Mark A

Not much but I got my ASR mount for my silencerco hybrid today. Already had the brake mounted on my wife's 300 BLK pistol so I'm really hoping to finally shoot it this weekend. Also, my duty/carry kit from Apex should be here in the next day or so and I will be able finish my C.O.R.E.

I hope that spot in the middle isn't a fried sensor...

At the time of sinking the Indy they did not. But, that sub and its' crew survived the war. That means that they most likely found out after the fact. It is interesting and often educational to learn things. It is what drives the human race forward. Fortunately there are enough people with open minds in the world to more than counteract those that have closed minds...

I need to see if I can find any interviews of the crew of the sub. Can you imagine the range of emotions from sinking what they thought was a battleship, only to suffer through the nuclear bombs and then finding out they got revenge before the bombs were delivered? I remember reading the story of the ordeal the crew went through waiting to be rescued. I don't remember reading about the mission the Indy had just completed. I wonder if any of the survivors of the sinking are still alive? If they are I hope this helps give them closure...

Nice specimen there... I like carrying my 29 on weekends, especially up at the farm. I think I actually like shooting it a bit more than the 20. Eventually going to round out the family with the 40. I don't need one but I sure do want one Mark

Option 3: will be working, will keep working. If I want to see what it looks like I will look at some of the eleventy billion pictures taken. And, if I want to confirm it I will look at the eleventy billion pictures of the last time it happened Mark

Why we as owners and the industry in general aren't throwing gobs of money at him I will never understand. He is just full of winning...

Congrats on the new blaster. I hope you have a lot of fun with it... I have 7.62x39 covered with an sks. I'm not as fast reloading it but I have a TON of stripper clips. If I need a heavy piston fired gun I have my Sig 5.56. You could beat the terminator to death with it and still fire thousands of rounds with no stoppages. I was on my third or fourth carbine class before I touched an AR. The instructor got tired of trying to set up malfunction drills on the sig and made me run them with his rifle. I about dropped it because it was so light. That sealed the deal for me. Wife and I have 300blk pistols set up for home defense and travel guns. Love the sound of heavy subs cycling through a suppressor. I will be curious to read your range report. For $599 it might be a good idea to pick up one for practice drills.

Yep...

If you are doing research or getting paid to test to failure I get it. Just to break it for the heck of it, not my cup of tea.

I have a bunch of VTAC super V's by Geissele. Like them a lot. The only AR's we have that do not have VTAC's in them are my wife's truck AR pistol and mine. They got ALG ACT triggers so in a way all our AR triggers are Geissele... Mark

I thought #2 was terrible... But, I will see #3 in hopes that it redeems the franchise.

After working on the health of the dirt in our raised beds at the house for a few years we are finally starting to reap the benefits. I also foliar fed for the first time and between getting the dirt right and the foliar feeding we have a tomato jungle. I'm actually a bit afraid the plants in the middle will not get enough sunlight. Our plants before have always been kind of spindly... We started harvesting cherry tomatoes about 3 weeks ago and last night between cherry and grape tomatoes I harvested about 2.5 gallons. I've got 3-4 times that amount that will be ready in the next 5-6 days... Almost time to get the dehydrator out. The wife loves dehydrated cherry maters on her salad all winter long. Reefer, I feel your pain on the lost plants. Some of our tomatoes are in free standing pots and they all got blown over last week. Never had plants bushy enough to stop the wind before. About 1/2 of them suffered pretty significant breakage of stalks... I wish the gardens up at our property were going as well but I only get there on the weekends and I have so much to do up there that I don't get to pay much attention to them. That will get better with time as I continue to build soil health. Our aquaponics experiment has been full of surprises, mostly bad... We've killed a lot of fish, killed a lot of plants, 3-4 pumps and in general have built a lot of character as my dad used to call it. But, we have a robust school of tilapia now (we call them the gladiators, any fish that flops around in the dirt multiple times and survives is tough) and we have the system fairly balanced. We have new plants in and hopefully they will do better than the last. If anyone else decides to stick their toe in this type of system give me a shout. I could write a book... Oh, growing a ton of sunflowers for the first time. Tried a bunch of different types but so far the plain old black oil variety are kicking butt... I have several hundred growing. Once they mature they will be chicken and turkey feed... It was kind of an experiment but I think it is going to be successful. I think next year I will try to start some in the greenhouse and see if I can get a bit of a head start. Anything I can do to reduce the food bill for the birds is a good thing. We also tilled up some dirt and planted rolled oats and various dried beans we bought at the grocery store. Amazing how much cheaper they are than bean "seeds"... If this stuff grows it will get fenced in where we are going to put the hogs this fall and they will eat it until it is gone which won't take long... Mark

How do you garden deer? I might enjoy that...

I'm 2 to 3 tenths slower on initial shot from holster. I practiced for a good 6 months and never really improved my time. I gave up and went back to irons for first shots and any fast repeat shots. Now, to the good part. I'm not the most accurate shooter in the world. I have good training and fundamentals but super accurate shooting is just not something that happens for me. With the red dot my shots at 25 yards and out are way better. The difference is pretty close to incredible. So for me, I'm going to keep working with it. At this point I ignore it on the draw and go to it when I have the time. That's a win in my book...

Well... I actually bought it last year but a couple of weeks ago I got my Silencerco hybrid out of jail. Does that count?

I'm not much on piercings and tatts and such but I am big on live and let live. I also think you win the cool dad award not for letting her do it but for helping her. Solid parent move right there Mark

You might contact Paul Wheaton at Permies. He comes into contact with a lot of people who are interested in farming and homesteading in ways that are very in tune with nature. I know he has families that visit his place for months at a time to learn various skills. If the second trailer is decently livable you may be able to find a nice young family that would kill for the opportunity to have land like that to work with. There is also a website WWOOF (called wwoofers which stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) which is an international organization of folks who move to different areas to learn farming techniques or just use it as a manner to travel the world on the cheap. I think there is usually a stipend involved but I haven't researched it that much. You would have to do a little due diligence to find the right people and they aren't usually a long term solution. One more possibility (kind of a long shot) is a Canadian named Curtis Stone. He runs a site called The Urban Farmer. He has a business and teaches a ton of classes on how to lease small plots of land in urban areas to farm for locally produced veggies. The lease agreements often include sharing a portion of the food grown so it could be a good source of free healthy food for you. He has a ton of students each year and may know someone local who has been through his course that would be an ideal fit for you Maybe one of those will work for you or maybe they won't but at least it's worth a look, Mark

Both of course...

Yes...but it is in the rules that if you do that you have to stop in Gallatin on the way and buy a Beretta

RED333, thanks, I've read that. We have a second wire crate (they make a pretty good brooder at the house with a plastic tub inside) We are going to brood them in a different room. I a;ready have a small building to use when they get a bit bigger and then they will be in chicken tractors.... Mark

About 4-5 months ago we decided to stick our toes in the water and bought (3) 18 month old Americuana chickens, a little coop and some electro-netting. After they settled down for a few days they started dropping an egg here and there and settling in. I added a light on a timer and a heat lamp for warmth and egg production went up. Feeling giddy with success we ordered (11) cornish cross chicks and (2) different types of Marans for a total of 18 new chickadees. Somehow we managed to keep them all alive through the brooding process and 7 weeks later the 11 cornish cross's graduated to the freezer. Due to some stupidity on my part I passed up a great deal on some 2 year old chickens and by the time I figured it out they were gone. Of course the next week the wife said we needed more laying hens now. So, we went to Poultry Hollow and bought (3) red sex-link birds that were about 24 weeks old. My buddy who helps me with projects wanted some and bought (2) White Leghorns and (2) Black Australorps. Both sets are very pretty birds. The 11 birds we processed taste good and definitely smell much better than chicken bought at the store. While we were waiting on our first birds to be delivered I remembered how tasty the pastured raised turkey I bought last year tasted so I ordered (11) broad breasted turkeys and 6 heritage breeds. 3 of those are for our neighbors. The heritage breeds won't get as large as the broad breasted birds but are better foragers and will reproduce better. You don't get to pick the sex on the turkeys so we are really hoping for at least 1 male and 1 female from both sets of heritage breeds. Really hoping to get 2 females of each kind and see if they can make free turkeys. We also have (10) more cornish cross chickens coming in the second order. The new batch will hopefully be more pastured than the first batch. Between getting them near the end of winter and these being our first birds to raise we kept them in a small protected run and provided most of their food. Hoping this next batch will be a little more self sufficient. I've built 3 long runs and the meat birds will go into tractors out on the pasture. Processing the first batch was possibly not the most fun I've ever had but the birds led a good healthy life and only had a second or 2 of bad luck. I thought I would probably want a automatic plucker and after doing 11 in one day I confirmed it. So, I'm ordering some parts and I'm going to build one large enough to process the larger turkeys. That will make things go much faster. Anyway, I know this is old hat to many of you but it was a big step for us as we move closer to having a homestead. These will probably be the only egg laying chickens we get as we will transition to ducks for eggs once we are living up there. I do plan on doing a couple of runs of (26) meat birds twice a year so we can put at least 1 chicken for each week into the freezer. It has been a fun journey and if you've been thinking about it I say get a few (not from tractor supply) and give it a shot. Mark

Ahhh... Bees... I'm very envious. I thought when we first bought our property in 2014 I would get 4-5 hives set up and producing. I was under the very incorrect impression that bees were kind of set it and forget it. The more I read the more I realized that we really needed to bee (hah!) living there full time. So, I wait and wait and wait... Eventually we will get started on our house and then we will bee (sorry) living there and get to start a hive. I think once I can keep a hive alive for a year then we will see about adding more I think meantime I will bee (I freakin couldn't resist) patient and live vicariously through you. Bee well....

I've only used O2 absorbers a couple of times. I had to buy a bunch and the majority went bad because they were all packaged together and after I opened them I found that out. So, I vacuum can (or dry can, whichever you want to call it) I do know that both hand warmers and O2 absorbers use the oxidation of powdered iron to generate the heat and consume oxygen in the process. I have friends that use them all the time. I just don't have the personal experience. The main thing I like is that (especially now) they are generally cheaper and they are packaged individually. It would only cost a dollar or 2 to do a side by side comparison and see if you can tell any difference Mark

I was in a couple of Home Depot's over the weekend. They had a big box of hand and feet warmers on clearance. The hand warmers were 10 pair for $6.00 and the feet ones were 5 pair for $6.00 These come wrapped in individual packets so no worrying about opening and resealing a big bag...