"DO More, With LESS"

[BillSchiller]

Jeff, this is what I used on old tin I used. I works pretty well. I found a different brand that cost $9/can

Flex Seal® is now available in White, Brown, Almond, Silver, Green, Blue, Red,...

[JO_Olsson]

Old aunt Karin was born in Sweden. Came here in 1912. She tried to teach us some, but not much stuck

Do you know where she grew up? Some accents are hard to understand and some almost different languages.

[KristijanL]

Hi Steve,

I must admit l found out that a surrated edge (thanks Billy) hoe works best by acydent. I am to cheap to buy new tools, l still use most of the tools that are older thain 100years. Hatchets, axes, hoes, picks… old and worn down by generations of hard working people. Hek, eaven my favorite chainsaw is twice my age old. A good old contra Sthil. Heawy like a pig (about 30 pounds full) but man this thing is a monster once it starts cutting…
Anyway, l found a old rusted out hoe while cleaning a old barn, the edge was, lets say, oxidation sharpened. Wery rough and toothy, but sharp. It wotked great.
Now, l just sharpen all my hoes (l have 4, all aincient) with a rough file.
This makes enough of a rough edge to do the job.

[taitgarry00]

Annual property taxes rate is now a combined effective 11% annually.

Wow, that’s heavy tax. Leaves me wondering what they are funding with so much revenue. Or are they just trying to force common people out? I pay around $550 for 320 acres of farm land here, The municipality clears snow after each storm, grades roads in the spring and maybe two other times, maintains roads and ditches, keeps beaver under control. That also includes school tax.

Edit: in response to Jo, I should add there’s no limit on property taxes here, it’s entirely based on mill rates and property evaluation. In cities commonly people pay between 2 - $5,000 annually for their home. Apparently Sweden has a better way of funding schools and municipalities.

[BillyAlabama]

I don’t know, but I will ask my in-laws. I think she sailed when she was 9 .

[BillyAlabama]

Stove installed and all set up. All burners burning. Ovens baked pizzas last night perfectly. Very even.

One in center rear needs adjusted but screw is stuck. Getting too much O2.

Fixed and moved this stove into the house during the shuffle. Got it at the scrap yard for $.03/lb. I repainted the top and two sides with tractor implement enamel. Lots of good stuff in the scrap yards and land fills…

Edit: the paint on the white stove worked great on the sides, but not on the top. The heat “browned” it. Still looks better than before, but just want to make sure no body took that idea without knowing that the results didn’t measure up to the hypothesis…

[SteveUnruh]

Good Afternoon Gary Tait
Ha. I think I already answered the, “Or are they just trying to force common people out?” the the now locked out Health Care topic.
Please reread me there for the specific’s.
Summery. Here in Washington State the “common people” are supposed to give-up Rural and move to suburban/urban track housing and become good-working, consumer-buying, multiple-lines credit-using sheep-people.
Those who own properties are expected to pay services for those who just rent housing.
All property owners are “rich” don’t you know.
J-I-C Steve Unruh

[SteveUnruh]

Back on topic of my Doing More, With less . . .
My corn/maize did for the very first time hit “knee-high by the 4th of July” here.
The sun warmed heated hand can watering and the 2X-3X ‘recommended’ fertigations is doing the trick. Of course as a kitchen garden the real measure will be the eat-abilty of the ears later.

Wifie is on my case to go back to overhead sprinkler deep watering. As traditional. Proven.
A while back I was asked here on the DOW, "Steve? What do you personally do about your (household/gardens/critters) water?"
Was in the middle of the 7 months really rainy season. I said creek water could be used 9 months out of the year. Rooftops collection. Both filtered with wood charcoal. I can woodgas power pump our 195 foot deep well for the really good stuff.
O.K. Smart-assed SteveU.
The creeks been dry for 8 weeks now.
Roof rain only been available for ~5 days out of the last 30.
So . . . just how little irrigating water can I garden with, eh?
2200 square foot garden, and now know that we need at least 42 gallons a day.
My eight 42 gallon plastic rain catch barrels would have been used up in the first two week of June. We then rained for 5 solid days then. By the 3rd day cooling enough to stall garden growths.
Replenished, if I was barrels using I would have ran out of a second collected barrels worth, ~5 days ago.
Ha! Ha! The 2 y.o. and 3 y.o. god-childeren been over for the last two weekends. I have been commanded to keep a wading/play pool filled for them. ~120 gallons I can then garden water can dip out of during the week.
No rain predicted in the foreseeable next 10 days.

I ever stop buying the mandated to use Town chlorinated water then I’d have to power up the deep well at least every third day.
Pressure delivery garden watering the old-way and I’d have to power up the deep well daily for hours and hours.
My south county growing zone 6 brother-in-law does his garden watering with pressure well water thru many drip hoses.
His grid power only goes out maybe one in three years. 20X the people down there in the flats-land. Same tax rate. 10X the people problems.
J-I-C Steve Unruh

Progress comes with watering can toting. And patience poring.

[BillyAlabama]

Hey steve, you can have some of my water, but I have to keep the 9 ears of corn we picked yesterday. It’s all we’re going to get this year…It sure is good stuff. My favorite----Ambrosia. It is what survived the hail early in the spring. The second and third plantings have washed away since. I guess we’re stuck with old canned corn this year, or that weird stuff at walmart.

[taitgarry00]

Edit: the paint on the white stove worked great on the sides, but not on the top. The heat “browned” it.

I wondered if that wouldn’t happen. I used to work as an industrial painter. Enamel (vitreous melted on enamel) is the toughest approach. Even it fails. The other option would be a high heat paint, but it will still fail in those conditions, but over a smaller area.

[taitgarry00]

So . . . just how little irrigating water can I garden with, eh?

https://youtu.be/tOIEThWnvpo

Hey Steve. I know you are data challenged, but I would recommend you check out this groups videos, the real deal, bare bones, rock solid third world solutions. Alternately you should be able to download pdf versions. Their gravity fed drip irrigation system based on rags threaded through solid plastic tubing is brilliant in my opinion, as are the human powered high volume or high pressure pumps, based on marbles and pvc pipe.

[BillyAlabama]

Hey steve, Do you use mulch?

we used to spray overhead water to irrigate. Used huge amounts of water. then, after the drought of 07, I started mulching more (or plastic mulch) and drip irrigating with drip tape. Since then I have rarely ever had to hook up the drip tape. Most of the time the mulch does the trick. It retains so much water. It also keeps things from splitting due to dry-then-wet-then-dry-then-wet conditions. The drip tape we use will work with as little as 10 psi which you can get by having a barrel of water 15 feet off the ground. or maybe it is 15 psi at 10 feet —I can’t remember.

Mulch,. It does a garden good!

[taitgarry00]

The drip tape we use will work with as little as 10 psi which you can get by having a barrel of water 15 feet off the ground. or maybe it is 15 psi at 10 feet —I can’t remember.

Google tells me the following:

One pound per square inch (psi) of pressure can be created using a 1-in. square column of water nearly 28 inches or 2.31 feet high.

Verifying the info, 23 feet elevation will give slightly less than 10 psi.

This said, I believe the EMAS system seems to work on much less pressure.

[BillyAlabama]

Sounds good to me. I got my numbers from an Extension Agency class I went to one time. Thanks for the correction. Maybe it’s 8 lbs…not sure…the point is, it doesn’t take very much pressure, and it saves a lot of water. Different products probably vary as to how much pressure they need. I have a neighbor who has a barrel of water only chest high and is able to use a drip tape product. The one I use requires more pressure.

[taitgarry00]

I have admired the commercial rain barrel products available, and they seem to work on a dead flat. Water loves running downhill. If it will fall from a sprinkler can, it should drip from a well designed irrigation system.

[Jeff]

All kinds of variations of reusing plastic bottles.

Watering Tomatoes Using a 2-liter Soda Bottle | Veggie Gardener

[SteveUnruh]

This is hard to convey if you do not live here . . . .
Vegetative cover mulch is a sure way to kill your garden here.
Molds, virus’s and fungus’s get you.
We have three of the cucumber, squashes different “white leaf” recovering from the cold damp airs in June.
I mulch with a layer of kept fluffed dirt. This actually works at a kitchen garden level to surface sun-kill and save underlying soil moisten.
Next year I will put in some “safe” block planted leaf lettuces and salad greens, radishes to compete with my 3rd generation learned regional traditionalist long-row, dirt-between wife.
Actually she more often right for us, than experimental me.

92F yesterday. And I DID keep her long rows well watering can watered!
I knew she’d check up on me for leafs wilting. Ha! Gave me a chance to shame her into some stoop-labor fine close in hand weeding of her long rows of the fine stemmed stuff. Water plumped weeds easier to carefully pick out then. Their root pulls actually aerating around the desirable’s. And their stalk/leafs/root wads DO get thrown between the rows to dry, die and “mulch”.

Regards
J-I-C Steve Unruh

[BillyAlabama]

goes to show farming is different everywhere.

[Jeff]

This might better belong in wood supply or doing more with what you have. But here goes it.

Back in the day when I was a full time sawmiller I found out the hard way that the profit was in the waste. The lumber just paid the expense and a bit for improvements then a few crumbs for me.

Never forgetting that I like to keep applying that. So here is my spuding operation.

I save on my saw blades, make better slab wood fuel, get a bark by product that would just go up in flames and get a work out at the mill gym.

I should find another Kemp shredder or make one that I could use to mulch the bark. A debarker would be nice but it would use up a lot of fuels and expensive to set up. Good idea to put everything to work in your wood lot.

Hoofed some lumber and slab wood over to Dad today.

Oh, I forgot sawdust for the bucket throne.

Remember, if the the ladies don’t find ya handsome at least let them find ya cheap !

[k_vanlooken]

profit was in the waste

Nailed it Jeff…

DO More with LESS waste… ( sharpening the knife or saw before its blunt , removing the bark or visible dirt’s from the material… so much old logic, but now lost in the “new Management teaching”