Today I discovered that 7 buckets of manure in the back with 3 buckets riding shotgun and 2 buckets of gravel on the floor board is about the load limit for the new home made golf cart dump box.

I can't believe it took us this long to make such an obvious improvement in carrying capacity.

 

Total cost on this home made golf cart dump box was just over 5 bucks thanks to using scrap wood from the old house.

It expands the back hauling capacity of the golf cart from 2 buckets to 7, with about 3 buckets worth in between the cracks.

Next up is a wooden rack to take advantage of some space up front.

This short video provides an accurate yet boring picture of how the rental chipper cuts a rug.

Our share ended up being 1/3 of the weekend time which worked out to be 65 dollars.

It was a great opportunity that would not have been possible without our neighbors' suggestion of sharing the time and the aid of their tractor to pull the thing all the way back here. Well worth waking up early tomorrow morning to drive it back to it's home in the big city.

I imagine this might be the closest thing we have to participating in an old fashioned barn raising which is too bad because this neighborly cooperation thing is a pretty darn good feeling at the end of the day.

 

The occasional water line damage is to be expected when your wife is just starting to learn the finer points of 40 caliber marksmanship.

 

There's a really good wiki-how that sums up what you need to know about sharpening your chainsaw with a hand file.

It seems the experts suggest a machine grinding at a shop after every 5 hand sharpening episodes.

You can buy small attachments for a Dremel to make the job easier, but these little hand files are a lot cheaper.

 

    Each round of gravel shoveling yields a few improvements on our technique.

I made the mistake of storing my hearing protection in the barn after a round of chainsawing a few months ago.

Not only did a team of mice shred the foam padding but it looks like they took out a long term lease and moved right in.

I finally got around to washing the mushroom wax pot last night and had some trouble.

It seems like a small amount of wax somehow leaked out and bonded with the teflon.

Next year I'll use stainless steel instead of teflon and avoid this sticky problem.

 

I got this cedar tree notched and ready to come down when a feeling came over me that it might still fall the other way, which would take down one of the power lines and leave us in the dark.

Nothing our little 4 ton hand winch can't handle. We just used the ladder to secure a cable high up on the tree in question, secured the other end to another tree and cranked it in a way that left it no choice but to fall away from the electricity.

 

I upgraded the beer can from last year's wax melting kit with this bigger and stronger tin can. I also improved the heating process by using a hot water bath as seen in the photo. This allowed for much better control and a safer place to rest the can while we drilled the next round of holes for the new oyster mushroom logs.

 

Project oyster mushroom logs step 1. Cut down small, fresh, box elder trees to be carried to the new soaking station.

 

It was a good day to take advantage of the nice weather and do some driveway repair.

Push with the rake, shovel, rake some more and repeat several times.

The couple that works together, stays together...or pitches a huge hissy fit and gets a divorce.  Mark and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day, but we do spend every day living in each others' pockets, usually very amicably.  In fact, one of my favorite parts of the day is the time I spend working on a project with Mark.

Even though I grew up with a handy father, I somehow missed most of the lessons on basic tool-use.  So Mark has taught me how to use a power drill, a miter saw, and so forth.  Monday, I was putting up the last bit of wall paneling, this time around the newly re-wired electric outlets.  How, I wondered, does one cut a small rectangle out of a piece of plywood with a jig saw?

I know this is old hat to those of you who dabble (or work) in construction, but I found this technique elegant and captivating.  First, Mark used a drill to start a hole in the plywood.  Then he cut along the line, curving around each corner so that he could keep cutting until an oval section fell out.  Third, he went back and cut the corners out --- the pictures hopefully make this process clearer than my description.  It's always a good day when I learn something new!

 

The do it yourself storage building now has a door up thanks to a couple more smashed brackets that work great at keeping the stopping portion of the frame in place.

 

We forgot to use a level when we were setting up the outer door frame of the storage building and because of that a small gap needed to be added towards the top to level it out.

 

The home made storage building got about half way sealed today thanks to four tubes of caulk and five tubes of liquid nails.

We ended up with several small gaps once everything went together with the salvaged wood for the storage building project. I was a little apprehensive about using liquid nails yesterday because I knew it was predicted to get colder today, but it looks to be setting up just fine.

 

Note to any future homesteading men out there. If you find a woman that will do your roofing without too much complaining then you've found a mate. Treat her well and don't work her too hard.

 

We finally got around to trimming a few of the downed pine trees this afternoon left over from the blizzard of 2009.

 

Today we installed some hard wood beams from the old house on the top of our walls to form a solid box for the storage buiding. We decided to extend each side out by a foot to provide some additional cover for the outer walls.

The frozen water shuffle got a bit easier after I installed a plastic faucet onto the pour spout of our 6 gallon jug.

We got the Chopper 1 axe up and running thanks to a couple of replacement springs and clips from the Chopper 1 website.

I've only just started using it, but I can already say I like it a lot.

It feels like I'm getting more splitting action for less energy input, which is a very good thing. What I like most so far is the feeling of increased safety. When there's not enough power to split the log the Chopper 1 just sort of bounces as opposed to grazing off out of control like the Super Splitter has been known to do if your aim is a little off.

Credit goes to Anna for capturing the exact moment when the Chopper 1 is completing a split.

Blue skies and above freezing temperatures helped us to breeze through two and a half more wall sections of our home made storage building project today.

Anna and Lucy are the miter saw experts on this job. I'm just backing them up with some heavy lifting and the occasional two cents.

 

The team at KMS woodworks has made some interesting progress in bringing together a compact solar charger that can be used for several low end power needs like a lap top. They are still in the testing stage, but it looks like they might make them available for sale in the 300 to 350 dollar range in the not too distant future.

It would be worth that much to me if it could power our modem and both lap tops for a few hours per day, especially during a power outage.

I really like the idea of having a portable off the grid option, especially one that can be taken on a back pack to provide the power for blog posts in some random ancient megalith site or more Mayan ruins.

 

The 6th wall section is now up and looking like a storage building.

Using this utility pump to fill a proper water container feels like a huge improvement over last year's 5 gallon bucket method. The biggest downside was lifting the bucket back out once you filled it as full as you dared.

 

I had my 2nd flat tire of the week just as I got yesterday's fixed. The first one was due to a sharp tree root jutting out of the frozen ground and jabbing itself into the side wall, but today's deflation could have been avoided if I'd had an inner tube in the tire, which it now has.

At least we got all the 2x4s shuttled back to our storage building project before this next storm sets in.

Cutting through difficult nails within a tight space like this is where these reciprocating saws really shine. The medium sized metal blade allows you to bend it at an angle, just don't bend it too much or it will kick like a mule.

This hand saw might look a little on the cheap side with its plastic handle and small size...but it cuts like the Dickens.

You will be impressed at how fast this thing can cut through a tree limb.

Thanks for the question.

It didn't take me long to come up with an answer to this one. The Stihl chainsaw would be my choice. You can get an attachment these days that can turn any chainsaw into a heavy duty hedge trimmer, which would be handy for clearing a new place. Firewood production would be my main motivation.

If you've got the time and talent a good chainsaw can also be used to make some impressive wood sculptures.

The palomino grain cow hide work gloves are still my preferred glove for handling heavy jobs. I estimate that the work load here at Wetknee seems to chew through them somewhere between 9 and 12 months, which is a good value when you consider the wear and tear you're saving on each hand.

I learned a while back that a good set of knee pads can make a big difference at the end of a day when you need to be close to the ground. What I never got used to was how they tended to cut off the circulation. My new favorite knee protector is this red foam rubber pad. It provides a bit more wiggle room and doubles as a place to sit when you need to take a break.

 

It's easy to make your own home made automatic chicken waterer with a 5 gallon bucket and one of our do it yourself kits.

We've been using these light duty water hoses for about 3 years now and the only disadvantage I can see is the ease at which they tend to kink up.

What makes the Highpoint 40 caliber carbine rifle a good choice for the modern day homesteader? It's affordable...a bit over 200 bucks, it's easy to use with minimal kick back, and it serves two roles on the farm as a weapon for home defense and a tool for hunting.

We could have gotten by with hunting our garden raiding deer with the trusty Winchester shot gun, but that thing has a hard kick to it and you only get one shot before you need to stop and reload.

It's been almost a week now since we upgraded the rear tires on the golf cart and the only regret I have is that we didn't do this as soon as we liberated her from the nice and clean campground that she came from. I would guess that our ground grippage has doubled in comparison to the traction cables we had rigged on her before.

 

The collapsible lawn and leaf bag is a product that works and works well. I imagine most folks would use it to support a big trash bag so that your lawn and leaf material can be bagged up and hauled off to a land fill. We use it in the raw to increase our mulch material, and it makes the job a bit smoother than trying to use a large tarp.

We decided to upgrade the traction chains on the golf cart to a more respectable solution. Now we can cruise through the mud with a bit more ease.

Yesterday we figured out the hard way what happens when you exceed the load limit in the heavy hauler trailer we use with the golf cart.

Normally it seems to be able to handle a full load of wood half haphazardly thrown in, but when you carefully stack each log next to its neighbor the volume increases to the point of a problem.


I heard a loud pop coming from the driveway where Anna was hauling firewood and knew some sort of tire mishap had occurred.

I think they sell these replacement wheels at the big box stores, or maybe we'll get lucky and our tire guy will work another rubber miracle by bringing it back to a functional life for a small fee?

 

It's been over a year since our phone line was cut in half by some reckless weed eating on my part. At the time I just stripped each wire and wrapped them together with a bit of electrical tape for protection. Well that kind of repair will only last so long if it's subjected to the outside elements.

I had to repeat that fix twice last winter due to moisture getting into the taped area and knocking out our phone service. Also the twisting of the wires can sometimes cause them to become weak and break.

I was quizzing our local radio shack guy on this last week hoping to find a clever solution and he came through with these phone splice connectors. Expect to spend just under a buck for each one, and get 2 packages if you need more than 4 wires spliced like most phone cables. It's really easy. You just slide each wire all the way in and crimp down with a set of pliers. Make sure you press hard.

 

Transporting piles of leaf material with a large tarp is a lot easier than putting them in trash bags if your goal is garden mulch.

I've already written a long post about sheet mulching, one good method of growing plants without tilling the soil.  The problem with sheet mulching is that it requires gobs of organic matter.  Can you get similar results with less outlay of cash?

A traditional British method of gardening without tilling is known as surface cultivation.  Farmers usually till or dig the soil the first year to loosen the ground and increase soil pores, but after this they merely layer two to four inches of compost onto the ground each year and plant without tilling.  A special hoe known as a Dutch hoe cuts off weeds just below the crown, leaving the roots in place to increase fertility of the soil and leaving the tops in place to mulch the soil surface.  By the third year of surface cultivation, very few weeds are left since new seeds aren't turned up through tilling.

My gardening technique has aspects of surface cultivation in it, and I'm looking forward to that decline in weeding (two years from now since my 2008 garden went to seed and set me back a couple of years.)  Robert Kourik notes that the tedious weeding in surface cultivation can be minimized by mulching as much as possible.  My father has good luck laying damp newspapers around his vegetables, a method that I may have to try next year.  This year's grass clipping mulch has also been highly effective.

The problem with surface cultivation, beyond labor-intensive weeding, is that productivity often begins to decline after 5 to 6 years when soil compacts.  Some farmers simply till their garden at that point and begin again.  Others use a spading fork or broad fork to loosen the soil without tilling.  I suspect that simple crop rotation may do the trick in our garden --- we grow enough root crops that require the ground to be churned up during harvest that we will probably end up digging every bed at least once or twice a decade.

We started to have some trouble back in the summer with one of the Plymouth Rock hens laying her egg on the ground, which made it easy to miss and pull the tractor over it, creating a scrambled egg in the yard.

It seems like a golf ball is close enough to an egg to fool even our smart Plymouth Rocks. No broken eggs since we installed the fake at a price well under a buck depending on where you get your sporting supplies from.

Liquid nails.

More liquid nails.

And still yet a bit more of the liquid nails to the time battered roof of our trailer. Each dab of glue getting us that much closer to a completely leak proof home.

 

When we first moved to the farm we had fantasies of owning our own mini-tractor. Once we did the math and figured out just how many times we would really need such a piece of equipment we scaled down the dream to a golf cart.

I've discovered it's far more efficient to hire out what little tractor work we need. Today we got 6 tons of crushed cinder blocks for 40 bucks delivered. The same guy is half way through scooping it up and spreading it around to troubled spots on our driveway for an equally reasonable fee.

It sure beats filling up 5 gallon buckets and spreading it around the old fashioned way.

Having 2 medium ratchet straps made it possible to hold the freezer in place while I used the other strap to finalize the mount.

Speaking of freezers, We saw a fresh independent film last month by the name of Freezer Burn. The hero is a quirky scientist who sells his house in order to raise enough money to modify a freezer so that he can be frozen for 15 years in an effort to capture the attention of a girl he has a thing for. It's that good kind of whacky that makes you feel just a little bit more alive after viewing it. I give it 2 thumbs up for its charm and wit.

I've had a few of those small ratchet straps for a couple of years now and they really come in handy...but they also have a problem getting hung up and stuck in some pretty nasty tangles if the load shifts.

We got a set of the medium sized ones a few weeks ago and I'm still kicking myself for wasting so much time on the small version. No more pinched fingers and frayed straps with the bigger more substantial mechanism.

Now, I have to admit that you won't see instant results the first time you walk your dog correctly.  When we got Lucy, she'd been tied up for months on end and she was wild.  I could barely hold her leash as she galloped up the driveway --- no way I was going to be able to get her to walk beside or behind me.

So, we bought a couple of tools to get Lucy to pay attention to us (and to wear down a bit of her boundless energy!)  The one dog-lovers are least likely to approve of is the Gentle Leader.  No, this isn't a muzzle --- your dog can open her mouth just fine.  The Gentle Leader is a lot like the harness on a horse --- it allows you to steer a large, powerful animal by turning its head rather than by trying to make the whole animal go where you want it to.  The Gentle Leader also puts pressure on top of your dog's nose if she tries to pull.  This simulates the way a pack leader will put its mouth around a follower dog's nose if the follower misbehaves, and both the pack leader's mouth and the Gentle Leader's pressure cue your dog to calm down and listen.

We also bought Lucy a doggie backpack and weighed it down with water bottles and gravel.  Carrying the backpack gave her quite a workout, even when walking at human speed.  I think that without the backpack, we would have had to walk Lucy for a couple of hours a day in the beginning when she was blowing off her leftover steam from being tied up.

Both the Gentle Leader and the doggie backpack did their job admirably, but after a few months Lucy had learned that we were in charge.  We slowly stopped using them --- after all, both were just tools to get our dog's attention.

I've had this 18 volt Black and Decker Firestorm drill for over 4 years now and it's still as strong and dependable as the first day I got it.

Its taken some serious drops and bangs over the years ...proving itself in the heavy duty tool league at a price well below the heavier brands. I've worn out one battery so far...but still have 2 more that provide more than a day's worth of work at an impressive charge time.

The new mower lost its get up and go today, which prompted a search of the internet for some free advice.

Samuel Goldwasser has a fine collection of tips and instructions for the do it yourself crowd. He is of the opinion that most lawn mowers function on a low compression ratio and therefore can do without the high octane fuel.

Our mulch machine just needed a new spark plug and a bit of oil to get back in the game.

Garden and water tools:

TC1840H Garden Cart - I would recommend this cart to anyone.  We've ridden it hard and put it to bed wet, and still it keeps right on hauling all of our household and garden supplies.

Ridgid 1 HP Sump Pump - This is our well pump, and it keeps right on pumping like a dream!

Thousand gallon tank - Still plugging right along, making our life easier.

Trake - I'd like to give this tool six stars, but it would mess up my rating system.  The trake makes weeding a joy!

Heavy hauler - The heavy hauler continues to hold up under serious abuse.  The only downside is that it's hard to maneuver by hand --- keep it hitched up to the golf cart or your lawn tractor and you'll be in good shape.

Mintcraft garden sprayer - A competent gadget for the price.  For under $20, what would you expect?

Kink-free flex hose adapter - still keeping our well hose kink-free many months later.

  

We had another flat on the Club Car golf cart yesterday. It was on the only wheel without an inner tube. That's 3 separate trips to the tire guy in the span of a year.

The lesson to learn here is if you're going to use a golf cart under heavy farm conditions then you might as well install inner tubes in all 4 tires and save yourself some time and energy.

Home and shop tools:

Fuji Finepix S100fd - We both still adore this camera.  We've yet to use all of its features, or to reach many limits in its abilities.  The only thing it doesn't seem to do well is extremely low light conditions without a flash, but I suspect we just haven't found the proper setting for that yet.

Liquid nails - I think that if Mark had to choose between me and a lifetime supply of liquid nails, it might be a hard choice....

Palomino grain cowhide gloves - Still Mark's all-time favorite gloves.

Skil saw - This electric saw keeps right on going.  We often bring it with us when we need to do home repairs away from the farm.

Ultimate sink strainer - a piece broke off the bottom of one strainer under light wear, but the lost piece didn't seem to affect the strainer's performance.  A great replacement to the dishrag mashed in the drain with a pint canning jar.

pStyle - I thought the pStyle was a great idea, but I forgot about it after a week.  Must have been the return of warm weather.

Champion 3000 watt generator - It's sitting in the barn looking pretty.  We've yet to have a serious power outage, so haven't revved it up.  We probably should give it a spin, though, just to see how it works.

  

I like Chris and Keri's automatic chicken door solution for several reasons. The design is simple, solid, and cheap to do for under 20 bucks, and they have detailed pictures with videos, and a wiring schematic to make the process easy for someone who might want to follow in this direction.

I've been looking at several different versions of these automatic doors on the internet and this is one of the first to use limit switches, which might come in handy for future experiments.

This is a plan I would favor because of the low cost and easy to follow directions. Thanks for sharing Chris and Keri.

While we're on the topic of automatic chicken care, check out our homemade chicken waterer which gives your birds clean water for days.

We found a Chopper1 axe at a yard sale today for just 10 bucks.

Bob Kolonia invented it back in 1975. What makes it unique is the rotating levers on each side of the axe's head. The levers swing out, directing the downward chopping force outward and exploding the log apart from the inside. His website has a nice animation that explains the process better. Ours is missing one of the return springs and pin that holds the spring. I'm sure I can rig something up before winter sets in. Stay tuned to see how well this baby chops wood compared to our Super Splitter.

I forget the name for these flip pliers. I bought them during a stage of my life when I was doing industrial fencing...that's chain link fence...not fancy sword fighting for some corporate pirate outfit.

Some days I would spend hour after hour securing long lines of chain link fence to its respective post. These pliers were good for that, but not optimal. They mainly functioned as a back up to my heavier duty set.

I thought this particular tool was gone forever in that vast vacuum of nothingness that tools disappear to. It showed up earlier this week when we were helping my mom with some home repair jobs. Somehow it got mixed in with her tools and she was happy to match it back up with its previous owner. Thanks Mom!

What I really like it for is the help it provides while I put together the hanger portion of what I think is the best chicken waterer money can buy. I used to use needle nose pliers, and then channel locks to finish each hanger. Now I just give these flip pliers a West Side Story switchblade twist and I'm switching tools without setting one down.

I think this tool is on par with the Trake...yes, it's that good.

We upgraded to a second packaging tape dispenser recently to speed things along in the Avian Aqua Miser building process.

This one is made by Scotch, and it's considered heavy duty. It was about 10 bucks, which includes a small roll of tape.

It works better than the cheaper model we bought back in the winter, and it has a nice feature that hides the cutting blades until one puts pressure on the top guard.

Since drip irrigation didn't work for the majority of our garden, we turned to sprinklers.  We probably spent over a hundred dollars over the last two summers searching frantically for a sprinkler that fits our needs.  Here's what we discovered about the four major types of sprinklers:

Rotary sprinkler --- water gets forced out of two or three spinning arms, irrigating a circular area.  The problem is that the water outlets are very small and clog easily in turbid water.  When one arm clogs, the sprinkler stops spinning and just sits there soaking two spots in the garden until you run out and poke at the clogged arm with a pin, getting soaked in the process.  (Yes, I speak from personal experience.)

Oscillating sprinkler --- water comes out of several holes along a metal tube, which moves from side to side so that a rectangular area is watered.  This has the same clogging problem as the rotary sprinkler, although at least the tube keeps moving when one hole clogs.

Pulsating sprinkler --- our pride and joy!  Water comes out of a big hole in a steady stream so that the sprinkler never clogs, then the water is broken up by moving parts into a gentle mist.  You can set the sprinkler to water a full circle or any type of semicircle and can also set the diameter of the circle as well as the size of the water droplets.  These sprinklers have the bonus of being able to water areas as large as 100 feet in diameter.  We started with a cheap plastic version, then upgraded to the metal version shown here, which cost us about $10 per sprinkler (bought in two-packs at the big box store.)

Stationary sprinkler --- this is merely a chunk of metal with no moving parts, so it's pretty indestructible.  Like the pulsating sprinkler, there is no clogging problem, and the kind we bought has the major bonus that it will run on low water pressure.  (We had to hook the other three types directly to the big pump to make them run, but our stationary sprinklers run on gravity from our thousand gallon tank.)  The downside to stationary sprinklers is that they only water small areas, but I like to use them to fill in gaps in our irrigation setup, watering solitary beds which would be wasteful to water with the pulsating sprinkler.

  

I learned today not to leave even a little amount of water in the sprayer after using it. It doesn't take long to get some algae buildup, which will clog the end of the sprayer that reaches the bottom of the container.

It's pretty easy to clear the clog, which is another selling point for the MintCraft garden sprayer I reviewed last month.

It occurred to me last night when the sheet of tin fell off the first anti-deer contraption due to excessive wear. It was all backwards.

I'm using a golf ball with a wood screw threaded through the middle suspended by some 14 gauge brace wire. That functions as the new banger, and now the tin is what it crashes into.

Now we get the initial clang followed by a rubbing sound. The tin has a small indentation that holds the golf ball every 5th hit or so for just a few seconds, giving us that random effect that will be more effective in sounding unnatural and dangerous to the deer.

We installed a new Y splitter to create an additional sprinkler zone for the garden.

It's made of metal with plastic coating. We started out using one made entirely of plastic, which was a mistake I won't repeat again.

The plastic version sometimes leaked and eventually cracked.

The goal is to have the irrigation system down to just turning a valve off and another one on to switch zones. This way we can save more time for weeding and other wonderful activities on the farm.

  

These small turnbuckles pack a lot of punch for just 2 dollars.

It's just the thing for getting a grape trellis post nice and taut.

  

After several rounds of adjustments the latest incarnation of mechanical deer repellant is working without fail.

Now that it's working I think I'll try my hand at dressing it up a bit to see if we can't make it look less trashy.

  

Sometimes a cedar post is just a smidgen too big for even the longest drill bit we've got. A well placed notch can sometimes solve any problem. That's what it took today to finish up a trellis for the new grapes.

I struggled with keeping the drill level in the past when boring through a post. The new Skil drill has a nifty bubble installed on top to allow for a perfectly straight angle when drilling horizontally.

The new Skil drill got a workout the other day when I needed to make a hole through some cedar posts.

I was surprised to see just how much more leverage the side handle gives you.

The 1/2 inch chuck allows for the bigger size bits and the extra 7.0 amp motor provides more than enough power. There's a nice rubber holder near the handle to hold the chuck key and the speed is adjustable depending on how hard you squeeze the trigger.

This should make mushroom log plugging a lot easier when it's not doing duty as our main motorized mechanical smasher.

I made our motorized mechanical smasher to streamline a step in the Avian Aqua Miser building where the wire hanger needs to be squeezed. This way is over twice as fast compared to using channel locks and saves a ton of wear on my wrists.

The Skil 7.0 amp drill is a perfect match for this application due to its adjustable trigger speed and easy to reach reverse switch. Its 1/2 inch heavy duty chuck locks down on the Wilton drill press vice handle with the right amount of clearance. Watch out! I'm sure it will smash fingers if given the chance. This is not a toy.

  

If you've got a low impact, repetitive turning task that needs to be motorized then the new Black and Decker 6 volt drill/driver might be just the tool for the job.

I've had mine for a couple of weeks now and it's really helped to streamline our Avian Aqua Miser building process.

It takes 4 AA batteries and transforms the combined 6 volts of DC power into a surprising amount of torque. We found this one at a big box store for just over 10 bucks. Don't expect it to do any medium or heavy drilling chores and you won't be disappointed.

I installed a small piece of foam pipe insulation to the shoulder strap of the MintCraft garden sprayer for some added comfort, and now I'm wondering what took me so long to wise up to this simple solution.

It makes hauling a full tank feel like a walk in the park.

For around 60 bucks you can get a device that combines motion detector technology and sprinklers in a way that might work for some folks with a deer problem in their yard or garden.

The CR0101 motion activated sprinkler seems like it would keep a wide array of varmints from your precious plants, but like with any new product the knowing is in the testing and proving that it works under real world conditions.

This might also be the perfect and humane way of keeping small children from entering your yard to retrieve their ball or Frisbee.

The rain has been good to us lately, but this week it came up a little short.

We had to make a small change to the creek pumping system by adding a separate line from the pump.

This provides a more direct path to the sprinklers and has increased the pressure by a noticeable degree.

The picture shows one of those large plastic storage units at the bottom of the creek that provides a nice place for the pump to rest. The intake is towards the middle, so it helps to prop the hose end up on a brick.

 

I managed to warp the second mulching mower blade of the summer today by running over a small stump near the grapes.

On my way to yardpartsexpress.com (my new home for replacement mower blades) I found an interesting culture of bike mowers.

It seems like folks have been merging these two pastimes for several years now. I'm intrigued by the inventive nature of pedal power being used to cut grass, but our lawn is so bumpy and rough that it's just not an option at this time.

The first contraption I built was not loud enough to be heard in the garden by the barn and as a result the deer have had their way with our defenseless sunflowers the past few nights.

This second unit went into testing the night before last and seems to be doing just as good of a job as the first one.

If I was stranded on an island and had to choose just one power saw, it would have to be one of these reciprocating tools.

They start at just under 50 bucks and can be used in a wide variety of situations where you need to cut through some wood, metal, plastic or whatever.

Of course if I was stranded on an isolated island there would most likely be no electricity...in which case a good hand saw would be the wiser choice, but if you want a heavy duty cutting tool that can fill in for almost every saw job imaginable, then one of these should be on the top of your tool wish list.

In the early days of spraying Bt I used an old Windex bottle to apply the fine bacterial mist.

That was a mistake I repeated way too many times before I wised up and invested in the MintCraft garden sprayer.

It's a well designed unit that holds a decent amount of pressure.

I give it about 5 or 10 good pumps which will last through a half gallon of spraying. The extended wand allows you to easily target any area of the plant while providing a convenient control knob for mist level adjustments. It gets a bit heavy to carry if you fill it all the way up, especially if you're using the shoulder strap. You might want to upgrade the strap with some padding if you do the maximum capacity.

I'm trying a new method of support for the tomatos this year that involves the 4 foot high green plastic fence material that comes in 50 foot rolls for 27 bucks at Lowes.

It's a 3 sided enclosure that provides easy access for weeding and pruning.

We invested in the next size up fence post, which cost nearly 5 dollars each. It really seems like the best option if you expect to repeat this procedure year after year in a different spot.

  

I've washed a lot of dishes in my time...and read each and every  soapy adventure in the compelling story of Dishwasher Pete's cross country journey.

I'm sure he would back me up here when I say the Lok-Spin sink strainer is the ultimate in water trapping sink technology.

I just installed two in our sink last week and couldn't be happier with the look and functionality of this practical and affordable kitchen innovation.

The strainer has a small dial that threads to the bottom section creating an unstoppable barrier. No matter how rough you are with the suds this stopper will never be accidentally dislodged.

Our micro business is off to a good start thanks to Anna's experiments with internet marketing.

If you're looking for some good free advice in this department I recommend checking out the micro-niche maverick website.

It just got started in March of this year, but what's there is some valuable and up to date gems on this ever changing field.

One of our future goals is to grow enough sunflower plants to turn the seeds into cooking oil.

I'm not sure if the effort is worth the reward, but thats what experiments are for. Once you harvest the seeds they need to be dehulled.
 
It takes about a pound of hulled seeds to produce 3 ounces of oil. I've read an area of 2500 square feet can provide a family of four with enough cooking oil for the year.

There's even talk of it being used as a bio-fuel.

I noticed the feed store had some 40 pound bags of the oil variety for 12 bucks so folks can keep their backyard bird population fed. I might end up experimenting with one of those bags once we figure out the best way to build an oil press.

We almost had to bring the sprinklers out this week, but a few good rounds of natural rain made everybody in the garden happy.

Hopefully the rain will continue to be reliable.

A couple of sprinklers mounted on metal fence posts worked well for us last year. The extra height increased the distance a bit and made it easy to reposition.

The water comes directly from a pump in the creek, so the pressure is enough to handle three sprinklers, but two seem to work best.

The June/July issue of Backyard Poultry hit the streets on Saturday and I couldn't be happier with how Anna's full page article on page 36 came out.

We've been getting some good feedback on how much happier chicken chores can be with this new concept in backyard poultry watering.

It's exciting to see an idea go from the drawing board to reality in the span of a few months. I was thinking today that our operation is a level below most small business set-ups, which inspired me to call it a micro-business. The name has been around for a while, and Lloyd Lemons is one of the top sources for all things related to these smallest of businesses.

Ye olde charcoal grill saw the light of day yesterday as we cooked up some asparagus and shitake mushrooms with a few hot dogs on the side.

My mom introduced me to the charcoal chimney starter years ago and grilling has never been the same since.

Your coals get heated up faster while using less lighter fluid. If you have a large crowd to feed you might want to have two going at the same time.

The second Trake arrived today and I can already feel an increase in our leverage over the local weed population.

It came with a tag that proclaims it to be part of the "Hen-Feathers" collection.

Its 16 inch length and 25 degree angle are nice, but its one piece cast construction is what makes it such a gem in my eyes.

I'd like to see an oversize version of it as a piece of garden sculpture in some fancy park in the city. That would be some outside art I could get behind.

This one has a green grip, which I'm thinking of securing with electrical tape to avoid the scrunching that happened to the original after hours of heavy use.

  

If you get a lawn mower blade installed backwards it'll still cut some grass, just not as smooth and crisp as having it cut the right way.

You might want to confirm this as soon as you start up the new blade as opposed to mowing all day and then asking yourself why it's not slicing through the lawn like its usual ninja self.

When I was a youngster the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a garbage man. Why? Because I thought it was very cool to hang off the back of the truck while it was still moving down the road.

I never did get to realize that dream, but the corn hybrid crew in the picture to the right seems like an even better gig.

They positioned young men on these machines and drove down rows of corn. The goal was to de-tassel a row to allow the pollen from the other row to spread by wind to form a hybrid seed corn.

  

The robot's day in the sun is fast approaching. From the level of research being done one can predict that an affordable garden robot might be here within 5 to 10 years.

What would happen if we grew to rely on such robots for the bulk of our agricultural work? Is there a danger in becoming dependent on this type of technology?

I'm not sure I would feel the same if I let a machine do all the work and never got my hands dirty.

I've discovered that  several people are working on a serious robotic solution to weed control all around the world.

In my opinion the little guy pictured to the right has the most promise for widespread acceptance.

He seems to be small enough to make mass production possible and I would imagine any successful product would need to function on a minimum of power. A happy ending would be some sort of solar docking bay the robots returned to when they got low on juice.

The weed population in the garden is in full retreat as we continue to get a handle on the situation.

Bjorn Astrand at Halstad University of Sweden is making some impressive progress with his weed killing robot named Lukas.

Lukas uses on board cameras and image processing software to zero in on its prey. You can tell from the picture that he's built for row crops, which wouldn't cut it around here.

The mulch machine is out of commission for a while due to a bent blade.

Heavy vibration and noise are a clear indicator of an out of balanced blade.

Some people might be tempted to whack it with a sledge hammer and force it back into shape. This will cause a weakening of the metal and might break in two under stress, which would be very dangerous for the person pushing it and anything else nearby.

     

Flickr user Kevin Borland captured the amazing image above that still has the gears in my head turning. This Amish family seems to have evolved to a sort of steam powered solution to farm machinery, which seems brilliant on multiple levels.

The homesteading community could learn a lot from observing how the Amish solve problems in such simple and innovative ways. These casual snap shots provide us one of the few looks into this interesting culture due to their clever rejection of big chunks of the world.

Dig, tamp, pull, and push. Repeat until garden is happy again.

Mark: "The more I use this Trake the more I like it."

Anna: "Yeah....I know what you mean, the solid-cast aluminum design and molded grip make it a tool you really miss when it's not there." -long and dramatic sigh followed by a furrowed brow.

Mark: "Uhhhhh...maybe we should get a second Trake?"

Anna: "I think that's a great idea!"

One of the biggest problems with the basic wheel barrow is the wheel.

When an inflated tire sits for a few months or longer you can expect it to loose some of its air pressure.

The solid tire version can only handle so much weight before it gets too hard to push.

The NuBarro from Germany seems to be a new level in single wheeled hand trucks.

That big wheel never needs air and is extremely tough. I've never seen this in real life, but it's easy to imagine how much more traction a person can expect when you look at the impressive design. The maximum weight is 750 pounds, and the price is in the 150 dollar range. A bit more than your average wheel barrow, but it might be worth it if you're pushing through ground heavy in sand or snow.

Jock Brandis has turned his inventive mind from being a Key Grip on B grade movies like the sci-fi comedy Normanicus to helping poor folks discover a more efficient method of shelling peanuts and other material.

The design is simple and solid and can be built for around 50 bucks. The bulk of the invention is two concrete cones, which can be formed with a set of fiberglass molds that Jock's North Carolina company provides. The latest incarnation uses pedal power to get the grinding done while producing a fan effect that helps to separate the shells from the nut.

Someday I'd like to build one of these and try to adapt it for the heavy walnuts that drop from the trees around here.

To energy star or not to energy star?  That was the question when our fridge started to die over a month ago.  Refrigerators are the single largest drain of electricity in most households, sucking up about 14% of your energy usage.  That's money going down the drain and pollutants going into the air.  But could we afford to go green?

You can download a very useful spreadsheet of energy star appliances' features and energy ratings here.  I was curious about whether the label was a marketing gimmick, but perusal of the spreadsheet made it clear that energy star fridges do save electricity, often 100 KWH per year or more.  The problem with energy star is that new models are out of our price range, with the cheapest ones going for over $500.  No one seems to be willing to sell used ones at all.  Read more....

A propane torch has thousands of uses in the world of a do it yourselfer. The tank is usually about 2 bucks and the nozzle should be in the 10 to 15 dollar range.

The picture shows Anna sterilizing some old bee equipment with the power of fire. Someone at our bee class brought up the possibility of boiling such things in large containers of Lye and our instructor's brow actually furrowed. I think a propane torch might save hours of labor in comparison to the boiling method?

If you want to pump water in a place with no electricity you might want to consider building a hydraulic ram pump.

It's a clever design that uses the momentum of flowing water for pumping.

The Clemson University cooperative extension website has a detailed explanation of the process, complete with a step by step process on how to build your own from plumbing parts and a bicycle inner tube for about 120 dollars.

It seems like the height your flowing water drops determines how much pressure you can expect. You'll need at least a 2 foot distance to get started.

Frank Aragona has an interesting company by the name of Agricultural Innovations. They are using technology to promote permaculture and sustainable practices throughout the United States and Latin America.

I was really impressed with the block press pictured to the right. Two people can make an average of 300 blocks in a day using this machine, which works on hand power. It requires a mix of 90% dirt and 10% cement, although the earth should have some clay and other minerals with agglutinating properties.

I just finished listening to episode 49 of his podcast, and if you like this subject it might be something worth checking out. He's got a good speaking voice and I like his style. I give his podcast two thumbs up.

I've been having some trouble with the chainsaw and was ready to take it in for a tune up. Anna mentioned how she read in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Countryside magazine that fuel with a 10 percent ethanol mix was not good for 2 stroke chainsaw engines. I checked at the gas station and sure enough it had a 10 percent mix of ethanol. It seems like most gas stations around here sell the ethanol enhanced fuel, but I got lucky and found one outside of Gate City on route 23 that advertised non-ethanol fuel.

Some folks will say it's not that important, but all I did was empty out the 10 percent ethanol fuel and mixed up some 2 cycle fuel with no ethanol and my problems went away. This guy suggests that the problem can be avoided by using the high octane gas, which tends to cancel out the ethanol effect. My chainsaw is of the older generation, and I'm going to keep ethanol away from it if that's what it tells me to do.

While searching for a cheaper alternative to power an automatic door I found this linear actuator that sells for 30 bucks plus 14 for shipping.

It's rated to pull 450 pounds! Which is more than you need for the average chicken coop door, but with a little imagination this device could be used as a light duty gate opener and closer.

You'll need 120 volts of electricity to power it, unless you rig up some sort of solar cell and battery combination.

This could also be used to open and close a window for green house ventilation.