Finally some good drainage progress

I felt terrible on Friday, and left work early, but mostly just napped.  I slept most of Saturday too, but at least I didn't need Nyquil all day.  All that happened those two days was that my new weed whacker arrived.  It is a cheap POS battery operated one.  I don't expect it to live long, but I was curious how well they worked.  When I pulled it from the box, it felt even cheaper than I had expected.

 

Sunday I finally dragged myself out and put it to work.  I whacked everything in the ditch.

 

The blade looks a little worse for the wear, but it is thin and cheap.  I have to admit, it worked better than I expected. I doubt it lives long given how cheap it feels, but at least until then it seems to work fine.

 

I ended up making a Tractor Supply run for more glyphosate and landscape fabric, since I couldn't find mine.  There was still green in the ditch, albeit very little.  I don't understand how this stuff works for people at the rated strength.  I mix it at 3:1 water:chemical ratio (1/2 gallon chemical, gallon and a half or so of water), when it is supposed to be mixed at 8.5:1, and it still doesn't kill everything.  I understand the knotweed is hard to kill, but this ditch was just run of the mill weeds.  It has doubled in price in the last couple of years too.  Ugh.  

 

When I got back, I pulled out all the ditch stuff.  Annoyingly the sock somehow got wet despite being inside a sealed plastic bag.  This made the cardboard tube it was one useless. I sprayed the ditch down with glyphosate while I waited for it to at least try to dry out.

 

I got the fabric down and got a little bit of gravel in the bottom for the pipe to sit on and hold the fabric in place.

 

The sock didn't dry out, so I had to manually put it on the tube.  It isn't hard to do it this way, but it is a lot slower.  I also knocked a bunch of leaves and stuff out of pipe.

 

After that it is just laying pipe, pull the sock over it, and put gravel down around it and bury it.  

 

I quickly realized that I didn't have nearly enough pipe and stuff.  I bought 100ft of everything, and the house is only 44' long, and you can't fit another house next to mine up there.  I really thought it would be enough.  I don't think I actually got 100ft of pipe though, I think the roll I grabbed was only 75'.

 

I also realized that I never dug the other downspout for the creek side.  Oh well.  Too late now.  I was thinking I might make the back like a raised bed or something anyways since I was planning on leaving most of this drainage as pure gravel all the way to the surface.  This just makes that more important assuming I ever actually put up gutters.  Currently my plans aren't more specific than something over the windows so that rain doesn't come in every time it even as much as dribbles. 

 

I got the pipe laid until I ran out.  I have gravel on it periodically, but I don't currently have enough gravel to finish the job, I will need probably another dump truck worth.  

 

I put a concrete block in it to hold the pipe in place.  I go shopping tonight and will pick up the rest of what I need.  

 

Because I can't get the tractor across yet, I have been moving all the gravel by hand, a 5 gallon bucket at a time.  I will say I have become a major wimp, after about 10-15 buckets, which was a little over a quarter of the pile, I was spent.  This pile is about 2/3 of a dump truck, the last third was used on the driveway last year.  

 

After that I was tired, so I went and ran the sprayer out of juice in the driveway and called it a night. There wasn't a ton left in it after spraying the whole ditch.

 

I am hoping to get another truck of gravel delivered today.  that way I can use the tractor to do the gravel work.  That is what I bought the tractor for to be blunt. 

Nice trip to Rhode Island

Sorry this is a couple days late, the last couple of days the blogger editor wouldn't let me upload the pictures for reasons I don't understand. 

 

I didn't do too much during the week last week, but I did pick up another couple of dressers.  The first one I picked up was actually quite nice.  It did not survive the drive back in the truck though.  When I picked it up, the door on the right was fine, and the piece of facing was still intact, the backing came off, etcetera.

 

I got the back reinstalled and got it put in the master bedroom for now until I decide whether to fix it or chuck it.

 

Instead I went and picked up another one.  I wanted one a touch deeper since the freezer is sitting on it, but it did fit, barely.  

 

Last weekend I went and visited Tim down in Rhode Island.  I went swimming (I had forgotten how buoyant you are in salt water), and we (Tim's son, wife, and I) visited  the Breakers mansion and did the cliff walk.  The mansion was built by the Vanderbilt family as a "summer home".  Must be nice to be that wealthy.  All the photos are at: https://photobucket.com/share/45f04ada-dc69-42ec-8341-1b0e77a7ba06 
Here are a couple of highlights though:

 

The cliff walk was quite nice too.  It reminded me a lot of Montauk to be honest.  I enjoy being by the water though. The complete set of pictures are at: https://photobucket.com/share/d84e784e-3e9e-4624-af49-de7b91e5dd3e

 

 

 

The guy came today to finish up repairing the mini-splits, so the compressor and leaks have been fixed on the other unit.  They both cool again.  It is a bit annoying to spend 13 grand on them one year and then have to spend another grand repairing them 1 year later, but oh well.  Fingers crossed they last better this time.

I think I caught something last weekend, so I haven't been too active after work this week.  It has been rather hot again too.

 

 

Smoked Cheese

Friday was pretty nice, but I wasn't really able to escape early from work unfortunately.  I  did do some work on the CR-V build on Friday though, getting the drawer installed.  I did hit an unfortunate snag; the drawer is too long apparently, even though I would swear I measured it.  I do have the means to make it shorter in the future if needed, it just means breaking apart all the pieces that I glued together.  For now I just installed it anyways, it just sticks out as far as the top, which is unfortunate.  Installing it was a pain.  

 

It sticks out.  Sigh.  It does open and close without issue, but I don't think I got the spacing perfect, it doesn't slide right.  Sounds like a problem for future Allen though.

 

If I want to make it shorter, I could just remove the front compartment on the right (farther side in the picture).  The right section is all individual pieces, and is about an inch longer than the prefabbed section on the left.

I also did some prep work for Saturday's first project.  I got everything out for smoking some cheese.

Saturday had two big projects: smoking cheese, and working on the ditch.  I have been wanting to try smoking some cheese for a while now.  It didn't start well, the original plan was to use one of the monster ice packs that I get every week with my meal shipments, but it didn't fit.  

 

Oh well, plan B.  Plan B was just use all the other stuff I have.  

 

The cheese sits on top of the ice to keep it cool.  I went with three different types of cheeses, mozzarella, monterey jack, and cheddar.   I also added some pepperoni sticks because I like smoked pepperoni.  It isn't normally cold smoked, but from what I read online, it should be okay, pepperoni has more than enough preservatives and chemicals to be fine, it just isn't clear if the smoke will permeate the skin.

 

Plan B didn't go well either.  It didn't fit in the grill with the smoke tube, my grill is too small.  It is only a little portable one.  

 

Everything fit after packing it tighter and using a smaller pan.

 

Smoke.

 

Everything came out with good color.  I did 2.5 hours (applewood pellets), but not quite the whole thing since the smoke tube actually ran out of pellets at around 1:40 minutes.  I caught it quickly and got it re-lit with more pellets in it.  Good to know it doesn't last that long though.  I did rotate the pan halfway through as well to try to get the smoke more even.

 

The temperature got a little close to being too warm a couple times, mostly after the ice had all melted, but none of the cheese melted, which is what I was trying to prevent. 

 

I discovered why everyone says to make sure you wear gloves.  The staining from the smoke doesn't wash off very easily.

 

Once I got it wrapped and in the fridge, I took a short nap.  I started the smoking at 6AM since I wanted it done before the sun got over the hill and would start drastically heating things up.

 

Once I woke up from that, it was time to move on to the ditch.  The part that I just dug out a week or two ago wasn't bad, it only took a little bit of shovel work.  The harder part was honestly getting the sand bags I put in there for the winter out.  Things were mostly dry, but not completely, they were still a bit slimy.  But it should now be ready for landscape fabric and gravel.

 

I also noted that the ditch was full of undesired vegetation.  So I went and dug out my sprayer and glyphosate, and sprayed down the front and the ditch.  

 

I also went out for a bit in the evening on the rail trail.

 

Sunday was on and off drizzly, with some storms in the afternoon.  I still managed to get a little bit of stuff done before it got too wet though.  I finally (it was waay overdue) got the snowblower off the back of the tractor.  I really need to find a better way to store this stuff, removing and installing 3-point stuff in a side slope is a really pain, especially the snowblower which I can't move.

 

I did eventually get it off and get the grading blade back on though.  Thankfully I can lift the grading blade for the most part.  It was raining on me as I finished it up though.  

 

it really has been wet this year, I grabbed pliers to remove the bolt for the swivel handle, and even my pliers have molded in the shed since it has been so wet.  Ugh.  

 

After that I went and did some inside stuff.  I got the AC's taken out of the windows on a short break in the rain.  They are now in the tub draining.  I also finally cleaned out my humidifiers from the winter.  They were a bit crusty because I let them sit so long before cleaning them.  I will need to decide whether to just replace that filter or I believe they are supposedly cleanable.  

 

My power went out during the storms last night.  It is nice having a spare power station around.  I was still able to nuke my dinner.  

 

I also used it for its intended purpose.  I bought this to be a UPS.  It ran my computer for the entire 45 or so minutes that the power was out, other than the few minutes I used it in the kitchen for the microwave.  I haven't finished installing it in the living room.   

 

I know I need more gravel for the drainage, so I am going to try to get that delivered this week,  I at least hope to get the pipe installed across where I drive the tractor and mower so I can get the excavator out when Dad comes to pick it up.  once that chunk is open, I can get the tractor back there to access the pile that is already back there for the drainage.

 

I thought it looked neat, so I took a picture of a leaf in the driveway after the storms.