Sunday, September 28, 2014

Late Summer Garden Refresh, Part Two

This is Brown Seeded Simpson lettuce. I have AMAZING luck with it. It grows more like a stalk, which can be a bit odd, but if you let the last of it go to seed, the seeds gather easily and any you miss will automatically reseed and sprout when the temperatures are favorable. This variety has kept us in lettuce far more than any other, and that makes it a winner in my book!


Part of the end of Summer refresh meant weeding the tree sprouts volunteers out, as well as adding in a couple other varieties and a little broccoli.


This was a volunteer melon plant in the other planter, but I am a little worried it might be too late int he seaosn to get anything out of it. Still, I am going to let it go and see what comes of it since we stay warm so long here.


Shadow like to supervise me. I cannot miss her when she sits on the dirt pile.  She knows it, and she wants to make sure to be in the middle of the action.


Unfortunately, what you see here is me finishing off the last of the rainwater. The storm didn't come, again, and we are careful to use the water wisely, but this was draining hte last of this barrel into a watering can. Bummer.


These are purple heirloom tomatoes. Just about ready to pick... YUM! Ever tried them?


A pepper plant and some peas, winding up the trellis.


Another bell pepper plant. We love those...


And the strawberries are coming back into production since the heat dropped a bit, too...


Bailey was chatting with me while I worked, and jumped in to take on cleaning out the water barrels.The screens just aren't enough, they are good, but dirt still accumulates!


After another round of chores, sprouts, and more, a beautiful evening settles in and we head in to the next task.


We are making little forward steps with out projects around here, but always have more to do, of course. What are you doing in your gardens and livestock pens this time of year?

Saturday, September 27, 2014

A Little Teamwork and Homegrown Redneck Engineering...

One of the many fun things I never expected about adulthood is that there is always a project awaiting my attention. I wish that was an exaggeration, but it isn't. Back in the spring, we got a crack in the wall of the shower in the master bath. I consulted friends, and came up with a plan to help it wait until hunting season. Why, you might ask? First off, in the last year, there have been several family crises in our extended family, and family is more important to us than tearing out an entire shower when we can avoid it.

Why hunting season? Really, out of practicality. Four of us live in this house, and when one or two are off hunting, fewer people are trying to share a shower and bathroom! So when Charlie was away on his archery elk hunt, I needed to make use of my time. 

First, Wyatt had been finishing repairing a hole in his bathroom from where the towel bar, not having lined up on the studs, had left a hole in the wall. It wasn't the first time, but the new repair was actually much better than the first, and he had done all of the work. We agreed that repainting the bathroom was a good idea, since the walls and ceiling are scrubbed regularly, and having to paint the repair meant a good time to do it all. Then we decided to go a shade darker.

The original color was an icy blue on one main wall, with the other walls white. We went just a smidgen more vibrant with a still icy blue, and took the blue back over the shower as well.


I think the color is a little more accurate in the top photo. Now we need to decide on new rug and curtain for the shower. Any thoughts for us?


I wanted to think that after that, and two coats of paint of course, that I was ready to get going on the master shower. But then I realized that something really did look funny. The vanity, to be specific. The drawers had kept rolling out and hitting me in the knee while I had been painting, but it didn't dawn on me right away (I do projects like this late at night, so I am even slower than usual during these times.)

Anyway, something look a little off to you? The front of the vanity had separated from the frame along this side. Ugh. I had no desire to replace it, but needed to get things on track so I could move on to the next project!


Wyatt helped me bring in a floor jack, and I was hoping to use some liquid nails to put it back together. After dragging it all the way up to the porch, and us using a dog towel to preserve the wood floor while lining it up in the bathroom, it didn't fit under the kick plate, so it had to go back out. My friend, Janna, gave us the idea of a soup can and board. Wyatt didn't want any proof of being involved in this redneck engineering...


He was able to help me with a piece of wood flooring and a can of canned pumpkin, but then the board broke- darn...


So then we were back at it with wood and a glass jar we usually use for tea.


The jar was too big, but we went back to the can of pumpkin. Less scary in terms of possible broken glass anyway, right? I thought I had everything on track at about this time, and used lots of glue to secure it in place. Wyatt continued to hold it down until I brought in some little weight plates. I thought for sure we were on track then, but it was not to be.


In the morning, after waking the kids the first time, I released the board, and found that the glue did not hold at all. BIG UGH! But I put the weight plates back in place, and having realized that there was some space between the drawer tracks and the original frame board that I could not screw to because of all the trim on the front, I brought in an extra piece of wood to fit there, and ran screws. It wouldn't be pretty, but when the drawers were closed, the screws would at least be hidden behind the drawer faces,


I went with long screws, since the board would have to support the weight of the drawers as well, and sone of them didn't go in all the way, so I will cut those off. But in the end, it is functional now, and will hold for quite a while so that I can get on to the  next project.  
perfect? No. But functional? Yes.

 

Anyhow, outside of the issue there, the vanity is perfectly functional, and I have really become frustrated with the "throwaway" nature of society these days, so I am going to repair and reuse wherever I can! We might not be fancy, but we are working to practice and live what we preach- organically, environmentally, and in an many aspects of our life as possible.

Well, lots more projects going on to share with you in the coming weeks. We hope you will also share your projects with us to continue to inspire and help others use a little redneck engineering in their homesteading and home projects!  And if you have a better solution tot he projects we have done, please share that, too! 

Have a truly blessed and thankful day!

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

After the Flooding of Hurricane Norbert, Getting Ready for Hurricane Odile

As usual, the hustle of life here has me busy enough to where I take photos to share, but never quite get to the blogging! So I figure I ought to take a few minutes today and tomorrow and catch things up!

To begin with, this is the garden shed. Or, shall I say random shed? Presently there are assorted garden tools, irrigation items, paint, a table I needed to put somewhere for a project, and the geese like to hang out in there. Yes, that's right, the geese. Despite having free roam of the property, a play house, their own pool and open enclosure, the geese like to nest by the planter boxes and sleep by the garden, but hang out by day in a metal garden shed. Goofy!!!! But then again, they live at our house! Does anyone else have goofy geese like this?


With the monsoon season drawing to a close, we had very little total rainfall, most of it garnered in the two inch storm yield midway through the season, and very little actually stored.  We had been able to complete the prototype water harvesting barrel a few weeks back, but when the rainfall from the hurricanes working their way up from baja California began to fill the prototype barrel and the extra overflow barrel that was out, we knew we needed to prioritize the project!


One of the barrels we had already had this rubber section of hose attached. This needed to go, but fortunately came off pretty easily. There was actually a threaded bulkhead underneath, which had me pretty happy since it would give us two barrels with threaded bulkheads and two with a new kind I picked up at the aquaponics store. 


In another spot on the same barrel was one bulkhead that was capped off. That would have been fine, but it was really filthy Poor Wyatt was sweet enough to volunteer to crawl inside and clean it out all the way!


While that one was soaking in ACV, I cut off the lid of another barrel, just like the prototype version. Then I set it to soak with the ACV as well, while working on setting up the bricks to keep it off the ground and high enough to put watering cans under the spigots.  Additionally, I wanted them high enough that overflow could pour out across the top to the successive cans, making it easier to separate them to clean them out periodically without needing to move them as a unit or re-plumb them!


Last weekend, I had needed to go in to work at the college to deal with new requirements and reporting, and the aquaponics store had been just a few miles down the road from there.  I picked up some new things to try in place of the bulkheads, called Uniseals. While the snap into place through the holes you drill, and tighen up around the pipe when you put it through, they do move some, and can be pulled back out. I used the same hole saw with these, though a bit larger than with the traditional bulkhead. The man at the aquaponics store felt strongly that these have lasted better than the others in his own yard, as plastic breaks down severely in the Tucson heat and sun.


This is the Uniseal. Have you ever tried them?


This is my fancy dancy little hole, made with the hole saw. And some muscle, too.


The seal really did pop right in as advertised.


I took a break to do a walk around at this point, having washed out the tubs and gotten another round of ACV in to soak and make sure any last residues would be gone. Bailey had a minute, so she came up to help me dump this tub. Notice that it looks like a black lagoon in there? This is what happens when you don't have a lid on your barrel- algae! Ugh, that is like an algae bloom in the ocean messing with the life balance where they appear- NOT something I plan to use on our gardens! We carried the tub together and dumped it in a tree well under some ornamental cacti and the like, where it would be okay and still useful.


After rinsing out the gunk, I went back to my project in process. This is the barrel with the Uniseal in it The guy at the aquaponics store loves these, and I admit that on top of the flexible material aspect, the ease of installation could also make for smaller openings and the possibility that we could have less gunk potentially getting inside. Still, that meant no actual threading, which has me rather nervous in terms of  the spigot being knocked around or out or that leading to a leak. They use them more in the way of one tank connecting to another, so they don't seem as likely to get the abuse that comes with being so accessible.

















Monday, September 15, 2014

End of Summer Garden Jump Start

With all of the crazy weather and in and out internet service, I went to work to get caught up on Saturday. It was a good thing, because despite the hour and a half on a Saturday afternoon spent away from the many things at home calling my name, I am caught up for the first time since the semester began. THer ewill be plenty more for me on Tuesday when I am in, but I will definitely feel better without the leftover list awaiting me!

On my way ther, I stopped by the local aquaponics store for some items I needed to add more capacity to the water harvesting project. I found a different solution to bulkheads, which will be a second prototype to compare, which I think will be interesting, and I will show that when I get more done with that tomorrow. 

On the way in the door, however, I saw some new organic heirloom plant starts, and couldn't help myself. Many of you will recall the project we have had to get the feeders up off the ground to reduce waste and keep pesky rodents out of the feed and away fro the livestock. The project has been successful and positive, but the mice were then hungry, and with my garden in containers and my plant starts ion the table on the back porch, they went straight for my plant starts and the main garden, devouring everything they could get to. It will be a bit before I can get the greenhouse rebuilt, even though I have been collecting the materials and creating plans. 

Out lavender was diminished some by age and other factors, so I was so excited to see lavender, peppers, lettuce starts and more!  I did my best to exercise restraint, but gave in to two lavender plants, and a few heirloom peppers, lettuce and broccoli. I think this photo shows as much restraint as it does bounty!


Sunday night during evening chores, I started on the additional water capacity, and then when it was too dark to do more, I took the lavender out front for a little foodscaping...

I had planned to get to these planters once the monsoon had brought consistent rain, but it never really did, being mostly family with a few days of overload until the last week or so. So I just never really got to it. This planter was rather overgrown with dead stuff! 


Hard to see in this photo, but there was a little green with a lot of dead stuff here. The green were fun little flowers that actually looked rather good in that planter, and might still get some little blue Marguerite daisies for the cute little goat pot. We will see.


This planter has housed more solar lights than anything else in recent years.


I cleaned out the dead stuff in this one, and added a little soil conditioning/ amendment so that I could decide about those daisies...


This one got fully cleaned out and some lavender. While for years, I enjoyed blue and white everything out front, I really needed a good spot for the lavender and better use of the planters for hte food and medicinal plants!


This one brought the second lavender plant and more soil amendment. 


Well, here is to hoping they flourish and bear seeds for lavender! Now back to finishing off an order, rigging a jack to finish the kids bathroom and having the additional rainwater capacity finished today and the other starts in fortified surroundings before the storm is due in! 

Hope you all have a truly blessed week!