Pump Action

We have two water pumps around the place: one providing irrigation water from the small Earth-dam next to the house, the other pumping our household water from the main storage tanks to a header-tank in the roof of the house.  Having installed our own plumbing, and water being a bit important, keeps us very tuned to the behaviour of the machinery we rely upon.  Let the water pump cycle even a fraction of a second too short, and I am instantly aware that there's a problem.

Over several weeks the house-pump has been cycling in ever shortening durations, and I'm well familiar with what that means...

Digression: The Inner Life of Pumps and Pressure Switches

The pump is controlled by a pressure-switch, which in turn relies on a rubber-bladder inside the pressure-dome. I've also heard it called a surge tank.  The rubber bladder gets filled with water, compressing the bubble of air between the bladder and pressure-dome, until there is sufficient back-pressure to overcome the spring in the pressure switch.  There are more modern electronic versions of pressure switches that do away with the need for pressure-domes, and I am told they're very reliable, but they were not around when we built and plumbed our house, and I see no real need for another expense to replace a perfectly serviceable setup.

Every so often, though, the bladder wears out and develops a pucture, and water seeps through to the wrong side of the bladder.  This means that there's less air to make everything work, and the pump trends towards switching in ever-shorter cycles, which, if neglected, will have the pump destroy itself.  So everything has to come apart, as pictured here, the bladder replaced, then put back together again.  Only this time, I was feeling a bit miffed at a bladder that has lasted a bare 18 months.  I should check inside the pressure-dome and check that there's not a rough spot sandpapering through the rubber.  The bladders are also getting quite expensive!

Invent Another Way

Out came an old bicycle puncture-repair kit.  Puncture located. Patch applied.  Whan, bang and we're back in action.  If it works.

After all, the whole thing is under about 4 bar of pressure.  And being flexed and bent all the time.  Neither of which is normal for a bicycle tube.

Only way to find out is to put it all back together; suck it and see.

Putting the bladder and pressure-dome back together, bolting the baseplate on securely, and threading the whole thing back onto the 4-way joint that ties everything together without causing any leaks is only part of the story, though.  The pressure-dome still needs to have air pumped into it through a tyre-valve on the top.  Normally about 1.5 to 2 bar of air pressure is plenty -- this is all about just having the air in place, rather than creating any tremendous pressure.  I have tried using a small 12-volt pressure pump such as you might carry in the pickup for emergency tyre pumping, but, to be honest, it takes so long to fill the pressure-dome that I'm better off using an ordinary handraulic tyre-pump.

There's Always Another Job Along the Way

Out comes the tyre-pump, only to find that the hose has perished and broken.  It's Saturday afternoon, and the hardware shops are all closed for the weekend.  Close examination reveals that most of the length of hose is still OK -- only one end was badly perished.  So, a little action with knife and a hose-clamp, and we're back in action.

Now we know why the shed is filled with a rich and varied assortment of plumbing bits, glues, wire, spare parts and piping of various descriptions.

Happily my patch-job seems to be holding well, though it remains to be seen how long it will last.  The saving of a couple of hundred bucks was a good win, but more importantly, the feeling that comes of having dealt with the problem, having refused to accept defeat in the face of niggling problems and difficulties -- that's the big win.

Post Script

I do plan to install a hand- or wind-driven backup pump for the house water.  That's partly the reason that the plumbing system was designed as a gravity-feed setup in the first place.  Right now we have water sufficient for about 3 or 4 days without power to pump water up to refill the header tank.  And it has happened a couple of times that we've been without power for that long as a result of storm damage.  In these situations we're still able to use inside water, bath, etc. where our much more modern and clever neighbours are forced to do without.

The catch is that I expressly do not want a manufactured pump, but something I can totally build myself from scratch, so that I am not at all reliant on any factory-engineered bits and pieces that would instantly become unobtainable should "everything go Pear-shaped."

On the Nature of Research Gardening

Days are beginning to draw in; night comes a little too early, and Summer's really over. Winter crops – onions, garlic, cabbage tribe and a few other odds and ends – are coming up in seed trays, and I've finally made a start on clearing and composting the (ex-)Tomato beds.

Somewhere sleeting through the Universe for æons, minding its own tiny business, comes an Idea Particle...

A couple of years ago I stopped treating Chillis1 as Annuals, although that's how most people grow them. "After all," I thought, "they're true Perennials, and since we don't get any frost here, why am I ripping them out fo the ground each Autumn, and starting new plants every Spring?" Sure enough, it works brilliantly. It means I get Chillis as much as six weeks earlier than new-season plants, and its well worth it, even though the fruit gets a bit smaller each season, and the plants produce somewhat less. One Jalapeño bush is reaching the end of its third season, and still prolific enough to be worth hanging onto. So now I have Chillis on a 3-year rotation, but...

Still not satisfied. I generally sow Chillis in September, placing the seed-trays atop a warm compost heap. Chillis like a bit of bottom heat to get going, but I have on occasion cooked the seeds with my over-enthusiastic hot compost. With September sowing (I've tried August, but its a bit too early for them) I generally start harvesting around the end of January or mid-Feb. What would happen, though if I sow Chillis now -- in April!

In theory the weather is still warm enough for them to germinate and put in a bit of growth before they shut down for Winter in about mid-June. Without frost they should be fine until the weather warms up (and plants can tell these things much, much better than we!) Then they should get off to a flying start and be fruiting by early December, but with all the advantage of being "new-season" plants.

So we'll see... Remind me to report back in October or November (unless some other disaster strikes.) Today I planted a couple of dozen each of Jalapeño, Habanero, Serrano and Cherry Peppers -- all favourites of mine.

Parting Shot

One shot good quality Vodka, well chilled in the freezer.
One Serrano pepper, quartered lengthwise, but not all-the-way.

Drop the Serrano into the Vodka. Leave alone for 3 to 5 minutes if you can. Sip.

But slowly!

---

[1] I know that lots of people spell it "Chile" or some other baroque monstrosity, but I can't get the hang of that.

Aaaand... We're Back!

Back from a trip down to Gansbaai (lit.: Goose Bay) -- formerly a whaling village on the Aghulas Plain, now a tourist destination for possibly the best whale-viewing in the world.  (Whales usually arrive around June and stick around until about Oct./Nov. to calf.)  The occassion was a sister-in-law's 30'th Birthday Bash.

Then on to Cape Town for a family get-together for First-night Pesach and visiting good friends.  Best part was that I got some brewing yeast from Franz, so I'll be able to get back into homebrewing after a lapse of several years.

Hmmm....  surely if I put together an unhopped wort... then ferment... then distill...  isn't that a simple Single Malt Scotch?  Any experts out there?

Self-sufficiency SEO

I spent some time this morning looking at getting the farm website (and maybe this blog) listed in various "directory" sites on the 'net...  "Is this really worth it?" I ask myself.

Who am I trying to reach, here anyway, and why?

For a start I love being able to interact -- even in the very limited way the 'net enables -- with other self-sufficiency nutters like myself; people who love the independence, raising their own food, healing the Earth, sustaining heirloom breeds, recycling their own "waste", managing their energy needs, exploring different ways for humans to live more sustainably on this planet.  There are few enough of us, so we gotta stick together.  (Besides, its a great way to learn new tricks and prick ourselves out of old comfort-zones and into new ways of doing, thinking, being.)

But, just as important, I want to connect with people similar to who I was 15, 16, 18 years ago.  Someone stuck in the desolate, affluenzic, wasteland called the Conventional Economy or (Post?)Modern Life.  The me of 15 or 17 years ago was starting to think of breaking out of the Two Inch Pipe that society had put him into, starting to conceptualise"something different", more connected with the Earth, but still did not know what to call it.  The me of 16 years ago could not see how to "make enough money to live" in an alternative lifestyle -- let alone the possibility of breaking free of the Money Trap completely!  The me of 15 years ago was finding it hard to summon up the courage to let go of the "safety net" of steady income, medical plan, pension plan and 20-days leave a year.  Little did I then see just how unsafe, how weak, shaky, unpredictable the "safety net" was, and what a vile and insidious trap it is.

Thus the urge to do some...

Website Marketing

(Ugh!)

I find it appalling: Not one of the website and blog directories I looked at has a category for "Environment"!

"Country Living" is a useful slot, but where do we fit people who are doing self-sufficiency in the cities and suburbs; those who cannot or don't want to live in the "country" but still want to be self-sufficient in some measure?

Would someone look under "Lifestyles"?  They almost certainly won't find anything useful there: It's all about Paris Hilton and buying the latest disposable crap.

"Health"?  Certainly some of what we do is motivated by health concerns: Our own health as well as the health of the other organisms all around us that sustain us physically, emotionally, spiritually.  And the health of our home, Earth.

"Home and Garden"?  Well, we built our own home.  And we do garden quite a bit!  But self-sufficiency -- or "homesteading" for my 'Merkin friends, though it does have an ever-so-slightly different connotation -- certainly encompasses a hell of a lot more than just Home and Garden.

It's also much more than a "Job and Career", and we certainly tackle the big "News and Issues" of the day, in our own tiny ways.  Not too many people are trying to directly and personally do something positive about Global Climate Change, (by using renewable energy sources, minimising our consumption, eating local) Corporatisation of the Food Supply (again: growing our own, saving seed, growing open-pollinated and heirloom varieties) installing and living with alternative energy supplies so that we're more resilient to the changes that will be wrought by Peak Oil.  We call it Taking Responsibility.

Lots of this self-sufficiency gig is, in my mind, about "People and Relationships" -- but that's not what the directories mean.  (One day soon I plan to write about self-sufficiency and community.  It's been much on my mind for quite a while.  Self-sufficiency is truly only possible on a community scale, and around here there's no real community to speak of, so I'd like to muse-out-loud sometime on how we might begin to build community towards self-sufficiency.  Another day.)

"Religion and Spirituality"?  Perhaps we don't talk about it much, but I, for one, am strongly motivated by the spiritual element of this life choice.

So Here We Are

All-in-all, I don't find the web directories to be much use at all.  We don't seem to fit in anywhere very well, but rather everywhere, just a bit.

I guess we never did, and that's what has brought us here, to this ever-striving-to-be-more-self-sufficient place.

How to Kill a Chicken

I started this as a reply to "Chicken anyone?" but it got long enough for a post in its own right, and is, in any case, something I've been meaning to blog on for a long time...

Killing chickens is a necessity if you're going to keep more than one or two birds.  If you allow them to incubate their own eggs, you're going to end up with half boys and half girls, and too many roosters is not good for the flock.  Besides, you probably want to be a bit selective about which chickens you breed from.  We carefully select our veggie seed  for saving so that we eventually end up with strains that are well adapted to our local environment, soil and climate, resistant to the local pests and diseases.  We should be doing the same with our animals.  We don't really want some fancy breed of chickens from America or Europe; we want our local Big Black Mommas bred by J!

So, whilst I don't relish the job of chicken killing, I accept its necessity.  It's also about taking responsibility -- what I generalise as "dealing with your own shit."  I have little patience with people who are quite happy to buy and eat slabs of dead FactoryCow from the supermarket, just as long as nobody reminds them that it was a real animal that lived under appalling circumstances and die in the most demeaning and degrading way imaginable.  No.  Our chickens range free -- often too free! and die as quickly and with as little stress as we can possibly arrange.  They die with respect, and with our thanks, so that we can eat.  I take the responsibility.  Then, too, they taste a hell of a lot better than bought chicken -- even so-called "free range" chicken is soft and tasteless in comparison.

In the past I used to break their necks by hand: tuck the chicken under your arm; hold their head in your other hand with your hand facing out, and snap down and twist -- very quick, very effective.  But a rotator-cuff injury makes that painful for me now, and with some of our big roosters I didn't quite have the reach for as quick and clean a break as I would prefer.  Then, too, we have bred-up a really big, healthy, self-reliant strain of chickens (to the point where we are a preferred supplier of livestock for people wanting to start their own flock) and their necks are very strong!

So now its a tree-stump and a blunt chopper.  "Chicken anyone?" talks of using a meat cleaver, but my feeling is it would be too sharp, and will cut the head right off.  A pretty messy business!  The point is to break the neck, not necessarily to chop the head right off.  Its a bit of a ticklish thing, judging the strength to use.  On one hand you want a clean break, instantly killing the bird on the first blow.  On the other you don't really want to break the skin, thus avoiding quite a lot of messiness.  Two people makes the job easier than just one.

Then comes the tedious work: Plucking and butchering.  I'll leave those for another day...

New Look Farm Website

Finally (after how long? :-) I've managed to put together a new set of templates for the farm website.  My own very humble opinion is that it doesn't look too bad.  At least not actively repellent, like it was before!

I would welcome feedback, especially concerning bugs and oddities, since I have not tried to fully debug everything; I was strongly feeling the pressure to get something, anything, out that improved the site's look.  I'll get you started: Horizontal lines should be green, and their left-hand edge should line up with the paragraph texts. ;-)  See?  Easy!

Hopefully I will have time in the next week or two to get the blog sporting a similar look'n'feel.  No promises, though, since I have loads of compost to make.

Now to add more actual content to the site...

The Why Of Self-Sufficiency

I met a man, recently, who, I could tell, was quite taken with our somewhat-self-sufficient lifestyle. Clearly of an age where he feels unable to job-hop – too close to retirement to risk jeopardising his pension plan, and deeply unhappy with his work situation. I can empathise. I remember that feeling: day after grey day in a multi-storey concrete box, breathing recycled air, recycled fast-food lunch, recycled office politics, endlessly recycling the same paperwork the same bits back and forth, to and fro. At the end of the month The Company arrange for some bits to get shuffled in the computer bowels of various banks, from whence more bit shuffling happens to make the mortgage payment pay the credit cards pay the car pay the taxmen pay the bank pay the healthcare pay the life-insurance pay pay pay all the death merchants to stave off their death grip on your life your breath your soul. Remember that the word "mortgage" comes from the Old French for "death pledge".

No wonder I wanted to find a way Back To The Land. No wonder he does, too. How many people complain of feeling "disconnected", "out of touch", complain of a "sense of unreality". Of course all those bits are unreal! Trust me on this; I'm a Computer Scientist! "  Out of Touch" with what? "Disconnected" from what?