I'm in the MO Ozarks and have acidy, clayey loam. In late July and all of August, this clayey loam can turn into a solid, dry, hard mass that stops potato growth. I start my taters way before everyone else around here so they can be out of the ground in June. I get more, bigger and smoother taters than all my neighbors. My second closest neighbor finally gave up on them because he wasn't even getting a 2 to 1 return. My best has been about 5 to 1 and if things are ideal, you should be able to get 7 to 1. That is 7 lbs harvest for every 1 pound planted. If I did a better job of hilling, I'd be real close to that. My neighbors dig them in mid-late July and let the soil totally dry out before harvesting for some reason. Takes them half a day digging a few rows. I dig mine whenever the soil is ideal for any sort of digging. One year, I was able to just pull up the plants with taters attached but I don't have that good a tilth now. Need to work on that. I collect oak leaves and pile them up so they can break down. I add that to my tater beds for fluffiness. Doesn't seem to steal too much nitrogen since they're half broken down already.
I plan to try a second crop in the fall but haven't yet. I'll be putting up a high tunnel this year and will probably do my fall taters in it or at least some. If it's well drained enough, they can be left in the ground and dug as needed. I've found some in the ground the following Spring that were still good. One of these years I'll have a root cellar.
Welcome to the past. "Slaving over a hot stove all day" was a real thing. The Waltons was a tv show that was on when I was a kid. Based in the 1920s/30s and there was usually three generations working in the kitchen. You mention kids. Are they helping you?
I feel your pain. Our kids just started eating like adults and I'm still trying to adjust portions AND try to have leftovers. Our pots and pans aren't big enough and neither is our kitchen. I'm not even trying totally from scratch. Just not doing nuke it kind of meals all the time and it's still tough.
You might look into "Once a Month Cooking". There's plenty of info on the web about it. Basically you spend an entire weekend cooking your ass off making a bunch of stuff that can be reheated. 40 breakfast burritos all at once etc. If you can join up with neighbors or friends it helps. Use whoever's kitchen is biggest and the extra people help in the way of making things more like an assembly line. Kids can help too as a lot of tasks will be small, easy things.
Get the biggest crockpot you can and cook something in it most every day. I built a fairly big smoker this past year and can fit a lot of meat in it at one time. It has to be tended to all day for up to 12-14 hours so I keep it down by my shop so I can work on something at the same time. It's portable so I can bring it up by the house if I have things to do there instead. I can use it twice a month and cook enough meat for the month. Not everything has to be smoked since that taste can get old. Wrapping something in foil prevents the smoke from getting to it. Smoking meat is more of a guy thing usually so if you have a husband/boyfriend, he might get into it and that would take some load off of you.
Cooking a lot at once for future use does add some work in portioning, packaging for the freezer and you'd need a stand alone freezer though not a huge one.
Well howdy neighbor. I'm in Cherryville. We have 15.5 with a cabin to live in, plus employment in the opposite direction, Cuba, but if you end up needing someone to stop by and check in on things while you're gone, I could probably do that.
I'm pretty sure Eden wasn't loaded with bugs and methheads but it evidently did have at least one snake.
Those elbows can be swivelled to make any angle desired but someone used them like they were all 90 degree elbows. Maybe for aesthetic reasons?
A more free flowing way would be an elbow right on top of the stove making about a 15 degree angle back and to the left. Then another elbow that would be about 75 degrees to make the turn to horizontal. That horizontal section should be as short as possible so that first up pipe should tilt back to be close to the wall.(at which point you may need a heat shield between it and the wall) Then outside the wall, put a tee with a two foot drop down and then your upwards pipe. Cap the drop down and that cap gets removed for cleaning out. Would need to pull the tee off to get that horizontal pipe clean really. Gotta have a tee there though as that's the first thing that will clog is that elbow at the bottom of a down pipe.
I went horizontal through a wall once and will never do it again. That section gets filled up with creosote. No way to avoid it. The particular stove I did that on had the outlet coming off the back so I didn't have much of a choice at the time. I've since cut a hole in the top and capped the hole in the back so now it goes straight up through the roof. Smack the pipe now and then and the creosote falls into the stove.
The other thing I see is that it looks like the stove was made for 8 inch pipe and someone put an adapter down to 6 inch. maybe???
Preferable and most proper way would be 8 inch straight up through the roof and use a double wall/insulated pipe through the ceiling/roof. (or 6 inch if that reduction is part of the stove itself)
I tend to make things last because I can't afford to replace them so I figure out how to fix them. I also reuse other people's trash.
Our house is actually a small cabin built with materials I got from tearing down a fire damaged house. 16x21 got small when the kids got big so I added a 28 foot camper on one end. The camper had been hit in the side so I just cut that side out, pulled it next to the cabin, jacked it up and built some steel legs for it to sit on pads.
People go through water heaters quick around here because they went with the 100 and something foot well instead of the 300 and something foot well. The shallower wells are high in lime. When water's heated, that lime separates so the things fill up with chunks of lime. I've been given or picked up 5 water heaters. Made one that works. Had to flush it and dig around with a coat hanger while flushing to get the lime chunks out. Three others got turned into a smoker and one I just picked up a couple of days ago. I'll flush that one out and swap it for the one we're using because that one has a rusty case. 40 gallon while the newer one is 30 and will fit the spot better.
Bought an old table saw from a former employer years ago. It had no oomph. Figured out it could be wired for 110 volts or 220 volts and that it was wired for 220 but has a 110 plug on it. Put 220 to it and it had balls once again. Probably circa 1940s. Weighs a few hundred pounds which makes it so much smoother and less rattly than a newer one.
S Bengi wrote:Stones
Put them on contour to slow water and trap organic matter.
Build Gabion/Bricks all you need is some wire mesh and you can now fill it up.
Habitat for snakes/etc
With Gabion walls you can build greenhouse/workshop and animal shelters in paddocks, even paddock walls
I've never understood the whole gabion thing. Seems temporary. Wire mesh will eventually corrode and then it collapses.
I'm in the Ozarks and we have lots of rock around here though not near as nice as up North. We've got lime stone but it's not very strong. We've got some knarly, holey stuff and then some decent stuff. I'm currently building a stone foundation for my shop which will be a barn someday once I can build a real shop. Went driving around a couple of days ago collecting rocks that the road grader turned up on the gravel roads here.
Just picked up the adjoining 7.5 acres which has lots of rock on it so I plan on incorporating rock into our house as thermal mass. Doesn't hurt that it looks cool as hell. We're doing an earth bermed house with earthip design aspects like the greenhouse. The inner wall between greenhouse and living space is what I'l build from rock. Our rock is mostly light in color so I plan to darken it up somehow so it can suck up more heat.
