March, 2015

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Lettuce

Sunday, March 29th, 2015

I don’t often grow head lettuce, but this is so beautiful.

Spring has fully arrived here, and everything is growing like wild.

 

Maintenance

Thursday, March 12th, 2015

The weather is harsh here, and it really tears apart things that are outside for extended periods. This results in lots of maintenance work, such as thing week’s project of reconstructing the platform that our water tower sits on.

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Brad noticed a couple weeks ago that the wood planks that sit on the metal frame and hold up the tank were looking pretty bad.

So we started by investigating possible materials to use. I at first thought plastic beams like the ones used for decking, but apparently they aren’t structurally suitable. We then thought about steel plating, but it is very expensive and there were concerns about rust. In the end, we just decided to stay with wood, but to use treated lumber and to coat it first with roofing sealer. (The 2×6’s that were used previously were raw, untreated wood.)

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boards painted

After we got the boards and got them painted, Brad figured out a process to replace the boards without removing the tank. Basically, it involved first emptying the tank as much as possible. Then he tilted the tank a bit, slid out each old board, and slid in new ones. It was lots of trips up and down two levels of ladders.
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halfway done

At first, I wasn’t sure this really needed to be done, but once we started on it, I could see how bad the old wood really was. It was probably just a matter of time before the whole thing collapsed, and what a mess that would have been.

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warped, cracked, and breaking wood

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scraps of wood after removal

And here’s the final result:

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PS If you’re wondering if all this moving of the tank affected any of the plumbing, it did. Small crack in a pipe meant we had to turn off all the water, drain the tank and fix it. It’s always something!

Feb. 26 – First asparagus

Sunday, March 1st, 2015

Last Thursday, the year’s first asparagus came up, and this post is to document that.

asparagus

It won’t be long before strawberries and artichokes are here. And then everything else. Yay for spring!