Woke to the Rain

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Kelsey

3AM. Once again. But this time I woke up because of a sound, not the usual reasons of a fifty-four-year-old. This time it was the sound of rain hitting the window. A peak at the weather once I got around the broadband connection being down again, and the radar shows we are at the head of a coming rain cell heading north and looking fairly large. Even if no new weather develops and it just traverses us, we are in for hours of rain. I was really hoping to go get some wood today. But mud everywhere is going to kind of ruin it. Is it even worth going back to sleep, or should I just give in and have a cup of joe and keep on typing?

Work is just going along. I keep at it, and there is some money, though I cannot call it a career, that’s for sure. It takes hours to get enough money to call it an earning day. I have to get past the gas I put in the car, and the food I eat during the day. Those all cost around $50. So, to get ahead on a day, I need to earn more than that. But that usually takes around four hours or so. It’s not great.

I have the wax melted. There was still a thick ring around the top of the vat last night. I broke it apart using the shaft of the scissors. Once I broke through it, it was fairly easy to scrape into the depths of the hot wax to melt away. This morning things look good for a pour. I just need to get the molds wicked, and ready. I’d like to get three full pours done this week: today if possible. That’s just over a hundred candles when done. That should be enough to hold us through a little while of sales online.

I am not good with this rain. I am not happy at all. I need the firewood. I need it desperately at this point. Once the snow comes, it won’t be long before all the logs are frozen to the ground, and I cannot get more. I need it split and stacked and under a tarp. I am not sure what all this rain indicated for the rest of the season. I have heard some predictions that we can expect loads of snow this year. This steam train just needs to keep on coming. It seems to be started. But then, the spring brought a bit of rain before summer went hot and dry and forgot all about it. I cannot take chances where the firewood is concerned. I really need to get this job done come spring next year and have the wood split and stacked and seasoning before the summer begins.

5AM is coming. It is almost time to wake missus up. I am listening to a podcast. I am typing, obviously. Still have not decided on a coffee. At this rate, I will have to decide on a nap. Oh well. Thank you, rain!

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Melting Wax

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Kelsey

It is autumn now, and the season is best for certain hobbies to start up, including woodworking in the shop where the temperature in the summer is a bit much for hand planing and sawing, or other kinds of work that results in a lot of activity and heat buildup. The house is cooler, too, and that’s where I have my wax supplies for candle making. My colonial candle molds are tin, authentic to the time period, and make three-quarter inch by six-inch-tall candles. I have one inch by nine-inch-tall tapers, too, but only one mold that makes six at a time. I am far fonder of the six inch probably because of my candle stands and lanterns are made for that size, and I have a whole load of holders to make stands of my own with that are also three-quarter of an inch in size. So, for the six inches, I have half a dozen molds that make six candles each, allowing me to make 36 in a pour. I also have a few various silicon molds of various shapes for things like little beehive candles, and wax bars that I can sell to apply to hand tools and thread and the like for woodworkers and sewers and leatherworkers. And now that I have written it, I want to have a pumpkin patch next year, and I think I will sell each pumpkin with a beehive candle to put in it when it is made into a Jack-O-Lantern. Something to ratchet up the game a little.

I have a huge brewer’s vat for melting wax in. I bought it about a year ago now and left it on for something like seven months straight over last winter so I would not have to melt all the wax in it to get started at making candles on any particular day. I also used it to help keep the chill off in the room upstairs where I keep it. After all, a huge vat of melted wax ought to do something against that. And that heat is why I shut it off over the summer! I didn’t need the extra with as hot at is tends to get upstairs in our house when the summer sun shines down on our roof. So it has sat with the wax hard and cold for several months now till Saturday, when I switched it on again for the first time since spring.

It did not take the element long to come up and the display to read 142-5 on the temperature. I kept the lid on, as always, because I wanted the heat trapped inside, and I also don’t like the idea of house dust getting into it. That’s how I left it from early Saturday morning. Sunday has come and gone, and when I checked it then, it was still a hard lump of wax in a vat. It was warm at the bottom though, and the sides were warm up to about halfway up. That was Sunday morning. This morning, I was able to push through the bit of wax that was caved in at the top from when it cooled in the spring. Wax changes in density with large swings of temperature. Even in a three-quarter-inch taper candle mold, wax will shrink enough as it cools to require filling again to top off the volume of the wax poured in the mold. It cools on the outsides first and leaves a hollow in the middle which has to be filled. As the wax int he vat cooled it cracked and left a large divot in the center that was weak when the heat came up from the bottom, and with some effort and a pair of scissors I was able to break that out and drop it down into the hot wax below.

I covered the vat with its lid and left it with a sort of volcano of hot wax in the middle and several inches of colder wax still caked around the edges in the hopes that now the heat will break through and trap under the lid enough to get that cake to melt off. When I was pushing with the scissors the whole cake seemed to have given a little and the hot wax pushed up through the hole in the middle. The hole is three or four inches across, and the volume coming up only rose half an inch or so, and I did not want to keep pushing it because I did not want my hands suddenly jolting into the vat of hot wax. I had already got a splash up that covered them once.

So, as of seven o’clock on Monday morning, October 13th, I am still waiting for the wax to finish melting that I put on early on Saturday. My plan is to string the molds and pour tapered colonial candles to list on our websites. Obviously, I will make a few mistakes to keep for us. Business is business, after all.

I have a second vat that is much smaller, and the temperature does not regulate well in, and I have filled it with wax that has come out and hardened on the table at the first one. I don’t want to introduce unclean bits of wax there, and dirty up the works. Much rather keep that separate for personal use or even tool wax as it is not like it is horrible filthy when it goes in. It does have a tendency to overheat, though, and a bit of the wax can burn at the bottom. That’s also something I would rather not introduce to a candle I am going to sell.

I plan on working today. Not at the candles, but in town. I have obligations in Preston tomorrow, and will be here throughout most of the day, so I will work then. The wax should be fully melted by then, and I will even be able to use the ladle that is stuck in the hard wax on the side still. It is fully metal and should be heating up and breaking loose before the full amount of wax melts on the sides.

The kids are off school today because of parent/teacher conferences. One of them has a single B, and the rest are all A’s between them, so we think we will not be attending today. That gives me a full stretch of time to go to work. I should be okay to just start late today, as if it were a weekend. I am thinking of making a list of people in the city I might want to give a pair of candles to, to get them aware that I make them, and as a thanks for being kind to me while I have been fumbling my way back into the work-a-day world. There are a couple I can think of who greet me as a friend when I come to their shops and genuinely ask how I am doing.

Giving mind to all this, I am now thinking of the stands and the chandelier that I have made, and that I should get some more made. There is only a little over two months left till Christmas, believe it or not. Once again, I could have hand made a Christmas, but it is getting too late to do everything I would need to. But there are a few things. I really need to rework my year, and plan better. I also need to try to fit in some photography in all this, and some leatherwork. My many crafts I enjoy!

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The Ventura House

Posted on October 6, 2025 by Kelsey

133 Leighton Drive, Ventura, CA, 93001, about 1994

My great grandparent’s house in Ventura, California was built in 1925 down the block from where it currently stands and was moved up and set up on stilts in the location it is at the corner of Leighton and Cameron. A lot appears to be different these days as the asbestos siding is gone and has been replaced with stucco, and the white picket fence is gone, too. Hooray for the siding, but I am sad it has been replaced with stucco, and I am sure sad about the fence.

My first memory of the house goes back to Easter, when I was six years old, and Cousin Frankie hid some easter eggs around the yard for some of the younger ones to go looking for. I spotted the egg brilliantly hid on the top rail of the fence on the other side of a rose bush. I was too young to know better than to go for it, so I did, and it was quite upsetting. I withdrew from the bush with legs Poka dotted in blood. It is California and I was wearing shorts, so there was nothing to protect me from the damage.

I have lots of memories of that house and the people who lived there. But to sum them up, I will say it is a place where there are smells that I associate with it. Irish Spring soap is the smell I remember from the bathroom. I cannot remember the name of the scent from the freshly washed sheets, but I remember slipping into the bed in the back bedroom when I would stay. I also remember the sound of the voices in the kitchen and breakfast room the next mornings, my great grandparents and Butch and Shirley and my grandparents were a typical sound that morn. Working class people, they were usually talking about their jobs. But topics could vary. There was always laughter. I’d get up and follow the sounds and the scent of bacon cooking on the old gas stove. Back in those days, appliances would get old. It would be bacon and eggs and toast for breakfast, and I would always marvel at my great grandfather, “Slim,” who for some reason liked to cut the white away from his egg yolk, then eat the whole yolk in one bit, leaving no sign of it on his plate. It was at that house that I came to know the taste of buttered toast in the yolk, which is to this day is one of my favorite tastes, with a slight sprinkle of salt and pepper, of course.

I spent a Christmas there, too. I don’t remember it very well, but there are pictures around the house somewhere that show Frankie, my aunt Amy, and my great-grandparents and grandparents there. It was an event that was not repeated in the years to follow, I suspect because my great-grandparents were getting too old to host such events.

My great-grandmother, Amy, had a shopping cart from one of the little local grocery stores, the kind you very seldom see anymore, and she used it to haul her laundry from the back porch where the washer was, out to the line, where she would hang it to dry in the warm California sun.

The garage faced Cameron and was situated behind the house with a little driveway between the garage and the side yard. They kept a travel trailer on that driveway, and we took it camping locally several times, including the beach, and Wheeler Gorge Campground. They also went places further way, like The Fountain of Youth out by the Salton Sea, and up to Gree River, Wyoming, Flaming Gorge, Utah, and of course to Lyman, where one of my great-grandmother’s sisters lived. I was in the bed over the table in that trailer on Rincon one night, looking out in the moonlight the first time I ever saw a wave reflect off a beach wall then return and collide with the next one coming in. It splashed straight up into the air quite away and amazed me. That was the same beach we were on when my great-grandfather gave into my plea’s and let go of me to get hit by a wave, and I discovered in it that it was hollow as I can remember looking up the tube before it crashed in. At that age, I wondered if anyone else in the whole world knew this amazing thing!

Slim died in ’85. His Find-A-Grave link is here:

Merlin Fredrick “Slim” Siedenburg (1907-1985) – Find a Grave Memorial

Great Grandma lived on till ’93:

Amy Eliza Walker Siedenburg (1913-1993) – Find a Grave Memorial

After that, grandma got the house, then sold it around the year 2,000. By then, she and Grandpa Kelsey had divorced. Frankie was dead too. A lot had changed in the family over the years, but that old house was just the same in so many ways. Sometimes it’s the places, not the people who are the steadiest things in our lives.

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A Couple of Things to Note

Posted on October 5, 2025 by Kelsey

I was out working today, and it was raining quite a bit, but with broken clouds, and lots of interesting light. But when it broke through enough to see the tops of the mountains over Smithfield, it had snowed up there, making this our first view of snow of the season.

So, yes, it was cold out today. Apparently, 53°F is cold to us these days, if the thermometer of the car can be trusted for accuracy. The range here at the house from today till the low hit just now has been 55.8°F – 42.3°F. Obviously, it has been colder up on the mountain. So, no snow down here, but while I was out, the woodstove got lit, and a fire was burning in it when I came home. Missus got it going on her own. I was worried about if it is burn ready and the pipe clean enough. I really should just get up there and clean it out and get it ready for the year.

I need to get in the shop tomorrow and get the looms built. So, that is going to be the highest priority. But soon after comes the chimney.

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Photo Bum at Work

Posted on September 30, 2025 by Kelsey

I have been bumming around with my camera to work on my art these past few days.  Here are some results.

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A Couple of Shots From Logan

Posted on September 23, 2025 by Kelsey

These are a couple of shots out of camera that I took in Logan on Sunday. I am pretty happy with them as is. What I really need is to get in and do some more shooting!

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Second to Last Day of Summer Musings

Posted on September 21, 2025 by Kelsey

Well. I did get the logs moved over from the saw pile to the firewood pile, ready to be cut down and split. I am supposed to go get more wood tomorrow with one of the boys, and hopefully that will work out. But I still have not got the gear together for gathering. I have not got a lot of time to work on that today if I am going to go into town to do some earning. I have got a fair total running for this week so far, but today is the last day to top it off and top it off I need to. The bank wants more money in it all the time to cover the bills, and to try to get a little bit ahead so I can afford some food. It is a struggle on the method we are on right now, but it will have to do till something better comes along. Living in America is expensive right now.

Our youngest went along to work with me yesterday. It was nice. She will open the doors for me when she can, and we have lots to talk about. I have also learned about some of her frustrations on living with her sister and the mess that exists in her room, and how she cannot get to her bed at night or out in the morning without dealing directly with confronting that mess. Sister has always got excuses but does not just get it done, and that is causing her problems. I observed that neither of them will find their way off their spot in the family area and go to work on it. It sounds like it is getting time for an ultimatum. I hate to have to get involved like that. I’ll be talking to mom about it first, and then she will likely offer it with me looming in the background with a truck, trailer, open window, and directions to the city dump. My mother taught me the value of a snow shovel in house cleaning.

Time with the kids while working is wonderful. I have had both along during the last few days. It is a good time for me to gauge their sanity, listen to what they talk about, what their problems are and how they address them, then offer anything I can. I am happy to say, there is not a lot in the sense that they are levelheaded and largely see the world as it is. That’s important to me. They are both kind and generous people and are not out to hurt others in any way, but will offer themselves when they can, while recognizing that it is not always mutual, and that others are not always right in the head themselves. They are not perfect, as the previous paragraph indicated, but I don’t think I could ask for more. They are both wonderful!

I took a moment out last night before coming home and parked in Center Street and fired off a couple of photos. I will share one of them, but the power of a modern DSLR really showed what it can do these days as I took this photo, which is posted unretouched at all, and uncropped, taken handheld with a telephoto lens. If you grew up on film, you know this as basically impossible. But a quick flip of the ISO which doesn’t muddy up so much, and we get this.

I will say, this is a max – 2MB downsized copy of the original 12MB file, so there is that to consider. It was shot at f/4, 1/800th, ISO 12800, handheld at 70mm. While I was checking the file info, it said this one is down to 811KB. So yeah, I have a much better copy in the camera still. That will be a good file to offer to the printer if required. I am just so glad to see this kind of result that I think I will be back down sometime to do some different crops and shoot more downtown. I also have a much wider-angle lens or two who might have something else to offer. I think the liminal might give more when there are no cars around and such. Time to turn it into art.

The sun is coming along, and I can hear its light from around the corner of the Earth. By the time it peaks, I can see myself sipping a coffee downstairs or lay here asleep again. Either way, I need to prepare to get wood tomorrow before going in to work. We’ll get the kids to school, then go dump out the trailer of his stuff at the local city dump, then drive down to Logan to pick up wood there. There are logistical problems, especially now with the stupid battery charger on the fritz. I am not sure how else I can power the winch that has to be mounted on the back of the truck. Do I put the deep cycle battery into the extra bay in the truck and run jumper cables to it from the truck battery while we drive down there to top it off? I don’t know. I can’t really think of anything else till I can afford a trickle charger or whatnot. The new models look so overly complicated, and like there is so much to break on them. I wonder if I can fix the old one and get it running again?

Oh, tomorrow is when autumn begins! I guess I am just not one of those summer-loving people. Autumn is my season, followed by spring. I love the transitions. Winter and summer get to be too much. But these shoulder seasons are where it is at. It is also so much easier to work in the workshop during the seasons of change. Well, everywhere, really. I will even be putting the wax melter on again in the couple of weeks. Time availability depending, of course.

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Generally Okay News, Though Not All

Posted on September 18, 2025 by Kelsey

We went to another market last night. It was not very busy at all. But we did sell some candles and a couple of other things, as well as we got notification just before we went that we sold another hairpin lace loom just before we went. The sun was shining, and the wind was very calm, so it was a perfect evening for it. But there were no crowds there at all. We could not say there were enough people to obscure our curiosity of the booths across from us at all.

The good news is that I spent the evening with Missus in her booth and felt okay with not having to run to town to work to make money enough to get through the week. In fact, in the end I just took all of yesterday off and did a few chores.

I got a bale of hay delivered the evening before last and spent part of yesterday making space for it under the old llama shelter, so I won’t have to mess about with a tarp over it. I also cleaned the llama and goat pen out. There is now a pile just outside of their pen to dispose of, and I may spread that across the other and use that next year to try a pumpkin patch in. There has got to be some good use! Maybe I need to move the back wall to the opposite side of the shelter to accomplish it well.

I also fixed the shower handle yesterday. The new handle I found at the Home Depot fit the stud on the Delta Faucet, but the shroud that covered the bulb drooped down too low and would not allow full movement of the handle to operate the water to full off or on positions. The good news is that the body of the handle is fully metal, and I was able to grind the ends of the shroud down a millimeter or so to allow for that full movement with no effort at all on the diamond arbor. So, that works very well now, thank you.

I also rotated the tires on the car and left the tool in it to retighten the lug nuts down after twenty miles of driving. The tires wear very unevenly on that car with the greatest wear showing itself on the front tires due to the shifting of the weight during hard acceleration, which I have been prone to during my delivery work. I also had that plastic bit on the front right that wore it horribly. So that one is basically bald, and on the back now. I have learned a few things on these tires and really should be saving for a new set now. I cannot feel confident in these for the coming winter.

Finally, I piled the logs from the sawlog pile into the firewood pile so we can at least say we contributed to the requirements this year. Jordan has worked so hard to get everyone ahead. I need to go get some myself, but getting the time to has been beyond difficult. Dylan and I are meant to on Monday, so with any luck, that will make another contribution. Work, work, work!

Okay, now to bury the lead, then cover it in mystery. A good friend revealed she is fighting cancer at the moment. Pile that onto all the other good news of the world right now, and what have you got? A shit-flavored sundae of despair. Still, we keep smiling and eating it.

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YouTube

Posted on September 7, 2025 by Kelsey

I want dearly to be friends with YouTube. I have a channel devoted to the farm that I cannot seem to work out because I cannot work out the farm. So, I have just created a person channel to upload anything that is not related to the farm and falls under all of my other personal creative endeavors. It is meant to be pretty random. So it shall be. It has a link to this blog right up at the top. Let’s see if we can generate a little cross traffic. Mind you, there is nothing on the channel as of this posting. But hopefully I will sort that out within the next month or so. So, here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuzPFnZB7OC_DXBJcwJz59g

The link is not too special at the moment. Just your basic standard little link. But so long as it works! Let’s see what we can generate in the form of content now. Let’s see which channel will take off, too.

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A Little to Talk About

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Kelsey

I am listening to the screech owl outside this morning. My fan is off and out of the window, so I can hear him and all the cows mooing on the neighboring farm. The owl must be trying to scope out something to eat because his position has changed a couple of times so far. It’s gone half six in the morning, so the sun is not yet up. Once it is, I plan to be keeping an eye out for a photo, if I can get a good position in relation to the owl. He has tended to stay about after sunrise, so it might play out in my favor. I’d like that.

With the kids back in school and the season beginning to cool, the time of change has started to peek in on us. Working eight-to-ten-hour days, inserting school runs in addition, and having to cut animal feed and deliver that to them, my days are currently too full to get the time to do the things I need to for winter preparations. I have a chimney to clean, and a yard to clear of some debris still, and I would like to get that roof together on the firewood seller. I’d also love to get my woodshed put together, but I am not at all confident in the start I have got to that. It’s something I probably should not worry about as it is boards where there should be beams down along the sill, but they are inch and a half thick and are basically working as a sill on bricks that make up for the remainder of what would be a beam. So, I should just carry one and get the thing put together. You know me. Nothing is ever perfect, so I get hung up. I need the woodshed too dearly to put it off, though! So, I should avail myself of the need and get it done.

The owl has gone quiet. Perhaps that is the end of him for the moment, and I will have to try again tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps I should be working by this time tomorrow or the next day.

Our oldest came by and picked up a load of wood yesterday, by himself, and brought it back to the house. He split the previous load and some of the one from yesterday, and he took a load in his truck bed back up to his place. He is working very hard this year on the scheme, and he is leaving some for us, as well. He is getting more done on the task than I am! I need to get some done, too, even if it is just sorting out what logs out back I am going to saw, and which I will cut into firewood as a sort of emergency contribution. Better still would be to get the truck gassed up and get down there and get a few more logs of my own. He has said it is hard work, and he is sure right! If I could just get the tires fixed on the trailer and haul the tractor down, we could make it a great deal easier to get the wood home, and then deal with it here, where there is water and a break place, and the safety of people around if something should go wrong, and the ability to lift a lot more with a lot less effort. There are lots of tools here, too. It is a far cry from doing such heavy work exposed to the sun where we get the wood. But fixing those two tires will be so expensive! So will not fixing them. I dare not fix one and use the spare, because it would be just my luck, I’d need the spare the moment I did that.

It looks like the hydrangea bush behind my shop is about to bloom for the second time. I have the electric running on the fence now, so it has filled in on the backside where the neighbor’s horses have kept attacking it for food. We may see the healthiest bloom on it yet in the next few days!

I think in the next couple of weeks the girls and I need to take a short expedition on our bikes to go see the progress on the bridge, and if there is any hope that we will be going back to their regular bus stop this winter. I don’t know who the county contracted to build the replacement, but they sure are not in a hurry to get it done. From what I could see in the dark that one night, by the time they were supposed to be finished, then had not yet put in any new concrete. I could see a pile of long rebar laying along the road, long enough to erect new pilings with. But there was certainly no sign of a deck. So, in addition to being unimpressed, I am still stuck taking the kids seven miles away to the next nearest bus stop. It could shorten my day and get me working a little longer if I could just do the one a mile and a half or two away.

By hook or by crook I need to get out in a short bit and cut some grass for these goats and llamas this side of the street, for their health! Is this a chore I want to do? Hell no! I don’t know what a big bale of hay costs, but even if it is only $80, I cannot afford that right now. Our animals have tended to go through about a bale a day on the two-string sized ones. Those are the small ones you see the Amish throwing onto their horsedrawn hay wagons in the videos you watch online. I am on about the really big bales you seldom see a tractor carrying more than two or three of at a time because they are so huge. Specifically, I mean six-string. My tractor can barely lift one! But it can lift it!

The screeching is still quiet. You know that if I go across the street and cut hay without my camera in tow, the owl will come back and fly right over my head again, like it did last week. If nothing else positive, I have learned that life can be a little predictable. Well, I can at least anticipate the kind of stupidity that carries on!

It has been good to sit and write a little. I have been missing this lately! Too bad I cannot get paid for this! Ta for now!

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