Anyone have any Agent Orange hiding in a corner? I gotta do something about this vegetation. I just don't know what.
Way too much for a backpack sprayer. Maybe a paint sprayer full of saltwater?
I can almost keep up with it in the spring, then it will rain for a week and it just takes over everything.
Buried in that mess are some delicious black raspberry bushes. I'm going to try to move them next year to somewhere more accessible.
Speaking of next year, I've made some garden decisions, and this is more for my documentation.
CUT BACK THE NUMBER OF TOMATOES. 8 total 6 of which should be Roma for sauce, not berkeleying 24 again.
poblanos were crap, sugar rush peach peppers were crap. More Grande jalapeno, way more mini bell, blot, and Chinese 5 color.
STAKE YOUR DAMN PEPPERS
Less tomatillo. 4 is plenty.
bush watermelon to INDIVIDUAL 10 gallon pots. would have been fine maybe solo in a 5 gallon but two in a 5 was the wrong answer.
pumpkins, see watermelon. Also, keep wetter
Actually plant your beets
And most importantly USE SOME SORT OF WEED GUARD. ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT BECAUSE, HEY DUMMY, YOU TILLED A METRIC TON OF SEEDS INTO THE SOIL WHEN YOU MULCHED THE PLANTS.
Big cardboard boxes are an effective weed guard. Plus, they're biodegradable.
I'm also a member of the 'WTF were they thinking' old house club.
In my case, the paneling (early 80s bleached lauan mahogany that was this loathsome brown-gray color with a green tinge) was on top of wallpaper. Or fabric. Or wallpaper that was printed to look like fabric. Or homasote (drywall made out of compressed newspapers). Or newspapers. Or sheets of tin. Or some mixture of all the above, depending on which wall of which room you were in.
The wife and I rented a dumpster and all the paneling and all the crap underneath it went in the dumpster. The molding around the doors and windows went too, it was splintered, beat to hell, and poorly 'fixed'. Also was covered in many layers of lead paint.
I had a stack of drywall panels in my living room for a few years. I used it as a couch.
I'm never buying an old house again.
starting to ripen up
The blot peppers are about ready
buena mulatta, they'll turn red when they're ready, but good and hot now
supposed to wait till they fall off the vine
my watermelon vines kinda died, so I've got a handful of 4 inch watermelon.
Growing so many more of these next year. Almost too sweet to eat even tiny, I can't wait for full sized ones.
Had the wedding at the house yesterday. Things went well. Canyonero did shuttle duty, storm held out until after the food was done, no fights, everybody had a good time. Then I ran the numbers.
Marriage license $70
Pig, stuffed with kielbasa, full foil roaster Cole slaw, 2 full size roasters of mac n cheese, big roaster of salad, buns, sauce $750
100 cheesecake cupcakes $250
24 regular cupcakes $50
Bartender $100.
I'm not counting alcohol because I used the liquor cabinet, didn't buy anything specifically for the wedding.
How do other people spend so much?
Feel like the carport at the old house would have been problematic when the rain came, despite being bigger than the patio. Especially when the hail came, because 90 berkeleying degrees, of course it's hailing(?!?). Having the big truckstop right up the street made parking easier, but I've had more vehicles here at one time in the past. We just used it to keep the lower driveway open for the pig guys.
The only picture of us was after we signed the paperwork, and it hasn't been sent to me yet.
No dances, never actually turned the stereo on, no speeches, no nothing. Simple and easy.
Congrats!
My wife managed to keep our wedding right around 2k for almost 200 people. It's amazing how much you can save if you do it right. Neither of us ever saw the sense in big money weddings, simple and cheap works great.
Congratulations Rev!
and well done on a real experience versus a big show.
we had a wedding caricature done in Lancaster in lue of an actual wedding photo. It's now framed on the mantle.
The chickens are all finally laying. Came home to 26 eggs. Now pulling 7 a day.
In reply to RevRico :
That is cool. Better than any photo.
RevRico said:
The chickens are all finally laying. Came home to 26 eggs. Now pulling 7 a day.
That's awesome!
The wife and I have the wedding party running away from a t-rex for one of our photos lol
the pumpkins are taking over everything the weeds haven't claimed. Vines over 20 feet, with 4 to 6 starters showing on each
Got new led patio lights for the wedding and finally got around to hanging them. Way better than I anticipated, way better than the lamps on the wall. 48 foot strip, 15 bulbs. I really need to put a gfi out there, but that really would require rewiring the basement and that's just not financially doable right now.
Still trying to install the water filter on the kitchen sink. I need an adapter from 3/8" FIP to 3/8" weird grey tubing. Guess what fitting I can't find at the plumbing store? I've tried using compression fittings on it and can't make them stop leaking, barbs don't fit the tubing properly. I don't want to buy a new faucet, but I might wind up doing just that.
poblanos
Grande jalapeno
Orange spice jalapeno
buena mullatta
Chinese 5 color
sugar rush peach.
I chopped all the pepper plants today. Keep in mind, I've pulled 10 gallon Ziploc bags of peppers already this season. My salt guy was a no show, so I'm making hot sauce this week.
Great update Revrico. I'm convinced if we interviewed homeless blue tent squatters , 1/3 would answer " it was either this or get another fixer-upper" . Still recovering from mine. The initials of fixer-upper should warn everyone "F.U."
Just making notes so as l continue to search I don't have to keep looking.
Oil boiler 81% efficient, 117000 btu
AC 3 ton, seer 12, no heat pump
Insulation in the attic, it turns out, is almost non existent. Some sporadic fillings of what almost looks like ground rockwool, but not full coverage and not very deep. Not a fun looking job either, may be worth it to pay someone to blow it in, if I can get all the crap that's stacked in there out without falling through.
I want to plastic over the giant windows in the living room this year too.
I found out the state offers a low interest long term loan (1% interest, 10years, up to $10k) to upgrade HVAC stuff. I think we're going to suffer through this winter with oil costs, then try to apply for it next year to replace the AC with one with a heat pump, and the boiler with something more efficient, preferably with some zone controls.
HEELP
I'm now really thinking about renovations, even if we can't quite afford them yet. I should be able to do most rooms inside of a week, even working by myself. Down to studs, new wiring/outlets/Ethernet, new heavy duty insulation, fresh drywall and paint. The problem will be working around the floorboard radiant heat things from the boiler. I don't know how much they can move to get the drywall in and out.
Thing 2s room is small and flat, with one odd shaped window and 2 doors. My room is mostly flat with just a weird kick out by the door and 2 windows. The living room is mostly large and flat, the fireplace is spaced so a single full sheet would fit on either side. The kitchen and basement are a bit more difficult, and the kitchen would be farmed out because if I'm redoing it I need a professional. Thing 2 prefers her room cold in the winter and isn't tied to the hot water radiant heat, so it's fine until she moves out.
That reminds me I need to look for a tankless or small tank hot water system for her room so I can cut out a giant line of unnecessary plumbing. Only wash clothes with cold water, and for as little as she uses the sink in there, on demand hot water is fine.
Holy cats, look at all those peppers! Tell me more about your hot sauces. Are you fermenting? I'm so envious of all those peppers.
Mezzanine said:Holy cats, look at all those peppers! Tell me more about your hot sauces. Are you fermenting? I'm so envious of all those peppers.
Simplicity is the name of the game for me. I weighed out all the peppers by type to the nearest pound, then split the piles them in half for two batches and add 2 sliced onions to each batch.
A batch starts with half the pile going into the pressure cooker with enough vinegar to hit the liquid minimum fill line, cook for 45 minutes, then blend it with a stick blender, add the other half of the match, and cook again for 45 minutes. Blend that, jar it, and is good to go.
The hard part is chopping all the peppers to maximize surface area.
hey I finally hung my pot holder thing we got in June as an early wedding present.
It's not level, I need to drill out another hole, and I forgot to get a holder anchor thing, to get the chain further from the light fixture so it levels out better.
It came with some little loops of steel cable with some horse crap fittings that used set screws. Guess what I lost before I even got it up the first time? If you said "some set screws" you'd be right. So I bought some heavy duty double link chain and some S hooks and redid it. Mostly because I was sick of the black pan smacking me in the head EVERY SINGLE TIME I walked under it.
Note for your tomatillios next year, you will need at least 2. Turns out they don't self propagate. I had a single one in the garden this year, tons of flowers, even some of the 'shells', never a single fruit developed. Also when you replace the heater, there are sometimes state rebates/tax incentives you can claim. We replaced our hot water heater with a tankless before we moved in and were able to get a state discount.
Fixed the Wi-Fi finally, moved the router upstairs, and stated hooking up the network switch. I haven't run any new lines yet, but having the router upstairs is a big boost. It let's a lot of our devices run on 5ghz instead of 2.4, but didn't seem to negatively affect my signal on the patio or the driveways.
Plastic over the big windows feels like it helped a little. Of course all the windows in this house are non standard sizes and will need to be custom made, so plastic is going to be a yearly thing I think. Taped it up behind the blinds and thermal curtains.
I need new pans.
The wood boiler seems to work fine, but it's hungry. No matter how full I pack it or how big of pieces a use, it's ashes with 2 hours. Still, that's that many hours a day I'm not using the oil. I usually wait till 1030-11pm to go light it. I have found it I really get a fire going and maintain it for a few hours, it'll go way past 65 that is set at, but that requires topping it off every hour.
I'm going to start looking at pellet stoves for upstairs in the living room. I think I can get the block plate out of the chimney, and if I have to I can store pellets in the snake garage I don't use anyway. Bring in 5-10 bags in the wheel barrow at a time as needed. That won't help keep the basement warm, but it would do wonders for the upstairs and my heating bill if I can find one that fits. Might also force me to look into furniture.
I'm working on a jig for making bio bricks in the mean time. The little one brings home ridiculous amounts of paper from school, then between junk mail and general purchases there are crap loads of cardboard as well. Might as well use it for something good instead of throwing it all away.
In reply to RevRico :
Tell me more about these bio bricks.
In reply to clutchsmoke :
This video popped up on my recommendations, which led down a rabbit hole.
Basically, fill up a garbage can with old paper and cardboard, sawdust if you have it. Soak it overnight, tear it up with a saw blade welded on some round stock mounted in a drill, then press the water out in a mold and let them dry.
I have a 15" long piece of 6"diameter steel pipe that I'm trying to figure out a base for, then I'll mount it in my 20 ton press and use some wood and some spare plate to tamp it down. After the first time I'll figure out a "finish height" and torch some drain holes in the side.
Our area doesn't recycle, and oil being more than a dollar a gallon higher than this time last year has made me look for any alternatives I can find. Turns out all the paper and cardboard I've otherwise been tossing can have a use. Not realistic to expect to use it this winter, but gives me a summer project to prepare for next winter.
My wife ends up bringing home literal tons of newspaper because of her job.
I just roll them up with twine and burn them. Not the same as nicely seasoned tamarack but it works well
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