Bob's Eyes

Sunday July 20, 2025 Guerneville CA.

My beef

My beef weighted in at 780 pounds. At 6.50 a pound, it cost me 5,050 bucks and I figure it will cost around 1500 dollars to butcher it and wrap it up. So that’s around 10 dollars a pound for grass fed beef.

I tried to make arrangements to pay the rancher today, but he didn’t answer his phone.

His ranch is at Jenner which I’d decided to go for ride down around the place when I went down to pay up.

I decided to go for the ride, just the same and try to call the rancher from there, if possible.

I drove on down to the Jenner area and tried my phone, but no matter where I tried the phone, there was no cell phone service. So, paying my bill was out.

Overlook

I headed on down to the overlook at the river’s mouth where it meets the ocean and parked to look around a bit.

The River’s mouth

Here’s where the Russian River runs into the Pacific ocean. Lots of harbor seals and birds hang out at this spot.

Critters

Seals and brown pelicans mostly resting and bathing in the river waters.

Seals

There’s at least a couple hundred harbor seals that hang out in this area.

And  lots of brown pelicans too.

There’s always a lot to see as far as the wild life in this spot.

I gave up on paying the rancher for now and went on home for a nap.

Nice day.

Saturday July 19, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Forest ride

I was just hanging around the house today, walking around the yard with the chickens.

I felt like I needed to do something so I fired up Hondo and rode on up into the hills to enjoy the forest.

Pond

I stopped at the pond to check out the water level as it’s been dropping quite a bit lately, I think from a leak that has developed in the pond somewhere.

As long as it holds enough water to keep the little fish alive, all will be just fine.

Over look

This was the next place I stopped, at this overlook. I sat in the chair there and enjoyed the forest some.

The view from my chair at that spot.

Two pools

Eventually, I made it over to Two pools to check it out.

I think we’ll call this spot Two pools and you can see why, eh.

How many little fish can you see in this picture?

I don’t see any little fish either. :O)

But I do see at least one little fish in this one.

Nice day.

Friday July 18, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Butcher

I got the message to go over to the butcher and figure out how I wanted to get my beef  cut up. A nice young lady went through the list and helped me figure out how to get it cut up to my liking, so it was easy to get it done.

It will need to hang for a couple weeks then they will get it cut up, so I’ll just have to wait a bit.

VA

As long as I had the time I drove on over to the VA place to try and talk about getting some treatment soon. Friday afternoon wasn’t the best time, but I persisted and got an appointment setup for Oct. 2. That’s a ways off, but they said to start there and hopefully I can get a canceled appointment later, so I settled for that. My corn problem is getting worse as now I also have eczema full body. When I eat or drink anything, it makes my whole body inflamed and it itches real bad for around 8 hours  and is very painful. This is all caused by the corn problem causing me to  have what is called a Leaky Gut, which is a hard thing to get cured of.

Costco

I needed a couple things from Costco so I headed for there. Not the best place to go late on a Friday afternoon, but I got in and out fairly quickly.

Nice day.

Thursday July 17, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Firebox

I loaded up the firebox with some dry fruit wood and got it going to test out the smoker.

This was to be a dry run with no fish in the smoker. The purpose was to test my wood fire skills and to see how I’d maintain the fire temp and amount of smoke in the smoker box.

Fire

My first mistake was I didn’t build a large enough fire at the beginning so I put more wood in the fire box  and let it get burning up to speed.

Amount of smoke

With a good fire going now, I needed to adjust the amount of smoke coming out of the smoker box on the right. I wanted only a little smoke and not a lot of smoke as to only flavor the fish and not turn it black and harsh. There’s a  little too much smoke in the smoke box here. I adjust the control in the long pipe on the fire box to control this smoke. Of course, moving that valve also changes the temperature in the smoke box, so I adjust the air intake to the fire box.

I think this is about the right amount of smoke, maybe just a little less would be good.

Thermometer

I used this thermometer to check the temperature of the smoker box. I’m shooting for 150 degrees F. or less for most of the time. It’s ok to be below 150, it will just take bit longer until it is done. It’s also ok to be a bit above 150 as long as it’s not for too long, or the fish will just get done quicker without quite as much smoke.

And of course, one has to keep adjusting the amount of smoke that gets to the smoker.

It’s not an exact science and that’s where the art in smoking comes into play.

Flaking

It’s mostly knowing when it is done. The internal temp of the fish needs to reach 145 degrees F. The fish will flake once the internal temp reaches this temp. If you don’t get the fish to flake, it would be more like eating a smoked piece of rubber, or an uncooked piece of fish. You just kick the fire temp up for the finish if it still  needs to flake.

Chickens

While doing that, I’d go for a walk around the yard before checking the temps again. The chickens where resting in the shade under this mulberry tree.

I spent most of the afternoon playing with the smoker so I’d be better at using it when there was salmon in it. I think I got good enough at it to do the job.

Smoke

This is adjusted pretty good here, with maybe just a little too much smoke at the smoker. I’ll have to try it out with some salmon to know for sure on the smoke.

Nice day.

Wednesday July 16, 2025 Guerneville CA.

I needed to gather some wood for smoking the salmon. I needed wood to make a fire and wood to make smoke.

I had this wood here, so I cut it up to make a wood  for a fire.

And I cut down a plum tree for some wood to make some smoke.

Then I rode on up to the forest to cut some more wood to make smoke, a small madrone tree should do it so I cut it up.

I put the smaller pieces of wood in buckets to make it easier to transport it.

That should be enough wood to get started smoking.

After that, I rode on towards home going through the state park as I wanted to visit with the guys at the park’s shop which I did.

Then home for a nap.

Nice day.