Tuesday, February 11, 2014

A cheap drip system for the garden

I ran across a pretty interesting article over at shtfprepardness.com  on setting up a Chapin Bucket irrigation system.

The link to the instructions can be found here for it.  The system is really pretty cheap to put together from what I can tell.

It is a simple gravity fed system that goes to a drip line.  From what I can tell one of the many benefits is that it would be easy to monitor how much water you are giving your plants in the garden there and its a system that does not waste any like a traditional sprinkler.  This is a system that is used all over the world in many different situations.  I can see how easy this would be to use along with a catchment system to really cut down on the watering bill for your garden.

This looks like another of the many things to try out.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Gotta love American ingenuity....

The nice thing about free enterprise is that you have a hard time slowing it down.

A little while back the wonderful state of New York passed a very atrocious 'gun control' bill that would ban any type of AR platform.

I ran across a wonderful article at gunsfreedom.com where a manufacturer has already worked around the restrictions.

Yes, at one glance it doesn't look very pretty but like they state, it shoots exactly the same as any other AR platform.  Also the beauty of it is that you don't have to do a whole lot to set it up as any other AR platform.

Right now it sounds like there are some pretty hard pushes in the states that passed crazy laws like this to get them repealed.  The public as a whole does not like the fact that 'big government' is encroaching into their lives so they are pushing back so we shall see where that leads. 

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Round .... of snow

This was what I woke up to this morning.  We were predicted to get anywhere from 3-6 inches from one forecast to 6-9 inches from another.

The thing about this is that it sure makes for a slow work day for me.  I do work for a company that focuses on safety so when the roads look like they are even remotely starting to get 'interesting' they lock all travel down to an individual basis.  So on my first day back to work up here in NW Oklahoma I am sitting here at the farm watching it snow outside.

I swear I have lost track of how many times it has snowed this year.  Honestly we don't get a whole lot of snow, but I have a feeling that the weather patterns are switching on us again.  I can remember back in the late 70's getting these nice snow storms like we are this year.

Now my kids back at the Homestead in Eastern Texas were commenting that they wanted to see about this much snow down there.  I told them that was a bad...bad idea.  For one that would mean the possibility of  quite a bit more snow back up where I work.  More significant though is the fact that the climate down there is really not suited for that kind of freezing weather.  The wife is wanting to get geared up for the spring planting season and get the garden started here pretty quick.  A large cold snap that brought snow would really adversely affect the growing season down there which wouldn't be good.

You have to love the Farmer's Almanac though.  It did predict both the mild summer we had and this wet winter we have been getting so far.  To me that looks like another sign that the weather patterns might be switching.  It should be interesting to see what the summer holds for us this year.

So what does everyone else think of these weather patterns?