With the potato plants and the few other small plants already in their respective planters or beds, I was able to move on to other duties around the compound. Of course the grass and other plants will continue to grow regardless what I do elsewhere. Well the grass in the garden in the areas I have yet to cover with gravel had gotten to the point where it needed to be cut as it was getting higher and higher and I had plans to get more veggies planted as the weather was finally leveling off.
Since there are still beds of varying forms, I would have to go through the garden with the wee trimmer to cut the grass through the area and around those beds. Of course the only trimmer I have is my trusty battery powered unit. The whole reasoning of course is the idea that I would have all these areas covered in gravel to where there would really be no concern with trimming or cutting grass other than along the fence line or off site somewhere. Even with the amount of area that needed to be trimmed in the garden, the battery tool was more than ample to get the area trimmed down that I wanted to take care of. I had to get around some of these beds to be able to get to them without having to wade through high grass. High grass yields ticks and fleas among other things, like hiding snakes. With the grass cut I was able to get to some of the raised beds, well more accurately, drum planters. These were the planters that I situated around the dog kennel soon to be greenhouse. I also had a couple of recycling bins that I had strawberries planted in that are currently growing rather well. The drum planters have either a tree or blueberry bush in them along with some strawberries planted around them. Since the strawberries are starting to come in, it would be nice for me to be able to reach them without going through a grassy gauntlet. Also, the potato plants are doing rather well. With the constant rains that came through here, feeding the plants, along with the large amounts of chicken litter I deposited in the planters well before I planted the potato eyes, these plants got a turbo boost of water and nutrition to grow large. I'm hoping that the spuds are getting the same turbo boost that the plants are getting so we can hopefully get a good harvest when the plants do reach maturity. Even the greens that were overwintered in the drum planters are growing up good along side the potatoes. These beds are going to end up being the planters for my fall harvest crops as the potatoes are going to end up maturing in the early summer sometime and the greens will probably end up going to seed around the same time, requiring me to pull the plants up as the leaves will be too bitter for us to use in salads. Of course I plan on planting some more plants in the bucket planters in my raised bed assemblies. I'll be planting more peppers in our one hydroponic system as well. At the same time I will make an attempt at completing some more larger scale hydroponic assemblies in order to grow more salad greens. There's really a whole lot I need to do in the garden to get it to the point where I want it to be. Between new raised beds and planters, more hydroponics, the completed and operational kennel greenhouse, and general raised beds, I should be able to grow a whole lot of produce. There will be more to come.
0 Comments
During our trip to TX a while back, we managed to pick up, among other things, another vehicle, a 51 Chevy Suburban panel truck. This truck as noted before, will need a full restoration but our plans for this vehicle involve swapping frames with our S10 truck so as to take advantage of the modern running gear and quite possibly the powertrain from the truck. Anyway, we had to rent a 3/4 ton diesel truck and use our neighbor's trailer to go to TX to retrieve the truck. Unfortunately our trailer needs tires and trying to run several hundred miles with 2 tons of weight over those tires was not an appealing thought. Anyway, we made an early morning departure to TX, getting to the guy's shop around 1230 PM. Of course it was drizzling so that threw a little bit of a hurdle in our path but we still got to work. We ended up pulling the truck out from its parking spot into the main thoroughfare before pulling the trailer around to get it staged behind the truck to pull it up on the truck. After a failed attempt to try to winch the truck onto the trailer because of four flat and destroyed tires and more than likely seized up drums, the guy was able to borrow a neighbor shop's forklift to lift and push the truck onto the trailer more than enough to have it safely on board. Using our ratchet tie downs we had the truck secured and ready to run. From there we went back to Estephan in Richmond TX, the dude that sold us some 65 Mustang floor pans because he had some more 65 Stang parts that I would be needing for that build later on. After chilling around The 51 Chevy and just talking it up about old cars and drawing a crowd as his neighbors thought he might've picked up another old project, we loaded up our Mustang parts and parted ways once again. Feel free to check out EDG Classics on Facebook to see what he does, he's got some cool old bikes and trucks. From there we cannonballed it to Ft Worth because I finally managed to catch up with another dude that had another classic that I really had my eye on because of the basis of the project. He had a 46 Ford coupe that was swapped onto an S10 frame and had the top chopped a little bit but was never finished. This car would also need to be fully restored or in this case, completed, but this is one of those cars that rat rods are made of. It's literally an "anything goes" type of build because being on a common chassis opens the door to being able to put different powertrains in the vehicle. I could go back to the 4.3 V6 and a 5 spd manual out of an S10 or I could cram a SBC V8 into the chassis. I could modify the suspension in a myriad of ways, either raise the thing off the ground or drop it like its hot. With the interior unfinished its an open canvas for building the inside how I want as well. It'll be another reason we'll have to return to TX once again, but that trip will be postponed until June since we had another trip we had to do first. Another little treat that we managed to get our hands on after getting the Ford was an old go kart. The story behind it was that the guys son used to run it when he was younger and after having some close calls with it a few times, got off the thing and it sat parked ever since. This go kart is a higher end machine with an electric start engine and multi speed transmission and hydraulic disk brakes along with headlights. It's actually a decent go kart and probably a couple grand or so brand new. The guy told us we could have it if we wanted. After looking at the ole lady we agreed and the guy grabbed his front end loader and hooked it up with the chain and dropped it right into the bed of the truck. So we really struck gold on this trip. We were ready to go home happy campers. From there we cannonballed it back home, returning at night and too tired to even attempt to unload the truck from the trailer. The following morning I got to work. I first started off by staging the trailer just behind the power pole that's next to the main driveway. The intent was to put a tow strap around the pole then hook a tow chain up to that and onto the undercarriage of the truck. From there I would gradually pull the trailer forward, with the ramps in place of course, and allow the power pole to pull the truck right off the trailer. I took my time gradually moving forward and watching the truck, checking to ensure it was lined up with the ramps and not scraping the fenders of the trailer. Eventually the front wheels were past the ramps and on the ground and shortly after the rear wheels were on the ground. I pulled the trailer clear of the back of the truck and put the ramps back in place. The next order of business was removing the Gokart. Since this wasn't the little rinky dink go kart that we would've rode as a 10 year old, this thing had some weight to it. It would take a couple of dudes to hump this thing out of the back of the truck and onto the ground. I didn't have a couple of dudes. My next option, after seeing the spacing from the tailgate to the front of the trailer, which was still attached, I took a couple of the leftover 2x6 boards from the disassembled porch and laid them across the tailgate to the front rail of the trailer where they overhang onto the trailer's deck. From here I ended up having to open the bleeder valves on the calipers of the go kart to release the pressure on the brake pads so the wheels would free spin. From there I staged the go kart on the boards and rolled the machine across the boards and onto the trailer's deck and on down to the back. From there the angled end of the trailer allowed me to roll the go kart effortlessly onto the ground where I was able to push it over to its new parking spot on the midway. With the truck in place I gave the truck a good once over just to familiarize myself with the old vehicle once again. I had to look at it while planning in my head everything I would have to do and what I would want to do, especially regarding the frame swap. Even getting ready to do that would be an undertaking of its own due to the fact that we're talking about stripping a whole vehicle apart to prepare it for this new life under a classic truck. One might say, "why not just try to find a raw S10 frame?" While there is some truth to this, if I do find one, I might find one for a few hundred bucks with the running gear still attached. Then there's a matter of the old truck. Since the bed is trashed, the engine has a lot of miles and the transmission is starting to fail, no one will give me anything for it as a regular truck. Even then, they will probably try to part the thing out after getting a few more miles out of it but either way, I lose. On the other hand, I can sell off parts from the vehicle that I don't need, make that extra money then use the complete chassis to where I could possibly get $500 worth of parts off of it, still have the chassis with the engine and transmission (I do have a replacement tranny to go in this truck), and rest easy knowing that I still got what I wanted out of the deal and made money to boot. Another thing that I thought about was the idea that I wanted to duplicate a project that I seen several people do. This is what is known as the predator truck or car conversion. This involves taking a Predator brand 6hp or larger engine from Harbor Freight, doing some small modifications to allow for a hook up to the input shaft of a manual transmission on a donor car or truck, and basically powering the vehicle from a large go kart engine. The idea was so simple and unique that it appealed to me enough to want to try and do this. Now after hunting for donor vehicles that would work for this type of build (lightweight is always better), I thought, after I swap the frames, I'll end up with an old chassis that actually shares the same wheel bolt pattern as modern day Suburbans and pickups and a few imports with 6 lug wheels as well. Even after pulling the antique powertrain from the chassis, I could get any old manual transmission from the junkyard and make the necessary hardware to couple the Predator engine to the transmission and just mount it on the old chassis. To add even more to the mix, I could save the cab and front clip from the S10 and mount it to the old frame to make what amounts to a "truck", just for the sake of rolling around the yard. The funny thing is if I do save the S10 body, I could technically still legally put the truck on the street on the premise that the truck is still able to be tagged for road use, despite being swapped onto another frame. I could make a quick and dirty flat bed for the truck or salvage some of the material from the old bed to make a flat bed in order to make the Predator truck, only having to restore the brakes on the old truck. I wouldn't even worry about the shocks as much since this thing would only be used around the yard for moving things around and maybe trying to pull or stage something like another vehicle in a spot prior to performing some work. Either way, whatever I decide, it will be on here. This week we, just like most of the south, had to deal with some crazy weather. It seems like every week we have a bout of bipolar weather coming through, sometimes 2x a week. We hardly have seen a straight run of clear or partly cloudy days for a while now. Well this latest run was rather pushy as it spawned some tornadoes in the tri-county area that did make a bit of a mess. In our area in particular, we had to deal with trees that came down. Now unlike the episode last March, not as many trees came down and not as much destruction came from this storm. For us we literally have to take all our wins where we can get them because no matter how the situation appears, things could've been a lot worse. We were out of the house when the shitstorm came through, which of course resulted in the power going out. After coming home the ole lady had to go through the effort of getting the old generator started, which involves a shot of starting fluid as the stubborn carburetor won't allow for a quick start even with the choke set. Well with the genny running we went through the normal routine of having extension cords stretched all over the place to power the fridge and freezer along with a lamp and the media center. We ran everything as usual for a fair part of the night but up to the point that we were about to go to bed the generator decided to peter out suddenly. Now I had to go outside when it was still misty some and see what was up with this thing. I checked the oil to verify it was good and even disconnected the cutoff switch in case it was shorting out and killing the engine. When I did this the machine started back up. It was running kind of erratically though. Upon going to bed, before I could really get settled in, the damned genny crapped out yet again. I went back outside and tried again, setting the choke and was able to get the machine to fire back up. I ended up trying to go back to bed, but before I could settle down completely it crapped out again. This time I said screw it and just went off to sleep since I wasn't going to keep wrestling with this damned thing at night. The following morning I hooked up a makeshift setup I experimented with on the other larger genny we have. Since its carburetor was pretty much shot, I had taken a propane regulator like what would go for a deep fryer or grill and took the length of pipe coming from the unit and disconnected the fuel hose from the fuel tank on the genny and hooked it to the pipe on the regulator. After turning on the regulator to let out a small amount of gas, I was able to start up the genny with the choke partially closed. Once started I adjusted the regulator a little until a higher flow of gas started and the engine ramped up to operating RPM. With the genny running on propane, we was able to hook everything up to that unit while I checked out the other genny to see what was up. I ended up taking all loads off the unit and ended up pulling the low oil wire from its respective sensor and started the thing up. The machine ran sorta erratically once again. I plugged up my log splitter to the genny and upon trying to cycle the splitter on it kicked the breaker, despite the genny being more than able to handle this particular load. After a couple more attempts at running the splitter I gave up and just let the genny run under no load to see how it acted. While moving about, when I passed by the gennies I could smell the smell of the exhaust from the genny that implied that it was possibly running rich or was otherwise not running good on the count of the carburetor. I pretty much accepted the idea that I would have to get a replacement carb for this genny just as well as for the one that was running on propane. As for surveying the area, like I said before, we have to take our wins where we can get em. First of all there was a tree in the back most part of the yard, along the western fence by the southwest corner, by the fuel shed that was pretty much dead and the tree guy said that he would have to climb it to bring it down from the top down. Well, the storm took care of that for us. Luckily though, it chopped the tree about halfway up, and laid that top half down in a large clearing of the back yard, just mere feet from the fences, the outdoor shelves with all the auto parts and and building materials and the fuel shed itself. It was almost like God carefully laid this whole half a tree down, breaking the branches neatly enough on the ground so it was down where it would no longer be a threat to us. The bottom half is not under any kind of load that would make it a danger. This tree could've came down on the fuel shed, the storage trailer, or any section of fence within reach. It could've came down by the garden, destroying the fence and the raised beds at that section of fence. Again, like I said, despite having to clean up this fallen tree, I have to take this as a win. Moving on, in the chicken yard some smaller trees and/or branches came down from outside the fence line but fell over the fence and into the chicken yard. Again this was another situation of taking wins where we can get them because despite the trees falling into the yard, nothing was damaged. The fence wasn't damaged despite sections laying over the tops of the fence and the gate, and no chicken coop, car or otherwise was damaged. There is a lot of broken branch crap all over the yard that will need to be cleaned up, but this is superficial versus having something crushed by a bloody tree! Most of this wood that's in the chicken yard is really just garbage wood, too small to warrant spending the time it will take to try and cut it up into small enough pieces to turn into usable firewood. Plus with the large tree down in the back section of yard, the last thing I'm thinking about regarding this small amount of stuff is trying to salvage it. We're going to be cutting it up just enough to move it to the burn pile to get it staged with the other trash to make a neat enough pile that we can fire up more sooner than later, provided it doesn't rain more. The lessons to be learned from this are the same as they were before; taking time to keep equipment up and in good standing so we don't have issues where we might have to rig up something to get us by after an emergency happens, and take time to do any and all landscaping that may be deemed necessary to point out any bad trees or other hazardous plant life that we may need to either bring down ourselves or be prepared to pay someone like our tree guy to bring down any dangerous trees. Point is, these damned trees are hazardous and with more and more of them being infested by these beetles, more of these tall trees are going to die off and become widow makers before all is said and done. As for the generator issue, this episode is having me start to consider the possibility of investing in a smaller whole house generator and a small propane hookup just so we can be able to function without the worry of an extended power outage going from a minor inconvenience to a serious problem.
After driving the Scion for so long, the ole lady had finally managed to burn up the rear brake pads on the car. It had gotten to the point that the rear left wheel would start growling while the right side would squeal when applying the brakes a little more than usual to come to a soft stop. It was obviously high time to replace this stuff.
Unfortunately I didn't have any spare pads in the storage trailer (something I may need to correct in the near future) so she had to make an impromptu run to town to the auto parts store to get some pads. In the meantime I did take time to get the rear end of the car suspended in the air and the wheels off so I can pull the old pads out and have everything at the ready for her return. After taking the pads off I did see exactly why the left side was growling. One pad was almost non existent while the other one was paper thin. The right side was a little better but not by much, those pads were pretty thin too. So off they went. In the meantime since it did not take me any time to get the rear brake assemblies taken apart and staged for the new pads, I decided to turn my attention to another project that I wanted to get off the roster, installing the chicken yard camera. Since the camera was already set up in the app, all I had to do was just hang the camera on the side of the house and set up the outlet outside to power the camera. I was going to take an outlet in the spare room and tap into it for my power feed to the outdoor outlet. I would punch a hole through the outer wall which would allow me to feed a romex cable through to the inside where I would plug the wire into the outlet then install the outdoor outlet box on the wall and hook the other end of the wire up to its associated outlet then close it all up. The camera would be hung on the wall with wood screws and wire straps would be used to secure the power cable all the way down and over to the outlet in a neat manner. This didn't take long to do as I had my trusty impact driver and all of the hardware right at my fingertips. After getting the camera on the wall I went ahead and pulled the outlet from the wall in the room then got a rough estimate where the hole will need to go in the outside wall. After finding the stud I went outside and drilled a hole through the wall then secured the outlet box to the wall, using the stud as an anchor point for the wood screws. I routed a length of romex cable through the hole to the inside then hooked up the outlet to the outside end and buttoned everything up. I used outdoor caulk to seal around the box where it meets the corrugated sheet metal of the house wall. Inside I pulled the outlet apart and pressed the stripped ends of the romex cable's wires into the slots in the outlet (after killing power) and buttoned that up as well, then reinstalling the outlet. From there I was able to turn the power back on and get power to the camera. By now the ole lady returned with the new pads so I was able to get those installed and get the back end reassembled and the car dropped back on the ground so it'll be ready for another day's work on the streets. With that, her car is straight for a little while longer and we now have four cameras operational in our surveillance system. Of course as stated before, I plan on installing some more cameras to get more coverage of the grounds and in particular the main driveway outside of the fence so I can see what traffic passes through. I plan on setting up a box against the fence with a trap door to the inside for delivery people to drop packages off that'll allow me to access the items from the inside of the fence. It'll be one of those setups where a chute will allow the package to slide down into a holding box inside the fence where one can't just reach in easily to retrieve a package. It'll be nice to have a camera posted up right here to cover the area. That will of course be in a future installment.
Another little organization task I had around here was the moving of all of the stacked firewood that I had along side the chicken yard fence and along the east end of the house after cutting up all of the trees that had fallen early last year. I did burn through a fair amount of this wood but even with that amount I barely made a dent in the overall stock. Since I was finally getting fence posts sunk in the ground along the eastern perimeter of the yard fence I wanted to relocate the stocks of firewood to the farthest most back of the yard in the northeast corner of the fence line. It was here that I had cleared some other stacked logs and cleaned up some other ground detritus and started laying gravel down so I can stack pallets in two separate rows, having a central corridor between the rows for walking along the length of said rows. These pallet rows would be the new staging areas for the firewood. After clearing the old firewood shed to get many of the pallets that I needed to lay these rows, I managed to get a large amount of firewood stacked up, filling the first row all the way up to a tree that is right along side the chicken yard fence on the outside. With that row filled up and also my gravel bed ending at that tree, I started stacking wood on the other row, starting at the back of the fence. I managed to get a good amount of wood cleared, creating a large corridor along the old staging area so if I did get fence panels up all along the eastern perimeter, I would still have a path with which to move the wheelbarrow through to carry wood or gravel over to the new staging area. After several sessions I did manage to get all of the wood stacked up in an even leveled stacking, almost using up all of the pallet space in the other row, This was almost perfect too as it now clears the area of all wood while using up the available space in the rows laid out. Of course moving the rest of the wood from the middle of the yard at this spot freed up even more pallets that will be used for when I extent the rows out even more towards the midway. Of course this will involve me laying down more gravel to make the base with which to lay the pallets down so moisture won't be as much of a problem and weeds won't be able to grow up around the firewood as it had before. Of course being on the pallets and off the ground will allow for air circulation under the wood which will keep the bottom most wood from rotting from too much moisture. Now even though the area is cleared there is still plenty more firewood that will need to be stacked. I already have a large stack of pre-cut wood from the fallen trees at the other end of the yard that have to be further processed into usable firewood. It is this firewood that will further fill up the extra pallets that will be laid down after more gravel is laid along the ground. I'm not sure how much space just this amount of wood I have pre-cut will take up but there is a good possibility that by the time I do cut up all of the fallen trees I will have run out of room a long time ago and will have wood stacked up with nowhere to put it, forcing me to use it up first in the winter and for other uses at other times. Really by the time I do get all of the wood we have available cut up and stacked along the whole eastern perimeter fence up to the midway, we will more than likely have several seasons worth of wood for all uses conceivable around the compound. We may find ourselves using firewood for burning applications where we may have refrained from using wood for the sake of not wasting it, but with such a large amount and with more to come as we cut up more trees and other ground clutter in the surrounding woods, we will find ourselves up to our necks in firewood that we will have to get creative in how we utilize this resource. |
Archives
May 2023
|