The Day Everything Broke

Today, so close to Halloween, offered up a share of tricks.

Last week, we cruised in our 1968 Chevy truck to go to an apple orchard. I rewarded the truck by putting it on the lift and changing the oil. Afterward, it would not start.

I was not quite ready  to curse. When our John Deere 1250 backhoe would not start, I cursed plenty. I needed it for digging holes to plant some bushes and trees.

I cursed in private, then recalled my recent lessons about turning frustration into gratitude.

So I got serious about diagnosis. The truck? I'd flooded it trying to start it by the throttle under the hood instead of the gas pedal. Solution: pull the spark plugs (due for a change anyway) and let it sit on the lift (for whose repair I'm thankful) and try  again when the new plugs come from Amazon (than you, Jeff Bezos: our local auto-parts store was clueless). While I was at it, I prepared to update everything to an electronic ignition: an invisible and relatively cheap (under $400) upgrade that makes starting an antique vehicle vastly easier.

The backhoe? I spent about $150 for a new battery (being thankful that I had diagnosed the starting problem) but after the beast ran for 5 minutes, it quit. Would I curse more?

A little. I cursed once or twice, until I recalled how my talented brother-in-law Joe fixed a similar problem on a different diesel: a small fuel leak made that tractor stall after a few minutes, as the fuel system pressurized.

I checked the lines on our backhoe. Sure enough, a plastic bowl that separates water from fuel had cracked, and fuel leaked out, starving the big Yanmar motor as it warmed up. A bit of epoxy provided a quick repair, lasting long enough to move the tractor and dig one hole in the ground for a shrub.

A new fuel bowl is on its way. 

By the way, I recalled how my father-in-law pinned himself under the rear tire of that selfsame backhoe, when he did something in haste. He survived, a miracle, but was never the same again. Life is short: make haste slowly, or festina lente, as the Ancients Romans said.

Let's face it: machines are easier to fix (and break) than humans, at least if you know something about machines. Yet some of these same Tractorpunk ideas might help with a difficult, even broken, human.

But first, let's dig some big holes in the ground and burn some rubber!

Gleaning Time

This word will be a good one for my workplace blog, where I propose a Word of the Week and Metaphor of the Month.

On the farm, or even in a small garden, gleaning has a strong purpose of connecting us with the final turn of the season of warmth to the colder, darker months ahead. I tend to glean--gather whatever remains from my final heavy harvest--on the day of first frosts. That would be tonight and tomorrow night in Central Virginia!

I filled a bushel basket with some summer squash, a lone cucumber, a few tomatoes, and many, many hot peppers bound for chopping and fermenting. It sounds sad, this last picking of fruits, but really it's a fun way to say "thank you" to the garden beds and "hello!" to fall plantings: broccoli, lettuce, kale, garlic and onions mostly. 

Nan and I then put heavy row cover on the smallest seedlings and trucked giant piles of dying weeds and garden debris to our two compost piles (a long-term one for weeds, a shorter-term pile for soil amendments, leaves, and kitchen scraps).  We spread fresh straw around the new plants we have for fall (Kale appeared just as the basil finished up) and continued to glean lessons from a rather bad year in the garden. Mostly that was my fault: late start, travel in May, laziness in July and August.

 Next year we will change how we manage our raised beds and mowing our paths, and remove any remaining weed-block fabric. We will rotate basil more mindfully (black spot appeared on it at season's end, so it cannot be composted).  We also gleaned some good ideas about planting a second crop of squash in late August, to beat the squash-bug cycle.  One lesson we gleaned involved herbicides: sadly, we cannot manage 300' of fence-line without some judicious application. With a good deal of that fence now covered in thick vines, we'll cut, spray, and maintain it better to keep weeds out and the sun on our garden. We lost a lot of produce to the shade this year. 

That all said, I managed to put up a gallon of tomato sauce in pint jars, nearly that much Blackberry and Fig jam, and get a fair onion crop. The garlic did not get harvested in time, so it sprouted. I gleaned all that; the soft-neck variety will be trimmed and pickled; the hard-necks went right back into a new bed. Next year, hard-necks will be our speciality as they keep so well.

I hope the lessons you gleaned from your gardens help in 2023.

Better Safe Than...Botulism

When my weirdo friend Gary and I were little, as precocious little boys with a love of reading do, we would say the names of ailments and diseases. We would then laugh like busy pint-sized demons.

Leprosy!
Jungle Rot!
Hernia! (This one we thought should be a first name)
Rickets!
Malaria! (Also a name)
Botulism!

Not so funny now, and we've lost Gary (to none of those listed).  For my part, I want to avoid Botulism if I can. When I can. During canning.

I put up a fair quantity of my Middle-Eastern tomato sauce this year, using my typical recipe and adding lemon juice to each jar, as today's varieties are not as acidic as those our grannies grew.

And being stupid, I canned them in a water bath, as I have long recommended at this site. All the jars sealed, but today I'm going to pop the lids, empty the jars, re-sterilize them, add more lemon, reheat the sauce, refill and can the jars in my pressure-cooker canner.

Why all that work? One, I love that sauce. Two, the jury is out on water-bath canning or pressure-cooker canning for tomato sauces, with my canner's manual recommending boiling water for salsa (is my recipe that?) and the National Center for Home Food Preservation (yay academia!) recommending pressure-cooker canning for spaghetti sauces without meat. Here is their FAQ page. They wisely advise on that page "The specific recipe, and sometimes preparation method, will determine if a salsa can be processed in a boiling water canner or a pressure canner. A process must be scientifically determined for each recipe."

So let's call my sauce vegetarian spaghetti  (without even one meatball and therefore, no bread. Google that one). And I will use the pressure-cooker method the National Center recommends, since it guarantees that food reaches 240 degrees. That will kill off any bacteria that can cause botulism. 

Boiling water is not hot enough.

Friends, do not trust all the homesteading and DIY-bloggers on this matter. Go with the scientists, and good luck with your late-season food prep.

All The Rain At One Time: Hurricane Season Again

I've written here before about the feeling of living in a shooting gallery as tropical storms and hurricanes roar over ever more frequently.

Hurricane Ian follows a track so close to the one from my 2020 post's image that I'll just be lazy and use the image again.

This year we decided to be a little more proactive as Ian approached. It looks like gale-force gusts tomorrow, but no sustained winds of more than 40 miles her hour. The ground was dry, too dry even, this morning, so we hope the rains do not uproot any trees. I did rush out in the final dry hours to plant some lettuce seeds and a row of peas, hoping to cheat Jack Frost.

I also hope we don't lose power, but I filled up two five-gallon containers with potable water, just in case. Our generator cannot run in the rain, so we'd have to rough it a day or so or until power returns. A whole-house generator is now under consideration.

As Ian looked likely we had ordered a few supplies, including a USB-rechargeable Streamlight flashlight; it's our third by that company. It arrived in a soggy box as the first rain-bands hit. Law-enforcement, the military, and first-responders praise the brand. I find them rugged and waterproof. Cheaper lights exist, but you get what  you pay for in a flashlight.

I had to use the new light right out of the box to help Nan find a chick that had gotten itself under a coop. The little critter would have perished in the mid-50s weather we are having, as the storm passes us.

It seems that I forgot flashlights in my earlier list! You can recharge these sorts of lights from your car's power outlet or USB ports. So let's add USB-Rechargeable light with at least 250 lumens to our storm-prep.

In 2020 we did not have our Walkie-Talkies, one of the best investments we have made. Their battery life would be a few days if we lost power. Add them to the list.

I'll message my nephew Chris Essid with Homeland Security to see what I've forgotten in this and my earlier post. Check in with your neighbors and family in the path of these storms. Good luck until hurricane season ends.

The Silence of The Roosters and Other Fall Traditions

Sad to do it, but we get to the point every year when a few formerly cute little chicks morph into nightmarish teenage boys who fight each other and roughly molest hens. One nearly blinded our former Alpha rooster, Big Daddy. BD now is our Beta, and we'd be sorry to lose him. As Roger our "chicken whisperer" tells us, older males mating with young hens result in fewer male chicks.

Win win.

And the aggressor? That punk teenager went into a dutch oven today. Young roos "taste just like chicken." Only older birds prove too tough to eat, good only for the stockpot.

Culling roosters we cannot re-home with Roger is, thankfully, only one of the annual rituals that begin about the time of the Autumnal Equinox. The heat and humidity have broken, so I get entire days for physical labor of splitting firewood and stacking it, pruning trees ahead of hurricanes, baling a bit of late-cut hay, planting garlic and onions, putting in kale and lettuce, picking figs and last tomatoes for last batches of jam and sauce.

As my full-time professional career nears its end, I'm ever more in love with this perfect time of year. I cannot sit still for long or look at screens except to write or study more about my hobbies. At night I read books, but while there's enough light in the evenings I get a bit more work done. There's also enough cool, dry air to make sweating fun. It's not hunting season yet, but the lakes are good for fishing for quite a while longer.  We even suddenly, after my wife's retirement, have time now for short vacations. It requires a farm-sitter, but the "shoulder months" are good for that, without fretting about animals needing constant attention to water and shade in summer or well-prepared shelter and fresh dry bedding in winter.

With Fall in mind, I went to the movie theater and sat in front of a big screen for the first time since COVID-19. I was deeply moved by Brett Morgen's film Moonage Daydream, about my favorite musician, David Bowie. I've missed his music terribly since his passing; he never seemed to run out of good ideas, even late in life.

Bowie's passing may have left a hole, but the film provided closure appropriately connected to my thoughts about Autumn.

 Fall can seem sad to some folks I know, yet to others "the veil is thin" between us and eternity. Our ancestors seem near. It was a good time to see that film. Bowie left this coda in the film, expressed as a prose-poem, and it fits well with any meditation about Fall:

You're aware of a deeper existence
Maybe a temporary reassurance that indeed there is no beginning, no end
And all at once, the outward appearance of meaning is transcended
And you find yourself struggling to comprehend a deep  and formidable mystery
I'm dying
You are dying
Second by second
All is transient
Does it matter?
Do I bother?
Yes, I do
Life is fantastic, it never ends, it only changes
Flesh to stone to flesh
And 'round and 'round
Bеst keep walking. 

Yes, keep walking. I'm walking outside now to cut up some limbs that fell in the last storm, before what is left of Hurricane Ian arrives.

(Do Not) Beware of Doug

It's been three weeks since I took "Doug," a fast-growing rat snake, to the back of our property and let him loose in a pile of scrap metal, invasive plants, and leaf-litter: snake paradise. "Go get 'em, Tiger!" I said, meaning that Doug would displace a few venomous Copperheads.

I rather miss him. He'd taken up residence in our newest large chicken coop, and once when I took him to the ravine at the western edge of our property, he was back inside a week. I found him curled up, with hens and a rooster just stepping over him. I put out feelers for a name on Facebook, and my grad-school bud Alan came back with Doug, for "I shall return" General Douglas MacArthur. Alan and I are both WW 2 geeks, so it was an easy pitch.

Now Doug is gone. I picked him up that last time with my snake grabber because he was trying to eat eggs, not just mice. And baby chicks were on the way.

I've long enjoyed having black snakes (Black Racers and Rat Snakes) in all our out-buildings, as they keep down the mice that eat wiring harnesses in vehicles and farm equipment. Though I can find no peer-reviewed study of the matter, black snakes are said to keep Copperheads away, which is more than enough reason to want these rather curious and gentle (unless provoked) creatures around.

Doug never tried to bite me, even when being carried and he slipped loose from the grabber, hanging out and inspecting his surroundings. I suspect I'll see him again. I already had a sign on our dog house that references an old Far Side cartoon, pictured up top. It feels like a welcome sign now.

Chainsaw Logic, Part II

In January, I wrote of my feelings concerning Stihl and Husqvarna saws. Now I'm ready for a farm-yard necessity: a second saw.  

It's a good idea to have two chainsaws handy when you cut as much wood as we do, and of course trees fall across roads regularly in hurricanes and ice storms. If one saw fails, the other can be brought right out. We did this for years, and in winter, when our Stihl saws could act up, I loved having a backup chainsaw.

2022 brought down at least 20 trees on our Buckingham County Property, across all the farm roads. Those are the ones I can see. I suspect more than 50 will have fallen, by the time we re-open the back road to our upper field.

Sadly for my wood stove but luckily for the forest, most are pines. I'll cut, season, and burn the pine mixed with hardwood to maintain a good burn temperature and avoid creosote.

Wood cutting with my current "Husky" is just not going to do this job. So several of their larger saws, ranging in price from $800 to $1400, are in contention.

First off, for most home-owners and casual sawyers, a small saw like my current one will be more than anyone needs. You can see other tips at my earlier post. And for your safety, please read this guide for using a saw from The University of Missouri's extension service. With hurricane season coming, there will be many emergency-room trips for new saw-owners. Do not become one of them.

Yet there comes a point when only a bigger saw can do the trick.  I'm still not ready to buck and fell large trees, a job best left to a professional. But our situation in Buckingham remains in my realm of experience, with the right tool in hand (both hands).

What is "bigger"? In a saw, it does not mean a longer bar but a more powerful engine. With that power, however, comes weight. Let's consider stats for two saws I may purchase as soon as next week:

• Husquvarna 572 XP: 5.3 hp, max torque 8200 rpm, 14.5 lbs.
• Husquvarna  372 XP X-Torq: 5.5 hp, max torque 6600 rpm, 14.6 lbs.
  

Both feature a 20" bar though longer ones can be had (and are not of interest to me). My current saw, a 440, has an 18" bar and gets categorized as a "residential" rather than professional model. It weighs 9.7 pounds and has 2.4 hp. It suffices for cutting limbs and firewood, as well as felling small trees (a foot or less in diameter and perhaps 30' tall). 

Both of the contenders are a LOT heavier than my current saw, which means no lifting the saw high. It's unwise to use a saw by reaching up above one's shoulder, in any case. 

Most of my heavy-duty cutting involves keeping the saw's center of gravity below belly height. I learned early to "let the saw do the work" by never pushing on a saw; that's a recipe to get the bar pinched or worse, have it kick back right at your face. Keeping the saw low avoids exhaustion, in any case. Gravity becomes friend.

Of one thing I'm certain: I want their pre-computer models. I've already had a long telephone conversation with one of my dealer's salespeople. Their newest saws promise smoother power and lower emissions but are not user-friendly to a DIY mechanic like me. That means I cannot replace key parts like a carburetor. I'd depend upon service, likely expensive service, at the shop.  If the X-Torq system (which does lower emissions and fuel consumption) can be had without too many electronics, one of these saws will be coming home with me.

If I were to go the really high-tech route, I'd consider their professional-grade electric saws, but I need to learn a lot more about Husqvarna's battery tech first. I dislike being what I call a "Dewalt orphan" with a bunch of 18V cordless tools for which the maker no long makes replacement batteries. In consequence I have to source re-manufactured battery packs from China. These replacements work until they don't.

I will continue this series as I get a new saw and put it to work stacking logs. As noted in my first post, the old saw is not going to be idle. It already got its annual tune up: new fuel pickup, spark plug, and air filter. Now is the time for a second chain in the case and maybe a new bar. I'll have my dealer look at the old 440 when I go shopping.

Stay safe in the woods. The dealer does not stock new arms or legs.