The house nexr door where the semi-invalid woman lived sold about a year ago. They were asking way too much and kept coming down in asking price. I made an offer but knew it probably wouldn't do it. The buyer didn't do anything with it until a few weeks ago. They live north in our street in a more modern house that this one. Next door house is a good enough older house but maintenance has been almost nil since neighbor woman husband died about 8 years ago.

I asked the young man who bought it if he thought it would fix up to be a good investment property. He said "no, just going to use it when we dress the game we get and put a couple of beds in it when my folks come to visit".

That kind of floored me, a couple of beds in a place you use for dressing out game you kill. Thought there would be a lot less expensive places to dress game and even put up your folks in a motel did see him with 4 friends bring in a bunch of wild turkys they shot plus many geese.

But when he told me a couple of weeks ago he was going to build a smokehouse in the back yard I just thought that was odd. BUT, when he actually got a permit from the city to build it I was suprised. He and a friend had a foundation poured and a week later built the smokehouse from concrete blocks. Guess it would be 8' by 12'.
'

Now we find out he has been making several kinds of sausage next door and began smoking them 2 days ago. Apparently it takes about 12 hours to smoke-cure a batch.

This guy has a scheme really dumb sounding to me but he is a transplanted Cajun and says the oilfield workers in North Dakota will buy all he can produce and he is going to make a lot of Cajun dishes and freeze them in pound packages. Don't know what they were cooking over a large propane burner in the backyard in a massive caldron but it smelled heavenly. His teen age daughter was stirring it with something that looked like a stainless steel canoe paddle. After a couple of hours she would scoop samples and take in the house only to come back and stir some more. I saw him with a big thermometer checking it a couple of times when they pronounced it done they scooped the product into small vats with handles and carried it in the house.

Now our house smells of smoke and am hoping for a change in wind direction.

You would THINK that the city inspector in charge of building permits would have checked with neighbors before issuing and I am quite sure there is no health inspector checking on it. Maybe since it won't be sold locally or in the state he doesn't need a license to produce this but not sure I would want to eat a product that had originated in a place I cleaned game. Enough.

Leone is working at the museum this afternoon and evening and I can't do the ceiling remodel in a spare bedroom without someone on the floor so I'm sitting here boring everyone, maybe put you to sleep.