Fun Lil Micro-Mini Project

To make a short story longer…

I have an area of our back yard* I’ve mentally designated for a future backyard* garden. Right now, I’m burning wood trash there, in a small pit I’ve dug–limbs, small trees I’ve removed and even good sized logs from a mimosa tree I’ve long hated.

Oh, the lil micro-mini project? Making charcoal in (very) small batches. I get a good fire going and then when it’s burned down a bit I shovel dirt and ashes over the burning wood until I blanket out even traces of smoke. Next day, I uncover the charcoal that’s been created and put it in a steel container until I’m absolutely sure there are no live coals still left, then into a covered plastic bucket.

Oh, the charcoal? For a very small earth-sheltered forge I plan on putting in the same small pit for use turning some old files and lawnmower blades into knives. (I’ve already annealed the files/lawnmower blades to make them soft enough to work… in earlier woodpile burns. :-))

Waste not, want not.

πŸ™‚


 

 

 

 

Note the difference. While I may seem (or even be) pedantic, it’s for good cause. I keep reading things on the web–and even in books that’ve been through the whole nine yards of traditional publishing, including editors, proofreaders and the like–that use “backyard” and “backseat” and other such adjectives as though they were nouns. It chaps my gizzard. The distinction is a useful one and should not be abandoned by the illiterati of contemporary writers simply because they’re too butt lazy to be well-read.

Tightwaddery: Simply Clear Thinking

A few years ago, our central air conditioning unit began showing signs of eventual–more like near term–failure. Of course, we looked into replacement; who wants to live through sweltering summers? And then, after several years of annual “resurrection calls” to AC service folk of varying ability, it failed.

We chose to swelter through that Summer. (OK, we added fans. *meh* Was not all that bad.)

But what did we ultimately do? Well, we had several options:

    Continue to suffer through the humidity of late Spring and the heat and humidity of Summer.

    Try to ameliorate the situation by installing a whole house fan–an option that appealed to me but wasn’t a solid sell.

    Install a new central AC unit.

Or…

    Zone the house and use “point cooling”.

Sure, a new unit would probably have worked and been more efficient than our old one by far, but what we ended up with

    Cost much less than 1/10 of replacing (and upgrading, of course, including the air handler that would’ve had to be replaced inside, etc.) the central AC unit

    Uses much less electricity than the old central AC unit, and not much more than when we went a Summer with just fans!

    Allows us to effect additional savings when we want by simply turning off cooling for areas we aren’t using.

Of course, we went with the least expensive method of zoning the house: window units. Yeh, yeh, I’m sure that impacts the salability of the house, but since that’ll really only affect our heirs, we just DGARA. We own the place (no mortgage) and have no intention of ever moving, so why should we care? (If they want,the kids can install central AC when we’re gone and they need to sell the house. We won’t care.)

Disadvantages: minimal.

Advantages: overwhelming.

Thinking inside the box and looking away from stale, boring, “standard” solutions can make one’s lifestyle more affordably comfortable.


Oh, one cool plus: freed up the 60-AMP 240-Volt circuit the central AC had run on to be split into 2 30-AMP 120-Volt circuits. Sweet!

Ahh! The Blessings of “Junk Builds”

My home office desk is a build consisting of

  • -a 3’X6′ top I slapped together from (mostly) scrap about 17 years ago.
  • -four legs made of (average) better than 10″ diameter sycamore logs from deadfalls off our trees from The Great Ice Storm of 2007, with
  • -oak 2X4 (from old pallets) and sycamore limb bracing
  • -and a 2’X3′ “keyboard drawer” made from a piece of castoff formica counter and the only purchased item, a heavy-duty drawer glide.

Why is this such a blessing, apart from the fact that it was built for about $12? Oh, well, when I stumbled and fell on the extended “keyboard drawer” a few minutes ago, I broke one of the free oak pieces I used to attach the drawer glides to the desktop, along with the drawer glides.

Cost to repair? Maybe $10. (I can get better, heavier-duty glides now for less at one of my fav “fell-off-the-truck-pricing” stores. *heh*) I have plenty of pieces of oak 2X4, so since I’ll recycle the 3″ brass screws, I’ll need only the drawer glides. Sweet. Heck, I’ve been meaning to replace these now worn (over 10 years old) drawer glides, anyway, what with all the wear I’ve given them using my keyboard drawer as a footrest… πŸ™‚

But… broke the oak support. Man, I have to lose a few pounds… πŸ™‚

Oh, and when the “drawer” fell, I also broke my plastic trash can. S’all right. Pulled it out of a dumpster almost 10 years ago, along with its companion paper shredder (which I repaired and used for five years until it died again… and was replaced by another dumpster paper shredder). I have more such freebies with which to replace the trash can.

I tell ya. Folks toss out the most useful stuff. (I’m about to use a discarded horizontal file cabinet as a “build-in” to a full room height bookcase. What was wrong with it that it was discarded? Oh, the back–cheap, thin mahogany plywood–had been broken. I replaced it with better: a peg board on which things can be hung behind the horizontal file drawers! It was brand new but “broken” in transport. Thrown out. Asked the business owner, and he appreciated the removal.)

OK, this is more than just an “I broke my desk, but I don’t really care” post. Catching wise? Don’t need to be a hoarder, but why just throw out stuff? Put it on Craigslist or something if it doesn’t sell in a garage sale! Here are some Craigslist listings just today for a locale near me:

  • Free firewood pic
  • A Bunch Of Stuff – Couch, Lamps, Gardening Stuff And More
  • puppy
  • Golden Retriever pic
  • FREE Wooden Treehouse/swing playset
  • Car/Truck Hood
  • 36 In. Screen Door pic
  • WOODEN SHOP TABLE
  • Free 20+ inch TV

Think what a blessing some of your junk might be either to someone in need or just some tightwad like me. *heh*

Still, didn’t even shake the desk. Just tore off the keybd drawer. My lap and a lil side table are working fine as keyboard rest and mousing surface for my wireless input devices. I frequently use ’em that way anyway when I have my feet up and am leaned back, comfortably “computing” from about a 5′-6′ distance from my monitor. Now, it’s reduced a tad, cos my feet are on the desk proper. I’m amazed i can find room for ’em there, though. The thing holds an awful lot of junk…

Christmas Presents: Ah! Somebody Knows Me Well

Perhaps too well. *heh* In the mail today, addressed to me: FM 21-76, Department of the Army Field Manual: Survival.

Though it was addressed to me, I didn’t order it. I can only assume it to be a gift from someone who knows me well. Now, who could that be…

Whoever it is/was, thanks! πŸ™‚ (Was Lovely Daughter)

(Of course, apropos of the Senate vote to enslave generations of Americans, the first thing my eye fell on when I opened the books was… a focus on escaping capture by the enemy. Of course.)

  • Size up the situation
  • Undue haste makes waste
  • Remember where you are
  • Vanquish fear and panic
  • Improvise
  • Value living
  • Act like the natives
  • Learn basic skills

Hmm, looks like a rubric for post-Obama Americans seeking to escape the enemy and survive as free Americans…


Micro-mini-update: Because of weather/road conditions, Lovely Daughter (why did I typo that as “Lobely Daughter”? :-))and SiL-to-Be did not spend Xmas Eve with us as planned. So, last night was our “make up Xmas Eve”. Re-read Random Yak’s “Lest We Forget”, shared Xmas Chili, Xmas music, etc., and then went on the Xmas Plunder from the Kids Down South. SiL-to-Be demonstrated his awareness of relationship between Sil-to-Be and FiL-to-Be with a wise gift: a Bodum French press coffee maker. Wise beyond your years, Grasshopper.

Tightwaddery Hint

If your family has cats, here’s how to save money on both cat food and cat litter: keep hunting until you find a food they don’t like (but make sure it’s still nutritious). They’ll eat less, and thus they’ll also poop less. Hey! They’ll also not get fat! It’s a win-win.

Thank me in comments.

More Tightwaddery

I posted some “tightwaddery” posts several times around the turn of the year, when the portents of the economic times we now face–rather, that anyone with more active brain cells than a head of cabbage can see we face–were strong, though still straws in the wind compared to what The 0! and his evil minions in Congress and his cabinet have now wrought. Although I’ve let the posts fall off, my exercises in tightwaddery have continued apace.

Here’s a lil mini-micro-nano tightwad tip: can lids. Plastic containers constantly wear out, become damaged or simply wander off in the hands of family members. As our menus have become more contrained, with only two or sometimes three family members eating here at any one time, semi-convenient foods, such as canned tomato sauces that can be enhanced with additional spices, herbs or vegetables into something edible and nutritious, are becoming more common in our fare. But. Small amounts as used for two-person meals can be more expensive when bought in small containers, so larger containers that are less expensive per unit of food are the “convenience tightwad” choice. But how to conveniently store, say, half a 26-oz can of pasta sauce? Well, most folks’d store the leftover sauce–not yet customized for a specific dish–in some sort of plastic container (that they’d later have difficulty cleaning the tomato sauce off), but not me. You see, I’ve collected a variety of plastic lids–from some beer making supplies, cans of “wasabi” peas, and even yogurt containers. The lids from the “wasabi” (really just horseradish-seasoned) peas fit perfectly on the 26-oz pasta sauce cans and enable safe storage for a day or so until next use. Other lids fit other cans, from dog food to black eye peas to cranberry sauce. And since all the cans are clearly labeled with WHAT they are, leftovers don’t wait long for usage.

Oh, and the “wasabi” pea cans themselves? Rings for poaching eggs, cooking perfectly round scones and even plaster molds for making some medallions for door trim (with the aid of some wax molds made from selected patterns).

Use a little imagination and you too may be able to dispense with some plastic storage containers. For “free” (cos you’ve already spent the $$ on the food the lids came off the cans the food was stored in).

Oh, for purists who insist on all their veggies coming straight from the vine/branch/whatever or at least being frozen: sure. If you can find, for example, fresh, ripe tomatoes have at it, but unless you pick them from your own vines, they’ll be neither fresh nor ripe when bought at the farmers’ market or your local grocery store. At least not both at once. Same for corn or beans or whatever. (If you’ve ever tasted corn fresh from the stalk, you’d know what I’m talking about. Amazing stuff.)

But speaking of…

For fresh foods, even if you have as little arable land as we have here in “rocky bottom” neighborhood, America’s Third World County, you can still economically grow food in pots, especially if you compost leftover vegetative matter from your kitchen and yard. I have some peppers (Habanero and Caribbean Red) that’ll be a hearty addition to meals later this summer, if we don’t get too much rain. (*sigh* These kindsa peppers are better with less rain than we’ve been getting. I’m a little afraid they’ll turn out whimpier than I’d like.) And you know, don’t you, that a handfull of pinto beans–the kind most likely to be used with a beans n cornbread meal or in a nice chili n beans meal–will likely sprout for you and either grow more beans for you or be a perfectly acceptable substitute for expensive bean sprouts from the grocery store. I have friends who planted a perach seed and have since–several years later–gotten some good peaches from it. Better soil than I have, but still…

Encourage volunteer pecans and walnuts, usually planted by absent-minded squirrels, to grow and reap the rewards in 10-20 years.

Plant window boxes with herbs. Harvest and eat volunteer plants like dandelions or “possum” grapes. No, one doesn’t get a lot of sustenance from any one small contribution of such volunteer vegetation, but they can make a very nice addition to meal times. But plant gardens that need lots of weeding and watering? Not me. I’ll plant things that’ll grow with little or no attention from me or use volunteer growth. My time’s simply more useful elsewhere, and I won’t pay money to water some fussy lil plant that’s not meant for my climate and can’t survive without constant attention.

Now, if only I could kill off the rest of my grass and get more useful plants like dandelions to volunteer in its place… Heck, maybe I’ll break down and buy dandelion seed. πŸ˜‰