jalapeno, half a  Red Hot Chili Pepper, and half Banana pepper in each jar. Hope they aren't too hot but I shall find out.

3 jars of pickles and 4 jars of okra

  
      Well that's about it for the night. Going to relax a bit then head off to the grind of the work week. BTW, I have been thinking about this for a few days now, I think the UK leaving the EU is awesome. My mother was British and she did not like the EU from the start, mainly because it was run by Germany and they had control of the currency. I had asked her a question before she died of why Great Britain was still on the English Pound, she said because of the Germans and what the did through 2 world wars. I think I will take my mothers word, one who remembers of having to run, duck, and hide as a German fighter come down the road one day while she and others were walking home from school in SouthHampton strafing the road. She would have been 79 this year. Also, why is it that its only politicians and elite who are all upset about them leaving the EU. I know, MONEY AND POWER......

Senior

Been busy, time for a post and getting the word out on SC Senate Bill 308

    Well we have been busy, and if you follow my better half you will know that the boys won the the county championship. It was a nail biter being down 5-0 in the bottom of the first inning, but over the next 5 innings, they pecked their way back into the game and the last two innings of the game ended in double plays. Top of the fifth, the batter was hit in the hand and fell to ground crying, but the rules state that his hands are part of the bat, well the ball went fair and NW picked it up as the runner was coming from third and a collision ensued with NW holding onto the ball for the first out. The pitcher came running to the mound to make a play, but NW tossed the ball to him and threw to first for the second out.
    Bottom of the 5th, NW had a double that brought in two runs, so going into the 6th, it was our team on top, 6-5. The team really held their ground getting the first out, then walked 3 players. You talking about parents being on edge, bases are loaded, and our relief pitcher has a 2-2 count, and the batter hits a small pop fly to the first basemen. The first baseman has had a terrible game, he had dropped several balls thrown to him but ends up catching it, and runs back to first to make the double play to end the game. You don't know how we felt to see our kids finally get their baseball championship. It was sweet revenge from last year to see the debacle of an error from the pitcher to the 3rd baseman that caused 3 runs to score and win the game. The kids threw their gloves up and ran to the dugout. After the handshake with the other team, NW came back into the dug out and I grab his gallon of water to cool him down and just started dumping it on him in celebration. I got ND later on the field with the rest. What a great season they had and I am really proud of them.

     Had a good T-Storm last night and got some much needed rain. Since Friday, we have had 2 inches of rain which really has helped the garden. Before all the rain came in on Sunday, I did a post a month or so ago about a huge pile of dirt that was coming my way. well today it showed up. Normally for a dump truck load of clean dirt, your going to pay $400 plus. Well I got 3 dump truck loads for $300. Plans are to use a small amount for planting grass but most will go to the shooting berm. I have already added a large amount of debris from my dads place and from trees that were cut down. Just wanting to build it a few more feet higher. 
 

total of 45 yards of red clay

     South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has finally signed Senate Bill 308 establishing reciprocity with Georgia on recognizing each states concealed weapons permits/licenses. This means nothing to me in the aspect of already holding a Florida resident CWL so I could still carry through Georgia but for the followers or readers, I wanted to put that info out to you. Here is the NRA-ILA link

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20140211/south-carolina-governor-nikki-haley-signs-into-law-concealed-carry-reform-bill 

    In the process of changing jobs, well sort of. I have been referred to a higher position which will cause me to change locations. That's fine because the morning drive will be 25 miles closer and the pay about $6000 more per year. Just playing the waiting game right now.

     Garden is doing alright. I have an issues with some of my corn toward the upper part of the garden, but the area equals to less than 15% of the garden and the rest is doing well. Bush Cucumbers are starting to produce, along with the squash (fried up a mess on Saturday) and zucchini. Tomatoes are spitting them out on the vine, but they are still green. Green and Lima beans are coming along as well. I still need to do some work on my onions. This is the second year that they haven't done anything, but we are not the only ones who have had problems as we have heard some talk from the Farm and Feed store. I may try something outside of the garden in a large planter.

         Well, that's about it for now. Between planting grass, doing stuff around the house, work, spending time with my wife and kids, and everything that pops up in between, not much going on here. Well there is, but..................

That time of the year when so many things take up your time.

   Sorry for the lack of posting, things have really been hectic here. Work has also been quite busy and with spring full in the air, where does the time go. So here is some updates:

    NW had an all important recognition dinner with the school board. NW was 1 of the 108 out of 954 5th graders that were recognized for their superior academic excellence.

   Tonight was 5th grade graduation at the school and NW received numerous awards, which include Science excellence, Accelerated reader (top in the school), "A" Honor roll, Celebration of Excellence with straight "A"'s since the first grade, Advanced School Excellence award, Presidential award for academic excellence (Yes, BO had to put his crummy fingers into the celebration). We are so very proud of our son, we cant wait till next year when ND is up on that stage receiving his academic accolades.

    Baseball season is winding down and both boys are back in the championship game for the second year in a row. Last Tuesday, they beat the # 2 seeded team from the northern division on our home field 9-3 to  advance. Tomorrow night is the night they hopefully get some revenge from last year. The boys 2 year regular season record is 23-1. I am so proud of them in both academics and athletics.

    Last week I became another year older and of course I took the day off. I went and had lunch with a few of my close friends on Fort Jackson. Guess you can say it was a working lunch per say. If any of you have been on post there, you know that we ended the day by walking the gun counter and discussing numerous fire arms. I love how this post and SHAW A.F.B has gun sales at the PX. Later that day, I spent some great quality time with the family. This past Saturday, I had my birthday dinner at Steve's Seafood.

     Garden is going great, picked up a Craftsman rear-tine tiller to get in between the rows. 

   If you have a small garden, I strongly recommend this tiller. I live on property where there are millions and millions of white flint rocks, some small, some large and it has no problem with busting the soil up. I purchased this to assist me with planting grass around the property and in the garden, it does the job. Yes, I have a tractor with a 5 foot PTO driven tiller, but when corn and other items are too tall, I have to find another way to get in there. I sure as hell am not doing manual labor to accomplish the job, the garden is too big for that.

     Till next time,

Senior

Odds and ends. Request from a friend.

    Things are slowing down a bit here. As most of you know, my boys and baseball are an important part of my life, and the bond that we have is real strong. I must say I am very very proud of NW and ND this year as JUGM has reported earlier, the boy's team had an undefeated season, made it through to the county championship game, but one error changed the outcome and they ended up finishing 2nd. I will say neither NW or ND made the error. NW was fortunate enough to make the county All-Star team as catcher. ND didn't make it and it was not because of his effort or skill, see ND is 8 and playing on a 9-10 yr old division team. We had to explain to him that he didn't make it because of the cheating little league team from Illinois has caused a serious crack down on age and local rules. Go figure, someone from Illinois cheating.......

     The garden is going great, although the weeds are out of control and we are letting it go as we have our crops for the fall garden in seed starters and as soon as the corn is all picked, I will be down there tilling it up with the tractor. So far we have picked corn twice so far and have almost 90 ears of corn, and we haven't gotten through a quarter of the corn. Also we have been in kind of a drought here and I have drawn up a irrigation system for the rows and cant wait to start the construction.

    Been following world events lately? I suggest everyone pay attention to what is going on in Greece and come up with your own lessons-learned when their financial collapse happens. I still am trying to figure out what Greece actually produces besides a dependent nanny-state.

    Work has been going good as I have been fully trained up and had my first 90 performance appraisal this week and as normal, I was rated excellent and above my peers with several at-a-boy's from two other departments.

    I received a request from a friend I met last fathers day when I went to a firearms training course up in NC. He administers the site                          and was solicited by a group in his area to advertise and put the word out about a networking opportunity with other like minded people to share world and intellectual thoughts about current events, prepping, and all that other stuff. Here is the link to meetup.com page.





    Well I just wanted to get on here and say, Hey, I'm still vertical and breathing. Now I must go as today is NW's 10th birthday. He will be excited for his big-boy gift.

Senior


   

Where has 2 weeks gone?

    I was relaxing yesterday and thought, hell I haven't done a blog post in almost two weeks. Well, where should I start, most of you know I was in SC with the my better half, JUGM, and of course the boys were with us as well. We tried to make it a spring break trip as the kids were out of school but her dad was in the hospital and we got a 2 day late start. Once there, didn't do a whole lot, just some chores and maintenance around the place and plowed up the garden and threw some rows for JUGM to plant some stuff. Me, I want a full garden but she only wants to put low maintenance items in the ground, so we compromised a bit, only put rows in half the garden. Hey, not bad for my first time on a 1948 Farmall Cub.....

  There are a few rows of sunflowers and a few rows of yellow onions.

   Saturday rolls around, and we have had rain since Friday afternoon and as the rain clears out, we take a trip to Harbor Freight. If you have been in one of these stores, yes it is full of Chinese junk, but how many times do you use a torque wrench? Would you want to pay $21.00 for one there, or spend up to or over $100 at Sears? I'm not a full-time mechanic, so figure which one I went with. Also, you can find items that will help you out in a survival situation in there, yes the quality is not top of the line, but budget minded preppers can start here. On the way home, we stopped by our local Gander Mountain and yes, we gandered through the store and left. Prices are just too damn high!

   Today was an easy day, went to china-mart to get a few things for dinner, on the request of the kids and NW and I stroll to the sporting goods section and buy a few boxes of TUL Ammo in 7.62x39mm. At $5.47 a box, can get it cheaper from online retailers when you add shipping in. With all that is going on in the Ukraine, bet 7.62x39mm may increase in price or be part of a trade sanction.

    Once home I think, what would be more relaxing than doing some reloading. Well I had some 300 Blackout primed up so I hit the single stage and got to work. Here are two of the components. Federal small rifle primers were the other, besides the brass.

    My load call for 16.5 to 17.7 of IMR 4227, my target load was 17.1. As you see I am off by a bit but no worries.

     The final mess of Blackout rounds. it was a nice day, notice me wearing my Crocks and shorts?

 

 

     This week will be a busy week, have some work to catch up on from the spring break trip and have to get things prepped before the spring heat arrives. Also, I will be heading north for an interview with one of the top two logistic companies in the world with a chance to be placed in their management development program. Wish me luck. Have a great week everyone.

 

Senior

Back home from the country

    This past weekend, we took a trip to my dad's place for a bit of piece and quiet, but also had to do some work. There are many large oak trees on the property that have shed roughly 1/3 of their leaves. We slept in til around 0900 on Saturday morning then we all got up and started on the leaves. I had brought some equipment up to help speed the clean up along. The kids took a rake and had a huge pile of leaves within minutes, but as you know with kids that pile never made it into my utility trailer. They ran and slid in them for almost a hour. As for me, I was well into a dust storm of dried leaves and dirt. After 5 hours of work, they were all pushed into the woods.

    In the early afternoon, my family friend showed up on his John Deere tractor with the Disc Harrow attached and headed down to the garden. He tore the crap out of that ground, when I mean tore it up, he was bringing dirt up from about 2-3 feet below the surface just into the red clay layer. When he was done, I was ready to start some rows and put stuff in the ground.

 

 

   When he finished up, I told him we all would be down to his house in a hour, we had already made plans to head to the livestock auction around 1800. He had brought it up a few weeks ago and we said hell yeah we will go. We meet up at his house and take off the back way, down two lane country rounds that later turned into dirt roads. They are not the best roads to travel down, but they sure are fun to drive on. We got to the auction house and went on it. They were setting up for the small animal auctions, such as chickens, turkeys, guineas, and rabbits.

 

   As the auction starts, I look over at my boys and they have no idea what the auctioneer is saying, but they like every animal in the auction and they want them as pets. They were amazed at the guy who would open up each crate, pull the rooster, hen, doe, buck out and display them to the buyers. Of course the bidding was for one animal, if there were 5 in crate, whatever the winning price, multiply that by 5. Little be known, I discovered that ND had been raising his hand bidding, I'm not shitting you. I didn't know this until the auctioneer had stopped the bidding to ask him to stop raising his hand. Thank god they had a rule for kids not bidding or I would have walked out with a rooster and two hens. Roosters went as high as $50 a piece. After about an hour and a half, we retired back to the house for a warm fire and college football.

 

    Sunday was more of a relaxation day. I was picked up around 1000 by our family friend and we went over to a friend of my dad's house. He was also a pal bearer at my dad's funeral. He has had a rough go as of late. He is 71 and lost an eye to diabetes and now has prostate cancer. He caught the cancer early and is in treatment and he looked extremely well. We must have stayed for 2 hours talking about chicken coops, tractors, gardens, baseball, college football, golf, and the yuppie society that has encompassed this country. Once back to the house, we took off to town to find American flags for my dad and two uncles that are buried at the cemetery. If I would have remembered to grab the four I had in my garage at home, there would have been no need to stop at the Walmart in town and have my wife go through what she did.

 

    My dad's side of the family had it hard back early 1920's and 30's. The depression didn't help either. They farmed or worked in the mills. Their only escape was to join the military. Dad served the entire Korean Conflict in the Air Force and got out as a A1C, one uncle served 3 years in the Army after WWII and got out a Corporal and my youngest uncle served 3 tours in Vietnam, that crazy M*%^&$% ^&*(^r wanted to go back for a 4th time but the Marine Corps said no. He also had a tour on SARA as a member of the embarked Marine Corps security detachment. He would have retired a Gunny, but he had disciplinary issues and settled for Staff Sergeant. I visit each one of them every time I am in the cemetery to pay my respects for their service. Once we got back to the house, I took the boys to the garden and we had some range time. NW has no problems shooting and has no problem hitting a target. He shot my Henry Lever Action for the first time and was a pro at it; however ND is a work in progress. His major problem is he is a lefty, but right eye dominate and struggles to hold the cricket rifle. So I go back through my vast military knowledge and come up with a plan. ND, lets try this. I wish I would have snapped a pic of him doing, but for illistrative purpose, this is what he did.

 

    BY GOD, it worked. ND was not shooting to the right anymore and was hitting the targets every time, I was jumping up and down like a kid on Christmas day. God, I love being a father teaching my kids. After we finished up I had brought my ATV with us and let JUGM get some time on the ATV riding around the property. That led to her riding the kids around one at a time and they had a blast. Once it got dark, I got a fire ready in the fireplace, they settled in and I went to the hill top to listen to the night and have time to myself reflecting on my memories on that hill top. Made my soul feel good to have that time looking to the sky, reflecting, questioning, and requesting.

 

    Monday we headed back to normal life, and back to work and school today. Got a notification that BOOF and his ya clattie wee toerag were making noise over at some blog. C'mon Randall, do I need to go there. By the way, send my best to Ellen as she recovers with emphysema.

 

Have a great week everyone.

 

Senior