While at the ranch, I mostly spend my time working on ranch-related projects. However, during my downtime I sometimes like to work on projects that make off-grid life a little more enjoyable.
The Hickory King dent corn I planted in the spring has since matured and been harvested. The volume I was able to harvest was okay for a first year, though, I would have expected more. Once the cobs were shelled I had enough kernels to fill 5 one gallon containers. Most of this will be either turned into hominy or ground into grits.
The other plants in the garden did less well. Some of the items, such as the onions and garlic, were over-watered due to my excessive enthusiasm about the drip irrigation system. The peppers and tomatoes were destroyed by what I eventually determined to be a rabbit. Hopefully a revised garden plan, which I will blog about some other time, will resolve these problems.
This summer also brought me in contact with a field mouse who tried to make itself at home in my camper trailer. The first night it moved in I was awoken from my sleep by the mouse walking across my hand. At the time I had assumed that it must have been a strange dream, but the next morning I found mouse turds in several places and knew that it had been real. Long story short, I figured out the mouse was entering through the trailer's cable hatch and I was able to keep the mouse out by placing a metal screen over the hatch.
I recently upgraded the liquid propane system on the trailer from a single tank system to a two-tank system that automatically switches over from one tank to the other tank when the first tank has run out of gas. You can then get the empty tank refilled at your convenience and never worry about having a disruption to your gas supply.
There is nothing better than taking a hot bath at night after spending a long day cutting and welding metal and, after some research and experimentation, I finally have a way to take an off-grid warm bath whenever I want. The system I currently am using involves a garden hose, a hose valve, a length of copper tubing, and a modified plastic storage container. Water from the hose flows through the valve into the copper tube which has been coiled and placed into a wood campfire. As the water courses through the copper tube it is heated by the campfire until it exits into the plastic container (which functions like an old fashioned bathtub or bath pan). When the size of the campfire is held constant, the temperature of the water exiting the copper tube is largely determined by adjusting the amount of water flowing through the valve into the tube. If I want the water to be hotter I reduce the amount of water passing through the tube. The water will then move more slowly through the heated copper tube and, consequently, absorb more heat. If the water is moving too slowly, though, it will start to boil and the copper pipe will start violently throwing out dangerous jets of boiling-hot water and even hotter steam. Finding the right balance between hot and cold is very tricky, so I never allow the bath to fill while I'm sitting in it. Instead, I wait until the bath is nearly full, remove the copper tube from the fire and turn it off, check the temperature, add cold water if it's too hot, and, when it's the right temperature, take my bath.
