The girls don’t seem to like their store-bought dome feeder anymore for some reason (they tenaciously won’t tell me why). The first reaction to such an exigency is: Googling. I stumbled upon an alternative design within mere minutes and decided to try that out:
I grabbed some sweet apples that were on sale at the supermarket, decided to buy some other veggies as well and turned on my trusty food-dehydrator. I tried to slice everything to about the same thickness of about 4-5 mm, as I expected that all ingredients would take roughly the same time to dry.
The groceries I used (apples, button mushrooms and chili peppers) are rather moist material so the drying time was a little longer. It was about 5 hours at about 55°C (131°F) for the shroomz and indeed 7 hours for the apples and chilies. Everything turned out fine.
The dry ager’s compressor unfortunately went belly up lately, so I cannibalized it thoroughly and re-vitalized the northern germany drying box instead (see the munich version here).This time with tolerable wiring and even a light 🙂 It’s going to see some action the next weeks or so.
So, germany is having a turnaround in energy politics… Yeah. More and more voices join in the concern that this energy transition will run all but smoothly this winter, since it is (german standard by now) poorly planned and badly managed just because of too much ideological wishful thinking.
We’ve seen at the Ahrtal floodings (which was just a local event) again this spring how reliable and professional our authorities work in emergencies. Hadn’t it been for loads of volunteers and private helpers, I suppose the area would still be uninhabitable.
Anyway I don’t trust our government farther than I can throw it, should it come to a large-scale and lengthy blackout, so I think being prepared is never a mistake. One among various precautions might be this:
Priscilla – the name tells the story. She’s the undisputed Queen of the coop 🙂
Last two week’s big project is finally done! I made a chicken coop in the back yard and now I’m waiting for some chickens to move in! Living in a rather rural area, I took great pains in creating an as much as possible predator-proof construction.
As the last try with the hydroponic tower system failed completely and I’m not willing to give up the idea itself, I tried a new approach. This time it’s a more standard horizontal construction, capable of holding 24 net cups in 4 “stories”. Construction was cheap and easy enough – the most time consuming thing was letting the paint dry. I’m waiting now for my seedlings to grow big enough to be placed into the tubes.
I tested my apple cider for the first time after letting it mature for almost eight weeks – it’s amazing what you can do with a load of apples, a little work and some time. It tastes good and refreshing, it definitely has some alcohol (7% vol. as per calculation) and a nice color.
It is a little acidic, not really sour but rather with a sour-ish hint. Next time I’ll not use “some apples” that I can get hands on but I’ll try to select some really sweet and ripe ones. Other than that: Great! I’m very pleased.
I made a tang hole filer for my next knife project to come. Just drilling and working with a needle file is not very satisfactory. I used a jigsaw blade that I trimmed down a little, some scrap wood and a dab of epoxy glue. Done.
So we caught the weekly allowance of two hours of sunshine the german weather gave us today and used it to finally try out the tabletop grill. It works well and the insulation at the bottom is very effective – no particularly strong downward heat development, so it seems to be safe to use right at the table. Fotos:
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