On $30 Paint Jobs, and Other of Life's Priorities

Before . . .

I've written several times about my little truck which, honestly, looks like it has leprosy.  It's does, after a fashion, since, because it is cursed with one of those infamous GMC primer coats that NOTHING sticks to, its paint peels like it's a redhead with a sunburn.  The dealer painted it several times in its youth (it's 25 years old this year!), and nothing stuck until my aunt and uncle, from whom I inherited it, painted it with tractor paint.  That's been at least 15 years ago and that paint is turning loose, too.  The truck is primarily used on the farm, is 25 years old but runs well, needs some body work, and, to be perfectly honest, is probably not worth the cost of a professional paint job.  My Suburban is afflicted with the same GMC paint disease, is only 20 years old but runs extremely well considering it has 300,000+ miles on it (we're going for half a million!), and would take more paint than my house.

Now I'm not one to sweat appearances over function, but even I began to tire of the piteous looks from friend and stranger alike so I started casting about for a solution.  Professional paint jobs?  Too expensive--even the cheap ones.  And the idea that formed sounded the the beginning to a Jeff Foxworthy joke:

If your car's new paint job involves blue tape, spray cans, and day with calm winds . . .

Before . . .

You get the idea.  Yup, I did it.  I started with the Suburban and a trip to Home Depot for Rust-Oleum Automotive Enamel in Gloss White.  I taped off everything I didn't want painted and shot the little rust dings with a bit of gray primer.  Given that the roof of a Suburban is only slightly smaller than an aircraft carrier, I dragged out a 6 foot step ladder for it and the hood.  Finding a calm day can be a challenge, but one turned up in late July, and I spent an afternoon and six cans of gloss white.  Actually, I'm pretty impressed with the results, so far.  It looks far better from a distance, and not so bad up close.

. . . After

The procedure was the same for the truck:  sand off big flakes, prime rust spots, tape off glass, and wait for a calm day.  For this project, I invited my darling daughter out to help; it's never too soon to start training the next generation in cost/benefit analysis.  For this job I dropped by my local Tractor Supply for five cans of Majic's M F Gray--for the non-tractor girls among us, that's Massey Ferguson gray.  A quick test spritz revealed that to be the tractor paint color that had held up so well.  We, basically, painted everything but inside the bed (I have my eye on some rubberized spray coating for that!) but, because it's so tiny, only used barely four cans of paint!

The reactions of my friends, family, and colleagues have ranged from bemusement to bewilderment.  I find, however, that the same ones who were aghast at the visual condition of my vehicles are even more aghast at my admittedly cheapskate solution.  But, I'm okay with that, and I have my family to thank.  I was raised by people who survived the Great Depression--both my grandparents, and my parents--where functionality trumped fashion in every case.  I like to think the lessons I learned from their frugality have helped my family survive the Great Recession of 2008.

So, my vehicles are joining a long line of vehicles whose function far outlasted their beauty:  the Blue Goose ('50 Dodge), the Red Monster ('56 Chevrolet), and, now, the Suburban ('94) and the Little Truck ('89).  They're worn, but they do their job with a quiet pride in a job well-done.  And, friends, that's real beauty.

What about you?  How are you living your Savory life?

Nancy

Lifehacks: No More "Untils"

Roadside Roses

You do what you can; you start where you are.

                                                                      ~character Althea Tibbs, In the Heat of the Night

I feel like I've just emerged from a dense fog.  Most know I've been taking the Permaculture Design Certificate course from Oregon State.  It's been an intense, yet enjoyable time under the tutelage of Andrew Millison, Marisha Auerbach, and my reader Tao Orion.  I've just completed the first draft of my final design project (for my farm) and I thought I'd take a minute to share a few thoughts.

My "greenhouse"

 Prior to taking the PDC course, I completed the Getting Started in Farming course from the National Center for Appropriate Technology.  When I needed a break from the PDC's 10-15 hours of study and homework per week, I read Joel Salatin's You Can Farm.  One theme has emerged from all three:

Discard the excuse of "until."  

We'll all used it.  

"I can't start farming until I have some land."

"I can't start plants from seed until I have a greenhouse."

Looking forward to her return!

"I can't start growing XXXX until I have a tractor."

You get the idea.  So, let's look through the until to the reality.

What can you do now?

If you have no land, rent (or, even better, borrow) some.  If you can't rent or borrow, grow in containers on your patio or porch.  If you cannot grow it in a container under controlled conditions, you surely can't grow it in a field where conditions are far from controlled.

If you don't have a greenhouse, build one with shelves, fluorescent lights, a timer, and shower curtains for inside use.  Shop garage sales, discount stores, your junk drawer, thrift shops.  It can be done inside far more inexpensively than you think.  My little greenhouse--shelves inside my garage--will have to last several more seasons before I can afford anything bigger.

If you don't have a tractor for XXXX crop, grow something else you do have the equipment for.  Don't forget to do your market research, however.  There's nothing more frustrating than growing something nobody wants to buy.

This oregano survived the harsh winter in an overgrown bed.
I wish I were as determined!

I'm having to push through the untils myself.  My beloved tractor is ill, and finding parts for a 40-year-old Japanese tractor is somewhat like an archaeological expedition.  But parts have been located and are wending their way to us.  Until they arrive, my primary summer project is on hold, but there are plenty of others, just as valuable, that deserve my attention.  I'm doing what I can until I can do what I want.

So, Althea's rule (which sounds a lot like an Arthur Ashe quote) is guiding me forward.

What about you?  Which untils keep you from living your Savory life?

Nancy

Lifehack: A Lesson in Frugality

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand 

I was feeling about as smart
as this little guy after a purchase this week!

I really thought I'd made a serious mistake last week.  We're planning to expand the blackberry trellises, as well as putting out a windbreak, so we invested in an auger for the tractor.  I found a used one on Craigslist, so we hitched up the trailer and took off on a two-hour drive.  It looked just like the picture, so we paid the folks, loaded it up, and headed home.

We only had about an hour of daylight left so we hurried to hook it up to the tractor.  The boom and yoke hooked up easily.  But when we went to attach the Power-Take-Off (PTO) shaft to the tractor, our problem became apparent.

It was too short.

No problem; we could just extend it.

It would not budge.  We pulled harder.  We tapped on it lightly with a hammer.  We tapped on it harder with the hammer.  Nothing.  Running out of daylight, we headed home, with me fearing I'd made a big mistake.  How could I have forgotten to check the telescoping joint on the PTO?  A new PTO would be really expensive if we could not make this one work.

Had my attempt at frugality been penny-wise and pound-foolish?

Too short by several feet!

The next day we did what any reasonable person would do:  we consulted every farmer in our church.  The consensus was to pour brake fluid down the slip joint and let it soak in.  We spent a while that evening hammering a small screwdriver into the telescoping joint, hoping to loosen any rust or grit, then dousing the shaft with brake fluid.  We let it marinate overnight with no success.

I was really worried.  I priced out really long PTO shafts.  Ouch.  We kept fiddling with it, with no success.

I was making plans to load the thing up onto a trailer and take it to the repair shop when, this morning at church, one of our farmer-consultants made one more suggestion.  I tried it this afternoon.

Eureka!

What a lovely hole!

Still one bolt to saw off, but I'm in business.  It's a good thing, too, since my trees are here and ready to be planted.

So, am I smarter than the earthworm?  Well, the jury's still out on that, but the lesson I learned this week is actually two lessons:

1. Be alert in business.  Make sure you get a good value for your investment.  Be penny-wise and pound-wise, too.
2. Persist in the face of trouble, but do not be afraid to ask for help.  Universally, the farmers both Jim and I consulted readily offered advice, and offered to help if we needed it.

So, it's been an educational week here on the farm; hopefully, next week's lessons will not be as, ahem, challenging . . .

What about you?  How are you living your Savory life?

Nancy

Lifehacks for 2013: a To-do Organizer for an Android Phone Using Evernote

I'm taking steps to become more organized in 2013!

I am a card-carrying (actually diploma-certified) technogirl.  There.  I've said it, and I feel much better.  I get a little twinkle in my eye when reading about new technology, but I've been around long enough to keep that twinkle from blinding me to the genuine utility of the latest gadget.  I entrusted my personal and professional schedules to my Palm Treo for years.  The exceptional PDA functionality kept me loyal long after the phone was yesterday's technology.  It did exactly what I wanted:  allowed me to keep and display a prioritized, categorized, dated to-do list while showing the day's appointments, too.  It was the slickest system going.  But, the lure of the Android proved too powerful to resist and I retired my trusty Treo.  Much to my dismay, there seemed to be no Android task manager that did everything I needed.  The Google calendar functioned well enough, but the task feature was, well, awful.  So I looked around.

A good task management utility is a thing of beauty!

I tried and discarded many task managers before settling on Evernote.  Yes, I know that Evernote is NOT a task manager, but that's how I use it.  It is web-based, but auto-syncs to an Android client, which is well-featured.

Now, there are a number of schemes for using Evernote like The Secret Weapon.  The Secret Weapon is a system of nested notebooks and tags that allow the user to mimic a digital version of David Allen's Getting Things Done task management system.  I liked the idea of the system and began setting up my Evernote account according to The Secret Weapon's instructions.  After a long evening of setting up notebooks, then endless tags that allowed me to categorize each task according to when, where, what, and who, I was ready to go.

But, then I started entering tasks and realized that, while the system was endlessly detailed and allowed me to sort my tasks in myriad ways, The Secret Weapon system is endlessly detailed.  Each entry required at least 5 tags after entry.  Sigh.  There has to be an easier way.

And there is--at least for me.

Keeping the blog schedule
straight is a challenge!

So, I've created notebooks for each of the domains of my life:  church, business, farm, work, and personal.  Some of the notebooks have sub-notebooks.  When I enter a task, the title of the task begins with the day it's due and the actual short name follows:

20130106       Update Savory Biblio blog

Write blog entry about Bill Mauldin's Army and post.

There are many tasks on the farm!

This entry would go in the Business notebook.  Any other tasks are entered in the same fashion and stored in the appropriate notebook.  To view all of my tasks for the day, I select to view All Notebooks and sort by Title.  Because of the configuration of the date, the tasks are sorted by due date.

When the task is completed, I put an X at the beginning of the title and it re-sorts down to the bottom.  Voila!

It's simple, it's easy to manage.  And, so far, it's working.  So, I'm happier with my Android phone and with my task management scheme.  I hope it will help me keep my tasks in line in the coming year.  Perhaps it could help you, too.

So, how are you organizing your Savory life?

Nancy

Lifehacks for 2013: Organizing My Life

My late writing partner, Max.

A former colleague of mine had the following bit of wisdom posted on her filing cabinet:

Your lack of preparation does not constitute an emergency on my part.

I absolutely loved it.

Have you ever known people for whom every task/event/whatever developed into an epic struggle in which everyone of their acquaintance was forced to abandoned his or her own well-considered plans to belay the impending disaster?

Organization
is more than
paperclips
and sticky
notes!

Due to heroic team effort, the catastrophe is averted, the Frantic Friend is effusively grateful, and the Helpful Acquaintances are madly scrambling to realign their own well-considered plans which have gone awry while they were helping the frantic friend, who has, conveniently, ambled down to the building canteen for a self-congratulatory snack.

Well, I've been both Frantic Friend and Helpful Acquaintance.  Hopefully, I've been more of the latter than the former, but, lately, I've felt more like Frantic Friend.  I do not like that feeling.  I am not the adrenaline junkie who enjoys the rush of impending doom.  I like calm.  I like to reason things out before I jump into them.  Even when it appears I've made a snap decision, it's not snap because, in all likelihood, I have considered the various possibilities previously and knew what my choice would be in a particular situation.

One stop on the fall craft fair schedule.

Except for this past year, when I had failed to account for the cumulative effect of work, blogging, the fall craft show schedule, a musician's usual Christmas madness, an annual fundraiser for which I only had limited responsibilities (and still managed to need help), co-ordinating a 5-session workshop, and having two unexpected work weekends.  Upon retrospect, I think I would have managed had I not lost the two weekends.  But, during that time, I became the Frantic Friend and I'm still playing catch-up.

I am tired of working at DefCon Red or whatever you might call it.  I'm rewording my friend's motto to assign the blame where it truly lies:

My lack of preparation should not constitute an emergency on any else's part.

It will take more than a red crate
to organize my life!

That's more like it.  The important part of the axiom hits me in the face:  my lack of preparation.  There are a number of old saws which say the same thing but one stands out:

Failure to plan is planning to fail.

So, it's time to map out the year, consider the possibilities, and line up contingencies for a schedule that looks like the Tri-D Chess board from Star Trek.  That means I may be away from the keyboard for a week or so, but I'll soon be back, and with a plan.

This is an extension of my plan outlined over on my garden blog Savory Le Jardin.  It will be a busy time, but the fact that I know a) who Bethenny Frankel is, and b) that she is divorcing her husband Jason Hoppy tells me I have time which I've underutilized.

What I've not mentioned that will be integral to the plan is the quiet time that I so desperately need:  reading, listening to the clock tick, watching for the afternoon hawk to come hunting, and writing.

Sunrises are magical
here on the farm!

So much of my life if high-volume input, and high-energy output, that I must have substantial processing time.  And I must plan for that, too.  Domains of my life must be prioritized so that activities within the domains can be integrated according to priority determined by importance or deadline (yes, I went to business school).

How will I record this master plan?  Paper planner?  Evernote?  Google calendar?  All of the above?

It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.  I think some chocolate is required for relief!

So, off I go to organize my life for 2013.  At least, that's the plan.

How are you living your Savory life?

Nancy