The sun is getting higher in the sky now and the temperatures have been rising up to – 4 degrees.
I have been out with my snowmobile on a couple of tours.
My Firebox Stove is proving invaluable as I do not need to dig down to ground level in the snow to make fire, instead I can place the Firebox on pieces of wood on the snow.
Last Saturday I helped my neighbour gather in his Reindeer
And catch and mark them. Some were sent off for slaughter.
Those of you familiar with Zebra Billy cans will know that they come supplied with plastic clips to hold lid in place. The problem is that the first time you use the can over an open fire, the clips melt.
I have seen on the Internet that people make their own metal clips from wire but I found a much simpler method using bulldog clips.
As you can see in the picture above, the first step is to remover the black metal part of the clip.
There are already two holes in each side of the handle of the Billy can where you can insert the clips.
With the lid placed on the can, mark the point where you need to bend the clip and then remove it and place it in a vice to bend it. Once bent, replace the clips back in the can.
When you pull up the handle, it pushes in the clips and locks them in place and the lid is held tightly.
It is -34c as I write this and the temperature will continue to drop during the night.
Last weekend it snowed. On Saturday I went out on a ski tour, which would have previously been in the forest but unfortunately the forest has been clear felled.
I found a fallen tree to make lunch on.
I removed snow from the trunk and placed on it my Bushbox with a Trangia burner and made some soup.
I saw very little sign of wildlife; Hare tracks and a male Grey-head Woodpecker.
Today is the first day for over two months that we have seen blue sky. We can’t quite see the sun above the horizon yet.
Over the Christmas period it has snowed every day and I have had a lot of work to clear the snow away.
We have now completed alterations to one of our bedrooms and are very pleased with the end result.
During the spring I made some Greenland wax and I have been using it now to waterproof my cotton clothing.
The wax has to be heated so that it melts into the cotton.
I have a spoon and a spatula that I carry in my food kit and I have also been thinking about making a tong, but I saw a YouTube video where a guy used a titanium spoon and fork in a special adapter to make a tong so I thought I would try to make something similar.
I found a small piece of spring steel and purchased some heat shrink tube.
I drilled a recess in the handles of the spatula and spoon so that the sink tube would shrink in to them to help hold them in place.
I put the spring steel in the shrink tube and them inserted the spoon and spatula into to ends of the shrink tube and heated it.
And then the tong was completed. I can remove the spatula and spoon and insert them when I need the tong.
Generally the temperatures are still only just a few degrees below freezing. We have more snow now but nothing like the amount we would usually have. The trampoline frame you can see in the picture below is usually half or even completely submerged by now.
I hope that 20021 will be a much better year for everyone than 2020 has been!
The weekend before last I went on a long walk in the forest
I even spent some time fishing in a local stream but caught nothing. Upstream there was a layer of ice
But down stream there was open water.
Last weekend however the snow and cold weather returned. As I write this it is – 19 outside.
I now have a Leatherman Skeletool which I use at work. It has pliers, wire cutters, a blade, a bottle opener and a screwdriver bits holder for Leatherman bits (two of which are included when you buy the tool). However, I really wanted to have a saw blade, so with just a few alterations to one of my Bosch jigsaw blades and a piece of tape, I made a saw blade
That fits securely into the bits holder
I also wanted to make an adaptor so that I could use standard sized bits (otherwise you have to buy a specialised bit kit). Some people have taken a standard bit holder
And reduced it down so that it fits into the Skeletool bit holder, but in stead of doing that, I divided the bit holder into two parts and found that the steel tube that holds the bits, fits securely over the Leatherman bit.
People say here that when the snow settles under the spruce trees, it will remain there and winter is here, but that is not true this year. In just a few days we went from this.
To this.
Some days temperatures drop below freezing, but most days it is a few degrees above freezing.
I have completed alterations in the bedroom and am now waiting for my wife to put up wallpaper so that I can install new electrical cables and sockets.
Kelly had her 7th birthday last weekend. How time flies.