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I probably could do four or five posts on kitchen gadgets. I have several on eggs alone. For example, here’s Henrietta hen, who makes perfect softboiled eggs:
A little slicer that snips off the top of said egg:
An egg separator (great for baking with children who want to separate eggs, but can’t quite manage it). Continue reading “More gadgets”
Larry’s birthday is coming up and luckily he has bought himself a present, a new Miken Ultra II bat, made of the same composite as the stealth bomber. He doesn’t usually bat left-handed but needed to here, because of the light.
This bat is so powerful that it comes with a warning label that says it is “capable of producing batted ball speeds that present a risk of serious injury or death to players, coaches and spectators.” Not to mention nagging wives.
In any case, he’s breaking it in for the spring season. Apparently composite bats start out stiff and need to be broken in for resilience and flexibility. Watch out Creakers!! Continue reading “Larry’s bat, plus kitchen gadgets”
If you’re a New Yorker subscriber, you know how relentlessly the weekly magazine arrives. Unread copies piling up around the house could replace the movie image of pages of the calendar flipping by to show elapsed time. But then comes a long plane ride and six or eight unread copies go into my carry on to be consumed like chocolates from a box. Continue reading “In praise of TV”
I love my chickens, but I also love to travel. I have already set up automated feed and watering systems and thanks to a friend who came to visit, I now have an automated chicken door that opens at dawn and closes at dusk. This amazing invention is from Wells Poultry in the UK, and came to me airmail. I couldn’t quite believe it would work, but it does. I set it up at the back of the covered area where the chickens are closed in at night as opposed to on their house itself. It’s very shady by the house, and I was afraid “dusk” there would be too early. We had to make a little ramp going down from the door, as the chicken yard is steep, and they were a little reluctant at first. Several hens went out, then the rooster.
The rooster and about four of the hens went down to the area where I feed them. But three of the hens weren’t eager to try the new door. The rooster came back up and encouraged them, and soon all were out. Continue reading “Automation in the chicken coop”
You can still go to the amazing Heirloom Expo at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa (thru Thurs., 9/15) and see displays of heirloom plants, animals and vegetables. You can eat basil pressed watermelon, the best creamy coconut popsicle I ever had, and buy seeds, plants, olive oils, vinegars, soaps, garden tools, videos, books, and even get a free packet of compost to take home. We heard a singer who could yodel up a storm and learned a little about biodynamic farming. We watched Chef Ray carve fruit and vegetables (that’s his sculpture above with eggplant leaves! and below a squash with watermelon roses and a polka-dotted apple).
At the animal barn we saw dozens of varieties of chickens , turkeys, and ducks. As there were lots of roosters, and roosters crow to define their territory, it was cacophonous.
Outside were heirloom pigs, goats and sheep, even some cows. I would love to have a pig or two, especially one of the miniature heirloom breeds, but that might stretch the tolerance of my suburban neighbors, who so far are okay with my rooster.
We met a woman who demonstrated a home-made bicycle-driven wool carder that she built. It put me in mind of my compost machine, except she’s developed a kit for sale. Anyone have sheep and need a better way to card your wool?
When we set up the Haengekorb, I didn’t realize it needed to be protected from rain. We hung it in a tree in the back of the yard, and it really wasn’t practical to take it down to put on a roof once the bees were in. The unseasonal rain we had prompted me to put up a very makeshift roof; but clearly, I needed to solve this problem in a more permanent way. I originally thought of 1/4″ plywood and 2×2’s, but I didn’t see how I could cobble this together around the ropes. Also, there was the problem of weight.
Then I thought of clear plastic corrugated roofing. I got an 8′ piece, some v-shaped metal flashing, a couple of pieces of lath, some marine glue, some foam pipe insulation and hose clamps, and metal duct tape (the kind they use for heat ducts). I had the lumber yard cut the roof panel in half, and cut a 4′ piece of the flashing for me. Then over several days I glued the lath to the short sides of the roofing, glued the flashing across the top, and taped everything up. I drilled holes for the ropes and made saw cuts from the edge up to the rope holes. I covered the holes with tape so they wouldn’t fray the ropes.
The installation had to be at dusk, when the bees were all quiet and in the hive. The first evening, I waited put up two ladders. I climbed up on either side of the hive, and set 18″ pieces of the foam pipe insulation around each rope, with a clamp at the top for the roof to rest on. I taped around each piece of foam for reinforcement. The next evening, I set the finished roof on the foam and taped up the saw cuts with duct tape and metal tape. Then I covered all the metal tape with blue painters’ tape to deflect the heat and please the bees, who allegedly like blue.
Now we’ll have to see if it holds up and keeps the bees dry when the rain comes. But in any case, this is certainly the most advanced engineering project I have ever tried. I am amazed that my measurements were right, the saw cuts were relatively straight, and the whole thing worked as I envisioned it.
For the full story of the arrival of the bees, and setting up the hive, click here. Or click to see the makeshift roof.
Okay, I have promised MacGyver-type solutions on this site, and here is the first one (if you don’t count the bee egg, which I didn’t invent): the amazing, fabulous, original compost and chicken food grinder, made for a total of under $100 out of a used stainless sink, a used heavy duty garbage disposal, and a new faucet and water line from the hose. You can read this or see it live, captured by my amazing friend and documentarian extraordinaire, Yeh Tung.
Compost is pretty simple: kitchen scraps, garden waste, straw or leaves and if you have some animal manure, great! Layer it, water and turn it from time to time, and wait. This is fine if you have unlimited space and time.
The problem is, if you have a small area, there is always too much compost and it takes too long to break down, so there are always more kitchen scraps and garden waste than there is space. Even if you import extra worms, as I did.
Over the years I’ve tried plain, unprotected heaps (attracts rats, raccoons, possums and skunks), drums and plastic compost houses (fill up too fast), and even an expensive machine from Nature Mills that turned kitchen scraps in to a wet smelly mess that was too stinky for inside and attracted flies and bred maggots outside.
My solution is the amazing, easily home built compost buster, made from a garbage disposal. For my prototype, I simply cut a hole in a piece of plywood, set it on a 2×4 stand, screwed the disposal onto it and put a bucket underneath. I used an extension cord and plugged the disposal in to turn it on. I put a strainer on top of the bucket, and used a hose to provide water.
Once I proved to myself that the concept worked (despite all advice to the contrary!), I added a length of old bicycle tire inner tube to the exit of the disposal, and put a cork in the intake valve. I added a sink, a faucet, and a big used Igloo container with a hose bib in place of the drink-dispensing valve.
The raw material goes into the sink, gets ground up in the disposal and drains into the strainer. The water goes into the cooler. I added a switch to turn the disposal on and off.
If it’s stuff the chickens will eat, I give the mash to them. This eliminates the litter of rinds and cobbs they usually leave. I make a mash of kitchen scraps. I also let them eat corn cobs and rinds down to the nubs and then take the rinds and cobs out to mash up for the compost along with garden waste, citrus, and onions, where the worms make it into compost practically overnight. The nutrient-rich water goes onto the vegetable garden.
Effective, efficient, and as noted, has a certain (at least to me) poetic elegance of design.
Every year on the afternoon and evening of the solstice, the Garden of Memory, at Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, Julia Morgan’s amazing, labyrinthine columbarium, hosts a concert of eclectic music: didgeridoos, electronic music, strange machines that emit sound, improvisational choirs, instruments made of glass, metal, fiber, discarded dolls and toy trucks… If you can imagine it, it’s there. The place itself is many levels with little courtyards and niches, each one with a different performer, and some grand performance spaces. Steve Kent, pictured above, is one of my favorites. He has a radio show, Music of the World, on KPFA Thursdays at 11 am. Also Orchestra Nostalgico. They seem to play on the deck each year, which is a nice spot to hang out.
At sundown, if you remember to bring a bells (or a bell or a gong or even a set of keys) you can ring then along with hundreds of others. There is something inexplicably powerful about doing this. Probably it calls up ancestral rituals and our Jungian unconscious reverberates. In any case, I’ve gone for the last three years, and can’t think of a better way to celebrate the longest evening of the year.