Growing Wine Grapes

I grew grapes for wine, the noble Vitis Vinifera, for close to 30 years. A good wine can enhance a meal. In fact, given any other choice I will choose water with lemon if a decent wine is not available. The acid in the wine, or from the lemon, keeps the palate clear and lets you get more flavor out of a well-done meal. Then there is the allure, “why yes I grow my own grapes and make my own wine my dear, care for a glass?” 

I know it sounds trite but good wine starts in the dirt and everything in the dirt ends up in the wine. I had sandy, rocky soil with minimal amounts of organic material. Vines need to struggle to make good wine grapes. I did fertilize but with composted organic material and a mixture of manures. If your manure still contains some amount of ammonia in it the wine will have an interesting bouquet so have patience give it 2-3 years to compost well. Watering, I always drip irrigated but sparingly. If you’ve got city water its’ treatment chemicals will end up in the wine so avoid it as much as possible. I had my own deep-water wells, so I didn’t have that worry. It’s the same with pest treatments. I planted a certain type of tree near the vineyard that Ladybugs were partial to. Ladybugs do a number on most common insect pests.

Mountain Horse Training 2: Tack/Untack Both Sides

Suppose you are in the high country and need to saddle, or un-saddle your horse near a cliff-side. I don't know about you but I'm not standing between my horse and the edge of the cliff to adjust his tack or work with the saddle. Sometimes that means you have to work with him from his offside

I'm going to assume you can saddle your horse, so now it's time to work from the offside. Start as if the horse has never been saddled before. Get him on a longe line or his lead rope and run him through his routine for moving forward, backward, "Come" and "Whoa" all while standing or walking on his offside. At this point grab a bucket or step stool so you can be slightly above him on his offside. Pat and rub the horse from tail to ears all the while talking, whistling or singing to him. Gently lay across his back and slowly let your weight come to bear on his back.

A Man and His Buds

Dogs. I've had a lifelong relationship with horses and dogs, and if pressed I couldn't give you an answer as to which is my favorite. Could you answer anyone if they asked you which of your children do you like the most? Back in 2010 I jokingly said to my wife, "I need a wolf." Damned if she didn't find me one that had a bit of dog in him. Most of his genetics expressed as wolf, including much of his behavior. He weighed in at over 100 pounds and was a handful.  Here's a photo of him and my other dog.

As one might imagine having a wolf can be a bit troublesome. If you think you might train a wolf, forget it. What you can do is bond with him and become a packmate. He was my hunting and fishing companion. I would heave a trout to him and he'd give me a look almost to say, "what, this is all for me?" Crunch, head, fins, entrails, everything, gone in a flash.

My other dog, my favorite breed Heinz 57, they have a little bit of everything in them. He's my working dog. He hustles the horses when needed and worked cattle well. He's also my truck dog. A man has to have a dog in his pick-up.

I had to put my wolf down not too long ago. They tend to die fairly young for canines. My other dog has mostly retired and his days are filled with power lounging in the sun, and pick-up rides. Oh, and wienies, lots of wienies.

Children and Horses

We get our Number One Grandson, who is 5, for 2 to 3 weeks in the summer. The great thing about grandchildren is you've already been there so you can just savor the experience. Hell, all the mistakes you were ever going to make you've already made with your children.

My first experience with a horse was when I was 11 or 12. I was shown how to saddle it, and then mount it and away we go. There was a girl who I had a crush on involved which explains some of my complete lack of sense. Fortunately for me it went well enough and my relationship with the horse has been with me since. 

Mountain Horse Training 1: Ground Tying

This post is more or less a re-post, but I've separated it out from my previous one in an effort to make things a little more coherent. When you're riding the back country, horsemanship follows some different trails. You have to assume nothing will be possible to do in the way you might normally do things. One of these is tying your horse. There just may not be room or a place to conveniently tie a horse to but you need the horse to stand still while you work with it. The solution is to ground tie the horse. It really is nothing more than having the lead rope on the ground with an appropriate command to let the horse know he's "tied."

So how do I proceed? Start at the beginning and train the horse to stand still while attended. Using a vocal command (I use whoa) and body language (stand tall just off to the side at the front of the horse) I step back and put some slack in the lead rope. If the horse attempts to move forward, I shake the lead rope with my hand clearly visible to the horse and give my vocal command.

Continue until the horse doesn't move when you are at least one horse length away. The next step is to do the same thing while the lead rope is on the ground. Drop the lead rope to the ground and give your vocal command. If the horse tries to move, hold your hand up in a stop attitude and give your command. As the horse progresses move around all the sides of the horse while he's ground tied. If necessary, go back to the lead rope in your hand portion of the training until he gets it right.

At this point you need to get the horse to stand comfortably while you proceed with other business. Ground tie the horse and do a small chore. Keep an eye on the horse with your peripheral vision and admonish it with your vocal command if it tries to take a step. Keep working on it until the horse can stand comfortably for 10 to 15 minutes without taking a step and with you at least once going out of sight of the horse. This should now be a regular part of the groundwork you do with your horse. As always at the end of the session praise the horse and give him a lot of positivity when he gets it right.

Mountain Horse Training

I've been remiss. It seems I haven't written a thing here in months and I also have failed in putting my thoughts down on mountain horse training. 

A friend of mine sternly reminded me of this recently. So, without further ado I have posted a list of things a good mountain horse should be able to do and in subsequent posts I will provide some rationale and the methods I have used to meet these requirements. As usual, this is my list and others might want to add or subtract as deemed necessary. Here we go:

1. Ground Tying

2. Tack/Untack Both Sides

3. Flapping Objects

4. Startlement Horse

5. Startlement Rider

6. Wildlife Encounter

7. Chain Saw

8. Obstacle Crossing

9. Backing

10. Sidepassing

11. Weight Drag

12. Load/Carry Saddlebags

13. Don/Doff Clothing

14. Lead/Follow

15. Firecrackers

16. Gunfire

17. New Trailer Load/Unload

18. Cross Water

19. Cross Bridge

20. Ground Leading in Harsh Terrain

Horse Trailer Wrap-Up

My horse trailer is finished, registered, and road worthy. I've given it its maiden shakedown cruise carrying a one ton load and then did a complete re-inspection. Everything checks out so I'm good to go. Of course, my horses, even though they've been trailered extensively before, see this new trailer as an existential crisis so they have to be re-trained. Pain in the... A few pictures of it are shown below the jump.

Cleaning Up Some Old Work

I was going through some old work and thought I would update some of my programs in a recent version of Microsoft Visual Studio. Old dogs and new tricks so to speak, but Visual C# is sufficiently similar to Visual C++ so it wasn't too bad. One of those was a program to fit curve parameters. The routine and the results are shown below the break. I will be making the executable file available on the Google Drive in the Downloads area in the very near future.

SIR Model Revisited

It has been about 15 months since I first did my original SIR modeling concerning the progression of Covid 19. That post is here. I thought I would re-visit the model and the data after all the things that have come to pass since that time. In my initial simple model I used a scaled population  (1 being the total U.S. population.) I have subsequently made some numerical changes  such that I could use the actual U.S. population and compare the confirmed cases and the estimates from the CDC.

As was mentioned in a previous post the CDC has esitmated that the total disease burden is off by a factor of 4.0 due to a variety of reasons they have published. That post is here. To my knowledge no one seems to take real issue with their estimates. In my model I used the multiplication factor published by the CDC and re-plotted it. It is shown below the break.

It's About Damn Time

My horse trailer is finally ready to be titled and registered. I'll be going to the DMV on Monday and we'll see how that goes. California handily allows for the registration for an own built horse trailer and the paperwork seems to be straightforward. I'll temper my enthusiasm until I have the temporary tags in place. I'm really pleased with how it came out and I like the color scheme. Here's a picture of the interior, and a second one showing the outside.

Wildfire and Other Things

What a month. Through August and the first two weeks in September it's been busy. I must have made two dozen trips evacuating other people's animals from the mountains. Wildfire. Every time there is a wildfire in California my mother phones me and asks "is everything OK?" Usually the fire is nowhere near us, well except this time, and she didn't call. Needless to say I get quite a few calls from my mother during wildfire season. The last drought caused a lot of tree kills due to the bark beetles, as I mentioned in a previous post, and often leads to an intense fire season.

It was quite the season this year and it was a near run thing at my place in the mountains. After the break is a photograph from the road up at about the 5000' elevation. The red dot is the approximate location of my place up there. The fire also threatened a small community at the base of the mountains.

Almost There

What with my truck being sidelined and having other things to take care of I fell off on my schedule to get my horse trailer finished. I'm almost there. I have finished all the sheet metal work and primed and painted the interior. I'll be painting the exterior this weekend. The uprights and the main frame of the roof was fabricated from 14 Gauge 1 1/2" square tubing, and the roof bows were made using 1" 14 Gauge square tubing. A diagram is shown after the break.

What Fresh Hell...

Well I see that the CDC is playing with mask guidance again. "Vaccinated individuals should wear a mask indoors." What? Are the vaccinated carriers? Heaven help women named Claire or some such. Covid Claire would stink as a moniker. So as not to appear as sexist Covid Charlie would not be fun either.

Now according to the CDC, at least to the people down in the basement who probably do all of the good work, the US has had approximately 140 million cases of Covid-19. You can read about the disease burden here at the CDC site. I arbitrarily increased the value based upon the current case numbers and the presented under-report value.

Approximately 60% of the population has been vaccinated. Now I'm assuming people got the vaccine to prevent getting Covid and not getting the vaccine if they already had the disease. If that's the case then what's the big problem? We've probably got over a 90% immunity. Sure we will continue to get cases as not everyone is immune yet, and I'm sure there will be some cases of re-infection. After all, immunity is usually not considered perpetual.

Unless of course something is being left out. No, that wouldn't happen. I don't believe in conspiracies, but I am also highly skeptical when it comes to coincidences.

Some Notes on Rebuilding Engines

Well, it's done. The engine for my truck is rebuilt and I have installed it. I thought I would take the opportunity to go over some of the things I have learned over time about rebuilding engines. My very first rebuild was a one lung motorcycle engine, and I had an owners manual and some basic tools. I think I was 13 at the time. Back then, an owners manual gave you the instructions needed to do that kind of job. Today, not so much. I think they give you instructions on putting air in the tires with a warning not to suck on the inflator while depressing the air trigger.

My Truck Got Hit By My Dog

I've been working on my truck, it has a sad. I had started to get an odd sound on occasion at the torque converter region of the truck so I took a look...

I inspected the flex plate and saw it needed to be replaced. Much to my surprise as I was in the process of lowering the engine to get at the upper transmission to engine bolts the whole transmission fell out. The case had broken some time in the past. So time for a remanufactured transmission. Which also means a new radiator and auxiliary transmission fluid cooler. I am also installing an auxiliary engine oil cooler while I'm at it.

Since I had all this free time I decided to refresh the motor. I put in a reman crankshaft, new bearings all around, new oil pump and screen, new water pump and fan clutch, and a new crank balancer. While I was at it I replaced all the sensors on the block. By the time I'm done I'll have put about $3200 into it which includes the price of the reman transmission. It seems like a lot for this truck but have you priced used heavy duty 4WD trucks lately? We're talking plywood. Prices seem to have jumped 50-75% in the last 6 months.

I think what I'll do is give this truck a flat bed conversion, give it a new paint job to match the horse trailer and make it my horse rig. These are my last horses so once they're in the Pasture of Dreams I'll just sell the whole thing, trailer, truck, and various accoutrements.

But It's a Manly Sort of Heat

What the hell does that mean? The same thing as "but it's a dry heat." Once it is over 115 degrees Fahrenheit all bets are off, it's just hot as hell. 

Now our esteemed Governor in Sacramento, Governor Hair Gel, claims we have plenty of electrical generating capacity in the state. SCE and PG&E beg to differ though. They have implemented a Peak Pricing Extravaganza, which means bend over. It seems Governor Hair Gel sees any electricity shortages as the fault of consumers. Similarly, a water shortage is not due to a storage capacity problem.

My wife is a very pragmatic woman, when there is a "rolling outage" her solution to the issue is "Husband of Mine, Do Your Thing." OK.

Every time I see our Governor on the TV I get this earworm. His hair was perfect...

Sometimes Life is A Country Western Song

 No, my dog didn't get run over but life intrudes.

I'll be back later.

Building a Horse Trailer Continued

I've finished the chassis work on my trailer. I added steps, a heavy duty bumper and put in all the reinforcements. I sandblasted it, and then primed and painted it. I also completed the electrical rough-in. I took it for a spin and was well pleased with the pull. I only noticed one bit of shudder at 50 mph that subsequently vanished above 55 mph. I rechecked all the torques and found one wheel's lug nuts insufficiently torqued, three of the bolts on the axle hanger system below specification, and the thing now glides at all speeds. I  torqued the u-bolts for the axles to 50 foot-pounds and the axle hanger bolts to 75 foot-pounds. There are some photos of the completed chassis below the break.

The Chassis Work Continues

After finishing some of the long welds on the chassis I mounted it on two supports I fabricated so I could rotate the frame as needed to get my welds down at an optimum angle. The rotating chassis is shown in the picture. That's also my trusty Ranch Truck, 250,000 miles and still running strong. 

I spent today cutting all the odds and ends for gusset plates, corner bracing and miscellaneous pieces. On Monday I get my order of steel in to build the frame for the top of the trailer. I still have to build a square tube bender to facilitate bending the roof bows. Onward.

The Horse Trailer Floor plan

I suppose I should have posted this drawing first, but here it is.