Putting The Canopy Over The Fifth Wheel

 We moved up onto Kelpie Kapers Farm in January. At the time, we just wanted to get out of the RV park and up here, especially after going through that flood. We decided that we wouldn't put the awning up over the trailer at that time and would wait until summer instead. Well, summer came and went and a few weeks ago, I put my foot down and told Bob that I was tired of looking at the stuff lying around and it needed to go up. STAT. He availed to his friend, Frank, to come up and help. They got this up within a day and a half. Not bad for two old guys, if you ask me.

They made excellent progress yesterday. They got the frame up and 8 out of 10 of the cross-pieces in place.

They left the very end pieces for this morning after one slipped yesterday. No harm, no foul.

This awning is 13 feet high in the center.

Poor guys. They were up the ladders. They were down the ladders. Ugh! They had a ladder on the deck.They had a ladder in the back of my truck.

Here's Bob putting in the final screws.

Frank is up the ladder.

We have a small walkway between the trailer and the deck. I asked Bob to shove it up as close to the deck as he could, so he put it right there up on it.

I now have my full deck. There's no more sheets of canopy roofing on it! Next up is Bob getting the hot tub wired in.

As soon as the last roof panel was put up, I could feel an immediate drop in the temperature inside.

And we're able to fully open our outdoor kitchen hatch up.

Our New Fifth Wheel, Pros & Cons

 In March, we moved out of our 1991 29-foot Alpenlite fifth wheel and  into our much newer 30-foot 2014 Forest River Wildcat Maxx when the neighbors, kiddy-corner across the street, offered it to us. 

We had lived in that Alpenlite for over 8 years. It served us well. We gave it to a guy who lives in here. He was grateful to get it and we didn't have to worry about cleaning it out and all that. I wasn't really into it, to be honest.
 

 Our neighbors were moving into a house and they offered to sell us this whole set-up...for a song! As chance would have it, we happened to have the cash saved up and were able to simply buy it outright. Yes, we paid cash for it and yes, it was a lot of cash. LOL!

This is a 2014 Forest River Wildcat Maxx. It's 30 feet long, with 3 slides. It also has an outdoor shower and an outdoor kitchen. 

We bought the trailer, the canopy over it and an outbuilding that has electric and cable run out to it. 

Here is the outbuilding. Everything is still a work in progress. We have bought a patio set to put in there so that there is furniture and we do have a TV for out there, too.
I digress...
This is about the pros and cons of our new fifth wheel.

It is a very nice looking trailer. It serves our needs quite well. There are a few things that I just do not like about this trailer, however. 

I do not like how high the cabinets in the kitchen/galley are. I cannot reach them, even with that nifty step stool that is in the kitchen. I also don't really dig having a cat box in my kitchen, but it was the only logical place to put it and, honestly, having it there is a good reminder to keep that sucker scooped out.
I also do not like my kitchen sink. In the old trailer, I had stainless full-sized double sinks. In here, I have white sinks that I have promptly stained up because I wash so many dishes and one is bigger than the other. Why would anyone, intentionally, want such a small frigging sink?? I don't get it. We did replace the faucet as the other  one was stuck on spray and I didn't like that. It was an easy fix, especially when you have a MacGuyver for a husband, like I do. He's one of those guys with skills. You know, skills. He can fix any-frigging-thing that there is, especially if it's electrical.
I took a hit in the kitchen department with this trailer. The kitchen has much more floor space, but it sucks as far as how high the counters and cabinets are and the size and position of the sink. Also, the stove only has 3 burners.The lighting is horrendous and, with the canopy over the trailer, it is dark in the kitchen. We are going to install a florescent fixture in the kitchen somewhere. There is absolutely no silverware or utensil drawers unless you put them in one of the 4 drawers under the pantry. There is no counter space and the counter space that is there to work with is awkward and not reachable. Those are the cons of the kitchen. This fifth wheel was not designed for those of us that are 5'5" or less.

However, the pros are that I can plop my cutting board over the corner of the sink to prep for cooking and watch TV. I have a microwave. The stove cooks hot. The oven temp is spot on. It's easy to tell when you need to wipe everything down. I can't let that many dirty dishes accumulate because the kitchen isn't tucked into the back of the trailer, the kitchen is right smack in the middle of the trailer.

In summary, I liked the kitchen in my old Alpenlite much better. I had more room. I had more usable counter space. I had great lighting. I had a ton of windows. I had 4 burners. I could reach all my cabinets. I had full-sized double stainless sinks.

Now, on to the rest of this new trailer. 

Moving on to the bathroom. The bathroom in the Forest River is hands-down the better bathroom, without a doubt. The shower is bigger. It has built in shelves for shower supplies. There's a skylight in the shower. There's a big medicine cabinet. There's a linen closet. There's under the sink storage. There's adequate towel racks and there's a storage shelf. There's a sliding, pass-thru door to the bedroom. The only thing that the Alpenlite beat the Forest River in is the size of the bathroom sink. The Alpenlite has a bigger bathroom sink. Other than that, there's really no comparison. The Forest River has an opulent bathroom compared to the Alpenlite.

I have to mention this pantry. This is part of one of our slide-outs. This pantry houses all of my at-the-ready pantry items and our dishes. In the top two drawers are silverware and utensils and in the other top drawer are those big and bulky utensils under kitchen towels. In the bottom drawers, I have one for excess spices and the other holds my other bulk items, like flours, seeds, etc. Both of those bottom drawers are crammed full. I'm working on using up the spice drawer so that I can move the bulky utensils into it.

We did not have a dining nook in the Alpenlite. The dining area was in the kitchen. This a separate dining nook. We have a ton of under the bench storage for canned goods and kitchen appliances. This is located in the same slide-out that the pantry is.

This is another of those areas that there is absolutely no comparing, the living room area. Hands down, the Forest River has the better living room area. There's so much more room in there and there's another slide out that we have a small Ikea sofa sleeper put into. It's more like an animal lounge that they deign to let Bob sit on every now and then.
It's almost not fair to compare these areas that have the slide outs because the Alpenlite didn't have any slides at all. 

Just this feature, on its own, would win the contest as to which trailer has the better living room. We use this every single morning. 

The bedroom area is another one of those rooms that can't even be fairly compared. The Forest River bedroom area is the better area. There are, however, some pros and cons. First, the pros are that I can stand upright in the bedroom in the Forest River. I could not do that in the Alpenlite. The built-in dresser drawers in the Alpenlite were much bigger than the Forest River's are. The closet was also bigger. In the Alpenlite, we had under-the-bed storage (as we do in the Forest River, as well) but, there were 2 nice sized drawers under the bed in the Alpenlite. We don't have those in the Forest River. So, as far as clothes storage, we had more space in the Alpenlite. The entire wardrobe on the Forest River is the third slide out. In the Alpenlite, we had 2 drawers on either side of the bed, in the built-in nightstands. In the Forest River, we have cabinets under the nightstands. I'm not sure which I like better. Sure, I can shove more stuff into a cabinet, but I'm not into squirreling a bunch of crap away in a cubbyhole. I'm trying to whittle down to only the stuff that I actually use. I don't need a ton of superfluous crap.
Also, in the Alpenlite, under the steps going up to the fifth wheel, the whole floor lifted up and it was storage space. We called it the basement. We also had a big linen drawer under the clothes closet.
So, just because I can stand upright, I'm going to say that that I prefer the Forest River bedroom to the Alpenlite.

Now, onto the outside areas of each trailer.

 This, right here, is what clinched the deal for me. This is our outdoor kitchen. There's a cabinet, a small counter, a pull-out 2-burner propane stove, a utensil drawer and a small refrigerator. We love the extra outdoor storage. We had to replace the rams on the hatch. This is a great little area.
We also have climate controlled, carpeted under the trailer storage in the front and we do have an outdoor shower.

In the Alpenlite, we just had 4 outside storage cubbyholes.

So, in conclusion, the Forest River Wildcat Maxx is the superior fifth wheel for full-time living as far as amenities go. It has that great electric fireplace heater. It has a built in radio/CD/DVD player. It has central air/heating. It's super propane efficient. It has quite a few windows and there's a skylight in bathroom and in the living room. It also has outside quick-connect hook-ups for a propane grill (not counting the stove in the outdoor kitchen). It's much easier to empty your black water tank in the Forest River and there's a back flush on the tank so that you can clean it out much easier. The hot water tank is both electric and propane and, if you're doing dishes or showering, you can flip the toggle switch to propane assist and it will keep some semblance of warm water. The pass-thru bathroom is just freaking cool, no matter how you want to look at it. There's also an actual bedroom door so that you can close it off and have some peace and quiet...well, at least until the cats and dogs figure out that you have locked them out. The slide-outs make a world of difference as far as space. The Grrr-ells (that's what we call our 3 female Australian kelpies) can stretch out and not be on top of each other. Of course, the cats have ripped up the screen door and the piece of lath next to it, but we did expect that and have bought a replacement piece of lath that matches. As far as the door, we'll probably replace the bottom with a piece of plexi-glass and really mess with the cats.
The Alpenlite had a much better kitchen.
So, the Alpenlite served us well, but we're onto better things now with the Forest River.

Homemade Fruit Vinegar

I was super bored a while back and I ran across a YouTube video of a guy who made his own vinegars. This was intriguing to me. I decided to give it whirl. I used dried fruit: mango, blueberries and regular ol' raisins.

You want to fill a very clean quart jar 1/4 of the way with dried fruit and top it off with bottled water (you want it to be purified). Top each jar with a coffee filter and secure with a rubber band. It will take a few weeks to see anything happening. This is where you are trying to capture some wild yeast.

Every single day, you want to stir your fruit. After about 2 weeks, it will start to turn into alcohol and you'll be able to smell it.

It will be foamy when you stir it. If you forget to stir, it can get a bit of mold on it. Just remove that with a spoon and carry one as normal.

Here are the raisin photos. It's the same process with any dried fruit.

The raisin one took a few more days to ferment than the mango one did. I still haven't gotten the blueberries to go. I'm going to just let them hang out and see what happens to them.

Yesterday, I strained the fruit out and discarded it. It did its job wonderfully. When I tasted the liquid, it tasted like vinegar. I put it into a clean jar and capped it. Vinegar ages well, just as wine does.

Finished mango vinegar. I'll use this in some Caribbean-inspired BBQ sauce.

Next, I strained out the raisins. I tasted this vinegar. This was surprisingly delicious. I'll be using this in place of rice wine vinegar in Asian recipes.

I have 2 new vinegars to experiment with now. Next on my list is some papaya and some currant vinegar. What will I do with those? I do not know, but the sky is the limit!

June Vegetable Garden Update

These are Cranberry Beans. I do not know if they are pole or bush beans, so we shall see.

These are a very rare Arapaho Fish Hill bean. Another one of those that I'm not sure if they are bush or pole.

The peas have gone gangbusters! There are a few of the vines that have gone 6 feet tall.I have 3 different varieties planted. I have Oregon Sugar Pod, Sugar Snap and Spring Blush.

Spring Blush pea blooms. These are super pretty and they are a very prolific variety.

These are Blooming Prairie bush beans on the top tier. On the next tier are Dragon Tongue bush variety. I seeded in nasturtiums in the bottom to draw in the pollinators.

In this raised bed, I have a Jibai Shimoshirazu cucumber, a cucamelon and some Pink Surprise calendule planted in the middle.

Red Romaine, mixed Bachelor Buttons and Strawberry spinach.

Bok choy, Sword lettuce and cilantro

Sword lettuce

In this bed, I have a French heirloom carrot variety called Longue Rouge Sang. I also have some Pink Plume celery seeded in.

Purple Emporer nasturtiums

3 heirloom tomatoes: Oregon Spring, which is a determinate variety. That means it will only grow so tall, set all it's fruit at once and they will ripen, pretty much, at the same time. I've never grown a determinate variety. I also have a Blue Beauty and a Paul Robeson. These two are indeterminate varieties, which means that they will produce fruit all season and will continue to grow until frost kills them. These tomatoes got a deluge of rain and a barrage of wind. They aren't liking it and their leaves are showing that. I'll prune them up after this week, as we are expected to have showers, off and on.

This is supposed to be a yellow zucchini. I'm not really sure what it truly is because my neighbor gave it to me and she's not really known for her memory or her accuracy in relating events. Anyhow, it doesn't look good at all, so I'm, most likely, going to pull it and replace it with something else.

Lacinato (Dinosaur)kale, Drunk Woman Frizzy Head lettuce and fenugreek with some round Parisienne carrots mixed in.

Yukon Gold potatoes

White, yellow and red onions with a row of bolting Watermelon radishes.

These are 4 Spaghetti squash plants that the neighbor (the yellow zucchini neighbor) gave me. She said she wanted yellow zucchini but got Spaghetti squash instead. I asked her if she ever reads the tags that are in the plants. I also seeded in some broccoli rabe (spring rapini), Buttercrunch lettuce and Asian chives into the bed. That neighbor gave me the squash back in late March/early April. I planted them with no great expectations of them surviving the night, let alone the frosts we were still predicted to have. They not only survived, they have thrived.

I have both red and green yard long beans in these containers.

I seeded in Chioggia beets with dill and with purple coneflowers. We shall see how well these companion plant together.

These potatoes are a fancy red skinned, gold fleshed variety that I ordered. I can't remember the exact name. I also have some Red Kennebuks going, too.

This bed is a mix of Tanya's Pink Pod and Maxibel bush beans. These are 2 of my favorite varieties.

I have collard greens and Peppermint Stick zinnias seeded into this bed.

I have planted both pink and white dandelions this year. I can't remember which this one is, exactly.

Drunk Woman Frizzy Head lettuce. I grow this because of the name.

Other than a small section that I seeded in with those French heirloom carrots, Longue Rouge Sang, there are 3 types of beets in this recycled tote raised bed. I use this for my bigger root vegetables. I have Golden, Chioggia and Yellow Mangel beets growing in there.

Jerusalem artichokes aka sunchokes. These are a member of the sunflower family.

I'm attempting to make one of those "spaces" here. You know, those spaces that draw the eye...we'll see if it works.

Top tier is Flood pole beans, middle tier is Borlotto di Vigevano Nano bush beans and the uze...nasturtiums to draw in pollinators on the bottom.

This is my nasturtium stand. I do have a feverfew up on the top.

We bought six of these hanging baskets for pops of colors.

Mystery yard long beans. I acquired these in a seed trade and I have no idea of if they are red, green, purple or spotted! These are going to be a Wait-N-See.

Purple Podded Pole beans

I have become friends with some local gardeners in the area and they were very kind and gave me tomato starter plants. I was grateful to recieve them. I am growing 6 different varieties in 5 gallon grow bags under a 6 foot tall trellis. I'm pruning them all to a single stalk and using plastic trellis clips to run them to the top. I have an Early Girl, Marglobe, Gold Nugget, Yellow Pear, Red Cherry and a mystery tomato plant that is another Wait-N-See.

A better look at those tomatoes. These suckers are healthy!! They are nothing like those finicky heirlooms that I have out front.

The rest of my nightshades. I have a white eggplant, a Black Beauty eggplant, 2 Italian sweet peppers and a Jimmy Nardello sweet pepper. All of these, but the white eggplant, were bought through our county's Master Gardener's plant sale this year. I can't say as I'm very impressed. That's where I got those raggedy looking heirloom tomatoes out front, too.

This is a volunteer Bronze Beauty calendula. I planted this with my Vintage Wine tomato last year and, apparently, it evicted the tomato and took up residence. I am just letting it have the grow bag.

Someone, years ago, gave me an iris bulb. Today, I have several in a large pot. They decided to bloom. Irises are my favorite flower.

We only had 2 rose bushes that survived the move.

Orchard Baby corn. Baker Creek Seeds says it will grow just fine in a container. I gave it a pool. We'll see.

Looking back toward the peas through our dog pen.

How the raised bed portion of my garden is set up.

We got permission to plant a couple of apple trees from the manager. An awesome friend bought us 2 as a housewarming present (we just bought this new fifth wheel and moved to this spot in March). We have a Golden Delicious and a Fuji.

Our outdoor kitchen on our new fifth wheel.

We had originally bought this privacy screen for our old place, to go on the fence. It works nicely as a dog funnel to direct them into their yard.

The front of our new fifth wheel.

Our grapes went fully in-ground over here.

This is like an outdoor living room. We have a set of patio furniture to go in there. Right now, however, it is holding a whole lot of canning jars and junk from our old place. We're slowly weeding through stuff. This room has electric and cable run out to it.

Our new fifth wheel in our new spot. That canopy is a really handy thing to have.

Everyone has wind chimes. I have a rubber chicken.

I still have my Pink Lemonade blueberries!

I saved the best for last. This is the view we have from our living room window. Thanks for taking the tour with me!