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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
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.
This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
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.
This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
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.
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 post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
Mark, if you had to
pick a single tool to take with you to another farm
like the one you have, what would you choose?
--- Errol, South Carolina
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.
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.
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.
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.
This post is part of our lunchtime series reviewing Robert Kourik's Designing and Maintaining your
Edible Landscape Naturally.
Read all of the entries:
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.
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.
This post is part of our Training a Farm Dog lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
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.
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!
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?
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.
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....
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.
This post is part of our Re-Reviews lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
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.
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.
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.
This post is part of our Irrigation lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
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 finally solved the deer in
the garden problem, and the solution was so elegant we gave it a new
website. Check out our deer
deterrent website for free plans!
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.
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.
We finally solved the deer in
the garden problem, and the solution was so elegant we gave it a new
website. Check out our deer
deterrent website for free plans!
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.
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.
We finally solved the deer in
the garden problem, and the solution was so elegant we gave it a new
website. Check out our deer
deterrent website for free plans!
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.
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.
We finally solved the deer in
the garden problem, and the solution was so elegant we gave it a new
website. Check out our deer
deterrent website for free plans!
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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