At least one of you didn’t quite understand Mark’s initial review of the Kindle Jack Jr. So we made this short video to show you the nuts and bolts of easy, safe kindling splitting.
(Side notes: Mark lost his Uncle Thomas yesterday, which is why I’m making this post for him. Also, if you tried to make a comment and failed, please try again — I think I found the bug!)
Replacing a bathtub faucet turned out to be much easier than either of us anticipated. Turn off all water to the trailer, unscrew both hot and cold water hoses along with the hose leading up to the shower, then slip the old faucet out and the new one in. There’s nothing complicated going on with the shower — water pressure is what makes water flow uphill.
The only real roadblock came when Mark noticed that an old leak (long since fixed) had weakened the wall the faucet was going to be screwed onto. How could we strengthen that area in a quick-and-dirty manner that would also hold up over the long term?
The back plate from the old faucet turned into a perfect solution. Applying it to the screw side of the wall while the new faucet’s back plate stayed on the faucet side of the wall resulted in a much stronger sandwich. Ta da — running water with no leaks!
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On a semi-related note, Mark has been busy turning Trailersteading into an AI-narrated audiobook. You can enjoy a sneak preview above, then if you enjoy what you hear you can buy the full shebang on Kobo or Google. Enjoy!
Where does a Venn diagram of werewolves and homesteading intersect? Nowhere…except me.*
Yes, as some of you know, my pen name’s werewolf books have been paying the bills around here for years. I have a blast spending my mornings in fantasy worlds and my afternoons in the garden, but I usually don’t try to mesh the two lives.
However, Mark and I are running our first ever Kickstarter campaign this week, and I realized there might possible be a few people other than me who love both homesteading and werewolves. Sound like you or someone you know? Then check out my campaign and/or share it with a friend. Thank you so much for your support!
*(Okay, so maybe the diagram also intersects with paying attention to phases of the moon? Maybe other places too? What do you think?)
Mark and I picked the last tomatoes and peppers today in preparation for what might be this fall’s first frost. But will it be?
Back when we lived at the bottom of a hill in Virginia, we could count on cold temperatures dropping least as low as the forecast, sometimes five degrees colder. Up here on a hilltop, in contrast, the opposite is true. A week and a half ago, with a forecast low of 33 F, we only got down to 38. Driving out that morning, however, I saw frost a mile and a half away as soon as I reached the bottom of the hill.
So will this week’s forecast low of 28 freeze our crops? Only time will tell.
Of course, hilltop gardening has its downsides too, the primary one being water. In the summer, I can feel the groundwater dropping out from under us. No matter how much water I add to our garden beds, the soil is always thirsty. The ground cracks. Plants are slow to grow.
I used to say that you can always add more water, but you can’t take water away. While that’s true, I’ve yet to figure out how to add enough water to keep our garden happy without spiking our monthly bill out of sight. I’m hopeful that continuing to boost our organic matter will increase the water-holding capacity, but there’s a lot of truth in the saying “high and dry.”
This looks like our very first post, but it very much isn’t! We just hopped over from an old blog to a new blog to make our lives easier. If you’d like to enjoy old gardening posts, you can find hundreds (thousands?) here. If you’re an old faithful subscriber, be sure to update your RSS feed!