Pat Redd

My sister sent me this picture from an old family album. It's showing my old Schwinn 10 speed set up to pump water. We must have been testing out the very old Fairbanks-Morse water pump I had bought at a garage sale. We were able to pump water at good pressure on just the third gear. Since that was some 40 years ago, we've since replaced it with a solar set up...which works very well.

http://solarbeez.com/2015/08/08/pedal-power/

When I bought my 'upright bike' back in 2004, I thought my bicycling days were over. I'd ride my usual 3-5 miles and hurt for a couple of days. I couldn't figure it out. One day when I was walking instead of bicycling, I explained the problem to someone I knew who wondered why I was walking. He told me of a saddle you could get from a mail order catalog. This saddle had two side by side pads with a gap between. That saddle literally saved my butt!
Just now I looked in the Heartland America web site, but I couldn't find it. I don't get the catalogs anymore, but for many years, I saw it advertised again and again. I'll bet if you can get your hands on a catalog, you'd find it, but looking in a bicycle shop, I never saw one. Back then it cost $30 to $40 bucks. Good luck. Sheesh, I was so desperate, I almost went to the doctor...all it was was the wrong saddle.

My son says, "it takes about 2 to 3 hours of firing to heat this particular oven up that much. That is because I put a rather large thermal mass in there, for longer baking sessions. If you just made the ovens for pizza you could get away with an hour and a half or so. If you use live fire when cooking probably even less."
Hope that helps.
Pat

I came across this web site while I was searching out another log hive face to be carved. I've built two log hives so far. I'm a natural bee keeper. I don't use ANY treatments in the hive and I only use bees from swarms. The log hives are mainly used for bees to live in, of course, but I don't try to get honey out. I figure they can have intervention-free shelter, some poison-free habitat, and they can give me swarms and unlimited photo opportunities.
http://solarbeez.com/2014/06/17/bee-atrice-steps-into-prime-time/
Bee-atrice Log Hive was inhabited on June 6, 2014, by a huge wild swarm after two failed attempts on my part to give her a swarm. That wild swarm must have been Italians because it built natural comb very fast and swarmed again exactly two months later in August. I wasn't real excited to capture a swarm in August so I let it do it's thing and it ended up choosing my recently vacated other log hive. Pictures and videos posted here... http://solarbeez.com/?s=bee+Beard+is+back
Log hives are a lot of fun...a bit of work setting them up for sure, but so what...it's my passion!

My son built a cob oven last month. He let me post pictures and a video here...
http://solarbeez.com/2014/10/22/brian-builds-a-cob-oven/
I brought some aged cherry wood for him to use.
We cooked pizzas in about two minutes. It really works well once it's heated up and it doesn't take much wood.

Here's my first attempt at a hugelkulture bed. It's 90% complete, I just ran out of energy for covering the last of it up...
I found a bunch of fantastic mycelium and molds on the rotting logs I used...was wondering if anyone would be able to put a name on some of these interesting looking spores. Also there is what looks like droplets of sap on the end of a log that's been in contact with the ground for a good five years...(so it's probably not tree sap)
http://solarbeez.com/2013/02/17/hugelkulture/
I looked for a web site that might be able to ID mushroom spore, but didn't find anything. That's why I wanted some more knowledgeable people to weigh in on it.
Thanks,
Pat