Well not really I pop in and read up fairly regularly. Just have not really felt like saying anything and being a lurker. LOL not going to say much about it other than that TN thang just didn't pan out, lets just say the more I learned the more I was inclined to withdraw.... Like widowed once OK, Widowed twice possible, 3 dead husbands behind her and one has to start thinking Hmmmmm? So a bit of a long psychotic story later I am safely back at the Kamp Krap Kompound I figured better alone and in peace than the endless drama, trying to control me and demands that were developing and getting stronger by the day in TN In the Months since then I have been working my ass off getting Kamp Krap back up to speed. It had gotten more than a little ran down over the last couple of years. November 2022 to November 2023 the deceased wife's Cancer was pretty much all consuming and then all the Krap to deal with after her death and then my absence from here for too many Months just kind of created a real wreck of the place. When I made my last trip back and sat down on the porch........ it really dawned on me just how over grown and what shit shape my place had became So I spent a lot of time just getting it back in kind of decent shape. Being a errrr retired senior now on a fixed income.......... I seriously am trying to just live on the Pension. And while not worried about money was worried about staying under $2580 per Month and got fanatical about budget and cutting expenses. Yeah I think I am good LOL. LOL at the time My former accountant filled the withholding form on the pension to have an additional $565 in federal tax withheld from the pension........ I have since corrected that LOL. And yeah Dee was expensive! I figured I would spend a good while alone and single after the TN Trap........ Yeah that didn't work out as planned. We are only a couple of hours away from each other and have a lot of fun together and GASP she is totally honest and straight forward about everything and doesn't have a long list of dead husbands behind her LOL probably look kind of funny together with her being 5' 2" and me being 6' 2" and 2X her weight. Yeah I have been getting my ass back in shape I wasn't in horrible shape but not int he best that I could be either. The Wood Pile and Hay Fields have been correcting that problem! If you have a Kamp Krap you don't need a Gym Membership. I decided a while back to scale my gun collection back to my 3 favorite sidearms and 13 favorite rifles and shot guns. And mentioned that I was thinking about sell my gun collection at a gun shop and the next day the owner wrote me a check for a very fair price and loaded his truck and trailer up with 167 great guns for his pre owned inventory and what turned out to be 6 pallets of ammo that didn't fit any of the guns I kept. LOL he had to make two more trips for the ammo his trailer could only take the weight of 2 pallets at a time. I kept the Rock Island 200 .38sp, the Vaquero .45LC and I am actually liking that Kimber 1911 10mm For Rifles and shotguns you know I kept my favorite Galil One AR10, and the Rock Island AR style 12 gauge. My two favorite Henry Lever guns in .45-70 and .30-30 A couple of Henry Breech Load single shots in .350 Buck Hammer and a .450 Bushmaster for the Rifle Deer Season. But other than the 3 scary black guns I kept everything else is geared for hunting. I figure that gives me a rifle or shotgun for every occasion. I am living in my little cabin I like my little cabin! Plenty of room in it for me and the dogs and a guest on occasion. Not exactly a tiny home cabin but not big either. But not bad for a repo $6500 portable building converted to my Cabin Home with maybe another $5000 into it in electrical, plumbing and stuff to make it a big bedroom, bathroom, living/dining room combo and a small kitchen. I broke down and bought a new bed with one of those high end mattresses with the gel stuff and memory foam and OMG what a difference that made in my sleeping! I needed to get rid of the old bed for a couple of reasons..... First it just was getting plain wore out and playing dodge a spring all night every night was getting old and painful. And well I errr needed to get rid of that bed and get a new bed. If or More likely at this point when I am not alone here most of the time...... Either the new house will have to be finished or another new house built. Most likely what will happen is the new pole house will get finished and we will live in it while a new house is being built over on the NW corner of the lake. But the Pole House does have a good over look of the big pond And it isn't in a bad spot But in talking we both kind of like the NW Corner of the lake and the idea of a bigger log cabin there. I can tell you though, I DO NOT have building another any kind of house from the ground up left in me I will buy the Log Cabin kit and hire a contractor to build it and do the electric and plumbing and take it over from there on the interior shell. I sold all of the cattle and Hogs and have turned their pastures into hay fields. LOL so I making A LOT of hay and have nothing to feed it to but am making a nice side income under the table selling it. The new tilt deck over trailer can handle 15 bales and every load delivered is $1500 CASH in the pocket. I only made 124 bales this year total but $12,400 for two weeks worth of work ain't bad money And that tilt deck makes unload at the buyers place EZ just raise the deck and they start rolling right off the end and creep forward until they are all off and done. Did some upgrades on the new baler and damn it make a tight very almost over compressed round bale now. We were curious if the new M5660 57 hp tractor could run the new baler. It could but when the bales got over 4.5' diameter it started choking a bit......... Don't know what the mechanic did and don't want to know but the tractor is now 65HP on the PTO and spins the bales off to 5.5 feet diameter and doesn't break a sweat now. Anyway it went from making 900-1000 pound 4x5.5s to making a average 1350 pound 4x5.5 with upgrades. I do need to ditch that John Junk Mower Conditioner it requires a minimum 85HP to make it spin and mow and the only tractor I have left that can run it is the 1974 110hp Oliver. Kubota makes a nice pull behind with a 10' cut that the M5660 can run that I will probably buy next year. I just don't care for the $22,000 price tag on it LOL. I bought the John Junk for $5500 at 10 years old 1 owner that mowed 100 acres once per year with it. Great used mower conditioner with a 12' cut but limited to one of my tractors I am loving the new 8 wheel kubota hay rake takes about 90 minutes to zip through the hay fields making the wind rows VS the 6 hours using my old 1947 case hay rake LOL. The second and last cut of 2024 Loading most of it onto the trailer in the field but getting a pretty good collection to load on the lake dam and NW corner. I think I have 56 bales left to load and deliver there and will make 4 more trips with 14 on the trailer instead of 15. Maybe a mistake but I just can't see where I needed the Black Ram and Red, So I put the Black Ram on FB market Place for $25,000 and it was sold in less than a hour and paid cash a hour after that and the new owner drove it away the next morning. LOL selling Black pretty much covered the $30,000 it cost to refurbish Reds guts. Got rid of that damned automatic tranny and put a heavy duty Manual 6 over in him. Did his engine rebuild and pretty much new high performance everything around the engine. and a new rear end with better ratios for highway and MPG but still plenty of power to get down and dirty with. LOL Stupid to put $30,000 into a 24 year old diesel truck, but I LIKE RED and am his only owner. Now he is good for another 24 years Removed a few things from him as well that were cool and fun at one time but just no interest in anymore like the blower that made it a stacked 5.9LB And a few other things that get him up to 185-190 on the straight roads LOL. Hey it used to amuse me to go screaming around a vette or other high end sports car after they would pass me and flip me the bird........ and they had zero hope of catching back up to that old beat up truck Red tops out at around 110mph now and doesn't get there real fast like he used to. I am older and well not anymore mature but at least a bit more practical now. Not all work I took some time to go back home and visit my Mom. Has been to long since I have been back to SD. And well she is not Young anymore but still in damned good shape for 80! Going to try to get back for a week every year and not 16 years between visits I do love my Red Morning Glories that I got going on the Dog Yard Fence from some wild seeds I collected ten years back. Humming birds love them to. And you know I am eating good Only things I didn't produce here on the plate are the Olives, Dressing and brown sugar. That little Doe I raised from a little spotted fawn after her mother got splatted up on the highway four years ago.......... Sigh she is never far away and stalk me around waiting for me to open a Nutty Buddy Treat for her. Not sure sometimes if I should have just left her on the side of the road LOL I didn't really intend to get a life long stalker and Deer for a pet. I probably spend too much time porch sitting with a good bottle of wine sipping it from my finest crystal but hey a guy needs to just relax now and then And while making hay when it starts getting to be the end of the day........ I get a little side tracked catching my dinner with the damned grass hoppers. And after I catch 8-10 I fillet them and make a tasty bluegill dinner. I keep cutting the crooked logs and tree crowns up. and then turning them into firewood I think I am finally back up to 4 years worth of Krappy Kords again! In the spring storms when I was not present trees got blown over across my main paths. So I have been cleaning them up for firewood and sawmill logs. All of my guns need a good cleaning dust removal. I have gotten really attached to the Henry All Weather .45-70 lever gun. Not really work but I am always looking forward to watching that horse walk around. Getting the Big Pond Point cleaned up and the Camper set up as guest quarters was high on my list. I like company well enough but with the exception of one I prefer them to be at least 1000 feet from the Cabin Still need to get that little 12x24 pavilion kit put up out there. It will take us maybe a day and half to get it built but thinking it can wait until the first week of October. There absolutely no danger of me ever even considering moving away from here again. I just ignore and do not comply with the IL laws that are just blatantly unconstitutional and none of them are enforced at the local level anyway and there are not enough State Police to enforce that BS on the millions of us that won't comply. I figured up the taxes I pay in IL and compared it to MO. IN. and KY and I would actually pay more in taxes in any of those 3 states just in different ways. I think I have about the perfect piece of land here at the end of a dead end road, in the middle of nowhere but still in striking distance of everywhere. And 16 years of building and investing a lot of me and fair amount of money into this place. I did sell off the 120 acres making a U around me on the N, S, NW, SW, and W but have first right of refusal and unlimited access to it for hunting etc. I kept the original 40 acres I first bought here and the oddball 5 acres of wooded on the NE along the road. I figure this 45 acres is plenty for me to work and take care of and a solid place to be prepared on and fairly easy to defend and deny access to if need be. Last Project I have to complete here is getting the solar systems bought and set up and getting totally off grid. LOL Accountant is deep in my ear screaming DO NOT SPEND ANY MORE MONEY IN 2024!!! YOU HAVE ALL THE TAX WRITE OFFs YOU NEED TO RECOVER EVERY DIME OF CAPITAL GAINS TAXES YOU PAID THIS YEAR! LOL I liquidated all of my investments and a lot were of a tax sheltered nature...... And rolled them into my Roth IRA so I had to pay a huge amount of taxes on that and thus needed to spend a huge amount of money on things I needed in order to get my money back next tax season So I will need around $75,000 in tax write offs in 2025 so no more big purchases until next year Part of the reason I opened a new ROTH and put everything except for a couple hundred thousand into it was because I CAN'T TOUCH IT FOR 5 Years LOL I was having way too many urges to go on big spending binges and that calmed those urges way down. Truth be told I will probably never touch that ROTH until 73 I think when I have to start taking RMDs from it. I have the $2580 Pension and free health insurance for life. The day I turn 60 I automatically get Dee's full Social security since she was approved for full disability prior to her death and that is either another $3800 per Month or $4400 per Month depending on which SS agent I talk to. Either way when I turn 60 my income jumps to around $6500 per month......... and if I have money to spare now with the $2580 pension I am pretty sure I will be OK financially then some of the big goals is to get to where I am producing 98% of the food here. I am 90% now but can do better. get 100% off grid and tell the electric co-op that their service has been terminated. And well just live and be happy
KK, I always love your updates! Some things are interesting, some make me envious, and some shock the hell out of me! LOL! But, I love'em! All of them! Believe it or not, I get inspiration from them to get off my a$$ and get things done. Whew! Three (3) dead husbands?!?! Damn, boy! You sure can pick them. Two maybe bad luck, maybe just a bad coincidence but three? Makes for a good tale now on how you were lured into her clutches yet through strength of will, and intellect you escaped the web of the Black Widow. Scary. You're lucky to get out with your old turnip still attached. Her replacement is certainly nice on the eyes too! I thank you for putting into writing your sale of your 167 firearms and 6 pallets of ammo. I have shown my wife your post to assure her that indeed her husband's firearm addiction is clearly not bad as she thought, and, in fact, she should consider herself very lucky. Strangely, after presenting my data all I got was her nose in the air, a few choice Russian words and the stink-eye. Nevertheless, her refusal to talk about it ensures me this is a big win! Thanks! Now, I am off to buy that new shotgun... I'm intent to also go to solar at least for a major portion of my needs however I am putting all major purchases on hold until I see what happens this November. I should have gotten this done this past Spring/Summer but was laid up longer than I thought due to knee surgery. Now, we'll wait until November and see what happens. The bluegills seem to be doing nicely! How's the rest of the fish doing? I've never had bluegill, but they certainly look tasty!
You being a damn Yankee probability didn't help, but glad you didn't become #4! Home, sweet home! There's no place like home! Been there, done that! NICE! That's entirely too many guns! Old stuff is the best stuff...usually! 16 YEARS! Were you waiting for the statutes of limitations to expire? We spray them with Round-Up! I like how they look, but I still spray them with Round-Up! Figured you for Mad Dog 20/20 or Night Train straight from the bottle. Looks like a branch from the Red Oak that we had go down back in February. We cut up the smaller stuff for firewood and burned the rest. Took 4 months (we had a wet spring), but now we have a lot of firewood in the barn and the rest is gone! I love to clean my guns! Some beer and food and make a day of it!
Mahalo for the update, @Kamp Krap. Good to hear all is well. I bet your mom enjoyed your visit. Check with your CPA, but you should NOT have to take RMD's from a Roth IRA.
Glad to see you back and sorry things didn't work out in TN but better to find out now and not later . Sounds like you have been busy and have things in hand and good game plan
The bass are in about the 2.5 pound range now and got some spawning in this year. At 5 years (3 Years from now) The bass should be getting into the 6-7 pound range. Red Ear and Crappie hard to gauge I didn't stock the Crappie and I only put a couple hundred Red Ear in. LOL the guns just kind of accumulated over the years and I needed to scale down several things the guns were one of them. I was way heavy on Galils and more than a few HK, AK and SKS and lighter on the ARs What I was lacking in were practical hunting guns and I wanted to get back to a more rustic feel in the guns overall. I had a few ragged out Henry's in the collection and I always liked the feel and look of them so I bought the 4 last spring that made the most sense for me in a classic and practical use way. I would like to have gotten the solar bought and done this year FINALLY LOL. But the accountant is correct I need tax write offs for 2025 and already have more than I need for 2024 with a decent bit of depreciation I can carry over to 2025. I am going with four 12kwh kits that can chain together or each be a stand alone. Figure what the hell I will try the ease of the bigger plug and play diy kits. And yep I really enjoy watching that horse walk around looks real good at a trot. LOL what would you say if I told you she is 6 years older than me and 60+ ...................... Yeah you guys are right LOL I have had so much financial garbage ran through my brain in the last 10 months its kind of all a over cooked stew at this point. Yeah the fact she never mentioned more than 1 and her Mom called me and suggested I might want to dodge the bullet that is her daughter..... Hey its all better than good now
Welcome back buddy. I was just thinking about you the other day, wondering if you had been kidnapped, or worse. I see you dodged the worse part.
Yep ,, been wondering about you as well ,, Welcome back ,, and I'm sure you're happy to be back home ,, you really do seem to have about all you really need ,, right there ,, no sense in leaving again ,,, glad to all is well .
When the woman's mother calls and warns you about her daughter, you better listen! Glad you did, and welcome back. And, everyone already beat me to the Roth IRA info.
Hello, my dear friend! You've been through so much. While it's a bummer that things didn't work out, I like to think that when people show us their true colors they do us a huge favor and it's a blessing when we find out sooner than later. My partner and I were in the industry of catching cheaters online for 7 years and there's a lot of scary, sad, and weird $hit (scammers, cheaters, liars, gold diggers, etc) out there. A life of peace is where it's at and it sounds like you have that there. Your pictures are always so amazing. I'm glad that you're making friends and enjoying life.
