Old-School Tools: Barge Cement Update

 

I do not place advertising on this site. In a time when many driving down what we once called "the Information Superhighway" looks like a tacky highway full of ugly, intrusive billboards, I hope you appreciate that.

I do, however, endorse products that have worked well for me. One of them is an old-timer, Barge Cement. In its original formula that I have written about here, it has saved many a shoe from the landfill, as I found when a pair of slip-on work boots nearly lost their sole. With the parts cleaned and clamped, Barge provide me with years of service beyond what would have been the end of the boot. Here's the form of Barge you might find on brick-and-mortar shelves. 

 

Check the web site listed below for specialty versions, like one I've recently ordered online.

Recently I've another tough job needing adhesives, fixing weather-stripping / dent guards on a farm truck, before I repaint them. Regular Barge, the shoe adhesive, will not bond to all plastics, and who knows what GM used for that piece? Enter Barge Super Stik. I learned that the firm offers a range of cements with differing set-up times and curing times. I recommend checking their chart to verify if the materials to be bonded will work with a particular adhesive.

Fixing stuff is at odds with the ethos of Huxley's Brave New dystopia that we seem to inhabit, but I'd rather mend it than end it. That applied to a 1951 tractor I got back in service a decade ago; I changed the oil and mowed grass with it this week. It applies to shoes and other things, if you wish to say no to a consumerist "paradise" of cheap goods meant to wear out and be tossed into our brimming landfills.

So be subversive: go out and fix something. Barge is a premium product at a premium price, but if you follow directions you will not be disappointed.

Call Some Guy? When Do You Do That?

After the remnants of a tropical storm brought 5 inches of rain to us in two days, our well-water again grew cloudy. Our well-house, below ground level, had flooded. 

Living with a well is always an adventure. 

Was it time to call some guy? My old man, whose tool-kit consisted of a claw-hammer and 16D nail, would say that if those two items did not fix something. "Boy, we better call some guy!"

I have done this thing myself, DIYer that I am. We have had this water issue before, after an earthquake (!) knocked a huge chunk of concrete out of the well's casing. Silt would pour into the well with heavy rain. I called some guy.

That time we spent thousands of dollars to get the casing repaired. Those repairs included a pallet-load of cement to fill a void as large as a closet and a UV filter installed for the water line. 

This time, we rode it out. Here's why.

Rural life involves lots of trade-offs, not least of which involves the expense of getting work done by others. Most of the time, to save money and remain as self-reliant as possible, we "make do or do without," so we have filtered water for a week as the ground-water level dropped. 

The well was, after all, undamaged. To have a firm come out and pump out the well house would cost a lot of money. I have a jet-pump, but I also have a day job that has gotten very busy of late. So out came the water filters for camping. 

No amount of self-reliance equates to self-sufficiency, a pernicious American myth I've critiqued here before. I put down my test of tests to this: is the cost of the repair vs. the time I'd need to do it myself so high that I am willing to surrender X hours of my time, bust knuckles, maybe risk an injury?

When the answer is "yes," I get out the tool box. If "no," I call some guy. That is not a defeat, but it's also not an invitation to be helpless and not learn skills.

No offense, but when something minor goes wrong at the rental property, my tenants never fix things that I can fix in ten minutes. First, they have me and I work just up the street. Second, there is fear of making something worse. My current tenants have some "skills" and can at least diagnose problems. I've had others without even a screwdriver or pair of pliers in the house. It's a form of learned helplessness I simply do not understand, but at least the rent gets paid by these good folks.

So learn some skills, but learn your limitations, too.

If you are an entrepreneur, I strongly recommend setting up a handy-man firm called "Some Guy" with the motto "Got a home problem? Call Some Guy!” That’s 1-800-Some Guy or  callsomeguy.com." 

That URL is not taken, so get busy. There's a fortune to be made.

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! 

2021 Fare-Thee-Wells and Thanks

 I said a year ago that for me, 2021 began with hope. I end it the same way, with hope and gratitude.

This blog soldiers along at a slow pace these days, as I've many obligations--writerly and otherwise--to fill my hours. But it would be remiss if I did not pause in the final hours of a gone year to give thanks. It makes a lot of sense, instead of drinking too much and then sounding a noise-maker at the stroke of midnight.  

So what am I thankful for, in the Tractorpunk scheme of things?

First, that my wife and I have the health to continue our DIY lives. In spite of a fall for her and arthritis for me, we still remain flexible, strong, and active. Today I moved 600 pounds of chicken feed into storage, after we made a trip to the factory where it is made in the Shenandoah Valley. I'm thankful we found that factory, to cut our operating costs for non-GMO chicken feed. Yes, we must raise egg prices in 2022, but not by the margin we feared, once inflation reared its ugly head.

I'm also thankful that my DIY skills continue to ramp up. I replaced the wire harnesses on our old John Deere M tractor and rebuilt the carburetor for the second time in a decade. With electronic ignition and all that includes, the 70-year-old beast still can mow the grass as well as when it was new. The work left the machine down for months and that delay had its frustrations, but in the end, I learned a lot. That's the satisfaction of much mechanical work. 

Beyond that, I'm finishing the year by putting old-fashioned wood weatherboard siding to replace some of the vinyl on our house. I planed it myself, from wood my brother-in-law sawed, from logs of trees my late father-in-law felled. From tree to board, in one family. We are not Amish (lots of power tools got employed) but there are few manual joys to rival making your own building materials. Eventually all the vinyl siding will be gone: cement board will replace some in hard-to-paint places, but where I have wood available, that will go up instead.

Third, I'm thankful that my wife could retire. So many of my friends cannot contemplate retiring, but our rather frugal lives and my day job, plus the miracle of compounded interest, let Nancy leave full-time teaching July 1. It has been a rough semester for her colleagues with COVID and a return to school of children not accustomed to sitting in a classroom for a few semesters. Now Nan can focus on her tasks with our LLC and do some part-time work for the school system, as I drift toward retirement in a few years. I'm planning to get a first-year writing textbook published, which is no easy task in this publishing market, but at the same time, I've published pieces in Style Weekly, back from the grave thanks to a purchase by Virginia Public Media. I've also written for Hemmings Daily and Modeling Madness (plastic models, not insane fashionistas).

Finally, I'm thankful for the locally owned businesses that have weathered the pandemic. Good Foods Grocery expanded and diversified its selection of foods, and it offers a quieter alternative to Ellwood Thompson's, another favorite. Several restaurants we love hung in despite the virus and labor shortages, and most of our favorites have been recently crowded, including the Athens Tavern, where we held our rehearsal dinner in 1992. We have a new local hardware store, too, to compete with Pleasants. Then we discovered a fabric store just down the street for projects, too. At Virginia Beach, we found The Barclay Cottage B&B where we found gracious hosts for a short getaway. We met a second farm-sitter, too, to help with the animals when we are away.

Not everything we love endured, of course. Our favorite wine store, Sonnys, shut its doors a few months ago, but that was more due to a greedy out-of-state landlord than anything else.Drive through Richmond, and you'd find more than few old businesses shuttered.

So we should count the losses, but at the same time, I'd start by counting what endures. There's a lot to fix, but we start where we can: locally.

Maybe that process can begin in 2022.  

Sunset image from Wikipedia

Silk Purses & Sow's Ears: 2020, Farewell

To write this post I decided to look back at my first post for this blog, where I decided that I'd not get political or snarky. I think I've avoided politics, anyhow. In that first post I also said that the tone would be positive here.

Thus this farewell to 2020, a bad year by most accounts, but I'd claim that 1862 or 1942 were far worse, existentially. What can be said good about a difficult year?

First, if you are reading this, consider the alternative: you might not be around to read it, right? Second, think of stuff we get to leave behind. COVID is still with us, along with economic malaise, racial tensions, and the urgent problem of climate change. But one thing is leaving us. Yes, I'm thinking of one particularly hateful person, a walking toxic cloud of entitlement and narcissism. May his remaining days on this planet be miserable. Nuff said. Begone.

Third, think back to the good things you managed to accomplish. I focus a great deal of the DIY infrastructure of rural life here, so I'll share one odd project that changed me in 2020.

We've been gifted (cursed, I'd have said in 2013, when Tractorpunk began) with three 40' shipping containers. One has a broken back, and the rain comes right in. I tried for years to be rid of this thing, and I hated even looking at it. We could not give it away, as we'd done with a few other white elephants on the property. Here's an old truck body, once a den for foxes and discarded cabinets now hanging on the walls of our utility room (the cabinets, not the foxes).

 

For the 40' container, no roll-back truck was going to stop by to get it. I'd contemplated bringing the shop class down from the community college nearby to cut it up, so they'd get practice with their torches.

Then it hit me: that container would work as well as the other two (spanned by a roof to make a run in) if I could stop the rain water from getting in. I kept looking down at it from the barn roof we were coating with a sealant. I don't know how many times I said "you know, we might be able to do something with that stupid thing..."

So first, I cut a hole in the side that I optimistically called a "door" and walked around; this made life easier, as the container's doors are so heavy that the Incredible Hulk would grunt, opening them. A puddle of frozen water had collected, but the wooden floor was solid and I figured we might as well improve it for dry storage.  

To make a long story short, look at the photo that leads off the post.  With my farmhand Quentin, we stretched a line to find level, then built our own rafters and put them atop sill boards; we used old lumber and scrap for 90% of the build. We got everything straight to within 1/16" of that line, and mason lines do not lie when they are taut.

Once we had a metal roof connected to posts set in cement, I had an equipment shelter for plows, disc harrows, and other implements that had been slowly rusting in the rain. Now they are on dry gravel where I can wire-brush, prime, and spray the lot with a coat of new paint. I'll be able to back the tractors up easily to each and attach them for field work.  Others gave sage advice: Jeff, thanks for the reminder that a a fascia board in front will prevent sag between the posts. I found some old boards today in the lumber room that will finish the job.

This transformation of a hated item took a long time. For six years I'd glowered at the damned container, until one day it hit me: make it useful. Why did that take so long?

If you know me, you know I relate to places and objects better than I do to people. Working on stuff brings me joy, as does travel or the allure of timeless landmarks from my childhood. Conversely, too many people are energy-vampires. I just told a friend from my teens who wanted to reconnect "no thanks." I'm not that person any longer and I don't need a "friend" who is only going to draw upon shared memories of our 20s. I was glad to be shut of him, back then. Again, begone. The years are shorter now.

Yet I can be wrong here: even people can change, like that container. Everyone is wearing masks, now. That heartens me.

I'm not sure which J-Bolts, bags of cement, and treated boards would do the trick on a nasty or willfully ignorant human, but those of you with better people skills, don't give up trying to help them, to stop the leaks and frozen spots.

I say that as a guy who turned 60 and now has a couple of long-term health issues. But maybe the next 25 years (if I'm lucky) I have left won't be so miserable as 2020?  The Science-Fiction-sounding year 2021 dawns with a bit of hope, with longer periods of daylight, and a vaccine.

Let's get busy building something worth keeping.

Boots Update: One Barge Sank. The Other Sailed. Redwing Flew!

Footwear makes or breaks hard work outside.

I wrote late in 2019 about my experiment with Barge contact cement.

I'm still a believer, though one of my sets of boots blew out after a month. Here's why.

My Statesman Wellingtons have a thick rubber sole attached to a flimsy boot bottom, some of it no more than a layer of fabric. Despite clamping the boots after gluing, it was only a matter of time before they blew out again. Off to the landfill for them!

My Cabelas slip-on low boots, however, are far sturdier, in both the lower portion of the boot just below the upper and the material of the sole.  They have held up to two months of walking and really hard work after some Barge and a few furniture clamps, overnight.

I won't miss those cheaply made Wellies. Instead, I'm going to try a heavy waterproofed leather boot with a Vibram sole. I've a lot of experience waterproofing leather, something that will need to be done every few months.

Mending is still better than ending, but sometimes you have  to cut your losses. No glue can fix "cheapass."

And no one in their right mind would call Redwing boots cheap, let alone cheapass. I've owned two pairs since I began my crazy apprenticeship with Big Ed, my father in law, in the early 2000s. I knew I'd want the best possible boots for working outdoors, ones that had steel toes and shanks, and ones that could be repaired.

That's where Redwing comes in a cut above other shoemakers (Mephisto comes to mind, but I've yet to see their work boots). Both companies share a belief that their shoe is so useful, long-term, that they'll recondition them for substantially less than the purchase price. Redwing offers a variety of repairs. The photo at the top shows my newer (grin) pair of Redwings. The bottom photo shows how they came back to me. I didn't expect brand new; these are not boots you wear to a formal dinner.

What I did except, and got, were new soles, repaired grommets, reconditioned leather, and new laces. Redwing packed all that in a new shoe box and included a can of their leather conditioner.

Price, with shipping? About $125.

On my older boots, not pictured, they capped a toe that had been worn down to steel. These Jed-Clampett stompers are my backups now. I should have them bronzed.

The test of any shoe, of course, is how they feel outdoors, in all weathers, for a long day's work. While the Wellingtons are not the ticket for that, the Cabelas and Redwing boots are top notch for eight, even twelve hours of work.

Still searching for a slip-on, knee-high snakeproof pair of boots. Or perhaps knee-high gaiters to go over the Redwings. Too many close calls last year, and my Kevlar chaps get hot doing brushwork in high summer.Working hillside, where a Copperhead might be above me, I'll still wear protection up to the waist.

Shop accordingly, and for the long haul. Happy stomping!

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.

Still Insanely Local

I try to avoid all big-box stores though I'm not immune: Home Depot stocks a store-brand Behr wood stain that I find superior to more expensive brands. Lowes is a good place to find Rustoleum paint and cheap, mediocre-quality lumber for projects (though I found that a local mill, Siewers, beat Lowes on prices for trim...they make it themselves and it is superior). I hit the big boxes for good prices on things like cement board that I use occasionally.

In the end, however, nothing beats a small local firm, Pleasants Hardware. Their midtown store closed, a tragedy for those with old homes seeking obscure hardware. I recall how it opened, on generator power, and endured thefts of saws and generators, during the craziness after Hurricane Isabel. I bought my first Stihl saw from them that day, using it while living in town; my mom had a huge elm come down in her yard and it needed clearing before the power came on; it pulled down the power company's main service line!

Some Pleasants' alums opened Anthony's Decorative Hardware, a place I can still get wrought-iron details like shutter dogs and hooks, since Nan and I make our own working shutters for our house.
 
Though that great old midtown store is gone, a cooperative (Do it Best) kept the branch stores and the Pleasants ethos alive: you'll find well staffed locations where the folks know tools, supplies, and other products. Unlike a big box, an employee will come up and help you find what you need. Look around and you'll find True-Value and Ace hardwares. Go in.

Lots of folks shop online; I do, too when I cannot find what I need locally. Shipping is often free. Yet recently on two occasions, Pleasants had something I could not verify online and would have cost me to pay shipping. Just yesterday, I discovered that I'd stupidly over-tightened the bolts holding the bar on my larger Sthil chainsaw. The studs are set in heavy-duty plastic, not steel, and the threads stripped out. Stihl, knowing about dunces like this writer, makes larger-sized studs, but they cannot be had anywhere online. Finally I found a Web site, but then I decided to call Pleasants: they will have the parts for me, for the same price in a week, perhaps two. The same thing happened recently when I needed new bars for both saws. Pleasants actually beat the price from several online dealers!

If brick-and-mortar retail wants to survive in the age of Amazon, merchants need to provide something the giants cannot: bespoke service, deep knowledge, and instant advice. They need to remember you with more than an algorithm based upon your past purchases and some cookies stored in your browser's cache.

Some locals don't get this: there's a NAPA nearby with a notoriously grumpy staff, unless you have lived here all your life. They get a bit nicer when you pay them in cash (I always do). But usually I order what I need online or at a big-chain auto store. Some of them are franchises of Car Quest or NAPA, and I fast learned which have the best staff. They get my money.

Four Essential Shop Tools (+1)

Having lived this way for nearly five years (!) I took some time to take stock, walking around the shop and just thinking "which of these things has proven most useful to me?"

Here are a few answers.

The Vise

The Columbian vise pictured above was in my grandfather's basement for decades, then my dad's garage for twenty years. As far as I know, neither of them ever used it. My grandfather was a junk-man and tinkerer. He probably bought the vise for its potential value as scrap steel. His basement was full of such things, and it's rather hard to imagine one making a living peddling junk these days, when our thrift stores are chock-full of ancestors' possessions no Millennial apparently wants to have.

But I digress. When I saw the vise the first time, I knew I wanted it. The solidity of the thing! It radiates the sort of sleeves-rolled-up, baseball-on-the-AM-radio DIY of a different era. And the metal is as formidable as the Battleship Wisconsin, another relic of that time.

My pipe-cleaner arms of my early teens could barley budge it. My dad knew its worth as a good tool, so after his father passed, dad stuck it in a corner of his garage. My dad's idea of DIY consisted of "call some guy" after his two tools--a claw hammer and 16d nail--would not solve the problem. All right, I'm exaggerating. Dad had a set of pliers too, if he could find them in the kitchen drawer.

When Dad passed, I grabbed the vise and asked my father-in-law to media-blast it. He then primed it, and I painted it with a heavy-duty monument paint that should last down the decades.  But the vise is not bit of hipster decor. I have used it many times for many projects. The jaws grip firmly enough for hammering metal into curves or bending bar-stock metal, though it occasionally serves the prosaic purpose of holding a #2 pencil that holds a spool of fishing line, when I restring my reels. The top of it can be used for cold-hammering metal flat, rather like an anvil.

So this tool is my #1 go-to in the shop. I could not live as I do without it.

The Drill Press

I've never owned one of these before, but my father-in-law left one on the property and it works wonderfully. The trick to a good press is that is spins slowly but has enormous torque. I've bored through sheet steel a quarter of an inch thick, with no problems. I use a cutting oil to make things go smoothly and the motor does not suffer undue wear.

I don't know much about modern drill-presses, but this one has real staying power. There are so many uses for it that I'd need a chapter of a book to list them all. But the press gives precision when precision is needed, or when very large bores for bolts need drilling. I used the press to make seat bracket adapters for a car I'm restoring and our 1950 John Deere M tractor.

Note the safety glasses nearby. Though the bit spins slowly, slivers of metal are no joke when flying through the air!

The Bench Grinder

These are salted around our property like Dandelions. I must have found six in various states of disrepair, including one very new and very cheaply made Chinese one in the box. It has no torque; if you press down on the wheel, you can slow it down! It is, however, perfect for light materials.

The best of the lot is shown, a vintage Craftsman from when Sears not only was the King of Retail, not a dying memory, the innovator purveyor of just about everything America's then burgeoning middle class needed for the good life.

The best grinders offer a work light, sturdy tempered-glass shields to protect one's face from sparks, and two grits of wheel or a wheel and wire brush (my favorite combo). As with the drill press, the torque on a good grinder can be immense. I usually have to hold work by hand to grind it, so I wear thick gloves to keep my hands from burning, and I never get distracted. Imagine having a finger pulled into the metal guard by the grinding wheel!

Grinders work for wood too; my first experience was as a 10 year old, making a Pinewood Derby car when I was a Scout.

The Miter-Box Saw

I own two, one of them a professional model Bosch with a 12" blade that is heavy and rides around on a folding stand. It  does great work, but the handiest saw of the lot I own is a little Hitachi, one that cost me less and $100. It is light enough to tote to the job site in one hand, and the 10" blade big enough to do all sorts of chores. It angles in both directions

and can accommodate lots of different sorts of blades.

I have used this little saw for wood (of course) but with a masonry blade, I've cut HardiePlank paneling for a siding job. An installer told me that his firm saves old saw blades and mounts them backward to cut such cement-board planking, as clever an adaptive reuse as I've encountered.

Safety with such a saw involves reading the manual and slowing down when making cuts. I wear googles and make sure I know where every finger is, so one day I don't come up, um, short.

That's four essential tools, but then I remembered my own example of adaptive reuse

The Floor Safe

I could not figure out what to do with a floor safe that had no working dial. Someone drilled all that

out years ago, but there it sat in my shop.

Recently I purchased a few fireworks for a 4th of July Party we didn't have. Where could I store them, safely? Then the old safe came to mind. I put them  and my jug of gunpowder for reloading in the old safe. There's a plastic jug of Alliant Bullseye pistol powder in there now.

The door shuts well and only needs to be pulled open. The thing weighs a few hundred pounds, incidentally.

So if you find a broken safe for sale, cheap, get some helpers to bring it to your shop.

Pro tip: If  you do reload, keep your primers elsewhere. Those can explode. Gunpowder only burns until it's confined in a cartridge or firework.

Get a second broken safe! Or even one that works for free. I see a 1966 post-office safe on Craig's List locally, an 1100 pound beauty. The catch?

It is "on wheels but is located in a small room in a basement that does have a walk out...however the walk out is into the yard not a driveway, so this is going to be a challenge. But if you want a cool big old safe and like a challenge, contact us."

Have at it! You can never have enough safes.

Guns, Varmints, and the Farm

Almost no subject divides Americans as much as firearms. I probably use one more often than most civilians I know, mostly for shooting four-legged varmints at close range.

Yet I hesitate to write about guns here; the issue is so fraught with disagreement.

If you live on a farm, the answer to "what gun do I need?" probably does not mean "no gun." I leave that up to you. To me firearms are tools and owning them is not about defending one's property from humans; it means shooting critters. As I've written before here, my state's laws prevent me from "re-homing" varmints caught in my live traps. I do release skunks right where I find them, because shooting them is a nightmare of chemical consequences. Besides, they are cute and seem to enjoy my method of releasing them (itself worth an entire post). The same goes for the rare squirrel I catch; the hawks here make them a rarity.

Groundhogs, possums, and raccoons? Not so much. Kaboom.

In writing about shooting, I will not discuss the uses an urbanite or suburbanite might have for a firearm: deterring another human being or, failing that, killing him and not yourself or a family member. All I'll say on that count is "take some basic classes, shoot a lot at a gun range, rent various semi-automatics and revolvers, then pick a weapon with which you feel comfortable, not the coolest-looking or biggest gun. Keep it locked up and near where it can be gotten quickly by the right person." And though I have a conceal-carry license, I have yet to tote around a handgun. I might bag one to go to the range, but conceal-carry is a fine art. One needs to take holster-qualifying and defensive handgun classes. Such training is worth every cent, as your life or another's may depend upon your skills.

There are few classes in good judgement, so I leave that up to you and your inner conversation to resolve.

I also don't have enough recent experience with deer or waterfowl hunting to advise anyone there who might want to bag a buck or be wet and miserable in a duck blind. More on deer next year, as I'm going to haul my WWII era Lee-Enfield .303 up into tree stands and, if lucky, get some venison for our freezer.

For pest animals that can elude even well designed fences to murder your chickens, little ones can be live-trapped and then shot at close range with a .22 LR. I use a simple bolt-action Remington, a single-shot weapon that had been in my wife's family for many years. At 12 feet or so, it's deadly accurate though I swiftly dispatch my "visitor" with a single round to the head and a second round to make sure the creature does not suffer.  Such .22s are not expensive, and they are simple to maintain. Most such bolt-actions are.

Then there are venomous snakes. After my close calls last year, I've decided to open-carry a Taurus Model 85 .38 Special with #6 shot shells. I do not wish to get in garden-hoe range of a big Copperhead again. They can move FAST, so I'd prefer ten feet with the .38.  In the picture below, the shooter apparently had a "near disaster" at 5 feet. I'd, for one, have stood further away and not shot at anything crawling over cement.  Perhaps he posed the dead snake there, but he killed a 5' long Copperhead not unlike the one that nearly bit me.

I'll keep the gun on my hip when mowing fields and when working around brush-piles. The weapon holds 5 shots. One could, with practice, carry a specialized snake-killer of the sort shown here. If you want to save money, however, go for a used .38 revolver. What is called "Gun Culture 2.0" with its love of tactical rifles and high-capacity polymer guns has pushed these older and dead reliable (pardon the pun) steel guns to the side. One only needs a few shots for a snake encounter.

Such a simple weapon can still be upgraded; I'm in the process of zeroing in laser sights integral to the revolver's grips. Such sights are not cheap, and if the batteries die, you had best have trained with the "iron sights" native to your gun. Moreover, do not be a skinflint on a holster. I've no recommendations there, though I like what I read about the traditional leather belt-holsters from Wright Leather works.  There's also a local company right across the river from me, Master's, that makes some nice products. I'll let readers now how they work out.

The only "cool" gun I'll note is the Taurus Judge and Smith and Wesson Governor. These large revolvers shoot .410 shotgun shells or .45 Long Colt rounds. I give a slight edge to the Governor because it also shoots .45 ACP, my favorite handgun caliber for human varmints. You would need a BIG snake for either the Judge or Governor; I'll pass but I'd love to shoot one.

Like these large revolvers, larger critters are beyond my scope(s) but for smaller ones I spot and can safely shoot at a distance, I have used an old Marlin .22 Magnum rifle with a telescopic sight. That round is longer than a .22 LR and packs a bigger punch, especially in a hollowpoint. Just because one chooses to shoot an animal does not mean one should be cruel. Practice until you can be sure of a killing shot, or don't take the shot at all.

Once I saw a rabid raccoon stumbling around in broad daylight. I hit it twice with the .22 Magnum and, in a Zombie-Movie moment, the animal flinched, then turned to stare at me as my wife said "get a bigger gun." My shotgun was far away at the time. Thankfully, the raccoon staggered off to die. I'd not recommend an AR-15 for such work but if you prefer a rifle, some new bolt-actions chamber the AR's .223 high-velocity round. Whatever the weapon, you'll need to zero in your scope well, and nothing I've found works better than a laser bore-sight. It goes in the barrel of an (unloaded!) rifle. The shooter need only adjust windage and elevation of the scope until it lines up with the laser's dot.

I've not spent much time writing about shotguns, though I own a very old Mossberg New Haven 12 gauge pump shotgun that I used for sporting clays as well as goose, deer, and duck hunting thirty years ago. It's reliable and simple, though there's little I need it for these days as I rarely need to shoot anything at range. My chickens and garden would be downrange now when critters appear, which is why I adopted a "trap and shoot" policy. My mantra for shotguns has always been "the simpler the better," and like the Remington .22,  one cannot find a much simpler weapon.  I admit a fondness for double-barrel shotguns. Nothing could be simpler, except throwing a rock.

So how much for a simple Tractorpunk arsenal? For used guns checked out by a competent gunsmith, less than a thousand bucks will buy a long arm, revolver, cleaning supplies, and ammo to equip the rural landowner, not including training and a gun safe.

Then, mindfully, let the lead fly if and when you must.

On The Country's Own Terms

I ran across an antique postcard (remember them?) today. A couple has walked out of a country house and needs to visit “the Necessary.” That means crossing a moonlit yard to a little building labeled “this is it.”  Just don’t drop that lantern and spill the oil. The Honeypot might go right up in flames.

Having recently visited a preserved 1930 Farm at Peaks of Otter, VA, I have to say “that was not so long ago.” Yet trips to the outhouse are forgotten. So is carrying a lantern. So are my rituals of country life, including, as I recently discovered, always double-checking for snakes.

The country slowly makes you live according to its terms, though on a beastly hot and humid day like today, I am very grateful for air-conditioning. The router is unplugged for a passing thunderstorm, something we never did in town, but otherwise we might be in the middle of a city.

Until you step outdoors.  When I did that the other night, about half past nine, I stepped on or just beside a poisonous snake stretched out on our kitchen steps.

Fate was kind to me; either the Copperhead struck and missed (they do miss sometimes) or chose to slither off. I heard the sound and figured it to be a black snake. That elicited only a gasp of surprise and a loud curse, as I’m accustomed to the non-venemous snakes that eat our mice and live in barn and garage to festoon the rafters with their shucked skins. A bite would mean a tetanus shot. I did not let fly a blood-curdling scream, as it might had I spotted the markings on the serpent’s back.

Then I did see the snake clearly. It was a steamy night, but suddenly I felt very, very cold. My wife grabbed a flashlight and spotlit the intruder against a cement wall—no place to fire a shotgun— while I got the longest-handled garden hoe in the shop. Several chops later, I was more than certain it was dead. It’s possible our snake was heading for a White Oak to eat cicadas. Copperheads like to do that between dusk and midnight in the summer. I’m going to check at the base of the tree (from a safe distance) with a spotlight to see if I find a snake party.

Once I refused to kill a Copperhead my late father-in-law turned up when he moved a fallen branch way back in the woods, where part of a tree had fallen across a farm road. It was a tiny thing, perhaps a foot long. It just looked up at us, not coiled.  He walked on and I caught up. He said “kill it?” and when I said no he asked why. “We’re in his house back here,” I said. His reply, with a glare, was “this is MY house.”

I still could not have killed that snake unless I had to. But in or by my house? Every single time, just as I’ve sent to their just rewards chicken-killing possums and raccoons. Just as I've dispatched dozens of garden-ravaging groundhogs.

These are the terms of the country. Not all wildlife is cute close up. Watch your step. Keep the grass short near the house. Sweep up the maple leaves falling early in the mini-drought we get every July. Copperheads are marked to look just like those leaves.

Never forget the above. Never. Yet when suburbia overtakes rural areas to ruin them, the newcomers (and I’m a newcomer of a different sort) clear, mow, poison, pave until the Wild is at such a remove that it will not come back, at least until our unsustainable civilization wises up to the need for living in harmony the Wild or collapses into a new Dark Age.

In a way I’m glad for that snake. He can stay in his house, and even cross the grass to the oak tree. I use a flashlight at night in the yard. But the step? Too close.

I tell city people “you could not live out here happily.” First, they’d not be able to wear flip-flops in the yard. Even the mention of ticks terrifies. Have you noticed how often in home-improvement stores and advertisements for home products that the white suburban families cavort on their hardwood floors or lawns barefoot?

Do not try that here. Ever.

Now I check the steps with a flashlight when I go to bring in the dog from her guard duties, thankful of all the places too far for commuters to drive to jobs, places where agriculture is still viable on scales large or small, places that cannot be so easily tamed into “Deer Run,” or “River View” or whatever place or species has been ruined to leave only a name.

No-Kill Fence?

After blasting four groundhogs and having Meatball the dog kill another while visiting with the owner of delli Carpini Farm, I figured that there must be a better way.

In the long run, a dog pen around the garden perimeter will accomplish a lot, as we plan to have herding dogs who live outside. They will go on walks to pee the perimeter, and this seems to keep animals away from gardens.

Now that we have chickens, too, there's the issue of predators after more than an ear of corn. I recently found a dead gray fox near our driveway, and that's a chicken-eater who can climb fences. I'd like to keep our wildlife alive, but at a distance. Killing everything simply seems wasteful, since we need wild predators and prey to keep the forest and field healthy. And of course such slaughter is impractical without poison baits or an army of hunters. I reject the former practice as evil and the latter as a waste of time and beer.

A mistake made in 2012 was in fencing. We have a fence that deer won't jump, thanks to height and some white streamers at 8' intervals, 8' off the ground. Ten feet would be ideal, but given that the garden is at the peak of a hill, it works. What has not worked is the game fencing itself for smaller animals. Field fencing consists of welded wire, with either with the same sized holes (usually 4 by 2 inches) or small holes at the bottom, larger ones up top.

No one but a hawk or barn cat will stop field mice, but groundhogs and raccoons can climb fences until they get high enough to slip through a big hole or go right over the top.

Thus, out come the rifle and live-traps. This year, however, I did more reading and discovered what some bloggers call "the floppy fence." I credit Debra Graff of Square Foot Abundance for inspiring me, as I found her post about fencing (ahem, a "fence post") and studied her design.

I have combined this fencing method with my technique of burying fencing to deter diggers and building everything around a firm barrier of 6' game fence. It works this way:

• 4' chicken wire, with 1' laid flat on the ground away from the game fence and buried
• Next 2' attached by wire and cable ties to the game fence
• Final 1' left to flop outward (Ms. Graff uses 2 or 3 feet. Let's see if my cheapass version works)

When an animal climbs up such a barrier, it gets to the top-most bit to falls back and, one hopes, off the fencing. Several writers who have tried this report that corner posts and gates are weak points. I have fixed the corners with extra chicken wire, also flopping out.

Such a fence is expensive. We have sunk over 1000 dollars into posts, game wire, cement, and now, the chicken wire. I do build my own gates, so that saves a lot of money.  We have seen a great deal less pilfering this year, with only one groundhog caught and killed in the garden proper. Thanks, Meatball!

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.