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Spaulding Smails

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Everything posted by Spaulding Smails

  1. I usually start planting my fall garden around late September. Tansplants include broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, onions, potatoes and garlic. For seeds, I'll do carrots, collard greens, spinach and lettuce. Fall gardening is awesome. Less weeds to mess with and production always seems to be more spread out over the season.
  2. Any ideas on what this might be? My mom snapped this pic a few weeks ago at our family ranch in western Kimble County. They saw him crossing the road, and he quickly traversed to the top of this Oak tree. It was about 6' long and was green with a yellow belly. I'm fairly decent with snake identification, but this one stumped me. Only thing I was thinking of was maybe a rat snake that had recently shed his skin? I think that's the only thing common in that area of that size, but I've never seen one that color. Wish I had a better pic.
  3. I happened to call my buddy who lives in Fargo last week to ask him a question about a project I'm working on. We were shooting the shit, and he said, "It's friggin' hot up here, doncha know." I immediately started chastising him and calling him a pussy. He said, "Bro, I looked at the national map today. You're in the 80's. It hit 104 here today. And I'm a pasty white Norwegian in North Dakota." I stood corrected.
  4. Production in my garden is hitting on almost all cylinders. We're canning and pickling multiple times per week and still giving tons away to family, friends and neighbors. Tomatoes and melons are lagging behind this year. I'm just now picking tomatoes. I have to get 'em early because we have a serious raccoon problem, and as soon as they're ripe on the vine, they're toast. This was tonight's haul. I'm getting about the same amount as shown every other night or so. Pretty much this amount of blackberries every day over the last few weeks. Love it!
  5. My cousin's husband owns a fence company in Boerne. He covers all over the western hill country. I just got a quote for him that was around $9/LF for 1500 LF, but that included several corners, a few H-braces and a gate. DM me if you want his info.
  6. We called it Del Rio chili when I was a kid, but it just consisted of a big can of Hormel chili, Rotel, Ranch style beans and some Velveeta. Nuke it for 2 min in the microwave and serve over Fritos. I feed that to the kids when my wife is gone. On her side, it's Texas Hash. Total East Texas fare. Love it. Kids love it. We eat it once every two weeks or so.
  7. @T’Boo Ted Marshall, I'm glad this thread popped back up. I'd been wondering about you too. Sounds like you're doing all the right things to set a solid foundation. I'm also intrigued about your thoughts around outside investment. I'm at a crossroads right now regarding that exact concept. On our side, I finally landed my HVAC master with an A license. He starts next Monday. Rounded out the MEP. I may hit you up offline to talk shop regarding a few things. I'm expecting this to be the 800-lb gorilla of our service arm, and I want to be prepared as we get him up to speed. We're kind of facing the opposite issues that you noted. I'm building this from the ground up, so we have NO processes in place. We've bumped our head a few times on the electrical side after a really solid start, and we've experienced higher than anticipated turnover there. The Sparkies have proven to be a different breed. But, plumbing has been solid. We were obviously bolstered by the "snowpocalypse" which essentially allowed us to self-fund our capital investments for that division. I've since hired two more master plumbers, and we're booking 3-4 weeks out. I've been skeptical of what I had to pay to get them on-board, but they've both delivered in spades so far. I'm of the mindset that, since I'm not a license holder, I pretty much need to have two license holders for each trade at all times. I can't afford to have someone get bent out of shape and jump ship with their license in tow without a plan B.
  8. You just described me to a tee. I had played sparingly growing up and in college. After graduating and getting married, I had a good buddy become the head pro at a local course. I started playing 3-4 times / week. Got into the single digits. Then kids happened. Three of them. I still played maybe twice a month. Then, I made a huge career change, then I broke my arm, then my oldest got into select baseball. But, I'm finally getting my business into a good spot, so I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on a club membership. I'm excited to be able to work consistently and enjoy the game again. Right now, everything is "off". I'll flash the occasional signs of competency, but nothing is comfortable. Looking forward to working on my game and making it fun to compete again.
  9. Just as "temporary taxes" like passing a bond never seem to return to their previous levels, I'm afraid we're going to see the same thing with restaurant prices. And, I completely agree that restaurants are grossly understaffed right now for all the above mentioned reasons. My son had a baseball tourney this weekend, so dinner plans for Mothers Day were up in the air. If he lost early, he and I were going to cook something for the family at home. If they kept winning, he and I would grab fast food and my wife and other two would fend for themselves. They won the first, then lost the second, so we decided to call in a to-go order. We called three local restaurants multiple times and nobody picked up. Finally got the fourth restaurant to answer. When we got there, they had us come in rather than have curbside because they were short-staffed. I don't mind walking in at all, but it was just a curious observation of the shortage for labor in that industry.
  10. Awesome. Paddle north a bit from your put-in at Del Norte. Not the biggest fish, but I always catch a ton of both largemouth and smallies just up river from the Del Norte campsite. If you're doing 30 miles, you may be going all the way to Rough Hollow. I've only done the run south of Big Satan once. The first stretch is awesome and some of the least fished areas of that river. But, watch out for those headwinds about five miles south of the Big Satan takeout. It's wide open and choppy from there to Rough Hollow.
  11. Good for you. Enjoy! What are your put-in and take-out spots? I've now done the Devlis 20+ times. My son's been with me a few times, but we did our first multi-night trip last year, and we had the same headwind situation. I ended up being "The Mule" that carried the gear and paddled hard on open water. It sucked. Bad. Big rain last week. You should be golden. Lots of good fish being caught over the last few weeks. Enjoy!
  12. @4th and 5. We-Ko-Pa seconded.
  13. We need to meet up for a beer one day. I'm on Creek Rd near Camp Lucy. That Loop 165 is a cool little stretch. I was looking at 5 acres that is on the market there. The east side that fronts the creek is gorgeous with beautiful homes. The west side of the road was hit and miss.
  14. Correct. There should have been some little black screws that keep the horizontal brackets in place. You should be able to use any machine screw in place of those. Good idea on the 1x6 behind it. That will probably give you more flexibility on where you actually mount them. Like I mentioned earlier, I have them loaded down, so I beefed up the lag screws from the little ones they sent in the kit. No issues since then.
  15. I knew we were close to you. This was actually off Loop 165 near Longhorn River Ranch.
  16. My go-to recipe is chicken fried breast. I've tried to roast a whole wild turkey and even tried to smoke one. Both were pretty tough. From my experience, the breast is good, but the thighs and legs aren't worth doing anything special. The last time I harvested a wild turkey, we actually used the wings, thighs and legs in gumbo. That was probably the best use I've found so far. Would love to hear if anyone has any whole bird recipes.
  17. Took my boy out Easter weekend to our place in Kimble County. Didn't see any turkey the first two years, but my mom put out a turkey feeder, and we actually started to see them this last fall. We saw a big group of hens, but no toms. He did shoot the big boar (220 lb or so) that we've seen on the game cam. Which was nice... The following weekend, I was cruising around looking at property in Hays Co with a big mug of coffee on an early Sunday morning and came upon THREE groups of big toms within a mile of each other along a little side road head the headwaters of Onion Creek. I'll post pics when I can download them. Any sound I made from 100 yds away in my truck had them blowing up. Rios will come to a dog barking if they're chasing hens. We used to have a tom that lived in the creek behind our old house. We'd hand feed him. During the spring, he'd gobble back at a fart once you got him interested.
  18. Good choice. The Islander is nice. Given your group, Islamorada is a great spot. Plenty of restaurants in Islamorada and Key Lago. The drive is manageable from Miami. Robbie's is fun and has decent food. Lorelei's and the Sand Bar are great spots for a drink. Hit up the Green Turtle Inn for breakfast one day.
  19. That was going to be my thought as well. Too much water. Those little biodegradable containers are awesome, but they tend to hold moisture more than the plastic ones.
  20. Got my suppressor ordered today. Just 8-10 months until it arrives! And, after three months of back-and-forth bullshit, I FINALLY got confirmation that my two-stage trigger shipped yesterday. Should be able to finally assemble my left-handed AR this weekend. Which, coincidentally, is perfect timing. I'm taking it with me tuna fishing next week. You know. To finish off those pesky tuna. Forecast calls for spotty squalls. I hope it doesn't fall overboard via a rogue wave or something silly like that.
  21. Quarter size hail this morning in Western Kimble County.
  22. A pool. Technically, we started right before the pandemic, but we put water in it Mother's Day, so we had all summer to swim. Worth every damn penny.
  23. Not sure if this counts for this thread, but I've also found a TON of fossils at the creek behind my house. Lots of common deer hearts but also a few gastropod fossils as well.
  24. I found this at our place as well. Not an arrowhead, but pretty cool nonetheless. Very limited production time and the ranger at Ft McKavett helped me identify it. My mom put together the shadow box and we have it displayed in the house at the ranch. yed
  25. Found my first one at our ranch last summer. Not the prettiest and not fully intact, but still fun to find on your own land. Haven't really gone searching, but happened upon it when trailing a little sow my buddy's son shot.
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