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. 

 

 

Thank you, Harry!

Dear reader, the object above is a tiny piece of lead (shown far larger than actual size) called a "crankshaft key" or "flywheel key" (or to some a Woodruff Key!) for a push lawn-mower. The little part sacrifices itself when when mower hits an unmovable object: rock, stump, Godzilla's little toe. It shears in half, along its longest dimension, to keep the mower from bending internally and breaking permanently.

Now why on Earth am I talking about such a thing? 

It's the first DIY job on a motor I ever did, with the encouragement of Harry Delolian, our neighbor. He was the son of Armenians who had fled the genocide in the Ottoman Empire and he was one of the most resourceful human beings I've ever known. Harry kept both a giant Ham-Radio antenna and the fuselage of a single-engine airplane in his tiny yard, which earned him weirdo points with adults and cool points with 1970s kids.

Harry showed me how to fix our very expensive Toro mower, my dad's pride. I'd used it to cut a neighbor's grass, as I did for several folks in order to earn model-airplane money. Dad was livid when I "broke" the mower, because dad, for all his great qualities, was no DIYer. To him a tool box consisted of a pair of slip-jaw pliers, a claw hammer, and one 16D nail about 4" long. Plus lots of cussing and sweating. If those items would not fix something, it was time to "call some guy."

Dad was ready to load the Toro into the Pontiac's trunk but Harry waved that off. "Joey," he said to me, "go to Lorraine Hardware and buy a crankshaft key for a Toro." As I walked down the street I kept saying "crankshaft key," so I would not look the fool in front of the serious and slightly judgemental men at that emporium of all things holy and perfect. I preferred (and still do) a hardware store to a church, since I think God meant for us to fix things, as part of some inscrutable and larger plan, not sit around with people we don't know well while singing poorly.

In any case and for under a dollar, I soon had the part. Harry pulled the top cover off our mower, thus ushering me into a realm of metallic mysteries. He talked me through every bit of the work, something he'd probably yell at kids in boot camp (he was an Army DI who had served in The Battle of the Bulge and as a Recon Scout in Korea).  The tiny part dropped right into place, and as soon as the Toro was screwed back together, it started and ran as well as new.

I thought of Harry the other day when I broke the crankshaft/flywheel key on our 13-year-old Craftsman self-propelled. When the mower would not start, I knew right away what I had done and said "thanks, Harry!" Two YouTube videos later, I knew how to find my mower's engine number and how to change the key. But it was Harry's hand that guided me. Amazon, not Lorraine (long and sadly closed) supplied the Briggs and Stratton key (I ordered 2, because things happen). Price now? $2.49 each. But imagine the cost of taking a mower to the shop.

The old Craftsman fired up on the first pull. That it still runs after 13 seasons is also testimony to Harry's annual reminders to change oil, swap spark plugs, clean air filter, sharpen blades, and keep the deck clean above and below.

Now don't you want to go fix something? Don't be like another neighbor who filled the gas tank with the motor oil supplied with the new mower (of course not reading the owner's manual). That new mower never, ever ran right.

 So fix something instead of breaking it!

It's God's tractorpunk plan for you. See you in the yard on Sunday.

Where Have All The Ringshanks Gone?

A bout of COVID, and it was not fun, kept me occupied for far too long last month, so this blog, as well as my DIY projects slipped their schedules. Now that I'm finally putting homemade weatherboard siding up on our addition, in place of hideous, unsustainable vinyl or expensive cement-board, I have a problem.

Nails.

Before the chronic shortages and inflation of our recent past hit, I purchased a Cadillac of nail-guns: a Paslode cordless that uses gas cartridges for framing. It's perfect for doing work from ladders where a long cord to a compressor could prove deadly. My old framing gun blew its seals years ago. 

First, I found that the gas cartridges are in short supply, and I want to save what I have for a Fall 2022 project to expand our hen-yard with a new coop. Second, nail guns can split thin weatherboard at the ends, so I planned to hand-nail every nail after drilling a pilot-hole. We did an entire house that way once; it's slow, meditative, Amish-style work, especially when a family member cut down the trees, ran the logs through a sawmill, helped you strap down and "sticker" the lumber to season, before you planed the boards.

That type of work makes one not waste a single scrap of wood. Not one. I even use the chips from the planer in our hen houses and in muddy spots during the winter.

In times past, I would go to the big-box or local DIY place and find lots of galvanized nails with "ring shanks." These little rings make it hard to remove a nail. That's a pain when taking down siding, but it also slows down the way in which a board exposed to the elements will pull away from the building, warp, twist, and do all sorts of non-linear things after just a few years in heat and cold.

So to Lowes, Home Depot, Pleasants, Lacy's Hardware, and the gem of Crozet VA, Crozet Hardware I went. 

At the small stores they knew what I wanted. At the big ones? Crickets. The problem has been that for years, because of the omnipresence of nail guns, shops no longer carry the variety of hand nails they once did. I scored a few tiny boxes at Pleasants, enough to keep the siding job going. 

No one carries my favored brand, Stormguard, that are USA-made and very reliable. Even I rarely bend any. 

So what did I do? Amazon had Stormguards, of course with free shipping for a five-pound box at a price that did not make me scream. I did not check the amazing lumber-yard Siewers, but I will and buy a few pounds of nails if they have them in stock. 

 For some reason, this situation scared me more than seeing empty grocery shelves and expensive gasoline. When we forget how to hand-nail things, it seems a moment in a slow descent into barbarism.  Machines break. Hammers, rarely.

 My father-in-law, who weathered the Great Depression, never ran short of fasteners: he kept pounds and pounds. Now, I will, too.

 So far, 2022 has had many bad omens. Add this particular shortage to my worry-list.

Image courtesy of QC Supply: stock up! 

Old-School Tools: Walkie-Talkies!

 

A WALKIE-TALKIE? Get out, you might say, in the era of ubiquitous smart-phonery. 

Agreed, up to a month ago. I associated these devices with the Radio Shack of my pre-teen years, in the 1970s. Yet when my wife suffered a debilitating fall in 2016, on an icy slate, it took me a while to wake up to her yelling for me. I began to consider, as she made a remarkable and hard-fought recovery, whether we might install an intercom system back by our chicken coops. On and off this consideration went, for five long years. Now we have something, but not an intercom. Those serve a certain need, but they are not perfect.

Her parents had an intercom between their auto-repair shop and their house. It came in handy in many regards, mostly for "lunch is ready, Edward!" notices but even altering them to a burglary. They left the unit active 24 hours a day. My tough-as-nails father-in-law went to the shop after the shop's mic signaled a break-in. He surprised the burglars with a shotgun and he told my mother-in-law to call the law. The bad guys dutifully put up their hands (no arguing with both barrels of what I refer to as "Old Painless") until the deputies took them away.

I've no plans for backyard heroism, but we do often have issues with our animals at dusk, usually a hen gone missing but also our too frequent encounters with Copperheads. An intercom lacks portability. Then I began to research walkie-talkies. They have come a long way as electronics evolved and rechargeable batteries improved. We knew that our phones do not have perfect reception from every location on our property, including the deer stands I use in hunting season, when a call for assistance might be essential. Moreover, we could take them to our land in Buckingham, where one needs to do a certain dance on a certain spot to have ANY cellular reception.

I'm not going to recommend a particular model. Take a look at reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. Some offer more water protection than others, including boater models that can survive "man overboard" situations. 

We purchased a midrange Midland pair of walkie-talkies for under $60, shipped. We use the low-frequency band (you pick a channel among 22) for a range of up to 25 miles (high-frequency use requires an FCC license). We are delighted. Just the other night, a Copperhead was cornered by our livestock dogs and I needed to respond ASAP. I got the notice from the walkie-talkie. Most other times, it's simply me (I do the cooking) saying "Queen Bee, come in, dinner in 5." Some things never change. My old man had a CB radio in his Cadillac, when he went to Florida to buy loads of tomatoes. His handle was "Big Joe Tomato." I use that one once in a while.

So far this old-school tool has more than paid for itself.  We never forget to carry them now when one of us leaves the house. We just make sure the other person has their radio and it's on.

 Don't rely on that fancy phone, if reception is spotty and your land has nooks and crannies you walk, hunt, or work. Buy a walkie-talkie and learn to use it. It might save your life.

And yes, I miss the living hell out of 70s Radio Shack. DIY electronics! I should write a post about the drawers of resistors and the soldering irons...

A Recipe for Middle Eastern Tomato Sauce

 

You have a garden or farmer's market. Use them, and learn to put up food. It's a great benefit of the extra time we have now during this pandemic.

 I was asked for this, and every year I have enough tomatoes to put up about 8 pints, if not more. This will make four quart jars for canning...maybe.

• Gallon pot of tomatoes, any kind, cut up (Romas and similar will make a thicker sauce). You can peel them if you wish. I don't
  
• One onion, chopped
• Six cloves garlic, or more, minced
• Green pepper chopped small
  
• Tablespoon of dry oregano (use less if chopped, fresh)
  
• Other dry herbs such a basil (tablespoon, crushed) or thyme (up to a tablespoon, crushed). Use less if chopped, fresh
• Teaspoon cinnamon
• Teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper or more to taste
• Teaspoon salt or more to taste
• (Optional) 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes.
  

 

That's really it. I often cook the tomatoes down a bit first, bringing them to a boil in a heavy dutch oven, then pressing them down with a potato masher to release the juice. The trick is very slow cooking, and I let the sauce simmer on a simmer-setting burner, with the top tight or just loose enough for steam to escape.
 

Watch the pot and stir occasionally to avoid thing burning. Cook until thick, at least 8 hours!

This makes a great base for lots of Lebanese dishes and it can also become chili con carne, pasta sauces, and more. 

I brown ground lamb and add it, then serve it over basmati rice. Or chop and fry up some okra and add it. You can't go wrong.

It cans well, with the water-bath method.  One thing: be SURE to follow recipes well, including adding citric acid or lemon juice in particular! Granny had more acidic tomatoes than we do today.

Update 2022: I now use a pressure cooker method recommended by The National Center for Home Food Preservation. Their spaghetti sauce recipe is closet to this one in terms of processing safety to avoid botulism.

Ad-Hoc Patches & Long-Term Consequences

All of us in education are scrambling, breaking old habits and a few rules to deliver remote education. I began to think about longer-term issues for Higher Education, really not the subject of his blog, but certainly fodder for my writing students' final project of the semester.

We'll figure it out. Right now there are bottlenecks, administratively, of the same sort that keep toilet paper and paper towels from getting to stores. The supply is there, but the system has temporarily bogged down.  Except for those items, our stores are well stocked.  Early runs on meat and other staples have abated. Produce is picked over, but for cooking oil, flour, vinegar, and other things low a week ago, stocks are up (just as the stock market is down).

All this thinking led me back to the local and rural; what will be the effects of our current crisis on localism, food networks, rural ways? Here are a few concerns, speculations, and hopes.

Loss of Elders

Though COVID-19 shows itself quite capable of wiping out young people, the mortality among the elders among us is likely to astound us all. I fear here a loss of rural memory, akin to what happens at my university when a key, long-term colleague retires or passes on. These folk have "institutional memory," a real link to the past and how things were done, including during crises past.

Soon we'll have no living memory, save for interviews and film, of how Americans coped the the Great Depression. We may have to rediscover the wisdom of our grandparents the hard way, but saving your twist-ties is not akin to learning how to tan leather, repair a carburetor (something I did today on a balky antique tractor), or fell a tree. YouTube is a pale substitute for first-hand, hands-on learning.

Farmers' Markets & Foodie Culture

These are closed, and some small farms dependent upon them and restaurant trade will go out of business.  One bright spot for a friend who farms at Dellicarpini Farms, Dominic Carpin, has been a Distributor / Online Farmers' Market, Fall Line Farms. Dominic had his biggest order yet this week. By combining services of many small farmers and taking a cut, Fall Line can get produce directly to consumers and allow farmers to, well, farm. From their Web site:

Each week our producers post the products they have available, setting their own prices, uploading their own descriptions and photos. You can read about their farming practices and contact them directly with questions.

Using our Buying Pages, you shop online with us any time between Friday at noon to Monday at midnight. You pay for your order online and then pick it up on the following Thursday afternoon at one of our Richmond area pickup locations.

Orders are delivered fresh, straight from the farms on Thursdays. Our producers share in the delivery process and we rely on volunteers to sort the orders at the pickup locations. This cooperative system allows us to keep delivery costs down to a minimum meaning more money goes back to the producers.

It's not as fun as strolling a farmer's market, but it keeps food local.  Foodies may have to settle for Spring Kale in place of their Tuscan Kale, but that is a real first-world problem. Thank goodness we have greens, period.

Home Gardens, Chickens, and More

A related issue is the increase of interest in home gardening. Where I live most folk keep a garden, but now they are doubling down on expanding for summer "just in case." I plowed and disc-harrowed my neighbor Lloyd's 1/4 acre plot last weekend. He had a garden there last year, but this year he's expanding. If seed sales are any indication, Lloyd is not alone.

Chick and pullet sales are up, too, as urbanites keep small flocks and rural folk expand. I expect there to be an egg glut soon. In Colonial times, as I learned in 2017 at King's Landing Historical Park in New Brunswick, eggs were not worth anything in barter. Everyone had yard-birds.

MOAR Data, Pleeeze?

Rural broadband is expensive, if it exists at all. We are on satellite via Viasat (clever name, that). We burned through our 50 GB of data last month without streaming one movie. We had remote teaching and lots of video conferences. But hope is on the way. Poking about in their Web site, I found an unlimited data plan for $50 more per month, less than I spent last month buying a few additional GB.  These plans may prioritize essential and less-essential sites....so caveat emptor. Still, it's a bargain and we can switch without penalty back to our old plan. They'll send us a new router, too.

I suspect many folks out here are doing the same, with a windfall coming for providers. Likewise this emergency will likely speed the rollout of 5G mobile networks.

So far, that's all I see, but the peak in cases locally may not come until June. Stand by for updates. Let's hope for better news, and stay safe, sane, and healthy!

Old-School Tools: My Favorite Stick-Um

Contact cement is nothing new; many cyclists have mended an inner tube with one. After airplane glue and white glue, it was my first encounter with the magic of adhesives. The superpower of contact adhesives, to me, is precisely the  relatively long working time before the glue sets up. The repairer has the freedom to make certain the bond is solid before going back to work. Rubber cement does set up quickly, at least for bicycle repairs.  Super glue, in its many forms, works great for many applications, but it sets up nearly instantly.

For Barge Cement, however, the miracle occurs long after the DIYer walks off, leaving items in a clamp.

I found this glue highly recommended online, especially for shoe soles and other nonporous uses, but local stores didn't carry it and the big-boxes would have to order it. So I went online and did that, getting free shipping. My original plan, one to be carried out this holiday, was to glue think leather over plastic seatbelt-retractor covers on a 1974 Buick Apollo I am restoring.

Then my expensive Wellingtons, a must for muddy time, blew out a sole, right at the toe. After cleaning up both sides of the rubber, I put a thin layer of Barge All Purpose on both surfaces, waited about 10 minutes, then stuck them together, using furniture clamps to hold the bond overnight. A month later, the boot works good as new, as does a pair of shorter Cabelas slip-ons that lost a sole. I had forgotten them and went to another chore. An hour later I came back, saw the boots, cussed a bit, then decided to clamp them overnight, as I had done with the first pair. They are holding up well after a week, in wet and dry conditions.

I don't know that shoes worn daily would hold up; I'm willing to try as long as I have a spare pair at work.

Give Barge a go, whenever everyone associated with Black Friday wants you to buy something new; it's not expensive and may save many hundreds of dollars lost when an item gets discarded. Let me know how it works for you.

The Cold, Clear Light of Day

I recall my mom's advice when frustrated or scared, "It will look better in the clear light of day."

That's great advice for anyone struggling with rural life. I didn't grow up with it and am still very much a city boy. I may always be, deep inside, despite all the skills I've slowly acquired.

Yesterday was one of those awful days. I had struggled with a large rotary mower I use several times a year. We'd had a great success clearing a large patch of Tree of Paradise, amid a jungle of vines. I wanted to mow them before the snow flies again, as it's about to do today. We are talking about enough piles of vines, cut and still attached, to overflow two 8' pickup beds.

Everything seemed aligned, cosmically, until the tractor's PTO shaft would not align with the mower's drive shaft. It's a tedious, heavy job that involves pry bars, cinder blocks, and cursing. In fact, I increasingly see why farmers have multiple tractors for multiple jobs. My dedicated bush-hog tractor, a Ford 8N, is simply too fast in reverse to trust near hills, and it lacks a seat belt or roll bar.

As I tried to connect the mower, the light faded from the sky. I put the tractor on a slope, with the loader bucket down, to increase the distance between the connections. No dice. Nothing, including adjusting all the linkages, would make something fit that has fit many times before.

As it got dark, I recalled my mom's advice. I put up the gear and then it hit me: the next day I would shorten the drive shaft about an inch. I was bone tired and needed a stiff drink.

I did that early, with a reciprocating saw. Then with my Dremel I beveled the edges. The shaft fit, the tractor cut the vines, and I was done in 45 minutes.

If you push yourself too hard when tired, a friend advised me once when chainsawing, you are going to end up in the hospital.

Good advice at twilight. Wait until the clear, cold light of day, then get back to work.

Water Water Everywhere

And not a drop to drink until you boil it 5 minutes or run it through a filter.

If you get your water from a well, you are effectively a water-quality manager who oversees a water-treatment facility.  And when things go wrong, you learn about hydraulic engineering, geology, and pathogens.

For the past three weeks that has been our life, since seven inches of rain fell in a few days' time. Our dug well had developed a crack and a bit of missing casing, most likely from the earthquake of 2011, and that meant fecal coliform bacteria in the drinking water rose to levels that are not necessarily healthy. We had a water test last year, through a Virginia Tech extension agency program, and that proved marginal for coliform. The heavy rain changed things, fast.

Soil filters rain water, and coliform bacteria are present in most soil. Yet that can present an issue for Dug wells, commonly found on older properties, which are more prone to contamination; I understand that some banks will not issue a mortgage to a home that does not have a modern bored, deep well.

That's not us. Our well is only about 30 feet deep and 3 feet in diameter. I tested again when the heavy rains made our water cloudy. Test kits are cheap, and the consequences of not testing regularly? Serious illness in the worst cases.

In my home test after the rains, we failed. So what to do if you suddenly find yourself living in the 1840s? Digging a new well or even repairing this one would cost many thousands of dollars we do not have handy.

Time to boil and filter, as I would on a backpacking trip or, more ominously, after some disaster.

There's an entire section at Cabelas I call "The Doomsday Aisle" full of "survival" rations and gear, including some serious water filters and purifiers. The the distinction is critical; the latter remove bacteria from water. Most simple filters do not. I have used prefilters when camping, if rainwater has debris. An old Melita coffee filter does the trick.

I suppose The Doomsday Aisle gives suburban preppers the same false confidence that a backyard bomb shelter provided in the late 50s or, today, a seldom-fired handgun tucked in the nightstand or worse for the untrained, waistband. But I have found that these same folks also vainly try to "tick proof" their manicured lawns, killing helpful insects in the process, and panic at every tick bite; I keep a jar of the four or five that get me, weekly.

Thus I have decided to give up on telling such people that you cannot buy skills. But if you are still reading, here's a tip: only buy gear that you actually use sometimes, not tuck away in the utility room. The test of such supplies and, in our case, water filter, need not be the coming of Mad Max. It might simply be a hurricane that interrupts power and potable water for two weeks, as happened in 2003 during Hurricane Isabel. My nephew Chris, with Homeland Security, gets blue in the face trying to explain that two weeks of supplies are all one needs to mean the difference between life and illness or death.

That photo is so reassuring looking, isn't it, to those fretting about apocalypse? Yet no supplies will help you without potable water. I got a $60 purifier at Cabelas, made by Sawyer; I like their backpacking purifiers a lot. Like the smaller units, the big one is reverse-flushable and good for 100,000 gallons. More than enough! I like that it could be mounted to a bucket and gravity fed into a container to drink.

The first step in addressing problems such as ours was to "shock our well." Those of you on city water may imagine me sneaking up and yelling "boo" into the well house, or telling an off-color joke to the plumbing. As the Centers for Disease Control's site makes plain, however, it's a rather lengthy process.  You make a bleach-water solution (in our case, 3 gallons of bleach), pour it in the well, wash down the inner casing, and run the taps. A lot.

Eventually the bleach smell vanishes, and our shower tiles were cleaner. But a week later, I tested the water again for bacteria.

Another Epic Fail.

We had our well service visit, the folks who fixed the well several years ago. They suggested that short a very expensive repair, we install a UV light in the well, at the cost of $1100 and with an annual maintenance fee of $150.

Of course we said "yes. NOW." As for timing, we are still about two weeks out from installation, perhaps another from when I test the water again.  We have gotten adept at filtering drinking water nightly, using tap water to wash pots and pans, and running the dishwasher on "sanitize." So it's less 1840 and more an inconvenience. We could, in theory, go on this this forever.

But I am thankful that we do not have to.

Old-School Tools: Hatchets and Axes

To a novice like me,  not long ago all hatchets and axes looked alike. yes, I use both, as well as a maul, to split a lot of smaller logs that don't merit the hydraulic log-splitter with its 27 tons of force. All of my modern tools, as well as a 1930 Keen Kutter "Half Hatchet" inherited from my father-in-law, work wonderfully.  As I began to auction off his collection of tools, however, I found out a lot more than I ever guessed about wood-cutting technology.

There's a great deal of pre-mechanized history here.  We often think of hatchets looking something like one of the two pictured below. Axes might have one blade or, more rarely today in the States, two. There is also the famous fireman's axe, a tool unlikely to ever vanish from regular use.

In fact, a study of a 1930s tool catalog reveals specialized hatchets for shingling, for flooring, and even a "produce" hatchet whose use may be lost to time.  A favorite I no longer see as what is called a "broad axe" head.

Hammers, wrenches, and pliers, other hand tools that survived the coming of power tools, at least has several examples for sale in any modern hardware store, but modern hatchets seem to have dwindled in purpose to the sorts just pictured. So few of us split our own wood in the age of gas logs.

For those who want to know more about the terminology of axes and hatches, I found a Swedish toolmaker's site with an excellent page on the subject. You may find yourself spending more hours there than you should, when you should be out splitting wood!

Old School Tools: The Perfect Book for DIY Farmers

Every sharpened a knife with a whetstone? Want to learn how? I've just the book for you.

What a surprise that after 90 minutes of being overwhelmed in Powells Books in Portland, OR, I found Professor Mack Jones' 1945 guide Shopwork on the Farm, just as I was leaving the store. It was like finding The Rosetta Stone. Suddenly, all of these mysterious objects in our shop or barn began to make sense. Professor Jones, at the University of Missouri, would have encountered many landowners and tenant farmers doing things much the way their grandparents had done.

There was a time when most small farms operated nearly as a closed system; the farm was also an amateur mechanic, blacksmith, plumber, and carpenter. At the end of WWII, many rural areas still lacked electricity, so hand tools were the rule and remained that way for a long time. Power tools were expensive, and farmers on small holdings tend to be a thrifty lot. Sadly, with the passing of generations, the coming of cheap big-box-store tools, and the movement off the small farms to large industrial operations, many old-timey skills have faded.  That's why this book is such a treasure to me. I own so many of the tools described, yet for some I had no idea how they might be used.

To any Millennials who want to try rural life, I'd recommend doing a lot of research first. This book would prove an excellent starting place. Nearly everything I have done with a circular saw, a table saw, a power drill, or an electric planer can be done by hand. And simple tools we rely upon, such as an electric bench grinder, can be put safely to many uses I'd not considered before. Jones' advice is well presented and easy to follow. I realized that all these years I've been using a whetstone incorrectly!

He has advice on everything from using an anvil properly to heating and bending metal in a hand-pumped forge; these are skills I will be putting to the test in the next year when I next shape metal.

While you may not wish to make your own lead-based paints, there is a recipe if you can find enough white lead for the job.  Forgotten those lessons on tying knots in Scouts? Mack Jones has you all set.

Before you ask: I don't loan books or any form of media, even to the closest friends. You'll have to snag your own copy cheaply, at ABE or at Amazon. If  you live in the country and want to do so as off the grid as possible, or if circumstances force your hand, this book will be worth its weight in gold.

The Shaving Bench & Hand Tools

I did not know who L.P. Hartley was until I searched for the famous dictum "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Hartley wrote a number of books, some very well received; his obscurity now makes a writer pause and think "why bother?"

But why bother at anything? In 100 years, anyone old enough to read this post will, at best, be a half-recalled series of stories told by descendants and an inscription on a stone, somewhere.

Now that I have depressed you thoroughly, let's hop into a time machine and cheer ourselves up a bit. It's one way I find solace as I face, as we all do, the final erasure of ourselves and our accomplishments. I'll use Rod Taylor's gizmo from the George Pal film; I think it best captures the intentions of H.G. Wells. I look forward to teaching the novel in my course on Science Fiction and Fantasy, this Fall. It puts human vanity into perspective.

So did William Faulkner, when he claimed that "The past is never dead. It's not even past." I feel that way whenever I visit Colonial Williamsburg. It always gives me a strange hope that whatever our species does in the near future, short of nuclear catastrophe an interesting and more sustainable life for our descendants will be possible.  I am beginning to regard the Past as a foreign country, but one we can visit.

Beyond Williamsburg's occasional theme-park dissonance, as bored or dumb tourists meet very savvy historical reenactors, I find something precious for the future of our civilization going on: the conservation of old-time skills. I've become increasingly obsessive to learn a few, myself, from scything and baling hay by hand to acquiring more skill with hand-tools. These were skills that most rural residents possessed in living memory. As a Williamburg employee, working on a hand-built sawpit and barn, reminded me, you don't have to go back 200+ years to find the skills he used. In 1950, my late father-in-law built structures using most of the same techniques and many of the same tools.

After a recent visit I decided upon a hot-weather project: building a "shaving bench" or "shaving horse." That's not for shaving oneself or anything equine, but it holds wood for smoothing out with either a hand planer or a "spoke shave." This site shows how one can be made easily in a home shop. It should last a lifetime, unlike many modern power tools.

No, it is not as cool-looking than George Pal's rendition of Wells' time machine, but it serves a similar purpose: adventuring into another era. Whereas The Time Traveler went into the dim and grim future of the human race, then, heartbroken, beyond to the end of the Sun, my Shaving Bench will take me back no more than a century, so I can begin using hand tools for more woodworking. I'm learning to be good with our hand-auger and have long been decent at hand-sawing, but it's a journey to unlearn muscle-memory honed with table or chop saws, drill-presses, and jigsaws. I will use some of these power-tools to fashion the shaving bench, in both the interest of time and in order to conserve materials.

There is a focus all tools engender, simply because you can too easily nip off a finger or worse by not paying attention. Hand tools add something to that focus, because the experience is quiet enough to eliminate hearing protection and, depending on the tool, bulky safety glasses.

At times like that, I realize that as hard as our ancestors worked, the experience was less mediated. The world was a wooden one, as ours largely is, but the experiential distance from tree to board to finished good was much shorter. 

I plan to travel back to that foreign country, increasingly.

Best Home Canning Site, Ever

Canning is a science, even if recipes are an art.  This time of year is the time to get the last canning done. To make a mistake may, at best, spoil the food. At worst? You kill someone or at least make them seriously ill.

There are a few principles I follow, based upon my reading of the University of Georgia's amazing site, The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

I send that site to anyone canning their harvest for the first time.

This post is short because any advice I can give pales next to that. I will add the following ideas for those determined to use Granny's yellowed index cards:

• The science of food preservation has come a long way in the past few decades. See if you can adapt granny's recipe to modern techniques. That probably means adding lemon juice or citric acid.
• Modern tomato varieties are not as acidic as they once were, so you will have to add lemon juice or citric acid.
• No one I know recommends canning in any containers larger than a quart. Save granny's old half-gallon Ball jars for dried herbs or beans.
• Try to use canned goods in a year, maybe two. I have figs in honey that I still trust ten years on, but honey is a perfect antibacterial. I'd not use tomatoes or pickles after that many years!
• No matter how Granny canned, if the site I've listed says "pressure cooker" go with that. Don't go with a boiling-water-bath technique unless the U Georgia site gives you a thumbs-up.

Enjoy your harvest!

Hay Making Experiment!

A few times each year, we mow a couple of fields of pasture grass, with very few weeds, in Buckingham Country. I would like to mow less often and keep the hay. On second cuttings, we could get straw, with fewer seeds and more potential as garden mulch. If we start keeping a few goats next  year, we'd want hay. What's the difference between hay and straw? Read all you would EVER want to know, right here.

The inputs into our food matter, and when we can we grow our own food or buy organic. For animals we feel the same way. I am confident that our grass here and in Buckingham is free of pesticide and herbicides, so the fields we mow can provide good fodder or animals or mulch for our rows of plants.

Sounds great until one prices out a baler and tedder. I don't own a sickle mower for the tractor but the other implements can set one back $20,000 new. Thus I'm not likely to go that route for might amount to 100 or so bales annually (not that we currently use more than 20). Luckily, not all of the world has turned to massively expensive techniques. This page from Ethopia, for small-scale herding operations, shows some techniques I plan to adopt.

While I think a hay tedder for the tractor may be a reasonable investment, so I can windrow the hay easily after cutting with the rotary mower on the tractor, a baler is big money. I'd rather pay a farm-hand a couple hundred dollars a year to help me hand-bale the hay. Stacking would we really fun, if the fields were near where I have gardens and animals. Scratch that: it's 50+ miles from field to farm-site.

My research on this turned up the Rev. J.D. Hooker's article about how to build a baler-box. It's very similar to the box shown on the Ethiopian page. It was a snap to make. I only needed a few screws and some 3/4 plywood. I added L brackets around each side since I'd be standing IN the box, stomping.

We cut and transported the grass to dry at home, but I'd prefer to windrow the hay and bale it at the site.  I  turned the hay once and checked for moisture. If it rots or gets moldy, it will go out for mulch or be spread in the chicken run.

My experiment produced three 2'x2'x18" bales out of 3/4 load of hay from the pickup's bed. With its 8' bed, the truck will hold 16 bales. I baled three in 15 minutes, so when I next mow a few acres, I think I'll take a farm-hand and get 50 or so bales done. We can stack and cover the ones we don't trasport with a tarp, though a farm wagon for moving our tractor will one day double for moving bales.

I've ordered a European-Style hay rake and will now hand-scythe some rye-grass right here at home to see how well it does. I will get a few more bales locally before practicing on the big field at Buckingham.

Old School Tools: Apinol

Since 1903, "America's Oldest Green Product" has soothed and cleansed those who work or play outdoors. Until I met my wife in 1989, I had never heard of this strange product from Alabama.

When Nancy began to talk about "Alpine Oil," which is how she and her family pronounce it, I thought it was something from a pine tree. Sure enough, Apinol is made from pine oil, and when you put it on a mosquito or tick bite, sore toe, or big scrape the sting is brief and the relief is long-lasting. You do, however, smell like pine-scented cleaning products.

We say around here that "it will help anything but a broken heart," and I'm not sure it would not  help in those cases, too. I have made a poultice from it, using cotton balls and medical tape, and let it sit on a blister or wound overnight. It relieves swelling and quickens healing.

Apinol can be hard to find. Locally, an Westbury Pharmacy carries it, and I have seen it listed on Amazon. I suspect this product, which has only changed from a glass to a plastic spray bottle in my many years using it, will be with us until 2103 and beyond.  Unlike many legacy brands, Apinol knows how to build a customer base and has a decent Web presence.

Tell your friends this summer, when the critters bite and scratch. I have not tried it as an insect repellant, but it's a soothing friend to have in a miserable time of year down South.

A Barn Find Of Another Kind

image credit: item on sale at Etsy. Get over there and buy one!

I hope to write here occasionally about "old-school tools" that faded when newer technologies came on the scene. Quite often, with farm equipment, newer is better since new technologies include ergonomic and safety features that could save a life on the farm.

Not so with label-embossers. I have never heard of anyone dying from embossing plastic labels. The technology, from Dymo, was wildly popular in the early 70s. I still find my name in tidy white letters on items from that era. The little 3/8-inch-wide strips of plastic last forever, unless they get wet and the adhesive fails. For a Type-A personality like my own, facing a huge barn of loosely sorted fasteners, tractor parts, and other cryptic hardware, two things can curb the clutter: shelving and labeling.

Shelving is easy for me, as are bins and carpenter's chests for sorting the little stuff. But how to identify items with a quick glance and not the opening of 25 little drawers? Enter a 1970s Dymo M6 label embosser, new in box, found under a shelf. It's not a '67 Pontiac GTO or an M-1 Carbine rifle, two things I would love to find in my barn, but it's still a delight and will get far more use.

Dymo still makes these older devices, though the company focuses its efforts of higher-tech and higher-cost paper labelers that I see at office-supply stores.

One becomes less fastidious when living in the country, but some urban habits of mine will never pass. One is a belief that a clean countertop and well sorted tools save hours of time. I also have an OCD-person's memory for things that interest me. I can tell you where nearly every can of the 100 shades of paint are in our barn, where the galvanized screws are not, where to find cable ties, jack-stands, gear oil, or which cabinet holds the PTO parts for our old John Deere M.

As with gardening, there's an "illusion of control" at play here. Early Spring makes a garden, or a workshop, look manageable. It's one reason I prefer the cool-season months. Once the humidity and heat set in, things go to hell fast after 10am.

So it's time to get to work, making those labels!

Garden Journal: Late Planting

I used to keep a "Garden Book" of my observations on paper, and I still may record facts there, but a blog provides an excellent record-keeping device in the form of tagging and fodder in case this project morphs into a book. So here goes for what has been a brand-new garden.

We had to pony up for a cubic yard (about 1500 lbs) to good bedding soil from a local firm specializing in soil, mulch, and gravel. That began but did not end the Kitchen Garden just outside our back door. We fenced with short, green-enameled welded wire, fastened to 4' tall treated posts set in quick-setting cement. That took only a day and the seedlings are now in there.

Yesterday we also seeded the back half of the big garden, really a field, with yellow clover as a soil amendment and as forage for the honey bees. The big garden, 88' by 42', awaits fencing 10' tall and with subterranean barriers for Phil, our groundhog. I don't relish shooting Phil, but the second he gets into the garden, Phil will learn "Rule 303" as quickly as any character in the old film Breaker Morant.  Groundhogs can excavate 700 pounds of earth for a single burrow and dig down a foot, so the old chain-link sections, rolled and buried about the field's perimeter, should keep Phil at bay.

Given our recent move to this land, I did not get my basil and tomatoes germinated on our porch but instead purchased them from firms doing business at Maymont's annual Herbs Galore show. In particular, for my fellow Central Virginians, I recommend Amy's Garden for veggies and A Thyme to Plant for herbs of all sorts. I tend to raise from organic stock or seed, but in the case of tomatoes I went with old favorites among the hybrids suited for a clay soil. Heirlooms have brought tears to me and mortality to my plants, so I  chose Mortgage Lifter, Big Beef, and a Roma variety. In my experience, they have all shown good VFN resistance. The only amendment these plants will need is some calcium spray as they flower and begin to set fruit. This will prevent blossom-end rot.

Tricycle Gardens, a local urban-farming nonprofit that has revitalized empty lots all over the metro area of Richmond, sold me rhubarb.  I love the plant and recall it fondly from my grad-school years in Indiana. In a couple of years, our patch should produce enough for pies and rhubarb divisions for friends.

With a cool and generally wet Spring, I can get away with planting this late. Corn will be sprouted indoors and transplanted to deter crows from picking seeds, and cukes will grow up and over a trellis. Soon the hot weather will arrive. We are lucky for this rain and coolness, even if it delays our gardens.