Time for Aesthetics

 

We don't live by bread alone, and most people I know don't live to work, either, but some jobs make leisure more pleasant.
 

We began our farm adventure in late 2012, and we spent a large sum of money and quite a bit of time renovating the farmhouse to look and feel like us, while retaining the characteristics that made it charming as the childhood home of my wife. The next several years saw us put in a fenced garden, planting shade trees and ornamental plants between us and a busy road, keeping bees, raisng chickens, adopting and working with livestock dogs. We've been here long enough to bury two beloved dogs and two house cats. We opened new pasturage and began managing a field my in-laws own, across the street from us. We repainted the entire house once and most of the out-buildings while building an equipment run-in. We continue to rid our property of scrap metal and other useful salvage.

That's only part of 12+ years work, but finally, and after much learning, we began to make things pretty in the areas where visitors most often want to visit, our garden and hen-yard. Little children love this part of their trip to our end of the county.

The fences need maintaining every year, but after several years, the old home-made gates needed re-hanging. I found that the strap hinges typically used for attaching gates to posts begin with a good deal of "play" and slowly acquire more, until we and our farm-sitter struggle to open them.

 While I've gotten more skilled at building gates, I discovered that I'd overbuilt mine. When it came time to re-hang them, I was able to shed some of the supporting boards on the biggest gate, replacing them with corner braces. And new hinges that are made for posts got the gates to hang true for a few more years.

 Then, it got to be time to finally add visual interests to our garden, beyond the chickens themselves who patrol the paths and a few pieces of statuary.  I used a solid-color penetrating stain I've discussed here before to add a vibrant barn-red to our center gate. The gates to the dog-run got stained a bluish green that I used simply because I had a can and wanted to use it up.  Some inner gates are getting the barn-red treatment as well. Staining the wood appears to deter carpenter bees and makes the wood hold up longer, overall.

I do not buy into the old-timers' maxim that if you are not working until you exhaust yourself, you are "piddling," and that includes painting for lots of old guys. 

The spaces we inhabit should look good if we can afford the time and money to do so. Staining and re-hanging gates cost little money and time. The reward? At sunset,  you look at the garden and feel more inspired. An wooden picnic table will be next.

Art museums always make me feel better about the human race. I can't fix our species but I can make my own corner of the world more pleasing to the eyes of all who stop by.

 Happy gardening this year. The corn is already knee-high! 

Recap on the Cheapness of Modern Applicances

Well, here comes refrigerator #4 since we moved to the country in 2012. That's one reason I've not posted for the month of May. We had a dryer die, too, but that's not the issue here. That dryer was past peak at about age 15. A different dryer I bought in December for our rental property? When I registered the warranty, the woman at Whirlpool advised me that she'd just been to a seminar on their newest models.

"Expect three to five years, if you take good care of it."

This is American madness. If our would-be King had not gutted our Consumer-Protection Agency, dealing with this new planned obsolescence should have been high on their list of priorities.

When I took a half-ton of steel pulled out of our woods to the scrap yard recently, I saw about 100 new dryers, washers, dishwashers, and refrigerators thrown onto the scrap pile. When I asked around the answer I got was "damaged shipping container." Even if these new devices last a few years, give them to Habitat for Humanity. They still had dealer labels attached. Easier to write off the loss, I guess. To me that's immoral.

It was not always this wasteful. To be honest, the original Samsung did not fail (though the French doors were extraordinarily flimsy and I had to repair them a few times). A lightning strike took it out. The no-frills Maytag (oh, repairman of legend, where are you?) died all on its own. The freezer worked, though I had to repair the silly ice-maker, but then the cooler below stopped working.

So we bought an even less frilly GE three years ago. I had read that the company brought refrigerator manufacturing back to the US, to assure better quality control. To avoid an ice-maker breaking, I used ice-trays. The shelf-brackets and frames (cheap plastic) broke over time, and I rigged repairs. Then water began to collect in the unit's floor. I've done all the things that service experts recommend: clearing the drain tube, checking the cooling coils for ice buildup, tilting the unit so it's higher in front, as this helps with draining into the bottom of the unit, where water evaporates in a pan. I found the door seal torn, so I replaced that. No dice.

This sort of refrigerator is a simple machine. Anyone with basic skills can make basic repairs, as I found when I downloaded a parts diagram.

I was about to get a new evaporator coil for the freezer, an easy replacement for a DIYer and about $150, until I realized for for $1000 more (I have a good deal of a credit-balance on my Lowes account and sales are coming) we could get a low-end Bosch, build like a Panzerkampfwagen IV from World War II. It has an ice-maker. From that failure of a Maytag I learned how to replace or repair them. Irony? That's about what we paid for the failing GE, the Maytag floor model, and less than we shelled out for the original Samsung.

When I talked to folks in the business the consensus was "expect at least 10-15 years, maybe more) out of the Bosch brand." Only Subzero lasts longer, but we don't have $10K or more for a refrigerator. I shopped around for deals and found one at Lowes. As soon as the July 4 prices drop, I'll pull out my %5 off card, use up the credit on our account, and have a Bosch installed. And yes, we'll pony up for an extended warranty at the end of the first year, which we get for free.

Our 2012 basic-model Bosch dishwasher is going strong, but I'm planning for a whole-house water filter system to keep calcification from well water from clogging up our appliances that use water. Folks in the business advised I consider that, too.

Onward. I will never own a "smart appliance" beyond the home-security system I installed. I don't need a refrigerator to tell me when I need to buy milk. I just want something that may work into my 80s. That's right around the darned corner.

 Creative-Commons Image: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=22055