Mother Nature is testing our Winter preparedness. I say, “Bring it”. This is about a month ahead of when we usually see these temperatures.
I woke up this morning with the coals still hot inside the wood stove. Filled it up with fresh wood to insure the coffee stays hot and the Mrs wakes up to 75-80 F.
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Bill, I guess the arctic hat of cold air is tilting your way at the moment. Still only up and down around freezing point here.
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Bill we are seeing a cold snap today as well here. It is 30 F now mid morning and dropping all day long it will hit a low of 14F with wind chill down in the negative range is the weather report I just got. I have most of my barn cleaned out but will wait till after this passes to finish i would rather let the cows get in if they get smart enough to come out of the wind today then worry about finishing the clean out. That can wait a day or two for the cold snap to pass. But it is early here. I expect we are in for a long cold winter.
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Once in every five years or so we see that kind of temps. And I bet that is not wind chill. Hope it warms back up for you all.
Hot coffee in the morning, YES.
Bob
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I’d hit the like button Bill, but I can’t with a good conscience. Where’s the “pity” button?
Though I did put on a flannel shirt this morning until about 8:30am.
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A year ago here on the 8th a record was set for the warmest day ever, 18C. This year a new record was set, for the lowest, minus 23C.
I could have used another 2 weeks of mild temperatures. Oh well, the ground will thaw in April. 
Bill, should be snowing your way today, followed by melting temperatures for a day or two, I guess that’s our reprieve before the full brunt of winter…
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Yes Garry, looks like we’ll have nice weather next week. Looks to be low to mid30’s
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More fun !
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Andy, dang - - that is nice ! ! And thanks for showing me how to make homemade brakes ! !
I know people buy brake pad material for fixing wheel horse brakes. Out of an industrial supply catalog. I think in the past leather was used. Maybe thin laminated wood 
Keep the vids coming !
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Interesting how this is made.
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Yes, I liked that one! I was thinking of making a small screw like this, mounting to a cordless impact screw gun, just for splitting kindling.
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The Sun came out today 57*f and dried the leaves that have fallen for the third time, still more to fall off the trees in your yard. We have Siberian elem and poplar trees big ones around the house and yard.
More leaves for the garden to compost down. The next batch to fall will be mulch with the lawnmower and left I on the yard. My nightcrawers that like to go fishing with me loves the mulch. We get some very big nightcrawers out of your yard all year long, even in winter they come up at night.
Bob
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Did someone say leaves? 
We raked over all the leaves from the neighbor’s yards using a big tarp. Free mulch for the garden!
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Better count the kids after they finish burrowing
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There has been a ton of interest in my home built boiler on youtube, so I finally got around to making this video on the auto fill setup.
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Andy, I dug out my bluetooth keyboard to type this. About five years ago Dad wanted to build an outside boiler. He looked at a lot of designs. I picked out a design but he found another. I could NOT see it, the the one he liked, working very well. I tried to sell him on this nice streamlined design but he wanted to pay for a set of insane plans. Just the materials costed more than he could afford.
Well, he made it work for about five years and last year agreed that he was ready to build the sane designed wood boiler! Of course there is more to the story like hungry for wood and boil overs but that’s a lot of typing.
We cut, twitched and trucked the logs to my place. Dug the mill out of storage. Built a shead for the mill so it didn’t need to be put back into storage, ready to go at any time now. We sawed the lumber for his boiler hut (Heat Hut). After the old boiler was dissassembled the boiler hut was built. Trips to the junk yard for supplies. Trips for other stuff. Built the boiler at my place. Trucked it to Dad’s place and dropped it on the ground when we were unloading it ! ! ! Ouch ! ! ! That sucked… Installed it, plumbed it, got a flue pipe for it and then built the controls for it, forced air inlet. Here is a shocker, after welding this up with my old stick welder it didn’t leak. Now, that blows my mind. I bet as I’m typing this it just sprung a leak.
Guess what? The brains behind this design turns out to be you! Question; how does’t Dad like it? Answer; he loves it (me too) !
Thank you !
Maybe I need to take some photos of a video. 
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Well, now Jeff, it’s been said that great minds roll in the same gutter. I had a lot of great plans and innovations rolling around in my head, but ran out of time so just slammed it together. Well, I’m glad I did because it has worked great for me. At any rate, I’m honored that you liked it. I would love to see a picture or two.
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To day we got word that Mission Ridge Ski/Snowboarding resort opens tomorrow, a week earlier then expected. If I was still working as a training director instructor for them I would be working tomorrow. It is nice not having to be there tomorrow working. Mission Ridge was the forth area to open this year in Washington State, sometimes we are the first to open.
I am going to continue to work on The Gasifier That Wanted To Be tomorrow. More updates to come. Prossesed about 50 to 60 lbs. of charcoal day, through my grinder/trommel from the four fire pit burns we had in the evenings. Got a plan to make the fire pit produce more charcoal and still have a nice fire to enjoy. I don’t like seeing all that beautifully made charcoal burn up in the pit as the fire burn through the evening. SAVE THE CHARCOAL.
Bob
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Getting ready for the winter wood all in a few calf’s been born went to a dairy farm an got another calf for daisy hope to get back on my Gasifire soon
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@Handy_Andy – This could take the better part of this week to find and upload photos of the Handy Andy Boiler (HAB ?). Home made controls from a $12 controller and relay.
forced air setup. Black tubing goes to the HAB.
Front of the HAB.
Side view.
More photos to come.
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