Every gardener should have an indoor/outdoor thermometer which records maximum and minimum temperatures.  Especially in the spring, temperature is very important, and your local weather forecast is likely to be off by up to 15 degrees, especially if you live in the mountains.  By writing down the daily maximum and minimum, you can start to figure out what the temperature is really going to be like, and whether those peach flowers need some protection from an unexpected frost.

I admit that I tend to obsess over keeping data like this, so when my thermometer stopped showing external temperatures last week, I felt lost.  I finally took a look at the unit, after days of mourning, and realized that the sensor wire had twisted partway loose.  Totally fixable!  I unscrewed the thermometer casing, cut the sensor wire all the way loose, and stripped the plastic off the two ends of the wire.  The wire was actually two wires, so I carefully twisted one cut end on the thermometer side to one cut end on the sensor side, wound that wire in electrical tape, and repeated with the second wire.  Success! 

Mark's usually the fix-it guy around here, but it sure feels empowering to fix it myself.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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