from the ruins of a bad day springs hope.

What Falls Down is Soon To Be Up Again

 

other pics soon to follow. 

     

          Well I expect to finish on the chimney this morning at least as far as the outside goes. I need to stabilize the last section of liner I installed in the new chimney by adding another foot of brick to the base of the last section. I was able to salvage quite a bit of brick from the old chimney and used it to rebuild the chimney. Only this time I have installed a replaceable metal liner as I went along and it also has a clean-out large enough to remove the liner parts and still be able to install new liner pieces.

        My skills at laying brick are not too bad, opting for strength instead of looks, really just wanting to get the job done before bad weather sets in. By using a metal liner I also increased the safety factor of the chimney so that in case of a chimney fire I would have two layers of material to burn through instead of one. And with the old chimney and the mortar cracks it would have been a sure thing that if a chimney fire were to occur, then it could have easily spread to the house. The metal liner will allow an easier cleaning with a chimney brush. I also installed chicken wire in the top of the chimney under the rain cap to prevent birds and bats from setting up camp.

        So I took the chimney my grandpa built some sixty five years ago and have improved upon it I hope in a way that will make it last another 30 years and help reduce my relying on fossil fuels as a source of heat. Wood is a renewable source of heat that works regardless of whether there is electric or not on any cold snowy morn.

       Further plans include a hot water loop of copper coil and a heat exchanger to further reduce my need for using sources of electric or gas for heating water for baths. I am real interested in the tesla battery system that is now starting to be marketed for battery storage of electricity. This coupled with solar and wind could possibly get a person off the grid, only using electricity as a backup to your own electric system. We are entering a new age and the electric companies are running scared. In Fact they are contemplating charging solar and wind users an additional fee for infrastructure costs , regardless of whether they use the electric or not. At that point I think I would cut the wires, and tell them to screw themselves.

      An update on some of the other projects I took on is:

      The tomato towers worked great, except in my haste to get them growing and going I just grabbed tomato plants and ended up with possibly the best cherry tomato plants in the world with hardly a sign of the dreaded blossom end rot. In fact I must have at least thousand or two of the largest cherry tomatoes you ever saw. I would can them still, but what a job it would be trying to skin the little shits. I will try the tomato tower again with another variety next year. The volunteer tomatoes under my benches in the greenhouse have kept me supplied with tomatoes to eat in sandwiches so far this year, and all this with very little end rot as I saw last year. I really believe that although the blossom end rot exists in the soil, I still believe it is exacerbated by the lack of moisture at critical fruit ripening stage. I am no expert but others have come to the same conclusion when it comes to understanding the disease.

     The potato tower is also subject to some degree to blossom end rot but I myself found no evidence of rotted centers of spuds I planted in my potato tower , in fact I am at level three of digging potatoes and although there are a lot of small potatoes I have had some rather large potatoes . This may be due to overcrowding of seed potatoes and limited amount of root growth close to the top of the pyramid. I am looking forward to finish digging the potatoes to see how well the pyramid did. Already I have dug three times the original bag of seed potatoes. That alone is a success in itself. I will try this again. And instead of fancy cut 4x4‘s I intend to just use cut logs that have the bark stripped, stacked and notched like a log cabin at little or no cost to the grower. And like the 4x4’s can be reused again. Three of these towers would be more than enough to keep a family going all year long with potatoes.

      The pool is nice but even in the greenhouse is starting to cool off, and I have been using it less frequently so I have drained it in preparation for winter. I need to clean the greenhouse thoroughly of weeds, and plants like trees I need to plant outside and take off the watering list. I will be doing more planting and composting as well this year. I also will plant a lot more berry bushes yet this year as long as the weather holds out. I am trying to balance all these projects with progress on my house addition and the chimney, and bringing in materials to make cement and lay blocks is a very important part of moving forward with the house addition. Things are looking better, still I would have liked to have been further along with some of these projects.