Today was like a half moon cookie

Recently I built this awesome grease collection system, it all fits stealthily in the Suburban and with minimal effort we can collect over 200 gallons per outing by sucking it out of dumpsters. The system still requires two people, one to hold the dipstick and one to monitor the pump, but it works well for what we need. Keep in mind that each of these trips nets $600 worth of fuel savings, compared with buying diesel. On top of that I built a similar kick ass grease filtration system, capable of holding 720 filtered gallons, more than enough to get us through the winter when it is harder to filter due to cooler temperatures. Well, last Sunday Johnson and I went out on our first hunt for grease in Binghamton, we didn't know the area very well but after looking in every dumpster we could find we got our 200 gallons, as well as a few to check out the next time we went. All told it took 130 miles of driving and 7 hours of our time, not bad for $600 but I knew we could do better. I filtered that entire haul in this last week so we went out again today, it only took 2 hours and 60 miles, most of which was driving from rural to suburban and back, to collect the 200 gallons, and since I rigged my drill up to the pump I only had to pump 60 of it by hand which was nice as well, much more efficient. That's the white half of the cookie.


When we got home I had to unload the barrels, 4 almost full 55 gallon drums, weighing in at about 500 pounds a piece. I usually scoot them down a ramp out the back of the truck which has worked OK, but today one of the barrels caught a nail on the ramp (I didn't build it, it came with the barn. This is obviously a pitiful excuse, but it makes me feel a twinge better.) Now I have a leaky bottomed full barrel of grease on it's side on the floor, cursing it to high heaven trying to right it's slippery ass. I wanted it to be upside down so the leak was on the top, but it was impossible. I had the grand idea to cut a hole in it and pump it empty, but the only other vessel I had to put it in was a barrel that is full of grease heated and ready to be filtered. I started to run it through my new magnificent filter system when that exploded too, literally raining grease on my head. It all took about 2 hours to clean up. That's the black half of the cookie.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to go along with it, 'blogs are boring without pictures. To make up for the shitty afternoon I'm now making peanut butter ice cream in our new ice cream maker I got for $4 at the local Salvo. Maybe the cookie is more than half white.

Ursula the Mean, Bratty, Awkward Teenager

The Country has brought out some independent streaks in Ursula, the horribly crazy dog. Independence is on one hand good for her, considering how completely hopeless she was without constant, loving, approving human presence when we got her. However, it also includes some rather immature displays on her part. Basically, she has been a total brat. I've been coping with this by starting a comic book featuring her idiot exploits. I am posting these illustrations to attempt to shame her into reform.


Please shame her in your prayers.

So far, we've done a lot of work that hasn't been that dramatic but that has taken time, effort, energy, and also blood, sweat and (my) tears. We've chipped away at siding, raised the well head, replaced windows, built some little things and designed systems, patched, painted, mopped, dusted, measured twice, cut once, and things have over time looked remarkably better.

We spent some incredibly painful hours over the weekend making a fantastic aesthetic improvement that really was dramatic, and boy it felt good.

I was totally unprepared for most of this project. The large silver vacuum-like sander, I figured, was like a vacuum. Maybe a bit harder to push. Well. Apparently, to get it to really work, you have to lift up on its handle. The whole time. This amounts to doing basically a few hours worth of curls with a weight that is completely physically impossible for you to lift. And then you have to walk, back and forth and back and forth and etc etc. The edger tool, for the edges, was apparently much worse. But I wasn't allowed to play with that one for fear it would drag me through a wall. The Big Man did basically all the work, with me chipping in to do follow-up sanding with a fine grit the next day and to work on the corners with a pad sander this afternoon.

I was also totally unprepared for the difference it would make. I mean, the floors were already wood, although they were painted dark, so I wasn't expecting such a transformation. The pain was completely worth it. And the wood/paint-dust that I keep finding in my ears and nose, that is also worth it.

Bam! Gender in the Country

Some of you have expressed, dare I say it, awe at the scale of work we've been doing. I have also detected a fair amount of skepticism, or perhaps, slight amazement at my participation in such projects. As my grandma continually fretted to all family members but myself over the summer: "She's just so small!"

Well, I resent the implication. It is true that I am a full foot shorter than the Big Man, and something around half his tonnage as well. This does not stop me, however, from dragging wood, trash and steel around the property with reckless abandon.

However, there are some tasks where I indeed find myself sitting out. Tonight's project (details to be revealed later) is one such instance.

So what do I do on these occasions? I practice. Or more specifically, I channel my great-grandmother.


In other words, it turns out that homesteading has some interesting, um, gender dynamics. In our previous lives, the Big Man and I cooked dinners, did dishes, and laundered on a strictly equal opportunity basis (probably even leaning toward Big Man being "House Marm of the Year" for the past couple years.) But with our impending idealistic "we do everything ourselves" life style looming on the horizon, I spend an awful lot of time kneading bread, prepping dried beans, and dehydrating apples. I quit working midday 15 minutes before the Big Man, so I can prepare lunch. I spend some evenings doing laundry instead of designing waste vegetable oil heating systems, some mornings testing pickling brines instead of rewiring the car, and some afternoons making stocks, broths and sourdough starters instead of building window frames.

All of this, I think, is okay. Sometimes I am bothered by the idea of me, literally, donning an apron and dashing about in the kitchen, while the Big Man bangs on things in the barn and comes in when dinner is ready. And it's more than a little disorienting. But, turns out, I like baking bread. I like preserving lemons. I even like wearing an apron. I bet grad school didn't see that coming.

Barn Cleaning Pictures

My helpful mother emailed some further documentation of the barn cleaning efforts, up at Flickr.

Happy Halloween!!!

On this All Hallow's Eve our sky lit up orange and the Grey Kitten was particularly excited. Remarkably, this was not photoshopped, I had to use the flash to show all of the Grey Kitten's features, which is why he seems separate from the background. I know how much all of you seem to love him, so I've taken a few pictures to further flesh out - pun intended - how gruesome he is. The images are intentionally small, so you have to click through to see him in his full glory.

The Grey Kitten's face:

The Grey Kitten's slim physique, acquired by strictly adhering to a zero calorie diet while laying perfectly still on a pallet.


On a lighter note, here's a photo of a Shaggy Mane mushroom growing in our yard.

Johnson and I have taken up mushroom foraging as a hobby and after a long walk in the woods that failed to turn up even a single edible specimen we came home to find a group of these growing in our yard. I picked and dried the cluster and now I'm letting this one grow, both to see how large it gets and whether it inspires others or not. As always, you assume your own risk if you do anything I suggest on this site, especially putting unknown things in your mouth.

Country Water, part II

Ok, so when we last talked I had identified four problems with our water:

* bad bacteria living in it.
* hot water smells funny.
* rust colored stains everywhere.
* soap won't suds up.

Like all complex problems, these were broken down into pieces and dealt with. When we discovered mice living in our walls and decided we didn't want them there, we poisoned them. Same goes for the Coliform bacteria. BUT, no use poisoning them if you leave the front door open right?

First we had to raise our well head. Presumably the bacteria made their way into the well when some part of some animal fell in, could have been a foot or a poop or even a rotten sock I suspect. Wells are just long steel tubes that go down into the earth until they hit the water table. There's a pump in the tube, conveniently placed below the frost line, and then the top of the tube, the head, is left exposed in case you need to service anything in there. Smart people put the head far above ground level, so when it rains the yucky run off water doesn't end up in the well, of course this was not the case in our situation. Our head was buried about 3 inches underground, with a pop bottle jammed in the top so you could pour stuff into it if you felt like it. Also, if Ursula felt like it she could drop a rude dooker down the well too, although she was nice enough not to. the photo above is our new and improved well head. Using PVC I extended the well head about 3 feet above the ground level, a few nerdy well nerds on the web and in person scoffed at the idea of using plastic instead of steel, but all it is is a water proof hat, I could have made it out of any impermeable material I wanted and PVC was cheap.

Now that the proverbial door's shut, I dumped a deluge of poison down the well, bleach to be exact. 4 gallons, then turn on the hose, point it down the well, and let it circulate for 30 minutes. Add more bleach, rinse and repeat. Crack all faucets and outlets in the house (I accidentally forgot the washing machine) until you smell the bleach and leave it be for 8 hours (we did this right before bedtime, on purpose.) In the morning we ran all the taps until the water was odor free, and we're in business. The whole process is called shocking the well. Conveniently, this was also part of the solution for the smelly hot water, but that's for next time.

On an unrelated note, I'm glad everyone liked the grey kitten so much, the views of his photo are the highest of all photos on the flickr page. Maybe I'll have the time tomorrow to dress him up for the holiday.