Daily Off Grid Maintenance - Future project prep and firewood

It's getting pretty cold out here in Alaska. Everything's staying pretty frozen during the day now and we have some things that we need to button up before winter. Typically when doing our videos we choose a topic for the week and we focus on doing that project. It doesn't leave a lot of time for maintenance and random chores that we need done around the property so we're going to take this opportunity for a day in the life type video and just kind of show some of the things that we need to do to keep everything running. It is seven o'clock in the morning and we definitely wake up in the dark every single morning now. Can't really see much and unfortunately the stars are not out this morning. Good work. So so I got our kind of wood stove area cleaned up a little bit. I used the last couple pieces of wood so Cody and Rowan are going outside right now. They're going to go start bringing in some more firewood from woodshed to stock that up. Meanwhile I'm gonna get started on some breakfast for all of us. I'd say about once a week we have either pancakes or waffles. Today it was pancakes and blueberry pancakes was requested so I already got out a cup of blueberries that we picked off our property. I like to kind of get them out a little bit ahead of time so they aren't 100% frozen. We're going to get started on this and then eat and hopefully by the time we're done eating coffee will be ready and then it's going to be time to go outside and get to work. It's a nice purple pancake batter and this is not baby food it is some of the beef tallow that we rendered from the half a cow that we bought and butchered ourselves last fall. We just use some of this to make sure that nothing sticks although most of our cast iron pans are pretty well seasoned it's not really that big of a worry but I always add just a little bit for the first our blueberry syrup that we made last winter and add that on top of our blueberry pancakes and that's breakfast. So I was coming back last night after dark I was doing some skidster work down the way and I didn't have any brakes when I was coming back so now that we have some light I'm gonna go take a look at the side-by-side see what we need to do to get those brakes working. I kind of expect that I probably tore one of my brake lines in the front and looking online that part is $160 so hopefully that's not the case but we'll take a look here. Taking a look under my left tire on the front it's pretty clear what the problem is. This braided brake hose must have got caught on an alder or something and just severed. So we are going to have to get a part ordered for this and the side-by-side is going to be down for a while. First thing I'm going to tackle today is some maintenance on the truck. During the winter months when we have all the snow on the ground we can't access our property with the vehicle so we end up parking this down on the road system that's about five miles away and I need to get my tires rotated and I need to get my brakes changed and I don't want to have to do that down on the side of the road in the middle of winter so we're going to get that done now. And I think while I'm working on this vehicle Lori's going to work on cleaning it out a little bit and getting some of our winter preparedness stuff into the vehicle. What am I doing? You want some help? Thank you. Oh I haven't seen any of that yet. Okay. You're going to find an excuse to use that tool all the time now. Yes. You can do it. Maybe. No. You're doing a really good job. Help. You want me to put it there? It doesn't go to anything. See this is solid. It doesn't go underneath. Yeah so you can you can touch it but there's nothing that I can't do anything with that. Oh no. You don't need that one anymore. Thank you. Brought a little bit of sawdust with you too, didn't you? Right here all the way. Are you kneeling down too? Yeah. Okay this is the tire from the front right going on to the back left. I did the brakes on the front right tire also and then I took the tire that was back here and put up on that one. This tool has made this incredibly fast to do my brakes and tires instead of having to use a tire iron and a ratchet set with a breaker bar and all that. This was a gift from my in-laws actually after they saw me struggling pretty hard fixing the skidster track. Well Cody is halfway through swapping out those tires and getting the brakes put in. I just finished emptying out the truck and vacuuming it. I gave it just kind of a rough clean down. I didn't get super super in depth because I'm just not having that energy today and basically now we just need to put everything back. The most important thing is we want to make sure we have all of our straps in here. We want to have a jack in here. All of like the winter emergency necessities we're going to kind of go down the checklist make sure they're thrown in here and we did just get some chains for our tires as well so we're going to make sure those are in the truck and ready to go if we ever so need them. That one was pretty easy. I'm guessing it's too full to put right now so let me just do it anyway though. So It's not a break done One more tire to go and I'm going to finish getting some of this stuff in the truck It's a heavy jack though. It is heavy. I really like it, too So on this side by Rowan's car seat We just have a basket of a whole bunch of backup kind of just kid things. They've got diapers We have some cloths towels blankets an extra hat some emergency snacks stuff like that and then underneath this seat We also just have some more kind of like emergency things. So we have an extra tarp, just a small tarp, but Clean for if we ever need it You have a smaller jack with the tool that uses it and then lastly we also keep a Air pump and then just a little first And all of these things we have had to use multiple times already both for ourselves and then also we've been able to help out Give it a couple more kicks. It'll go And Then finally on the other side of the truck We have a few more items to throw in over here as well So we have some jumper cables Toe strap. These are some shocks that we need to get rebuilt So we have to drop them off in town hatchet tire and then some chains for our truck We do have in the bed of the truck a couple like big straps and then a couple of small straps And we're just gonna leave them in there. So yeah, that's covered too And we just need to get on the last tire and then it's all done one project off the list Like all day to do it You can change the Because you're not gonna be having that tool with you So For an upcoming project I need to get some of these birch boards out of here that we milled a few months ago They're in the solar kiln drying away I lopped off a piece of a 1x and a 2x to check my moisture a few days ago Currently my 1x piece On that cut edge is at 11% and my 2x Is 13 I don't expect the 1-inch stuff to get any drier in here because all of my Dead-standing dry spruce that I have in here is around that 11% So being those were dry coming in and they've been sitting in here for months and they're not any drier I expect 11% is kind of what everything is going to be brought to So my 2-inch stuff could dry some more but we're going to pull out the boards I need for this upcoming project and get them laid out inside and with the wood stove They should finish up drying nicely and then I'll be able to start working with them I will say this solar kiln has been working amazing for me Even though it's not drying things down to that 9 or 10 percent that I was hoping for 11% is pretty good Especially being that I just milled all these two months ago And it only took two months to get from that 30% down to my 14 on the 2-inch stuff Typically if I were to air dry something just keep it covered whatever else I would expect at least two summers to go by before I could use any of this stuff. So two months is amazing You know what it was I wasn't here to help you decide what was being kept you just did this by yourself What do you want to do with that? Well, I made it down to my first 2-inch layer I need three of these for the upcoming project So we're gonna get all these pulled out and then they'll get brought inside to finish drying I will say once we got to the middle of the stack here These boards are a lot wetter than the ones on the outside even with me cutting off that end and checking This end board was around that 14% The outside of the boards in the center are still at 20 So they did drop significantly still in the two months, but I would expect they need probably another like four Maybe You know, we did put this here just for you Rowan watch out, please. Oh, good job. Thank you Okay, that's coming with another one let's get the door Don't pinch our fingers. Yeah Yeah, you take this one No, all right, I'll do it by myself then you're gonna help sweep them stud So helpful, thank you one two three Puppies cheering for you. I do it again. I jump again One two three Well, we only have a couple hours until dark so I'm gonna start working on this pile of firewood a little bit Just see what I can get cut up before dark You Well made a small dent in the pile Got a little pile of firewood here that I'll have to get covered in a tarp because we are expecting snow tomorrow Once the side by side gets fixed. I'll get this pile hauled and stacked in the woodshed And for dinner tonight, we are having some steaks while Cody was out working on that firewood I went through and I cut up a bunch of carrots and potatoes that we had grown this year We just have them roasting in the oven in the wood stove Unfortunately, these steaks are not from our moose nor are they from the half a cow that we got in butchered We ate through all of those steaks already. So we have some just store-bought I think these are just plain super basic New York strips, but they should be pretty good. We're gonna get them on the grill They look good, oh my gosh, it smells so good, too And Dinner is ready. Just some steaks and some roasted potatoes and we're all very hungry. So we are going to eat this up Well, we are done with dinner We are in our blanket pile right now for the night and just kind of hanging out on the couch We're probably gonna do a little bit of editing Maybe even get a movie up on the projector on the wall and just kind of hang out for the rest of the night but that's pretty much it just a Regular day for us