I am just looking to put down a few ideas about what I want in the future. I want a piece of land that can be a hobby farm. I do not know if I would be brave enough to jump into a full farm right away, nor do I think that Tami would let me. However even on a small plot of land I could do most of what I want. It would have to be on at least two acres unfortunately, since there is a lot of ordinances restricting "farm animals" out here. Anything less it is illegal, but at two acres we could all of the sudden have 64 chickens 2 cows and 5 goats or pigs. Why I could have half of that on an acre out in the middle of nowhere I don't know.
Now I do not think that I would start with that many animals all at once. I think I would want to start with a few egg laying chickens, maybe 2 milk goats, enough meat chickens each year for our family, and at least two bee hives. Now I do not think that I would go buy all of this at once. I think it would be a one species at a time deal so that I would have time to figure out the basics before I add something on top of that. Tami would want us to start with the chickens probably and I would be content with that even though I might prefer the bees.
I would also want to have a garden that was about a quarter of the lot. I would try to grow multiple varieties of everything that we love to eat and maybe a few things that could be experiments. I have learned to love zucchini just in the past year after all. I would also try to plant a small variety of fruit and nut trees. A few sugar maples would be great too. All of this together would keep me happily busy in the afternoons and on saturdays.
In order to prepare for this as best as I can I plan on filling our balcony with as many plants as possible this spring. We have great light and I hope that the garden will do as well as our last little container garden did this past summer. And hopefully better than our poor Arizona garden. If I can convince someone to let me "rent" a corner of their property I will start an apiary as soon as possible and maybe use honey to pay the "rent".
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Learning by Necessity
So I got my shop smith set up today at my in-laws (since Tami convinced me that my neighbors would not appreciate me using it so close to them). After finding a good branch to turn into a candle stick holder I started it up and started going to town. After about 15 minutes or so I found that it was having a few problems. Then the completely stopped spinning. Not only am I brand new to using a shopsmith I never have done anything with motors or even much anything electronic.
So over the next couples hours I had to learn how to take it apart, how everything fit together and how to fix it. Once I got the drive belt off the motor I was able to diagnose the problem that the motor itself was the problem. Looking inside I was able to see that it was all clogged up with sawdust. After cleaning it out with a can of compressed air I found that the motor was running just fine again, maybe even a little better than when I bought it.
Out of all the ways to learn, this is not my favorite. It is stressful not knowing what you have to do to solve a problem and not really knowing where I could learn the proper thing to fix the problem. I much prefer learning something and then doing it, not doing it and then learning.
So over the next couples hours I had to learn how to take it apart, how everything fit together and how to fix it. Once I got the drive belt off the motor I was able to diagnose the problem that the motor itself was the problem. Looking inside I was able to see that it was all clogged up with sawdust. After cleaning it out with a can of compressed air I found that the motor was running just fine again, maybe even a little better than when I bought it.
Out of all the ways to learn, this is not my favorite. It is stressful not knowing what you have to do to solve a problem and not really knowing where I could learn the proper thing to fix the problem. I much prefer learning something and then doing it, not doing it and then learning.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Equal spacing trick
I just learned a quick trick used for spacing things out at an equal distance without having to do any complicated math. For example if you want to space out banister for a porch rail. Take a long piece of elastic from a fabric store and use a permanent marker to mark every 2 inches (or another even distance) on the elastic. Now you can stretch the elastic so that two of the marks reach the ends of your length or banister. If you want the banisters spaced farther out then stretch the elastic a little more and eliminate a banister post.
Moving!!!
We are moving this week. And from this move I have learned a lot that I wish I knew before we moved. Some of it we learned in time some of it was a little late. I want to compile everything that I learned so you can be informed before a move. If you have any other ideas or suggestions please comment so that anyone who reads this later can also learn from your experiences.
First of all we are moving from Arizona to Virginia. I imagine that some of this information will only apply to long trips. Also it really only applies if you have to pay for the move yourself and do not have a job paying for you to move.
How to move your stuff:
We chose to use ABF freight. They have a self pack option that is very similar to PODS. They drop off large containers that you fill up yourself and then they come and put it on a flatbed and move it for you. We looked at pods but found that ABF is somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 the cost of PODS. Also my in-laws just moved from Nevada to Maryland with PODS and were not quite happy with the service, not to mention the price.
We also looked at U-Haul as another option. Not only would we have to deal with the hassle of driving a large truck with a car on a trailer behind it, it would also cost more. Between the cost of about 300 gallons of gas and the cost of the U-Haul for 5 days plus 2300 miles of driving it works out to be about the same price as ABF. So I will let someone else drive my stuff out and will just happily drive my car out.
Boxes:
We got most of our boxes for free which was nice. Yesterday though we started to run a little short so I went out and bought a few. I searched online for the best price but found nothing better than what Tami knew about. Apparently Harbor Freight in Tempe (and maybe other locations) sells the used boxes that their merchandise comes in. All of the ones I saw were about the same size of roughly 24" x 18" 10". Now that won't work for everything but it is large enough to hold a lot of stuff but small enough to not be too heavy as long as books do not go in it. Now here is the best part. They sell them for 4 for a dollar. There is not a better deal out there when it comes to buying boxes.
Packing material:
Most of our packing material was newspapers that we got from my grandparents (since they are one of the few people I know that still gets papers. However we had a brilliant idea when phone books got delivered while we were packing. It is amazing that they still get delivered and for a lot of people they go straight to the recycling. But if you cut off the spine of the book you are left with a neat and rather thick pile of packing material.
I hope that this helps someone sometime and that I do not have to do this too many more times in my life. Please leave comments of your ideas and experiences to help others.
First of all we are moving from Arizona to Virginia. I imagine that some of this information will only apply to long trips. Also it really only applies if you have to pay for the move yourself and do not have a job paying for you to move.
How to move your stuff:
We chose to use ABF freight. They have a self pack option that is very similar to PODS. They drop off large containers that you fill up yourself and then they come and put it on a flatbed and move it for you. We looked at pods but found that ABF is somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 the cost of PODS. Also my in-laws just moved from Nevada to Maryland with PODS and were not quite happy with the service, not to mention the price.
We also looked at U-Haul as another option. Not only would we have to deal with the hassle of driving a large truck with a car on a trailer behind it, it would also cost more. Between the cost of about 300 gallons of gas and the cost of the U-Haul for 5 days plus 2300 miles of driving it works out to be about the same price as ABF. So I will let someone else drive my stuff out and will just happily drive my car out.
Boxes:
We got most of our boxes for free which was nice. Yesterday though we started to run a little short so I went out and bought a few. I searched online for the best price but found nothing better than what Tami knew about. Apparently Harbor Freight in Tempe (and maybe other locations) sells the used boxes that their merchandise comes in. All of the ones I saw were about the same size of roughly 24" x 18" 10". Now that won't work for everything but it is large enough to hold a lot of stuff but small enough to not be too heavy as long as books do not go in it. Now here is the best part. They sell them for 4 for a dollar. There is not a better deal out there when it comes to buying boxes.
Packing material:
Most of our packing material was newspapers that we got from my grandparents (since they are one of the few people I know that still gets papers. However we had a brilliant idea when phone books got delivered while we were packing. It is amazing that they still get delivered and for a lot of people they go straight to the recycling. But if you cut off the spine of the book you are left with a neat and rather thick pile of packing material.
I hope that this helps someone sometime and that I do not have to do this too many more times in my life. Please leave comments of your ideas and experiences to help others.
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