Month: April 2024

Warm and damp, maybe rain, maybe storms… low 80s yesterday with a lot of wind, but sunny enough to turn the kids pink.

Long day but the kids had fun. The one dad who came to take a kid home, was driving an EV. Had a charger scheduled in a nearby town, only 20 minutes out of his way, for 40 minutes, so he could get home.

The 120v charger is 3 miles of range per hour of charge, the 220v is 30 miles per hour.

I’ve been thinking about buying a charger for here just in case we had a visitor, since they are cheap in the auctions at the moment. Then I had such a visitor. I will look a bit closer this week.

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The bottom blew out of my lawn tractor engine just as I finished the lawn… I hit something bad then the motor started clattering. Wasn’t too long until there was some energetic disassembly. Smoke and a lot of oil dumped out the bottom. Dang it. I do not need a project but I have to figure something out, I’ll need to mow next time I come up. I can rebuild the deck for the mower my buddy gave me, or try to fit the bigger one I just rebuilt to it. Or buy something new… at least I got most of the lawn cut first.

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Kids swam and played in the water most of the day. They have a lot of energy and still like to just play. It was great to see.

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Weeded our garden with a mini roto tiller attachment for the string trimmer motor. It worked pretty well, and while it takes some manhandling, I think it’s still easier than hoeing. The peas are doing well. I test dug around the potatoes and there were golf ball sized taters. I harvested two radishes and they were nice. The turnips are not thriving. Something is turning the leaves to lace, and the roots are only thumb sized, and are more like horseradish at this point. I also took about a dozen blueberries off one bush, and then covered them with bird netting. They were just a day or two short of perfectly sweet.

I think it’s time for round two of radishes and turnips. The pumpkin and squashes haven’t died yet, so that’s a plus. Peppers all have buds, and the tomatoes have both flowers and fruit.

All in all, I’m pleasantly surprised at how well the garden is doing. We have gotten a bunch of rain, so there is that.

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Speaking of rain, the sprinkler pump work will happen today, if it’s not raining. There are various storms forecast for the area, but I’m not worried. It will storm or it won’t. The lake and local geography often keep us from getting the worst of any storms in the area.

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Our home owners group met for our annual ‘clean up’ day. I chatted with several people and made an appearance at the meeting later. Community is important. You definitely want to be “in” the group if push comes to shove, and not part of the “them” group. I’m doing what I can to be a part of this group.

Climbing the curve to be “local”. Climbing the curve to grow food. Climbing the curve to harvest protein from the lake and surrounding area. They are all pretty steep so you need to get started…

And stack, because crops fail, and the people with food will have many more options.

nick

Warm and damp with overcast and weather in the distance. Possibly weather up close later on. It was 73F with a breeze when I went to bed, and had been for hours.

I spent Friday getting ready to come up here for the weekend. I did a couple of pickups, and took care of some things around the house. I hit Costco for gas, and Home Depot for plumbing supplies. Then I loaded up the truck and headed to the country.

All that messing around meant a late start, so today I’ll be mowing and getting stuff ready for guests. D2 is having some friends up for her birthday. It’s going to be loud. And I’ll probably do more host stuff than working on the place. I know there are a lot of burgers to be cooked at some point, and corn on the cob too.

I will be taking another shot at the irrigation intake line. I got a couple of flexible fittings and intend to get the inlet up out of the muck, and hopefully keep it out this time. Best case would be some sort of floating contraption, but Home Depot was out of the hose I need to make that work. We’ve been getting a lot of rain, so it’s not critical to have the irrigation working yet, but every time I mess with it without solving the issue there is something else that doesn’t get done. I’d like to be done with it for a while.

Had a nice little fire last night, and WRMI was booming in from Miami, loud as broadcast, until it just stopped around 1 am. Conditions changed somewhere between here and there, and that was the end of my listening for the night. Radio is fickle, which is why it takes practice, even for just listening. Tomorrow I hope to do some side by side testing with my faithful Radio Shack radio, and the two new Eton radios. Hopefully they will sound good and pull in the stations.

It all takes practice, and practical knowledge. It takes redundancy in gear and technique. You have to actually DO stuff to know what you don’t know. So get out and do. It will show you places you need to improve.

And stack of course, don’t miss out on that.

nick

Cool and damp again, but hopefully clear. It did clear up late in the day yesterday, and the sun felt really nice. Another day like that would be welcome before summer really kicks off. We’ll see…….

Spent most of the day indoors, doing sorting and cleaning. I’ve been moving stuff to and from the attic, poking at my office, and generally hoping to stack stuff for the auction. I’ve made some progress but it’s slow. That might be because I kept checking auctions all day too. I won something for the BOL that I’d tried for a couple of times so that was nice, but most of my auctions passed without me winning anything.

I did assemble a telescope I picked up at the goodwill outlet. It’s a 70’s Jason 323 “Comet Chaser” and is mostly complete and in pretty good shape. It’s incredibly well built with heavy duty materials, and lots of metal. It’s missing all but one eyepiece, but is usable as is. I’m debating whether to sell it for $50, clean the optics and use it as is, or use it as a spotting scope on one of the big scopes… I’m leaning toward list and sell as the easiest option. It’s a neat little scope.

Since I was in the attic, I installed a few new rat traps that I modified slightly. One of the rat trapping channels I watch on youtube features the guy’s own mods to the traditional snap trap. I didn’t 3d print a little cover like he does, but I did cut an arch from cardboard and staple that to the trap. It goes above the trigger mechanism, forcing the rats to approach from the end, and not lick the bait off the trigger from the side. I will see if they still avoid peanut butter, or if that acquired knowledge has vanished in several generations since they learned it. Nothing was in the live traps. I did find more ‘signs’ of where they travel and that they DO travel across the attic, but no further clues to how they’re getting in. FWIW I haven’t heard any skittering since I closed up the path I know about.

Today will probably be a continuation of the progress I’m making on cleaning and getting stuff organized and out of here. That’s the plan in any case. I might have a drop off and maybe one pickup, but I think most of the day is clear. I do have to hit Costco for paper towel… I forgot to grab a bale while I was at my secondary, and Costco is closer. No way was I going there on a Sunday.

I’ll point out that the world continues to slide toward war, and economic upheaval. Violence is definitely on the rise, domestically and internationally. Keep your awareness level elevated when out and about. Carry the means to defend yourself. Study and pay attention to what is ‘normal’ for your area, and what isn’t. Perhaps more importantly, get out of cities, start your victory garden, integrate with the local community by making yourself useful to them*, and stack- for your needs and the needs of those you love.

nick

* you don’t want to be a carpetbagger or johnny come lately when SHTF. You don’t want to be in competition with them either, so figure out something to do that complements local businesses instead of competing with them. Start on the web of favors done and received, of mutual obligation, of test and counter test that establishes you as someone they WANT around. Like growing a garden, it takes time, and time might be short. Start.