I got the lube in the differential carrier topped off
Like a lot of things, the actual doing was much less of an issue than what I feared. The plug is on the back of the diffy-carrier and the back is flat enough that I did not need an extension. The 3/8" square drive on my standard ratchet inserted all the way into the female feature on the plug. A longer handle might have been nice, but it did not take a super-human amount of torque to get it out.
If I had to guess, I added 10-to-12 oz of fluid before it started bleeding out of the access port. Then, after wiping the plug clean, I reinserted and torqued to approximately the torque it took to remove it.
Work continues on the fence
I added an in-line surge suppressor on the power cord to the fence energizer.
I removed more weeds and replace damaged insulators.
I moved a salt-block out to the soon-to-be pasture. The best fences have feed, water and a salt block all on the same side of the fence as the animals.
Cleaning 1/2 gallon mason jars
They used to hold cider. Some kind of organic film deposited on the inside. Hard-water deposits on the outside.
I ran 16 of them through the dishwasher with "Iron-out" to remove the hard-water deposits.
I tried isopropyl alcohol but it did not dissolve the organic film.
Mrs ERJ suggested bleach-and-water. It worked like a charm. See! It pays to listen to your wife.
Picking persimmons
We picked a couple of grocery bags of Lehman's Delight persimmons yesterday. Quicksilver helped.
Quicksilver likes things to be "right". For instance, she tossed the ones that were ripe enough to be ready to eat right now because they were soft. She tossed the ones that had any spider-webbing on them. If a stick broke off with three or four persimmons on it, she insisted on peeling them off of the stick before putting them into her bag.
I picked them primarily to collect the seeds.
Lipstick mushrooms
We walked past a pile of woodchips after picking the persimmons and there were two colonies of "lipstick mushrooms" on it. They were rubbery and could be bent down and they almost went "Boing!" when released.
Quicksilver was intrigued.
Shopping
Two bags of duck food and one bag of potash fertilizer.
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| Five-year chart, price of DAP, a source of Phosphorous. Images added to address a question in comments about price history of fertilizers. Note that the bottom of the graph is NOT zero. |
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| Price of Potash a source of potassium. Canada is a major source of potas |
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| Price of Urea. Urea is a common source of nitrogen and every major producer of natural gas (including Russia and the countries around the Persian Gulf) also produces urea. |
Finding a misplaced tool
I found a sickle that I had absent-mindedly placed on a handy but out-of-the-way horizontal surface.
That made me happy for two reasons. For one, it is always nice to recover a tool that I have misplaced. The second reason is that I am no longer in fear of stepping on it and getting cut or hitting it with a mower.
I replaced the straw in the duck dormitory
Like adding lube to the diffy-carrier, the job was not that difficult in spite of the limited access.
Privacy film
A possible identification:
ReplyDeleteMutinus ravenelii
red stinkhorn, Little Red Stinkhorn
Thanks for the ID.
DeleteJoe how big a bag of Potash and cost compared to last fall.
ReplyDeleteThanks
Michael
It was easier to add three charts to the text of the post than to find the receipt. Please check the post.
DeleteWhy not use wood ashes for potash? We usually toss some in our garden beds in the spring. No measuring or testing, just ‘some’.
ReplyDeleteSouthern NH
Too much area, not enough wood being burned.
DeleteIt is primarily for the two "Dacha" orchards I am putting in.
I recently reached-out to my nephew whose business takes off in the spring. I offered to "put in" a 400 square-foot garden to get the train moving.
When I was working for myself, one of my customers was a large East Coast oil company. Their R&D manager notice they were paying 1-2 cents a pound to have the urea hauled away as waste. He proposed setting up a plant to convert the urea into a pelletized form of fertilizer and selling it commercially. The plant was built, and the manufacturing, marketing and sales areas were staffed.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone from corporate audited the program, it was realized the company lost 5-7 cents a pound on every sale.
The plant was shut down and the employees laid off. The manager was promoted to VP of engineering.
The privacy film is something that I have seen a fair amount of here in our apartment complex, especially on the first floor units.
ReplyDelete