Day 281 October 15, 2002

It's a beautiful fall day, sun in and out, nice strong breeze blowing, unusually, from the east. Last night it got down into the high twenties, seriously hurting my tomato plants. I had covered them up with a tarp, but it was no match for that cold blast. I got only 3 ripe tomatoes from my late start crop. There are probably 100 still on the plants, but I fear they will never make it. Oh well. The stove on low, I was warm all night.

I fired up the back hoe and used it to lift the cement mixer and air compressor into the van for their return home. I packed the van with all the tools I will be needing to replace the porch on my parents' house.

I also made arrangements today to have the Big Yellow One transported back to New Jersey.

Determined to not leave any piles of scraps lying around the cabin, I made a fire in the campfire ring and burned all my pallets, one or two at a time. I had put this off for a long time as I had wanted to give the pallets away to someone who needed them, but apparently no one does. My bulletins for free pallets did not induce a single phone call. Only in America can you not give away a perfectly good something for free. While they were burning, I made trips from the pile of junk someone had dumped here many years ago. I picked up anything that would burn and burned it. I cleaned up a fair amount of trash, but I figure I have a pick-up load of metal and glass left. Next time I have Mr. Plow up here I hope to take what remains to the dump. It was king of interesting (and a little gross) to go through it all. I recognized some trash that dated to my childhood, none of it valuable. It was a strange mix of stuff ranging from plastic soda bottles to old motorcycle rims to the omnipresent car tire to pull-top beer cans (these melt readily in a hot camp fire, Butchie taught me that) to old wooden windows to a set of large bore automotive piston rings. I wonder how many people would have known what they were?

8 hours, cool and breezy around 52.