R. Ford

Ok heres how to get rid of the rats. This trap works well and i've got rid of a few infestations this way. Cut a metal or plastic 55 gallon drum length way so that you get sort of a trough. Drums are cheap, but you could use anything you have on hand. An old watering trough or bathtub would work just as good. Lay it on it's side, open side up and drill a hole in each end of the drum centered about an inch down from the top. Get a 1/2" piece of pvc pipe (it's cheapest, copper would also work, but not iron as its too heavy). Cut the pvc  so that it is 16 inches less than the length of the drum. Now you will need a good stiff wire. I like to use some household bare solid copper grounding wire, but you could also get by with some rope or bailing twine in a pinch, even a piece of rebar would work. Tie the wire to one of the holes you drilled and then run it through the pvc pipe, and attach it tightly to the hole on the other end of the pipe. So now you have a pvc pipe suspended above the empty barrel. Screw or hot glue a piece of wood or cardboard to the pvc pipe. The piece needs to be about 6 or so inches long, and about 3 or so inches wide. a 6" piece of 1x4 works great. Screw it so that it is perpendicular to the pvc and centered. Place some peanut butter on both the top and bottom of the board. Lastly place the trap where you want to catch the rats at, put about 6 inches of water in the bottom of the barrel, and lay a board like a ramp from the ground up to the center of the barrel on one side (not the ends). The rats will smell the peanut butter and go up the ramp. At the top they will smell and see the peanut butter on the board, but they wont be able to reach it, so they will attempt to hop to it. When they land on it, the pvc pipe will spin on the wire, dumping them into the water below. Because of the water the rats can't jump out of the barrel and will be trapped. Empty daily, and refresh the peanut butter. This is the basic idea, you can adapt it to whatever materials you have on hand. You could use a 3/4" piece of pipe and then use a piece of rebar instead of the wire etc.

It's easy to catch them on the roost. Just let them go to roost then grab them by the feet and flip them upside down. If they are too high, such as in a tree branch etc, then push a wide board like a 1x8 or 1x10 up to their chest. They will step up on the board naturally, and then you can lower them down to yourself.

I love my fiskars set. They seem to require much less force to trim branches than the other loppers i have when comparing them side by side. Keep them sharp and lubricated. Fiskars makes some really nice and ergonomic cutting tools if you haven't tried them out before.

I run a furniture factory that builds solid pine furniture.  I handle everything from hiring to product design and ordering materials.  We have just under 80 total employees. It's hot factory work,  but I have all of the sawdust and pine off cuts you could dream of and normally make at least 100 gallons of biochar a week (this is one pickup load of pine off cuts).  I hope to build more kilns and start to sell/ barter my biochar locally.

Let me talk to my daughter. She's ten and would probably love a pen pal! Be in touch soon.

My physics side wants to say that this would be a net loser. Most any turbine you placed that would effectively be pushed by the air, would be putting back pressure on the fan, making it work harder to disperse the heat from the coil and condenser. Think of it like a fluid (because it is). You are asking one pump that is already pumping "water" to now power a turbine, and expecting the pump not to have to work harder to do so. There may be some slight nuance to this particular situation, but i think overall you have a net loser of energy. On the bright side though, it gives you a good bit of experience setting up a small diy wind turbine, give it a shot and report back here with the results.

We all know that fried is the best, but here's my family's favorite way that I cook pork.

Season chops with heavy salt and pepper, a small amount of garlic powder and some dried rosemary and sage. Let them sit on the counter until they are close to room temperature. Preheat an oven to 350.Add a dollop of butter to a stainless pan on high heat ( you don't want a non stick pan here). Drop pork chops in pan and leave exactly where they are, don't move them around. You want some of the seasoning and pork to stick to the pan here. It won't take long to get one side very brown, flip and do the other side the same. (This is pretty much treating the pork as you would a steak). Since we don't eat pork raw like steak, move them from the hot pan and onto a baking pan or dish and into the oven to finish cooking through. While it's finishing, deglaze your stainless steel pan with some warm chicken broth. It doesn't take too much, maybe a half cup. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spatula to get all of that flavor up and into the broth. Now add a small jar of cherry preserves and stir it into the broth and cook on low heat until you are close to a gravy like consistency. I then add a good tab of butter here, and maybe a small amount of any liquid that came out of the pork in the oven to melt into the cherry glaze. Place porkchop on top of some mashed potatoes and then a healthy spoonful of the glaze over all of it.

Sorry I don't have any measurements, I really don't use any when i cook, so it's mostly done by feel and taste.

I use fly traps for mine, but I have a friend who put a few of the little trees brand air fresheners (like the ones that hang from the rear view mirror in your car) with the scent called "vanillorama". He swears that flies hate it and wont go any where near his coup.

Pearl Sutton wrote:I couldn't sleep last night, so I was on my phone looking up how to make foot powered scroll saws!

I'm also still fascinated by furniture that folds, slides, does things other than just sit there.

Check out Roy Underhill's "woodwrights shop" if you aren't already familiar with it. I can't remember the episode but he has a good one on a tredle powered table saw and a spring pole powered lathe.


Lately I've been learning to consider all uses when designing things around the homestead. I built a new coop for the chickens, but dear wifey decided that it would be a good time to go ahead and move some of the chicks over and let them acclimate to the new coop before the larger hens move in. These are the two pictures I got the next morning when she went in there to check on them:


The little girl had wedged herself there sometime during the night. So needless to say (especially with chickens), expect the unexpected. (She's doing just fine)

This is right up my alley. The company I work for designs and builds pine furniture that is simple and long lasting and I often reuse other entire components when designing new pieces. This end table end will now be the end for a storage bench, and my coffee table top also doubles as a desk top etc. I've always been a fan of the "buy once, cry once" mentality, but I think in today's economy and so many different things begging for your dollars, we would have a heard time convincing enough people to spend the extra money (think much much extra) to make this a reasonable venture. There is a reason that we live in a throw away economy, and I believe it's what the market demands. We have our choice of shopping with the local hardware store and paying a little more for a higher quality product or going to the big box store and picking up what we need, plus some groceries, and a new belt, kit-kat on the way out. Clearly most choose the later (I know this crowd on here may be the exception). The problem with manufacturing anything like this would be being able to source and secure parts for build and repairs on an ongoing basis when you are a tiny tiny fish in the pond. If you choose a motor currently in production, there is no guarantee that the same motor will be in production in five years or five months if the main user or manufacturer of it does a design change.  I don't like being the fly in the ointment, and I'd be the first in line if someone figures it out, but in my humble opinion, this would be dead on arrival.