http://www.mundanedaily.com Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:24:27 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've spent most of my life looking closely at, and enjoying, commonplace things. Now I've spent a year writing about them, and circumstances have decreed that that's enough. Other activities are making a heavy claim on my time, and I must, regretfully, break away from blogging. You may be interested to ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=719 So we're into it again, this time canning pumpkin and processing grape juice, and the kitchen is a mess and everyone is tired and the last thing anyone is thinking about is cooking supper, and uh-oh, no leftovers. Time for a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, which is a bonus ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=717 The garden is supposedly finished, but it seems we can't get it fully emptied. Tonight, on threat of freeze, we ran out there just before bedtime, and in the light of the car's headlights found, to our surprise, twenty watermelons, a dozen pumpkins, and a couple of straggler squash. Now it ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=716 Hardware "trail mix" is the mechanic's lifeguard—invaluable provision for the farm or anywhere that unpredictable and assorted repairs are made. The best trail mix follows no organizational rules. All the "extra" hardware that inevitably accumulates around the shop is simply tossed into a container. Time spent in qualitative analysis of what ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=713 Brushes are one of the few ultra-simple tools still in high demand. This particular brush is about fifty years old. Its first service to humanity was as a tent sweeper, carried along on camping trips, tucked into an old canvas four-man tent. When the tent wore out the brush went to the ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=708 Admittedly this grinder is not tight enough to put an edge on a fine knife or chisel, but most of my cutting tools are "rough duty" so it gets a lot of use anyway, touching up ax and adze heads, mower blades, and knock-around cutters. It's pedal-powered, so I can ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=710 Pictured is the engine compartment of my car—a 1985 diesel Jetta. I bought this car almost in desperation, sick and tired of opening the hoods of newer vehicles to see a relatively uniform block of plastic and metal, virtually none of it identifiable. In relative terms, this old Jetta has very ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=706 This is what happens when you're loaded with wild apples that ripen exactly when the garden is in peak harvest. We lose quite a number of wild apples to the ground every year, but this is a new record. Earlier-than-usual apple ripening, colliding with an overwhelming abundance of garden vegetables and fruits, left no time for ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=699 This is the sort of weather that sets an off-duty pasture back to work. For weeks the grass has been in suspended animation, the cow has been grubbing for tiny scraps of green, and I've been reluctantly feeding some of this coming winters' hay store to fill the gap. But ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=703 The Dexter calf (on the left) is our future family dairy cow; the Jersey (on the right) is our beef steer. They are like pets, which is by design, since a micro farm like ours depends on well-behaved and compliant animals rather than special cattle-handling equipment, like squeeze chutes and head gates. ... http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=701