Doug Coffield

I just had success with a live trap. Something was "relocating" eggs from the coop to several locations outside. I didnt know what was responsible so I put an egg in a small live trap and caught a rat.

By the way, my two terriers were of no help with the rat.

I've spent the summer focusing on the house and now am turning attention to the long neglected property.

I have lots of trees that are starting to get over run with vines. My thinking is once the leaves fall I will do what I can to remove the vines to help the trees. Is there any reason this is not a good idea? Any reason to keep the vines? Mostly wild grapes, I think. Location is south east Michigan.

Have you tried looking at an RV supplier for the 12v smoke detector?

Thanks for the replies. I hadn't thought about flies transmitting.

I have been living in my rv while rehabbing the house on the new farm. After towing the rv to the closest dump station once I decided to carry buckets of the black water and dump it on the fruit trees instead. It's 95% diluted urine with only small percentage of solids from when the mrs can't make into the house toilet in time. Little to no paper.

Are there any health concerns from doing this with the fruit in the fall? I thought since nothing will touch the fruit it should be ok.

If the controller was working before the water got in, you might be able to revive it. If the water damaged some circuitry then this won't work. But if the water just left a conductive residue that is causing the controller to misbehave then this might work.

Remove all connections and open any case it has to expose the bare circuit board. Use q-tip type swabs and rubbing alcohol to remove any water residue you see. Basically wash the board with the alcohol. Lightly scrape any stuborn scale or residue. Let the alcohol evaporate and the board dry, remove any cotton left behind by the swabs. Reassemble the case and reconnect the wires.

If you are lucky it might work. I have revived a few water damaged things this way.

I've just been reading about all the nasties they put in toothpaste. Fouride, saccharine, propylene glycol....

Can anyone recommend a good natural toothpaste without all the crap in it?

I'm headed down the same road you are talking about.

One thing I'm in the middle of right now is trying to get 12v Led lights. The LEDs are much more efficient than incandescent or cf lights. Running them on 12v directly from the batteries will save the cost and efficiency of the inverter. The same would apply to what R Scott is talking about with the rv pump.



Check out nickel iron batteries. You pay a serious premium to buy them but they don't need to be replaced like lead batteries. They are almost impossible to damage from missuse.

Wyomiles Hogan wrote:Did you get your water cleaned up ?

Not yet. I'm going to wait until closer to when we might occupy before dealing with it. I don't want the issue to come back from lack of use.

We've had the property about a month and a half. Part way into renovating the house.

I usually walk over the hill to look at the pond and will kick up 4 or 5 deer that seem to live either in the swail to the right or the thicket to the left. Today I slowly walked over the hill and saw deer starting to leave the thicket and they just kept coming. I counted 19 deer! Might need to rethink fencing the garden.