Another water heater I got around the same time has had the lime chunks rinsed out, new heating elements put in and one new thermostat as well. Old Whirlpool that has a nice rust free casing. Been running it in the house for 4-5 years or so.
Posted on 07/01/2025 5:32:22 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Been to town 20 mi in one direction to pay personal property taxes and get some cash for my inspection sticker guy. Went to see him in town 20 mi in the opposite direction but he’s out until 1pm so I gotta go back, twice because I have two vehicles to get stickers put on. Then it’s back to town in the first direction to get stickers for my plates.
Gonna let my brain cool off for a few and head to “towns”.
Fixed the blower fan in the truck a couple of days ago so I have AC again. The trip to inspection guy is 13 mi on gravel and 6 on pavement. Other town where I work and where all the county offices are is 4 mi gravel, 16 pavement. I’ll be close to 100 mi on gravel today. Crazy. AC = good.
I get paid tomorrow so I’m going to pay off the auto insurance in full to save a few bucks and get that entire vehicle monkey off my back. Technically not true.
I have a car trailer I had registered in FL but MO requires a title and even though I have the mobile home title that the trailer was made from, I have to have it inspected by a State Trooper and then apply for a homemade trailer title. I use it once every year or two so I haven’t bothered. Would be nice to have it proper though. Need trailer break away set up for it since it has electric trailer brakes.(must have the ability to continue to apply brakes for 15 minutes) Side clearance lights I have but need to install.
Gave up outside. Pushing 90 and I was pretty much done anyway. Didn’t get the controller up high in the fridge like I wanted but high enough to put my tunnel tool box in the bottom. Just ordered a 75 foot cat5e cable - $12.50 free shipping. Paycheck on the 25th is real tunnel spending time.
I’ve tried black walnut for smoking and it gave meat a bitter taste. Kinda like when I use too much hickory in a long smoking session. I’ve learned to use mostly oak, plum from our big plum tree that finally died, apple, maple, etc.
Of course, over 80% of our trees are hickory...
What we have here is a hickory. I think that might be ok for smoking. Truthfully, we use pecan wood chips in our smoker. I love the delicate flavor it gives everything. Beef, pork, chicken, salmon, have all been really great with pecan wood. It’s subtle compared to other woods. Of course, pecan doesn’t grow up here in the Midwest (that I know of) so we purchase our wood chips.
Me too (showers). The forecasters had taken them out of the forecast, now they are back “in”. Every day in our 7-day forecast has at least a 20% chance, and the last few days, every day we had even a 10% chance, we got at least a hard (if only 15 minute) thundershower.
I have a ton of oak, plenty of hickory and some cherry available here. I like to start out with cherry and then swap to hickory and finish with oak.
The meat has taken as much smoke flavor as it can pretty quick. Then it’s just a matter of keeping the right temp and mammalian meats tend to get wrapped in foil at the half way point. On big roasts, when I foil, I might swap to the oven to finish it. Boston Butt or brisket, I might start late enough in the smoker to finish overnight in the oven.
My son doesn’t like smoked meat aside from salmon of course and it’s just me and him so I haven’t run it in a while. I need to go smaller. Hate using pellets when I’m surrounded by wood. Might have to invent the Mini Wood Fired Smoker.
You would think I’d love a small pellet smoker with thermometers inside, including stuck in the meat, fully automated. Cooking is different though.
Another water heater I got around the same time has had the lime chunks rinsed out, new heating elements put in and one new thermostat as well. Old Whirlpool that has a nice rust free casing. Been running it in the house for 4-5 years or so.
*** My son doesn’t like smoked meat aside from salmon of course and it’s just me and him so I haven’t run it in a while. ***
Pecan wood is so mild and subtle that your son might appreciate it. It’s great with salmon, and as I mentioned it works on beef, pork, and chicken, too. We haven’t done shrimp with it yet, but I imagine that would be terrific.
Try it sometime with salmon to introduce it to your son. Maybe you’ll get him to try something else successfully.
That’s an amazing setup!! Love it!
*** Might have to invent the Mini Wood Fired Smoker.***
Please do!! This is a great idea! ;)
Tree project is finished for the next few days. Progress stopped when the crane with the grappler hook/saw malfunctioned. These trees are so tall that they have to extend to their full reach, which puts a huge load on the weakest point. This is the second rig that was messed up with this project.
The bucket truck is in for regular maintenance and won’t be out until Monday or Tuesday. Today, all I had was fresh herbs. Next time, I will be armed with cookies or some such to offer for a hard day’s work. (I offered water, but they brought their own.)
We are the 4th owner of this house. I have never met the original owners, but they still live in the area, and one neighbor is still in touch with them. I asked her to reach out and see if they want a slice of the hickory tree. They said yes! So they will come by sometime next week to retrieve it.
I’m looking forward to meeting them. The woman is apparently a Master Gardener, and she gave me a great slate to work with. I hope she will like what we’ve done with the property, but you never know.
The only other thing we did was update the kitchen. I like to cook so I needed a gas stove. It was an imperative for me.
Used to be your storms would pick up more moisture over the lake and dump it on us. Not this summer. Not like it used to be. There have only been a few days I have not had to water.
He’s fine with hickory smoked salmon or any other kind of salmon. Problem is, he doesn’t care for pork and that’s the common smoking meat, aside from bri$ket and maybe tri-tip but the local grocery store started selling tri-tip steaks and we love those. Poor Man’s NY Strip.
I’m waiting for and praying for our usual Summer Drought. I hate, hate, hate a wet growing season.
I’m not having nearly the production I normally do. Rain, overcast skies, no sunshine. I’m sad. :(
Luckily, I can find my way to the Piggly Wiggly. :)
And at 5pm, I guess I still wasn’t done because I went and filled the truck tank with water and transferred it to the tunnel tank. Made a new setup for the transfer from one tank to another and it worked great. I sat in a folding chair in the bed of the truck and adjusted the gate valve exiting the truck tank to keep pace with the sump pump in the goat’s tank from where it gets pumped into the tunnel tank. Makes me clean the goat tank too LOL. Clean and full now.
I was going to buy a transfer tank that could be more hard plumbed but I kind of like this setup. Electric transfer pumps don’t do much for GPH and so it would take longer they can’t be allowed to run dry. I don’t mind sitting in a chair, sipping a beer and adjusting a gate valve for 5-6 minutes.
I think I have more motivation now because I’m no longer destitute. I ain’t rich but I’m no longer behind at least and can start putting away money while still buying some things.
Green is shed - blue is outside in the shade close to the shed. 
Just came in from watering and saw my first mosquito. It came near my face then it did not even trying to bite me. Just left. Picked my first shishito. Looks like I have a bunch of red raspberries to pick.
Our son smoked a tri tip for us on the 4th. It was great! (I made the mac n cheese.) Rounded out with raw veggies to keep it easy.
Onward to other tabs to see what I can knock off the To Get list. I'll be hitting Menard's Sunday after work for chain link top rail and who knows what else. Walmart for a cheap prepaid cell phone or two.
To Get
Cell Phone
Insect Netting
76" support hoops for the netting
Greenhouse Film
IBC Totes (x4)
Cattle Panels
Chain Link Fence Top Rail
Gable Vents
Linear actuators
12 foot step ladder (non on craigslist right now)
Bunch of little drip irrigation items
Bunch of those Deutch connectors (need to tally up how many)
Bunch of relays (need to tally up how many)
Vintage Fridge Gasket
DIN rail
Secondary ethernet switch (one for shed - one for tunnel)
Decent solar batteries
Another Mini PC or three (thinking about replacing our laptops with them too)
Materials for lean to shed on NW end of tunnel
Small tiller
And probably a whole lot more. Gonna be like Christmas every day here for me soon with daily packages coming in. I see Lowes has a little Honda tiller but that's about like the seeder. Don't need it quite yet.
Just found out they sell china knockoffs of the $400 roll up sides motors on amazon for $100 ea. I might go that way instead of my bifold hangar door style sides for now. I can install roll ups in a day and they do the job.
Was thinking about a new 5,000 btu AC for my son and put his old one in the shed but I might want to just go the final route of a mini-split AC system with heat pump for the house.
Thrift store finds & cooking ‘adventures’ (I should know better)!
The widow of my first cousin (she’s 81) has had a bad 2 weeks ... 2 falls. She’s very banged up, but hasn’t broken anything. She’s getting depressed because it’s scary not knowing when you’re going to faint or your legs just won’t hold you up. The docs have done testing, but can’t find anything specific.
Anyway, mom and I are trying to cheer her up & help her when she needs it. I’ve taken her to 2 doc appointments, text her every day & see how she’s doing, if she needs anything, etc. She and her husband used to go to our lake cabin fairly frequently & about 30 minutes away was the local, very popular, BBQ joint. They had rice pudding & my relative LOVES their rice pudding - if you bring up Ralph’s, she will be talking about the rice pudding.
My 500 casseroles book has an ‘Old Fashioned Rice Pudding’ recipe & I decided to make it for her. The recipe calls for a 1 quart baking dish. The smallest dish I could find was an 8 x 8, 2 qt. On the way back from a haircut yesterday, I stopped at the Goodwill in the small town next to ours, hoping I could find something and I did! A beautiful little glass 1 quart baking dish/bowl. It’s older*, not Pyrex, but thick glass, very sturdy, $4.00. Then I spotted a cut glass bowl, smaller size than what we have ... it is footed, so the bowl isn’t directly on the table. So cute ... $4.00. Last ‘find’: some Dr. Seus’s books - brand new for $2.00 each - bought 3 and they will be Christmas gifts for the nephews (all under 4 years old). I grew up with Dr. Seuss ... so silly and fun.
Now for the part where ‘I should have known better’. I whipped up the rice pudding (easy recipe) and poured it into my ‘new’ 1 quart baking bowl/dish. Hmmmm ... it’s pretty deep - is the middle going to set up within the allotted baking time? The answer is “NO”. I added time, but finally had to call ‘uncle’ - the sides/bottom were getting too dark & the middle was still liquid. I got out the 8 x 8 and transferred the pudding to the larger, shallower dish & popped it back in the oven. The liquid set up within 5 minutes (2 eggs in the recipe). It wasn’t pretty, but it was ‘tasty’ - very good, actually (and I don’t really like rice pudding - I think it’s the texture).
I had warned my CIL (cousin in law) that I was running late and finally told her I was on the way ... with pudding. She was happy to get it - thought it was very good! I visited for an hour & a half, too. Making the pudding for her was well worth the effort & next time (mom wants me to make her some), I will use a much shallower baking dish. I believe we have found our 1.5 quart Corningware dishes that should be perfect :-)
Busy day - company coming tomorrow. All the grocery shopping got done yesterday. I will probably run over part of the lawn with the mower - tomorrow will be a week since last cut - it’s right on the borderline of getting ‘shaggy’, but still looks pretty good. We used the newly paved driveway for the first time yesterday - it’s really nice, looks great. While I was delivering pudding, mom trimmed around all the trees, front & back, which saves me a lot of work. Last big ‘to do’: go to town & pick up BBQ at our local stand - very good BBQ, can’t wait for lunch tomorrow.
*My glass 1 quart dish is Vintage Glasbake Maid of Honor (Sears). Mine is clear glass, most of what I saw is milk glass (white) with some blue flowers. My bowl may have had a top originally or may just be a serving bowl - I can’t tell & don’t see the exact bowl online.
“I think I have more motivation now because I’m no longer destitute. I ain’t rich but I’m no longer behind at least and can start putting away money while still buying some things.”
That is a good place to be in Life - at any stage. PLUS you know how to grow your own food. Winning! :)
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