2/6-8/07 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

The pickup was having an engine problem which shows up as loss of power under load. It has been getting worse for the past several weeks, and this week I could only go 35 MPH on the steepest grades going over the pass. Once I was on the level, or going downhill, I had plenty of power but it was still missing on one cylinder all the time. Not a good sign.

I arrived at 12:20. It was 35 degrees. There had been no new snow. It was beautiful out.

After moving in I went up to work and noticed that the peanut was gone from the main floor. I couldn't be sure whether I left one there or not, but it sure seemed that I had. None of the traps was disturbed upstairs or downstairs and there was no other evidence of mice. I didn't know what to think, but I was concerned. I put a new peanut down on the floor.

I had brought some boards with me and I used them to rebuild two toolboxes to make them longer. Now they hold the long augurs, rasps, and other long tools, which will make the boxes a lot more convenient.

The water running out the end of the hose wasn't running as fast as usual so I suspected that a branch had fallen across the hose and the weight of the snow was pinching it. I figured I had better find the problem and fix it before it plugged up completely and froze.

Before I quit for the day, I spent some time scraping a log in the loft wall getting it ready to varnish.

On Wednesday I talked to Karen Arnold again as she was walking down the road. She told me some interesting history of the area that was a little inconsistent with the published stories that I had read. She offered to bring me some historical documents that I could look at or maybe copy the next time she came by. That sounds very interesting to me.

I decided to work on the hose pressure. I started by uncoupling the hoses connected to the copper water line running up to the cabin and back. The flow was slow there, so I figured any obstruction must be uphill from there. I hooked the hoses back up and started hiking up the hose line looking for trouble.

Less than one hose-section distance uphill, I came across a huge hole in the snow that had been melted away by jets of water squirting out of the hose. The hose had evidently been bitten by an animal. There were four or five punctures that were spraying water.

Since there was so much pressure at the punctures, and not so much where the hose connected to the copper line, I figured there was probably an obstruction between the two. Starting at the melted hole, I dug a trench through the three feet of snow down to the hose all the way back to the copper water line and found no obstruction at all. Then it dawned on me that the pressure was a result of the copper line going back up to the cabin, which gave it about 20 feet of head.

I uncoupled the hose again where I had before so that the water could run out before it went up the hill to the cabin. This reduced the pressure at the punctures so that instead of spraying water, the holes were now sucking in air. That allowed me to clean and dry off that section of the hose and tape it up good with duct tape without having the tape get all wet.

When I hooked the hose back up, the pressure increased somewhat, but it was still not up to full flow. I hiked the entire hose route looking for more trouble. There were no more melted snow holes, so I don't think there were any more leaks. But there were quite a few fallen trees across the hose route that might be causing trouble. The problem is that there was three feet of dense snow on top and without knowing exactly where to dig, it would be a huge job to try to clear away all the fallen trees.

Since the flow was now plenty adequate to keep the hose from freezing, I decided to watch and wait until spring when it will be easier to clear away the trees. If the pressure drops more later on, though, I may still have to go up and dig some more.

After my work on the hoses, there was quite a bit of air that got in the line. I went up to the cabin and bled air out from the hose bib at the top of the loop. It occurred to me that air might have bubbled up the line toward the spring and gotten into the loops of copper pipe. There were six or eight coils standing vertically where I had left off embedding the pipe in the creek bed. If air got into these loops, it would significantly reduce the pressure below. I laid the loops down so they were as horizontal as I could get them in the hopes that the air bubbles would be forced around the loops and down the hose to the creek. It will take a while for these bubbles to work themselves out, so maybe next week the pressure will be back up. We'll see.

When I finally got back to the cabin to get some work done, I found a shrew in the trap in the crawlspace. He was stiff so I think he got caught during the night. The new peanut and the traps upstairs were untouched. I still don't quite know what to think.

I spent the rest of the day planing, scraping, gouging, rasping, and otherwise preparing logs and window frames in the loft wall for varnish. I got four logs done between the loft windows and I did the window frame surfaces on both windows that are in contact with the logs. Then I swept up the chips and vacuumed the wall and the floor.

On Thursday morning, I varnished the four logs and portions of the window frames that I had prepared. After cleaning out my brush, I went out and rolled up the hose that I had first tried to use for the Boy Scouts. It had been plugged up with ice, but I had hung it up from a high log so that it could drain. It was empty now so I rolled it up and put it away. I noticed that snow had accumulated on top of the newel post for my outside staircase and I decided I didn't want it to be soaking in water like that. I got a plastic bag and covered the top of the post after drying it off the best I could. I had lunch and left for home at 1:40.