Some Sad Thoughts About Using Roundup (And Why I Do)

A piece about weeds appeared in the New York Times recently and readers erupted when the article's author mentioned the usefulness of Roundup. Granted, many of the respondents are not small farmers; they only have to deal with pests like poison ivy on a quarter-acre lot. 

 Our fence-lines are full of the pesky plant, and we are taking over 1000' feet of fence and growing. That's small by most small-farm standards. Then we have invasive vines and other plants that become "Copperhead Road" in breeding season. That means getting things done before 8am many mornings. We work hard to keep the fences clear. Glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup keep them that way for a few years, when applied correctly.

Beekeeping was long a concern for us as we battled weeds in the fences; we are winding that down because the summers are simply too hot and the miticides too potent to make us want to work hives in July and August. We'll keep our gear but our last hives will go to a younger beekeeper. For native pollinators we continue to plant for them, and our limited use of herbicide does not occur on plants they frequent.

As for the weeds, Hot water and other organic solutions won't work. A burning torch would, but not if it starts a wildfire. Reluctantly, I began to apply Roundup as directed on the bottle of concentrate, spraying the plants early in the day when the wind is still. 

I'd welcome other solutions that work on the scale of a small farm. Our extension agency was NO help, a biologist suggesting we spray a field we want for native plants with $10,000 worth of Roundup to kill everything and start anew. It would get rid of invasive Stilt-Grass all right, but the environmental and monetary costs are beyond our desire. Instead, we'll bring in Mountain Mint and other plants that stifle the invasive.

 And so it goes in strange times, ones likely to get stranger in years to come.

Image: publicdomainpictures.net 

Recap on the Cheapness of Modern Appliances

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 

  

Slowing Down To Do Better Work

When my childhood friend Dominic made a heroic decision to try organic farming after a layoff, just a year after Nan and I moved to the country, I paid close attention. He stayed at it for the better part of a decade, using antique equipment. His experience taught me a few things that I have brought to my own gardening and tending rural land. 

Of all I learned, one lesson stands out most, a principle I call “slowing down to do better work.” I wish that Dom and I had read Wendell Berry’s essays sooner. Berry’s thinking about local culture, agrarianism, and the proper use of tools would have saved us time and money while adding pleasure and better stewardship of the land. The scale of Berry’s economic model maps well onto my personal belief that Distributism can replace corporate capitalism in a century that will see, thank goodness, declining human population.

First, though, some specifics before thinking big and long-term. Central Virginians, save during drought, must mow grass close to the house weekly all Spring, Summer, and most of the Fall. Fields get fewer mowings. Dominic noticed how the old-timers near him in Hanover County would mow their fields slowly with the throttles set high. This burns more fuel but means cleaner cuts when creeping over the fields at the pace of a slow walk. We have here the antithesis of “mow blow and go” suburban lawn “care,” nearly always farmed out to a company these days. I see the kids who do this on zero-turn mowers that race over a yard. I suppose the homeowners are too busy after work to tend the yard, off playing golf or chauffeuring the kids (who would be better off in a neighborhood pickup game) to kid-sports events.

Many suburban lawns are often a toxic nightmare, anyhow, so let’s move on to something sane. Most of us are not Berry with his horse-drawn equipment yet the same philosophy can guide our work. For the rural mower who aims to protect and improve the topsoil, the slow-speed, high-rpm method means that grass and weeds are cut cleanly, not torn by the blades (assuming the blades are sharp). Yes, it takes longer but when I gathered and stacked the hay, I found it clean and superior to what I had formerly done in haste. The hay goes to our garden or chicken run, where the birds scratch it around and eat the seeds.

Berry writes about this philosophy of farm work in his essay “Horse Drawn Tools and The Doctrine of Labor Saving.” He decided to forego the purchase of a used 8N Ford tractor and mow with a team of horses and an International horse-drawn mower. He found that his equipment made better hay than did his neighbors’ tractors. His story will perplex those farmers who consider even the 8N a bare-bones machine as outmoded as a horse and best seen in a museum. I can attest that my own 1952 8N is a bulletproof, simple machine that has needed nothing in the 20 years it has been in the family, beyond fluid changes, fuel, two tire tubes, some paint, and a few sets of spark plugs. I learned to plow and mow on the machine and it still does useful chores, including cutting where we gather hay to stack in our barn after it cures.

While I have no plans to farm with horses—we raise chickens, not row-crops—some of Berry’s ideas have influenced me deeply. We looked at expensive hay-baling gear for small square bales. For now, it saves us money to buy straw and store just enough hay that we can manage raking, tedding, and transporting manually; we might get a dry stack the size of an SUV in a good year and need 30 square bales of straw as well.

I contrast this to what our Deere dealer talks about: air-conditioned cabs, round bales so huge we would need hay spears and plastic wrappers to move and season them. No thanks. The last thing we want is more complexity and more unsustainable materials on the farm or going to the landfill. Speed breeds those things, and Berry rightly sees the debt-trap they set for a small farm. 

Some expenses are inevitable, of course. When Dominic was still farming, I encouraged him to find one reliable modern diesel tractor in place of his handful of sometimes unreliable gas-powered antiques. But even with new or nearly new equipment, a farmer should start small. A dealer often tries to sell “just in case” power and attachments. They can be added later. I did recently spend $500 to set our utility tractor and implements up with Deere’s iMatch hitch, so I can hook up the rotary mower in a minute, then drop it to get a different implement. As I age and have arthritis in my left hip, such accommodations have proven to be a godsend.

Yet I waited 14 years to upgrade the tractor, after 600 hours of service. We might all apply Berry’s philosophy that way. It works off the farm too. We are today using AI to enable us to do more work in a shorter span of time, but what gets lost in all that haste? How much poorly-conceived “good enough” work, like poorly-mowed fields, gets completed as a result? Berry states that instead of building good soil, hasty farmers impoverish the land. With generative AI and other purportedly labor-saving technology, what are we doing to improve our minds and spirits? What are we doing to make our clients’ lives and our work better?

The next time you are asked to hurry a job, reply that you want to do good work.

When drafting this post, I wrote it first by hand. Checking Duck Duck Go, I verified the location of an e-text of Berry’s collection of selected essays The World-Destroying Fire, then used that e-text to help me find and annotate passages in my paper copy. No contradiction here at all. Using the technologies of print and Internet together led me to work methodically and do better work. If you want to see what Berry advises, you can find the essays here.

I turned off the AI assistant too.

The Last X You Will Ever Buy

Sobering, isn't it? At age 65, I confront a strangely comforting dilemma: Many of the thing I buy or do will outlive me. That Deodar Cedar in between us and the road? It will be big when I'm in my 80s, but if climate-change and future residents allow, it will still be growing bigger in the 22nd Century.

If my tree-planting is for the next generation, as well as an "up yours" to the greedy idiocy of denying human-driven climate change, then buying things that last a long time constitutes a statement about economics and frugality. 

Every time we acquire a vehicle, and I'm addicted to clean used vehicles, I say "this one will be here when I ain't." And now when a tool wears out, I start shopping for something that will be in my estate sale. I've written here about the wisdom of getting only vehicles that are friendly for DIY work. That philosophy applies to many things, big and small.

Last week, the first circular saw I'd every owned, a basic Skil purchased in the early 1990s for under $50, gave up the ghost. I could have ordered a new trigger (the motor works still) but stands far from my late father-in-law's Porter-Cable belt sander, a Gibraltar-like device that commands reverence and weighs about 40 pounds. I got a new trigger for that one. It should last another 40 years. The Skil is a cheap tool that lasted a long time because I am careful with my tools, cleaning them and never, ever loaning a tool or vehicle to anyone unless I use it for the borrower.

The saw's replacement is a DeWalt saw. Instead of an $80 Skil, I spent another $100 and got a saw that rips paneling like a hot knife though butter. The handle fits my big hands well, and the trigger design is sure and solid. These features matter after you work with a saw for a few hours.

I really like the DeWalt's corded tools, but I've sworn off the cordless ones because the company changes battery designs regularly and I had to find third-party batteries from China (when I can in these crazy times) to keep a set of 2008 tools running. 

Planned obsolescence violates every fiber of my being.There was a time when a good tool meant a lifetime investment; that's the case for the sander I noted, as well as some of the shop tools we own. My Bosch Miter-box and Delta table saws should survive me (I bought the latter from an estate, in fact). I attended a farm show where a craftsman used a spoke-shave from the middle of the 18th Century; George III was boss here when that tool was made. He told me it would go to a child with an interest in woodworking, as it has been passed down for over 250 years.

I just wonder: if we thought of purchasing as much as possible items that would outlast us, how much healing would that do for the environment? Moreover, how much would it rebuke the purveyors of cheaply made, disposable goods? We would have to save up for a quality item. Wendell Berry made that this sort of durability and longevity tests for a sustainable economy.

When the current stupid era ends with an inevitable economic crash, I wonder if we might return to the Distributist principles of localism, frugality, and durability.

I'll be cutting boards and waiting to see. 

 

Old School Tools: Percolator Perfection!

Unlike me, my late father-in-law was not picky about coffee. Yet when I perked some for him using a stovetop peculator, he ordered one himself from The Vermont Country Store. I'd ruined him on weak and tepid Mr. Coffee, forever.

I inherited his pot, and I have my original too. It's time I got those old pots out more often. I tend to use them when we have company. And when I smell that coffee, good things happen to my mood. My mom used an electric peculator, and I liked that coffee a lot too, partly from the smell of brewing and also from memories.  Mom's coffee maker had no off switch; you leave an electric or stovetop on too long, and you can smell the ruination. You only do that once.

On some dreadful days, my parents and I would brew coffee and enjoy it in dainty stoneware cups and saucers around the kitchen table. It was a rare moment when my dad's guard was down and we could talk about serious things. When mom was in the hospital once, I showed dad how to make coffee (he got very good at it, too). I also recall that after dad passed, mom and I would fire up the peculator and share a few cups. This ritual eased, for a little while, her grief.

But it also united us around a favorite beverage. Mom hated coffee machines for producing weak brew. So do I. So did my sadly departed friend Steve Gott. For him, old-school percolation was the only way to make coffee.

Today we have wasteful coffee-pod coffee going to our landfills, whereas I have been composting my Melita filters and coffee, from a plastic cone I've had since the early 1980s. But the peculator! It's even less wasteful; it has a metal basket where I dump my grounds into the compost bin.

 Now, with only one coffee drinker in our house, I think smaller. This means that I have a Goldilocks dilemma.

My favorite pot is made for a LOT of coffee. My other peculator is a cafetera from Madrid; it reverses the process by pushing the boiling water up, under pressure, from the bottom of the pot. It makes a superb brew. I bought it in 2002, to replace one I'd lost in the late 80s. Sadly, it makes one tiny cup. I need two cups every morning.

Now I need a coffee maker that is JUST right. As for the design? Those stovetop and electric percolators, like safety razors or car controls from before about 2005, perfected a technology that has only gone downhill with each "innovation" since. I'd claim that everything afterwards just tries to empty our wallets. 

I'm not talking about a cappuccino machine; that's another form of perfection. I lack counter space for that, alas.

Pressure Washers: Why WOULD Anyone Not Want Electric?

In keeping with my recent post about our electric lawnmower, I'll post an update about another useful tool: a pressure washer.

I simply despise gas-powered ones. They have proven finicky and fragile in my experience, and they are noisy. They emit pollution I don't wish to breathe.

A year ago, I pressure-washed the stupid vinyl siding (I hate the stuff!) that we have not yet removed from our house. We still have it on the back of the home. Being old-school by nature, I would rather paint weatherboard or at least Hardie-Plank siding. They both hold paint well and...do not look like plastic.

In any case, a neighbor loaned me his 2000 PSI plug-in washer. I used a transfer pump from the bottom spigot of a rain barrel to get water. The results were astounding. It looked like I was respraying the vinyl white as it stripped off dirt. I used a cleaner that does not harm plants near a house, which you should research before letting a washer go wild near your hostas.

This year, I purchased my own 3000 PSI electric washer for under $200, ahead of the ludicrous and self-destructive US tariffs against Chinese goods. I've since purchased a 24' telescoping wand to clean second-floor areas without venturing onto a wet ladder. It includes a scrub-brush attachment.

Folks PAY money to have their homes washed. I suppose it lets them watch more TV shows or play golf.

I'd rather do it myself. I get to use up surplus stored water in the fall, as the garden winds down. The house looks great for the holidays. I still don't love vinyl siding, but it looks nice when clean. 

If it's above freezing, get outside and put on waterproof clothes. Let the water fly! As with any tool, practice. Using the wrong nozzle (read the instructions!) can peel paint. With the right nozzle and technique, my washer can blast farm equipment clean or remove gunk from the underbodies of vehicles. 

Bob Vila offers some reviews. We opted for a generic unit something like the Earthwise shown in the reviews. I now see no advantage now to gas-powered units except their use away from an electrical outlet. For ease of starting, sound, emissions, and power, electric washers work just fine.

Creative Commons image by Debbie Wolfe from Bob Vila’s site. 

 

 

A Simple Ceiling-Fan Hack

Admitting something obvious, something you did not know before, should be counted as wisdom. Let's hope. I just learned a means of using our ceiling fans to best circulate warm air through our home, in wood-stove season.

In Winter, set the fan to rotate clockwise, which pushes hot air trapped near the ceiling down and draws air near the floor upward. In summer, set the fan counterclockwise, to push air down and give you that lovely fanning effect. Run your fans low, and yes, even if you have central heat and air, running them will reduce your bills.

Of course, mine were set backward, by me.  How to change the direction? Find a small button on the fan housing; you'll need a ladder. Some newer fans with remotes likely have that feature, but I'm averse to anything that I must use a remote control to master.

Hack that fan and stay warm. It's my favorite time of year. 

Silly question: same trick south of the equator? Sure. 

image credit: pexels.com 

Six Months With An Electric Lawnmower

A full month slipped by without a post, but we got busy with several projects as soon as the heat broke.

One thing that did not break? Our new push mower. I am utterly delighted with my first cordless electric grass-cutter, a Stihl RMA 510V.

We needed a unit that would handle about 5,000 square feet of patios and edges where the tractors cannot mow; I know those figures would have boggled my mind 20 years ago, too. On rural land, one thinks about acres of open space if one has pastures. I'd love more in woods right up to the house, but then the copperheads might come indoors. No, thank you.

A political aside: How did getting a vaccination or an electric lawn mower become an act of civil disobedience? Well, I did both this year. For the grass, I spotted a Stihl landscaper-grade mower in the dealer where I buy parts for our gas-powered weed eaters (My saws are all Husqvarna now). One selling point, beyond being on sale and coming with an extra battery? That it would cut all our patios and more on a single charge. Stihl promises that the batteries would be supported long-term. That matters a great deal. I have a nice set of DeWalt tools for which batteries are no longer made. Luckily, I found re-manufactured ones from China (with the stupid tariffs now, I'm not sure I can get more). In consequence, no more cordless DeWalt for me.

With this lawn-mower, there's no more replacing carburetors, no more running out to get ethanol-free 93 octane (or at least as much of it). No oil changes, no smell of gasoline or breathing exhaust. Just sharpen the blade once a year, and clean the underside of the mower at season's end. It's so quiet I do not wear earplugs.

This model has a self-propelled feature with enough torque to scare me when I first engaged it. It's a landscaper model, after all. It will roll on a bit after I disengage the driving wheels, but we plan for that, as we do when mowing pasture with a Ford 8N: you learn to give the machine a little room to stop. After mastering that trick, we learned how to run the mower, quickly.

The driving wheels are shielded from long grass, unlike our old Craftsman, which would get wire grass tangled around the axle and grind to a halt. On flat ground or downhill, the self-propelled feature need not be activated, but I have several grades to mow where a tractor won't fit. This proved a godsend for my back and stamina in hot weather.

We found we can cut everything without running down the battery past 50%, even though our patios exceed the square footage Stihl estimates. We did run out of juice once, because we'd not recharged the mower. In any case, the chassis has space to carry a second battery.

You'd do well to consider an electric. If you like having all your tools using the same battery, this unit's batteries work for Stihl's lawn tools and latest chainsaws.

If electric chainsaws had enough run time to cut up a big tree, I'd switch tomorrow.  

The Boy on the Burning Deck

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never, Ever Give Up on Fixing Something

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

Sometimes, however, I still make mistakes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Pumpitude For Your Rain Barrels

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Now's the Time to Trim and Plant

 

Apple-tree spreaders do their thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know your limits! And keep gardening.

Not a Drop to Drink: So Plan, Already!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creative Commons image from Pexels.

Be Careful With That "Seasoned" Firewood

Buying any wood this year?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

Stay warm and feed that stove!

Pride of Workmanship?

As I retire from full-time work in a month, I have been thinking about pride in one's work a great deal. I have never been fully satisfied with my career, which may be a good thing: too much complacency leads to a numbing of the soul. I would instead invent new directions to pursue. This sort of free-lancing stands at odds with the values of corporatism, including the variety now infecting higher education. Not so oddly, I find the opposite--a sense of pride in serving one's community--in small businesses locally owned. It's a delight in our time of anonymous and virtual commerce to encounter vestiges of craftsmanship and civic pride. 

So often, however, it's just the opposite.

I spotted the worst paint-job in many years recently, pictured, at a roadside place in Buckingham County. I hope the owners did not pay much for the job. The painter, using a spray-gun, clearly cared nothing about putting glossy red paint on the grass and parking lot. Ironically, the paint was not well applied to the picnic table. The finish had run, pooled, and left thin or unpainted spots.

At our own picnic table, not yet "painted," I noticed that the original finish was a good-quality penetrating stain, not paint. Stain provides a better sealant for outdoor furniture, too. It can be renewed easily without scraping, even on the oldest wood, as I found not long ago with the old fence at our rental property.

Yet someone painted over the old stain, and once you put paint over stain, there's no going back. In a year, that haphazard paint-job will peel. The owner will either have to scrape the tables down or, as I fear, toss them out and get new ones. They are not bad tables, either. I'd like to get one, sand the heck out of it, and stain it again.

Usually we take our burgers and go to a nearby pocket-park, a tiny miracle of good craftwork. It features durable picnic tables, nice plantings, and a permeable-surfaced parking area.  You don't see trash on the ground, either. I don't imagine that it cost the county that much to build and maintain. It also speaks to something so old-fashioned we rarely hear its name today: civic pride. The town government does not know the travelers or locals who might stop for a smoke break or a sandwich; the small amenity simply says to everyone "you are welcome."

Pride is a dodgy commodity. "What is the return on investment?" a wily and short-sighted American capitalist might ask.

A great deal, I'd answer, but not something to measure in dollars and cents, the false American god of our era. Especially in the mad rush of Black Friday.

Today, of all days, on Black Friday, our water heater decided to start leaking heavily. The unit, at 12 years old, still looks great, but that's the outside. Not wanting to brave the crowds at the suburban asteroid-belt of big-box stores, I went to our local hardware. They had a heater more efficient than our old one and with the same volume. It took me all day to finish the job, but we have guests arriving and they'll want hot water. "Calling some guy" would not suffice, and I've installed two smaller electric water-heaters.

I needed a few tools not in my plumbing box, one a crimper for the little copper rings that make watertight seals on Pex pipe. A novice can learn this sort of plumbing, as compared to expensive mysteries of sweating copper pipe or the cheap, easily broken PVC pipes that I find mostly good for building hoop-houses nowadays.

A young man helped me find the fittings for the new heater, after I discovered that my old pipes were about 3 inches too short to reach the new tank's inlets. The new hardware was cheap enough, but the crimp-tool cost 60 dollars, almost 10% of what I'd paid for the heater. Yet I needed the tool, badly. The young man looked it over and said "This is a nice piece. You take good care of it and it will last the rest of your life."

I joked about only needing 30 years, but his remark stuck with me. I want to hear more of that in a time of disposable products and bad paint-jobs. I do indeed take very good care of all my tools. In the end, our new water heater is no thing of beauty, but it is firmly placed, not leaking, and looks as if a professional installed it. I'm proud that by sundown, I could have a martini and say "job well done" as hot water again flowed from the taps. I'd done it myself, probably saving 500 dollars. 

You could, too.

Chainsaw Logic: That One Little Wire...

I think this post constitutes part of a series. I've written often here about Occam's Razor, and in this instance it and the old "For the Want of a Nail" allegory.  

It's easy to forget the simple, in our age of wonders, how one simple technical issue can make everything stop. Right now, I am streaming a BBC World Cafe concert with Gillan Welch and David Rawlings. My 1980 self could not even fathomed that as possible.

It's a form of magic, following the precepts of Clarke's Law. Remember, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." We get baffled when the technomancy suddenly halts, the screen locking up or the phone "bricking," even a damned advertisement on the YouTube concert-feed popping up mid-song, despite my ad-blocker. The spell is broken, though in my case that stupid ad lead me to the NPR ad-free original. 

Until we fix things, we sit like our primate ancestors before a sacred stone, bewildered at the departure of our gods. Yet sometimes we can bring fallen technological deities back to life.

Recently a friend of my wife's had an enormous Red Oak tree fall in her yard, nearly hitting her house. It would have totaled the place, frankly. now it lays in her yard, some 70' of tree with 40' being straight and nearly 36" in diameter. It's what furniture-makers would call a "veneer log" for the lack of hollow core, lack of limbs, and straightness. Yet we cannot get any log buyer to look. Apparently these folk want a bunch of such logs (worth several thousand dollars each) before driving out.

After inspecting the tree, I came back with my little "firewood" saw and The Big Dog, a $1000 Husqvarna 365 with 5hp and a 20" bar.  I had planned to keep the beast the rest of my life.

"Woof Woof!" said this Big Dog, until it would not bark for me, let alone start. 

I gnashed my teeth. I pulled at my beard, having no hair on my skull. I cursed the gods of Sweden and two-stroke internal combustion, to no avail. I considered the expense of even a diagnosis at the dealer, looked at (heresy!) a $500 Stihl "Farm Boss" saw, ready to spend MORE money. 

No. I was doing what an academic colleague calls "catastrophizing failure," meaning that I assumed a small setback would lead to an utter and permanent disaster. 

Realizing then where I went wrong, I began replacing Husqvarna parts myself, starting with the simplest parts and least expensive that can lock up a saw: a new spark plug, a kill switch, then an ignition coil. Still, Occam failed me. The saw would not even "burp." A second wave of self-doubt followed as I watched more YouTube "how to" chainsaw videos by burly men with Southern US, Scottish, or Scandinavian accents.

Then $30 later, I fixed the saw and it fired right up. Even that 30 could have stayed in the bank. I checked the electronics, working backward, to my new spark plug. What if the wire that attaches to the plug had turned sideways when I pressed on the rubber "boot" that covers the end of the plug? 

With a razor blade I cut open enough of the cover to see that the wire loop connected to the plug. It's the little metal piece shown in the image at the top of the post. I slipped it over the plug. Then I pulled the cord.

"Woof! VROOM!" The Big Dog barked!

I've learned from working on engines a little bit, whether on old tractors or late-model cars: a single wire can bring done tons of working metal. So can a pinched gas line. So once again, Occam proved right in the end. This is why we pay a mechanic 25 cents for a screw, and $50 for knowing which screw to replace.

Now back to that tree. I just felled a section the size of a normal tree in 30 seconds, a task impossible with my firewood saw. 

Never give up working on stuff. A fix may be simpler than it seems. And now I have some spare parts for the saw. 

I was about to put the saw on a pagan altar and make offerings to it. Clarke was right but so was Occam. Keep moving up the chain of causality to the problem, and one can fix nearly any machine (and maybe large societal or environmental woes, as well).

Grandfather's Hammer and Keeping Old Things in Service

Some of you may know the Grandfather's Axe paradox. I encountered it a few years ago. The paradox asks us that if every part of an item is replaced one by one, in the end, is it still the same item? I heard it stated as "this is my grandfather's axe. Since he used it it has had two new handles and one new axe head."

So is it the same axe? The empirical, scientific answer is "no." Every molecule of the original item has been replaced, even if it looks identical.  I'm a Humanist, so I'm going to sail off in a different direction.

The paradox stretches back to ancient Greece, where it was called The Ship of Theseus. I really enjoy logical paradoxes, if you cannot already tell. I am not going to give you my philosophical opinion, right away, but I will talk about an item that evades the paradox because it is pretty much the same as when my grandfather used it.

He was a junk-dealer by trade, an immigrant from Hatay in what is now the southeastern corner of Turkey. Arriving in Richmond in 1911, in time he acquired an old truck and combed the countryside for scrap metal, old broken tools, furniture, or anything that might have some intrinsic value. Somewhere along the way, he found an old claw hammer, or at least the head of one. He fixed it to a length of metal pipe and used a giant nail to hold the head to the new handle.

I found that hammer when cleaning out his basement in Richmond, a couple of months after his passing in 1982. It went into an old tool box I still have in my barn, but the hammer recently re-appeared in my shop, when I found myself in need of something for driving masonry nails in the cinder-block wall for hanging tools, old tin signs, and other bric-a-brac. The old hammer works like a charm.

For years, every time I saw it, my Type-A, rationalist side would say "that old hammer needs a proper hickory handle," but somehow I never quite got around to it. I'm happy about that now. I'm slightly less Type A (and probably less rational) after a dozen years in the country, since farmwork requires a certain amount of clutter and temporary disorder when, say, the garden is bursting with food as it is right now.

We live in a time of fast food, fast fashion, disposable electronics. No thank you. My anti-consumerist, Humanist side wants to stake a claim to keeping old things that work well around as long as possible, even if, especially if like The Ship of Theseus, every single part has been replaced at least once. I recently put new front wheels on an old Woods belly mower that my late father-in-law slung under a 1951 John Deere M tractor he purchased new. In the years that I've been custodian of the machine, I restored and repainted it, replaced the seat, swapped out a new wire harness and battery, put in an electronic ignition. I bought a new mesh inner panel for the grille, a gas cap, and lots more.

Is it the same tractor? Mostly, yes, and it does exactly what my father-in-law did with it. When I'm gone, a grandchild or great-grandchild will get Grandpa's tractor, and one of my nieces or nephews who has a taste for DIY work will get my grandfather's hammer. Perhaps the paradox becomes meaningless if the object's purpose remains the same, and that object gets passed from generation to generation. I hope they don't just use the John Deere for parades or the hammer as garage-art.

It will help if I can get someone to form a bond with the tractor or the hammer, telling the story once a younger person shows interest. Luckily, the interest is there for lots of things that have been family heirlooms, but most of those objects I've handed on have not been tools. To merely hang the hammer on a wall (as I did the mower's old wheels, one of them still quite usable) seems to break a chain.

I don't have a fancy philosophical name for this but "the thingness of things" has been my go-to. I feel the material presence of my forebearers when I get on that tractor, hammer a nail, use a biscuit-cutter that belonged to my late mother-in-law. My favorite skillets are cheap and thin Taiwanese-made ones my mom got me at a Roses store in the summer of 1982, when I was returning to college and an apartment for my final year. I use those pans daily now and think of my mom, gone nearly two decades.

So look around the shop and house at old things your ancestors used to make life simpler: a rolling pin, a favorite casserole dish, the old Buick sedan that grandpa loved so much. Look at the well-made furniture that is not modern chic but still perfectly useful.

Could you still use those things? Why not?

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.

Saving an Old Fence

When we lived in town, I always felt the pressure not to have the worst fence on the block. Now I don't worry about that at my home, but I sure do at our rental.

My tenants are fine folks. One of them used to work for me, so he knows I'm a fuss-budget about fiddly things. When their neighbors got a new fence, part of ours was so rotten (the ground there stays wet) that posts snapped off. The fencing company put up a 4' picket fence but I wanted all the fence to match the 6' privacy fence that we inherited when we bought the place a decade ago.

Treated wood ages like other wood, and soon enough, that fence looked like the set of a horror film. While I don't place advertising on this site or endorse products, I cannot speak highly enough about Behr Solid Deck Stain. We'd used it to preserve the house's deck, and it's a tough product. The company makes lighter-duty stains for siding, but the deck stain seemed a good, if slightly more expensive, option. I'd found that it made old wood look as good as the new replacement boards next to them.

So this post is short but clear: if you need to renew old wood, try this or its competitors. I found Valspar a little more expensive. But to hide the old dark weathered wood, go solid, not transparent.

Keep in mind that you cannot put stains over paint. They will peel. I never use paint on decking or fences, anyhow: I've found that on new or old unfinished wood, these heavy stains last a decade and best of all, clean up with water.

Happy repairs!