The Boy on the Burning Deck

 

No, I don't mean the Victorian-Era poem by Felicia Hemans. I doubt many of you have ever heard of "Casabiana," but it was once very popular. It's maudlin stuff today, dreadfully melodramatic to modern ears, or perhaps we are simply too jaded and declined as a culture to appreciate the poet's sentiments. Maybe I'm a barbarian, but I begin to see where Mark Twain got his "Ode to Stepehen Dowling Botts, Dec'd." I stand with Sam Clemens when it comes to hating Victorian verse of the popular sort.

In any case, for Hemans' tale of the doomed lad, I had never been forced to memorize it in school, as had earlier generations. We instead learned the much more durable "Ozymandias" and a few of Poe's poems by heart. For that kid on the flaming ship, I simply knew the line I've used as my title because these past few weeks, I've lived it. The heat broke, for which I'm thankful, but so did a wooden deck in several places.

The past several days have been consumed with removing rotten boards from our rental property's deck. Buried nails, likely from the 1990s, prove hard to exhume, and then I must plane some of the replacement boards down to fit into the empty spots. Of course installation proves a snap, as I use a screw-gun and star-headed screws I can back out later with ease, when--not if--more repairs need doing. I like these new coated screws; while they are not cheap, they hold up. I've backed out and reused several that still look new and do not round off like Philips-head screws can do. I stain all sides of the board too. Rot creeps in from any angle.

At the end of each session, sore to the bone, I am reminded why I despise wooden decks. Why did they get so damned popular? I share a theory espoused by, among others, Western Doughty, that Americans retreated from their front porches after the 1960s. I was lucky enough to grow up in the last years when, on a blue-collar block in Richmond before AC was common, all the neighbors would sit on the porches on hot nights. When you strolled down the street, greetings got exchanged.

It was no utopia; the dark side was that everyone knew your business. Still, the nation could have done better than treated wood, when we retreated to our back yards. 

Wooden decks require the constant maintenance that a sailing-ship needs, lest someone fall through the deck and into oblivion. I've found that heavy, solid penetrating stain works well enough, as it has for a fence I rehabilitated at our rental property, but decks, by their nature, get a lot of traffic. The one at our rental house, for now at least, bakes in the sun. I plan to change that with a strategically planted Willow Oak this Fall.

 The issue with decks of treated wood (were I forced to build from scratch, I'd use the new composite decking) is dry rot. We know that term, but I began to think about what it means on a deck. Here's an explanation for boats, from the Wikipedia page on dry rot (yes, they have a page for everything):

An explanation of the term "dry rot" circles around boatyards periodically. In the age of wooden ships, boats were sometimes hauled for the winter and placed in sheds or dry dock for repair. The boats already had some amount of rot occurring in the wood members, but the wood cellular structure was full of water making it still function structurally. As the wood dried out, the cell walls would crumble. In other words, the wood was already rotten and as the boat dried, the wood collapsed and crumbled, causing the workers in the yard to determine it was "dry rot", when in fact, the wood had been rotten all along.  

Even with good penetrating stain, dry rot happens to decking in time, because water will find a way into a crevice and sit. Cycles of drying and wetting just give dry rot more chances to begin; fungus follows, invisibly, into the hearts of each board. Think of how cavities form on your own teeth. For decks, what may look great may leave your leg broken when you fall through a big, new hole in a seemingly intact board.

I do like one aspect of repairing decks: Whenever I do a rehab, I clog around in my "Jed Clampett" Redwing boots to see which boards are bad. Breaking a board or two is great fun. Replacing them? Not so much. 

Save yourself. Use composite boards or build a damned patio! 

As with horses, sailboats, swimming pools, or lots of vices I cannot name here, it's better if a friend has a wooden deck.  No, that is NOT my deck up top. It's from the Wikipedia page.

Never, Ever Give Up on Fixing Something

I learned a great deal from my Depression-Era parents and grandparents not to throw things away needlessly. That habit can lead to hoarding, but in my case, my Type-A personality tends to sort things and only toss or recycle what can possibly have no future use. I find all sorts of useful items tossed out in city alleys, when working on my rental property. Many I have repaired and put back into service.

Sometimes, however, I still make mistakes. 

A few times this month, I nearly spend money needlessly. It's a lesson to 1) read the instruction manual on appliances and 2) Watch more YouTube videos.

First it was our lightweight Shark Vacuum, a well-rated device we'd paid decent money to buy at a big-box store. It simply stopped running. A quick check on YouTube and a vacuum-repair site showed me a second filter in the body of the machine. In ours, it was completely clogged. In five minutes, the machine ran again, saving us perhaps $800 on a new vacuum we'd been eyeing.  For under $30, we purchased new filters to keep the old vacuum going for (I hope) many years.

Then it was house paint, something that costs forty dollars a gallon or more already, not considering how ill-conceived presidential tariffs may influence prices soon for so many things we buy. I have saved a lot of paint for a decade that was used when renovating our rental property, but a good deal of it came in older metal cans. These rust, unlike newer plastic paint cans. Some paint had to be tossed out, but I carefully opened two cans, salvaging what I could and finding the paint still viable. I put the remainder into plastic jars saved from the kitchen, in case our tenant needs more touch-ups.

I was ready to get a new range for the rental house too; the oven door had gotten liquid between its two glass panes. It proved tedious work but I removed the door, disassembled it, and cleaned the glass. Now it again looks nearly new. The culprit? The door's handle was loose, and the handle seals the top of the door assembly. My last tenant must have burned something in the oven, so steam worked its way into the door's innards.

Finally, I was faced with hard water and stained porcelain. Our commodes looked horrible because of our well water, as did our shower floor. No amount of scrubbing with brushes and Barkeeper's Friend (or more caustic products) would clean things.  I was about to purchase two new commodes and consider re-tiling the shower when I read about pumice blocks. Suffice to say that these did the job, for under $10. The grout in the shower and the basin in the commodes look clean again. The shower will take constant vigilance, and here Barkeeper's friend with pumice and a small brush for nooks and crannies made showering a pleasure again.

 Learn about your house and vehicles. From an HVAC tech I learned how to unclog a drain-tube in our heat pump; last year that saved me an expensive service-call. Then I learned to flush my hot-water heaters annually, too. Do you know how to do that? It can save you hundreds of dollars in deferred replacement costs, since it extends the life of the heater. 

The economy looks shaky to this cheapskate, with lots of wishful thinking and tomfoolery of crypto-currency that screams "Charles Ponzi" at me.  I suspect that hard times lie ahead for spendthrift nation that is so poorly led. What can you do now to save money on repairs and replacements? Might be time to read that owner's manual again, or maybe for the first time. 

 

 

It Ain't the Heat...But the Humidity Can be Tamed

I recently installed two large dehumidifiers, at a cost to me of under $500, in a building that simply is too large to air-condition. I've been pleasantly surprised by the results.

Our large out-building is cinder block with a metal roof. The ground floor was built into a hill on the southeast side, which provides some natural cooling at the cost of being damp, causing mold to form in spots on our camper as well as anything else left there. The upper floor bakes in summer, and until later year, could be difficult to enter on a hot day. Last year I added more circulating fans, which did help move air around on both floors, but the humidity persisted.

Now with the dehumidifers running, for a few dollars each month, the entire building is dry and pleasant (downstairs) and tolerable to pleasant (upstairs). I can now work on cars, farm machinery, or carpentry projects without dying of heat stroke.

I set the target relative humidity at 60% for each floor. The units have a garden-hose adapter and the water goes under a garage door to the outside. These units can remove tens of gallons of water from the air daily, but there's not enough of a drop to collect the water in a barrel, something I'd like as I use distilled water from our home AC to flush the radiators in our cars, when I change coolant. I will figure out a system later. Note the starting humidity after I had the bay doors open for 30 minutes. Within half an hour of closing the doors, we were back at 60%.

Such adaptations won't solve all problems, even when I install solar on our property to reduce our carbon footprint. Meanwhile, parts of each floor remain more humid that others, though the circulating fans help reduce that problem. For those like me with a large garage but little money for HVAC, this solution may help you as human-driven climate change makes our summers ever less pleasant. 

 

Pumpitude For Your Rain Barrels

 

The Zen Koan for "before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment...same thing" can be applied in my semi-retirement. "Chop Wood (From Fall to Mid-Spring) Pump Water (other times)."

 

I enjoy more unharried time, free from the dreariness of campus politics and trifling administrivia, to focus on three things: writing, teaching a single class, and working on our farm. All stimulate different parts of my being: they are intellectual pursuits, though one is more social  than the other two, and only one includes physical labor.

That labor need not be onerous, especially as one's body ages. Watering a big (5,000 sq. foot) garden takes about 40 gallons at least weekly, often more in on a high summer evening, just as the lightning bugs start their show. How to get that all from rain barrels far away? Drip irrigation works for big operations but costs a lot of money and is not portable. It may work for you. All you need is water uphill and fixed beds for the system.

Or carry water in buckets and cans, oh Enlightened Sage. Not me. I let a pump do that. You see the two types I've tried. Both have their advantages and shortcomings.

 

The green pump, a cheapie from Harbor Freight or Northern Tool (I forget), has become my favorite, even though I damaged it by letting it run dry. It still works but now I let the weight of water in the rain barrel do the work for the pump, by connecting barrel's spigot to the pump's inlet (I had to make a female-female connecting hose). This same technique can be used for our pressure washer. I mounted the transfer pump on a small piece of 2x6 treated wood to keep it level and off damp ground.

 

Transfer pumps tend to be lighter than the submersible black one, also a really cheap Northern Tool purchase. Both pumps have grown old and cranky as I am doing, likewise acting up at times, needing only a tap from a hammer to get them running. That may be my fate one day. Bonk bonk on the head.

 

But as I said, they are cheap pumps. Submersibles work great if the top of your barrel or cistern (ours is a copious 500 gallons) is not crisscrossed with bracing, as some of our barrels are, and (strongly recommended) you get a submersible with a float that will shut the pump off as soon as the water level falls too low (again, running dry burns out the pump motor in short order). We had a pump with float, a promising stainless steel model, but it's now at the scrap-dealer's pile. Also a cheap pump, it gave out after 2 or 3 years of powerful service. It never ran dry.

 

Why not buy a nicer pump? I will next time. $100 is not too much, even $200, for one that will last many many years with proper care. Or you can spend $40 to $75. Be sure you have a hammer handy. 

 

Which type of pump is for you? My hose runs 200' from the barrels to the garden, or from cistern to barrels uphill when we transfer water from deep storage. 

 

Unless a hose kinks, the water-flow is powerful and the source sustainable (we have a shallow well we don't use to irrigate. Rainwater only). I use the nozzle shown below to save water. It's a powerful jet nozzle (a tiny one) of solid brass. I can dial it to a stream or spray. The only issue involves debris that can clog the jet. When that happens, I crimp the hose (no 200' walk in July, please) and remove the nozzle and crank it fully open. I then visually inspect it and either puff up my cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie and blow out the debris, or I find a piece of straw from the garden mulch and clear the jam. 

 

Then I watch the plants grow. Now that's enlightenment, Grasshopper. Happy Gardening in 2025. 

 

Essential Automotive Skills

Decades ago, I let others change my oil and rotate my tires. No longer. I have saved thousands of dollars in the process.

I thought it would be fun to share some skills that anyone with a motor vehicle should possess. 

The idea with these basics involves both agency and thrift. I skip some tedious repairs on modern vehicles, like flushing the cooling system or swapping headlight, tasks I do.

Changing a tire: while rotating your tires is a relatively big undertaking even with a vehicle lift, changing a tire should be easy. It avoids helplessness by the side of the road. My nephew John Ryan insisted that his children should learn, along with learning to drive a manual-transmission vehicle. I mentioned this in an earlier post about avoiding “learned helplessness.

How To Learn: The best way to learn is to read the owner’s manual. Learn the order of tightening wheel lugs and how to do so correctly.  Next, practice jacking up a car on a level surface. Lower it. With the tire on the ground, see if you can loosen a lug. If not, you may want to purchase a better wrench. I got one from Amazon that I use on cars, trucks, a camping trailer, and tractors.

Simple Safety Props:  Pack a few 10” pieces of 2x6 wood in the car, too. One can be a block to place the jack on, if you find yourself with a flat on soft ground or even the volcanic grit of Iceland, which is where my last flat happened. The second block can chock a wheel on the side of the car not lifted. 

Checking and changing your oil: the former is wise, and though the latter is often dirty work, even with a lift, it is rewarding. It also can save you thousands over the life of the vehicle. I used to do oil changes while lying in the street in front of the house, before I had a garage. 

Tools Needed: You can buy ramps, or go with a good floor jack and jack stands for safety, plus an oil catch-pan. I do this for our Miata, too small for the lift. I set the handbrake and leave the car in gear (park when an automatic) when I have it on the stands or ramps, with those wooden blocks mentioned earlier, set behind the rear tires.

Watch lots of videos first for your vehicle. Draining the oil pan is easy but removing a filter on some vehicles takes research, practice, and the right combination of extensions for your socket wrench. I own lots of cup-style filter sockets. They are cheap and generally perform better than the old universal oil-filter wrenches of my teens.

Learning Those Codes! Some folks panic when the "check engine light" appears on the dash. I get out my cheap OBD-II scanner and my phone. I picked up the scanner for less than $20 and after trying some free phone apps, went with one I think cost me under $10, called OBD Fusion. It reads the codes on your car, using a public network called OBD-II that your phone will detect the moment you plug in the scanner.

You will look really impressive when you go into your local shop and say "my scanner shows an EGR error code" but you'll have to first read the scanner number and look it up on the phone or elsewhere. My 2003 Chevy truck recently showed a "PO165" error code. Luckily, the OBD Fusion software also showed me that it was an oxygen senor, even which of four needed replacing. For me it's a DIY job, but that requires a lift or lots of agility under a safely-jacked and supported vehicle.

A dishonest shop might add extra things to your bill, but if you walk in and say "I need O2 Sensor #1 in Bank 1 changed," you won't be ripped off.

Charging up a battery / jump-starting a vehicle: Think positive to positive, negative to negative, and you have it.  

Tools Needed: Good jumper cables cost less than 50 dollars, but they require the presence of another vehicle. Even better, I keep a portable jump-starter in the shop and haul it in the trunk of our cars when on the road, as well as a basic toolbox. Keeping a battery minder on your car in the garage can be wise for vehicles not driven frequently or in cold weather. They trickle-charge batteries and can prevent the sorts of hard starts that reduce the life of a battery. 

If your battery goes for good (usually a bad cell in it) you can save a great deal by swapping out your own battery. Lots of newer computer-laden cars (I hate 'em) are built to make you go to a dealer to pay big money for this. But you can work around it with a device called a "memory saver" that hooks up to the same OBD-II port mentioned earlier. Check to be sure your particular vehicle does not retain system memory; it varies by year and make. Again look for YouTube videos showing you how to avoid losing all your radio presets and other information that can occur with a battery swap. 

Maintaining tire pressure: I forget to do this regularly, but a decent gauge is cheap. Most passenger vehicles need under 40 psi, save for high-performance tires. Your little bike pump will not suffice, but a cheap electric pump will do. 

Changing air filters: Engine and cabin-air filters can be fiddly but need no special tools to swap. Again…videos for your vehicle. Our Toyota Tacoma took all of five minutes. 

Adding coolant: I check the system on older vehicles and tractors frequently. The trick is to have the system cool enough to open a radiator cap on an old vehicle, or simply watching the fluid level in a newer one. I am stunned by how many folks I know who cannot find these service points on their car or truck.

Reading a paper map: Will your phone always work? I dislike phones generally, but in particular I hate using Google or Apple Maps to tell me where I need to go. Instead, I tend to look at the map and memorize the routes. I rely upon the apps on a first trip or two only or when planning (some apps can show roadwork or congestion in real time). 

After a few trips, the route gets imprinted in my memory instead of making me helpless if my device does not function.

Better still, in case of a dead phone or loss of signal, I keep old-time paper maps in the vehicle. While you are at it, learn where North, South, East, and West are. I test my students about this; almost none know those directions, nor can they read a map. They are slaves to a device, when the device should serve them and help to mentor human skills.

What have I forgotten?  Let me know.

I Can't Get That Part: What to Do?

Though one of the primary rules for this blog has been "no politics," I am going to sound out about tariffs, in general. In my Macroeconomics class way back, we studied how they tend to punish the populace of the nation that levies them, especially when import-substitution may take years or decades to accomplish. 

Our 2006 Honda needs bushings for the rear differential. Our 2003 Silverado needs oxygen sensors. Both are DIY jobs, but the Honda's work will be tedious so I asked a mechanic doing some brake-work to replace the bushings.

 "Sure, if I can get the parts," came the reply.

That prompted me to order the Oxygen sensors for the pickup NOW. I'm certain they are Chinese made. I think lots of Americans are panic-buying ahead of the tariffs taking effect, hedging their bets against chaos. Costco the other day was rather feral.

But let's play along with our so-called leader for a moment. In particular I want to test his crazy notion that we can bring manufacturing back home fast.

Let's say I wanted to open Tractorpunk Bushings LLC tomorrow. I'd apply for a loan, find a location in a light-industrial park, purchase equipment. In theory, I might get my first bushings molded and listed for sale in a year. But how many could I produce, even if one could 3D print them in polyurethane or rubber? And how would I buy rights to bushings patented by major manufacturers, domestic or foreign?  Where might I find employees skilled at running the machinery, which these days requires computer skills? I'd need someone to manage the advertising, shipping, and order fulfillment.

And how many vehicles in need of bushings are on the roads and in the fields of this nation?

 As a Distributist, I think we should have local manufacturers: tens of thousands making and selling things from open-source designs licensed in the Creative Commons. I could even foresee a galaxy of small firms building a hundred cars and trucks locally each year, based on low-tech utilitarian models with good pollution controls and safety features. Customers wanting high-tech or luxury in their vehicles would pay more or pay a specialist to come to Tractorpunk Cottage Motors to install that infotainment system or leather heated seats.

My idea goes back to something I wrote about before: vehicles have gotten too complex and it's best to buy a really old one and fix it yourself if possible. YouTube makes that work. Where do you think I learned to change O2 sensors and bushings? The best videos come from small companies that sell the parts. But where do they get them?

My Distributist alternate reality for a million cottage fabricators would be even harder than the Free-Market, patent-driven Capitalist model I described. 

So for now, stock up and watch YouTube. You may have to DIY things for a while. If you are serious, invest in jack-stands, a creeper, work light, and a good set of wrenches. You are going to need them.

Plant a garden too. Learn to can and dehydrate. Save seeds. Think about how to defend yourself. Meet your neighbors and share work, without talking politics or religion. Put down the phone on which you are doom-scrolling, turn off the TV for a few hours, and learn a craft for making, mending, sewing, knitting, building.

These are troubling times. I don't see them improving without a crisis of the sort we in the States have not witnessed in many, many decades.

This post may be one of the gentlest slams on our leadership, such as it is, as you will ever read. Maybe we should be screaming. I think we will, once the real price of arbitrary tariffs sink in and cut into our household budgets.

Big-City Visits and Me

How did 40 years go by so fast? I'm approaching the anniversary of leaving the US (I hoped for good). 

I loved living in Madrid, if only for a year, but that was so long ago....okay, yesterday. In a quiet neighborhood between Plaza de Cuzco and the once-village of Tetuán, an area that metro Madrid had eaten up in Franco's time, I figured I'd found the best possible combination of quiet repose and urban energy. To quote from a blogger who lived in my old neighborhood 6 years ago, Tetuán remains the right sort of un-hip place that is authentic without being dangerous, as well as affordable since "most of the young international people here in Madrid really want to live closer to the center. They want something 'vibrant' – whatever that means – and full of youngsters like themselves."

I figured Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol were only a short metro ride away on the blue line. Our furnished apartment, at $350 US then, was a real bargain. We only had to pay a finder's fee of one month's rent.

Now, in a visit to Baltimore's Little Italy, a neighborhood that recalls my old Madrid haunts, I realize how much life in the country has changed me in just over 12 years. I came north on Amtrak (my way to travel the NE corridor) for the big annual meeting on academic writing, CCCC. Someone not present asked why I didn't stay at the conference hotels. Simply put, the food is awful, the prices high, the scenery 1970s oppressive in a Logan's Run sort of way. Maybe that explains the conference nightmares that I have nearly every week: from burning hotels to drowned rooms with my laptop still inside, to lost directions and meanders around a strange city to find the Hyatt Regency's Crabcake Room.

 So now when I go to conferences, I look for lodgings a short walk away, usually in a traditional B&B that costs less than the conference monolith. I don't really care for Airbnb or Vrbo unless I'm somewhere longer-term, so I can prepare some food. Going to a supermarket in another country is an unalloyed joy to me. I had a great Vrbo experience that way in Fredericton, NB last year but a recent short-term stay in Winchester, VA, made me want to run back to a classic downtown hotel with a martini bar or old-school, owner-occupied B&B.

Baltimore's Little Italy seems my sort of spot. It's a short stroll to the dreary presentation rooms and throngs of professionals still on the rise who need to network. I'm semi-retired and so past all that. I met a few old friends for a drink in a boring and overpriced hotel bar, then left for something more authentically local but not twee or tarted-up. The hipsters with the parents' money or swank jobs are all in Fells Point; it's lovely but curated in a way that bothers me. On the other hand, north of the harbor, parts of Baltimore get sketchy fast. That too reminds me of certain neighborhoods not far from where I once lived in the Spanish capital, or for that matter, the block in Richmond where I grew up; the joke in the early 70s was "who beat you up today?"

These days I don't really want hip, curated, sketchy, or blue-collar urban. I don't want "busy" at all anymore. Traffic noise wakes me after living so long in a rural place. But more profoundly, it's the nature of how transient things are in a city, apart from preserved historic buildings.

Walking by myself on a rainy Baltimore day, the wind trying to destroy my umbrella and my pants cuffs getting soaked, reveals something I don't see when the sky is French blue and the colors in window-boxes call to me. 

In a city, even one where we have friends, we really are loners. Erasure of our lives lies never far away; once we are gone, our apartments will be occupied by someone else, our belongings not taken along scattered. I recall our final day in Madrid, leaving our apartment; we had piled by the curbing things we could not foist off on friends. Manolo, the building supervisor who really never seemed to like us much, did come out with a rare smile to say goodbye. He was inscrutable, but that day he seemed happy, maybe because the young and pesky Americans were finally going home.

An old Roma man with a horse-cart came along at first light a few times a week, to gather the sorts of things we abandoned. Soon our passage would be erased, like a busboy clearing a restaurant table.

You won't see old men with horse-carts in Baltimore, but the vibe is the same. You move on and it's as though you never existed. Little Italy, though charming, is not really the tightknit ethnic place it was half a century back, when children of immigrants lived there and talked to neighbors on the front stoops, as in a Barry Levenson film. The restaurants are still superb and folks friendly in businesses there and on Federal Hill. I went back to Byblos, an excellent Lebanese place I'd visited before, where my "cousin" Sami the owner recalled me, my wife, and two students who had visited him the last time. But the sense of impermanence still hung in the air as surely as over any cul-de-sac suburb. The architecture and patina of history make a cityscape more interesting, but turn a corner and you find a tragically ugly new high-rise that has erased a block of old houses and stores.

One gets erased in the country, too. Even if you have a large family with children, in a generation or two you will simply be a name and a fading photo on the wall, whatever your legacy of genetics or property.  

Maybe that's why it's healthy to visit a big town once in a awhile. I know rural folk near me in Goochland County, often older people, who have not been to downtown Richmond in decades. They still think it a crime-ridden, run-down place. It's not. But if they were to visit the hipsterific areas downtown, it might be worse than confirming old prejudices.

They'd see how quickly life moves on without us. They do miss the innumerable charms of city life: great museums, galleries, urban walks, live music, bespoke and funky-downmarket dining options. 

Yet I can still get that, plus a sense of ennui over time's passing, during a short urban visit. The woods beyond our garden? Those are not eternal, but they provide a different scale of time that stretches beyond our little lives.

Semi-Sufficent? Is that Enough?

I've written here about the folly of trying to be self-sufficient, instead turning to the notion of self-reliance, an Emersonian virtue I embrace.

Recently I read a fine post from Kirsten Lie-Nielsen, a homesteader, that she and her spouse have left farming largely behind, at least as a full-time, rural venture. This experience, one where she attempted to become an influencer but met hostility for her left-wing political views, gave me pause about how I approach rural life. 

These words in particular strike me as wisdom: 

We have no aspirations towards self-sufficiency, but a desire to experience varied aspects of life while remaining connected to our food sources. I now have a set of skills I can draw on if I find myself in the kind of calamitous situation that sections of the homesteader community are prepping for. I feel a deep appreciation for the labor of food production. I’ve also learned to embrace the freedom of progress.

When this blog began, I thought that I might use my writing skills to follow the path of a farmer like Joel Salatin. Now I've my doubts, and not because Salatin and I are very different animals when it comes to politics and religion. I deeply respect the way he manages the property at Polyface Farms, and I've had two nice chats with him about how one can run a farm sustainably. I no longer follow his blog, however, because of right-wing extremism and Doomerism, mostly by his readers, a similar pattern that led me away from another writer who once used to visit my classes to discuss his work. 

In case of a national disaster, no one is an island, no matter how many generators, solar panels, firearms, or cans of food on hand. Only community and self-reliance might ease the troubles, though I'd prefer we search for ways to avoid them altogether.  

I'll employ a simple example of semi-sufficiency here: the other day, my brother-in-law and I skidded two 12' long poplar logs out of the woods. A huge twin-trunked tree had split in a storm; we wanted to save part of it for his sawmill. Poplar is a delightful wood to work. I've made a good bit of weatherboard for our farmhouse from trees we cut, milled, and planed in years past.

I could never handled that sort of job alone. We used two saws to cut the logs (for when one saw gets pinched and stuck; it happened once to me). We then used a long cable and electric winch to skid the logs across a wet-weather stream at the back of our property, with me walking beside the skidway with a Peavey Tool to roll the logs around when they got caught on something. Finally, I got on my tractor and hauled the logs the final distance to a trailer.

No one person I know could do this. With my spouse still recovering from a broken leg, she couldn't help. So in hard times, who can you count on to help with rural work? My other best helper, who lives nearby, voted for the other side, but we get on well.

Community, despite adversity and personal differences, keeps the Amish on the land, but influencers have followers, not co-workers.

That's the mistake too many misty-eyed homesteaders make who want to be famous. 

Now's the Time to Trim and Plant

 

Apple-tree spreaders do their thing

With the weeds just starting their journey to domination, I got busy on some undone tasks. This is the time, friends. Get out there.

Fruit Trees: We cut back our apples and figs. They've gotten so tall that I need a big ladder to get fruit from the tops. While we were at it, I used split branches from fallen maple limbs to make spreaders that train limbs on sides where I want growth. I split the ends of small pieces of maple or use a Y branch, bracing the other cut end against the trunk. When the sap rises, the branch will tend to stay in place. If not, I can cut another spreader.

Too Late for Alliums? I missed the planting-window for garlic and multiplier onions in Fall. First it was too wet, then too cold. Then I got busy cleaning out my campus office. Now here we are, at the end of frost season, planting them. To force growth I'm going to hill them, as I saw done recently in the garden of the Governor's Palace at Colonial Williamsburg.

Hilling has some advantages in our clay soil, avoiding rot. At the same time, in the hot part of the year I'm going to need to weed and water fanatically to get a good crop. As for the hard-neck garlic I love? It will wait until Fall, when I can order more seed-garlic. I'll plant some organic grocery-store variety to tide us over. 

Weeding Before Summer: You really don't want to deal with established weeds and dry soil, so why not get out there now? We let the chickens into the garden all winter, and they loosened even the wire grass. With tiller and cultivator, I got the soil looking lovely. The weeds will return, as always, but they'll be smaller and have roots that are not so deep.

New Tiller: This gets its own post soon, but I purchased a light-duty Stihl tiller to replace the heavy, and not very reliable rear-tine beast I've been using. I'm going to repair the latter and then sell it. The Stihl uses a power-head I know well from our weed-whackers (and it's no wimp; it's a professional model with a lot of torque). I'm getting too old for the rear-tine monster, anyhow, and with our minimal-till method and already amended soil, I just want to turn in ashes and compost. I don't need to bust the sod. For that, I get out a tractor. 

Calling Some Guy: I've a dead oak that needs felling, and it's in an odd place where it might fall on a fence or chicken coop. Then there's a huge red maple that needs a major limb dropped or maybe the entire tree, as it's pulling out of the ground. Enter an expert. I'll get two estimates and the firewood. 

Know your limits! And keep gardening.

Not a Drop to Drink: So Plan, Already!

Our well water is cloudy again, after rains that have turned the ground to pudding, at least at the top. Further down, it's frozen, a pleasant and, historically, seasonal surprise after so many disappointing, warm winters. If we get lucky (well, I love snow) we'll see a major snowstorm midweek here.

The issue with filtering our water is trivial; trees falling in wind are more serious, but so far things are happening away from the well-tending giants around our home. What falls back in the woods will be firewood for 2026.

I compare our lot to folks in the Richmond metro area who lost potable water for a week due to mismanagement and delayed maintenance at the treatment plant. This event made national news. Some people I talked to had pressure; others did not. None of the water was safe to drink. 

 There's not much to do if no water comes from the taps. You buy bottled water or, as one friend did, visit friends elsewhere. Others took short and unplanned winter holidays.

But were the water on, yet not potable, why not own an emergency filter? That's our plan and it's come in handy at least four times in almost as many years. I detest those awful iodine tablets, considering them some test of macho-hood for old-school campers. Technology has given us a better alternative.

We use a system very similar to Sawyer's product shown here. 

Before we have more emergencies that I'm sure are on the way in these troubled times, get one for your home. We are pricing solar and a whole-house generator for our farm, too. I can't run our generator until the snow or rain stops.

Urbanites and suburbanites may not need the big-dog chainsaw or even "the pee-wee" saw I use, but consider a basic hurricane emergency kit as well as two weeks of non-perishable food. You may not be able to leave home the next time trouble comes knocking. 

Creative Commons image from Pexels.

Three Essential Natural Chemicals for Your Garden

We think of the word "chemical" in a negative way, unless we work in the industry. Yet even without a periodic table or large fertilizer makers, our preindustrial ancestors knew that soil needs certain things to be productive. Where they got them is another post, but here, for a start today, we need: nitrogen (from compost, green manures, animal manure, or fertilizer), potassium (from lime or ash, usually), and rock phosphate (a mineral).

It's easy to confuse the last two. I found a site providing the basic explanations, as well as where they come from. I think we'll be hearing more about phosphates soon; the trade war between the US and China may endanger supplies of this important additive for fertilizer. The US has some domestic production; all comes from mining.

I would love to find a sustainable, locally available substitute for rock phosphate. It's the missing ingredient in sustainable gardening. Luckily, I have chicken manure handy. When composted, it's a viable substitute, and there are others. These won't work on many large farms, but they provide a godsend for gardeners. Good compost seems able to provide all of the "big three," if it's the right mix of green materials (food scraps) and brown materials (fallen oak leaves, say).

Some plants, like nightshades (peppers and tomatoes in my garden) need a boost of rock phosphate annually. I provide it with a product called green sand, which is just what it looks like. As a mined rock, it's not sustainable. Yet a little seems to go a long way, so my current bag is only the second I've bought in 12 years.

We avoid other bagged commercial fertilizers on our farm; any left from my in-laws got spread broadly and thinly, to be rid of them. They are junk food, in many cases. Our goal is to build good soil longterm, using rotation and amendment and minimal tillage whenever possible.

So as we get ready for Spring gardens, what are you doing to get the soil ready?

 

Be Careful With That "Seasoned" Firewood

Buying any wood this year?

We are going through a lot of wood in our stove this seasonably cold winter. I am reminded of all the poor quality or under-seasoned firewood (always promised to be "seasoned") that I purchased back before I cut my own wood. No, my pile does not look as nice as the header photo.

Nearly all of the wood I purchased before moving to the country went for ambiance in a fireplace. Now we need it for heating, saving over $1000 each year compared to running our heat pump. If you too heat with wood and are new to it, however, here's a cautionary tale.

You see every expensive bag of supermarket logs marked "seasoned," but a study from the University of Tennessee's extension service finds that claim laughable. The UT folks tested batches of store-bought logs; they found moisture content at 50% to 90% the rule. That's far too wet to burn when firewood needs to be under 20%. For most wood not kiln-dried, that means at least 9 months split and stacked dry. Many types of wood require a year or more.

What do I mean by "wet"? It's not the wetness one finds from a log sitting in the rain; instead, it's the internal moisture of green, growing wood lost as a dead log dries naturally.

For a load of maple that fell in a storm this year, mostly big branches, I chainsawed some into small logs yesterday and hauled them to the shed. Wood from the same stormfall maple that I'd cut in late spring is barely safe to burn now, but it had been split and stacked in a sunny shelter. The remaining wood left in the forest comes in at 30% moisture. I might hazard burning a bit of it in April, after checking with my moisture meter again.

I've written about this magical device before here. They run under $30 at Amazon or you can "go pro" but that's best for a wood buyer or firewood dealer.

Today I checked some seasoned wood I split and stacked a year ago. I placed the meter at the end of a white-oak log and also into its split side. Both gave low moisture. 

 

Likewise some very old pine that I mix in with my hardwoods.

 

I don't like to burn a lot of really dry wood but it's good in a mix and to start the fire.

If you buy firewood, do yourself a favor. Get a meter and be Type-A so you don't ruin your chimney. And post to your community-living groups if you find very wet "seasoned" firewood.

Stay warm and feed that stove!

From "Tree of No Use" to Useful Tree

 

I've written here many times about the Stinking Sumac / Tree of Paradise / Alianthus. I've yet to find a use for it, but there's another tree that many of us dislike that I've come to appreciate, the Sweet Gum. It has those sticky balls that sadistic children would throw at each other or (slowly raises hand) would shoot out of a slingshot.

I don't bean anyone with the tree's seed pods any longer, but I do burn the wood. Yes, I use a tree that many folks who heat with wood toss into the ravine. The wood is hard to split when green, and not much better when seasoned; the grain is crazy, the fibers clingy. It's not a wood to split by hand. But then I have 27 tons worth of splitting power in our gasoline-powered Trobilt.

Gum is supposed to stink when burned. True, if not seasoned. I spoke to my chimney-cleaner, a Good Ol' Boy who knows his wood. Cut it in the winter when the sap is not flowing, then split it right away gum can be burned in 9 months. In other seasons, one needs to wait a year and yes, that wood will give off an aroma. Use a moisture meter to be sure the wood is ready, to avoid creosote in your chimneys.

 I have been burning some of it lately, from a tree that fell in a summer storm in 2023. It gives off a woodsy smell that I get outdoors. Our stove is too efficient to let that scent into the house.

Numbers like the ones from the University of Kentucky do not lie. There's something to be said for Gum. It has a heating value in BTUs higher than pine. We don't all have a ready supply of Hickory or Osage Orange or White Oak. I get a good amount of Oak, but Sweet Gum is so plentiful here! The tree shrugs off urban pollution and drought, though on the down side it does like to shed limbs in storms.

Why does Gum have such a bad rep? I think it's the pain-in-the-butt nature of splitting it, if done by hand.

So don't toss that gum. Find someone who heats with wood and offer it. I'm reminded of "The Tree of No Use" from the writings of one of my old-school influencers, Zhuang Zhou the Taoist philosopher. That tree yielded nothing but shade: no fruit, no wood good for burning. And it lived a long time.

So will our gums, in the era of climate change.