60+ year old thread.

Good Friday Morning Porch! Going to finally smoke some ribs today; first time in the smoker, and first time trying the 321 recipe. What could go wrong - because it's a beautiful chilly morning! Going to putz building the stand for the hydroponics that came yesterday. That should be a fun experiment!

This link is for BBQ Tom (& anyone else). Wondering if you or anyone has experience with these things? The 560 was reviewed briefly in Pop Mech, and I kept forgetting to find the little clip and bring it up. Today, I both remembered AND ripped it out of the mag! They like it - I was intrigued!

Gravity Series – Masterbuilt

 

Welcome Dan. Everyone seems to miss this at the right time. But, if you fill the cooler over there in the corner, everyone will notice!

 

We didn't quite get snow but it stayed cold all day yesterday. The fire in the woodstove hadn't quite gone out when I woke up way too early, so I was able to stoke it back to life. We kept it going all day, pretty unusual for this time of year.

Today I do some shopping for my mom, little chores at her place, then maybe get around to running the chain saw for a little while. The old saying about "wood heats you twice" is more like "wood heats you AT LEAST twice" at my age! 1. Cutting it. 2. Splitting it. 3. Stacking it. 4. Hauling it into the house.

 

Thanks for the warm welcome.

Most recent shot.

 

Yeah, that's the bird!

Mine is much prettier!

 

Welcome Dan

I got the RSI Cap on last night when the kids came over. The local store had bone-in ribeye for $4 a pound; my wife went crazy buying 20 pounds! Four joined us for dinner. Thankfully my daughter's boyfriend loves steak, so we sent them home with most of it.

With the cap on, and the freezer loaded up, it was time for BlueBell (Texas) Icecream and rootbeer to make rootbeer floats for our Parkinson's Boxing Class. One of our boxers is a retired general, and I'd never seen his face so animated when he spotted Root beer float! I think it made his day, which made my day.

 

Root beer floats made my belly!

 

321





There's nothing but bones now. Even the dog had to beg a scrap.

 

Good morning, all!! A chilly start here in northeast PA. It's 14 and still dropping - heading up to 50 today and 58 tomorrow. We're slowly getting to the 60s for next week.

Hoping to get a Fedex delivery this morning with some parts to get my brush cutter back in operation so I can continue clearing out one of our tree lines. I also need to pull out the old chipper and see if that will start up. My father-in-law was great at buying tools for the farm...just not so good on maintaining them.

Stay safe and warm!!

 

If your mowing it, have you thought about just going the full monte and
putting grass down?

How’s the situation with your greenhouse?

 

It's not an area that I mow. Our place was, at one point, a small horse farm. We built our house in what was a hay field overlooking the large pond on the property. The tree line I need to clear was the defining line between the old field and one of the grazing areas for the horses. Overtime, it's had some bushes that have gotten out of hand - I just want to get it to the point where I can take the field mower over it once a year. Now that I've retired, I have the time to get to these projects.

We are in the process of deciding what we want to do. The insurance company gave us the full amount for removing the tree and a fair amount for the damage to the greenhouse. We're not sure exactly what we want to do with it - definitely want to make some changes from how it was configured. We're waiting on our contractor to drop by to talk about it. Hope to see him this coming week.

 

Property shipshape, mower serviced, ready to go, grass needs 1st. cut, too cold today though. Weather guy says last cold morning for a while. All plans for outside stuff are subject to change, this time of the year.

 

I have read nothing but good things about the Gravity Series smokers and judging by your results pic it turned out well. I like the 3-2-1 method. The more I cook the more I like to judge by look and feel. Excellent pull back BTY.

Nice looking Tacoma. I like the black myself.

Another easy day. Three last loads of laundry and clean my old home office room as I transfer it into a music studio. LOL

 

Good Morning Cool Old Dudes and Susan
23°F currently on monkey mountain; was 9°F overnight. Which means another systems of snowshowers coming. Looking at WX Underground App, we'll likely driving out under the new systems leading edge.

6
Always a piece of equipment needing maintenance or repair on a farm.

&

Tom

 

If my math is correct we're somewhere around 9 or 10 days from the end of Ken's ban.

 

Thanks Tom. Those were done in the vertical I got last year. It does a fine job, but is hard to tend to as far as temp control. I mean, I COULD sit there and drink beer for 6 hours, but it turns out I am not that patient either! And I don't think I could drink beer for 6 hours any more..... I may just use my stimulus and make a change! This is what I used



While I was doing the cook, and drinking some beer, I got the stand made for the Hydroponics kit that I ordered. (Really less than the cost of messing with all the PVC doo dads it takes.)




Questionable weather today and tomorrow, so not positive when I will place it on the fence, and get the pipes in. It will be fed from the goldfish pond pumps, because they produce some fine plant food according to what I read. A highly experimental project this will be!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, Happy Saturday Porch!

 

Good morning everyone,

Warm day yesterday, big melt into mud now ice until it warms back up.

Having an issue with the septic system, it appears part of the pipe from the clean out between the septic tank and the drain field is frozen so the clean out was bubbling waste and apparently worked its way off - had to get the cap back on and tighten (nasty job). Called the neighbor from down the road (septic pumping company), he came out looked it over to make sure it was what I assumed. The tank doesn't need pumping, it is draining but extremely slow so there is a little back-up at the exit port in the tank. Come on warm weather. I think with all the late snow and the fact the garage down-spot runs over that area and it is still snow and ice covered caused the freeze up. Will take the quad and plow some of the build up to see if we can get the ground uncovered in that area. New spring project, underground pipe to disperse down spot run-off. That worked well for next to our house, no more ice driveway I have a heat tape in the underground pipe and it clears all the snow and ice off the roof down to the drainage flow we created a few years ago.

Got a few errands to run and for those following the medical saga - have not heard from my cardiologist which tells me there is nothing to be overly concerned with.

Have a great day and of course continue doing the right thing - mask up LOL

 

Kurt, Some years back, I rigged up a temperature monitor and blue tooth for my phone. Used a processor board and some Microelectronika click boards. Thermo-j-click & Bluetooth-click. Grilling while the game was on, so it was my way of keeping track of temp.

These days you find a turnkey item on that A to Z company. One such kit (just a random example) $33 solution.

$59 BBQ Meat Thermometer, Remote Cooking Thermometer, Digital Oven Thermometer with 6 Probe Port for Smoker Grilling (Carrying Case Included)

https://www.amazon.com/Thermometer-Bluetooth-Grilling-Carrying-Included/dp/B075L7V6NZ

Septic: Frozen pipes got us during the Texas Deep Freeze. No electricity, so no running water. I was flushing once a day (drilled hole through 2" slab to ice on the pool to siphon water to use for flushing. Septic backed up, blown toilet seal, water seeped out into hardwood floor in next room. Damn! I got the plumbers out, usually pop and reseal is $250. The toilet that leaked had a recessed oval flange, so the recommendation was a jackhammer and setting the correct round flange. The guy is good and said, "We could use two beeswax stacked rings, but that fails after a couple of years". $1350, no broken tile (whew). Still need to address the living room floor ($4000?) The pool freeze damage was $5400. We still need to address tile and resurface (Ice popped the cap and top 2" of plaster/tile) about another $22,000.
No insurance coverage on the pool; the house is still under the 1% rule. About $30,000 in freeze damage. It would not have been so bad if we have electricity that week, warm water would have kept septic pipes cleared, and pool pump circulating water would have prevented so much damage.

My wife asked, "weren't you going to buy a generator a few years ago?" We have a 1000 gallon propane tank. Most years only need 200 gallons but will add 500 gals every two years when prices drop in the summer. Hindsight. I'll wait until August to look into this again. Propane is the least maintenance, so I like that for backup as long as that big tank is kept filled! 10KW system burns 1.5 gals/hour at full load. Hindsight would have paid for itself.

 

Tom, I have one of those Meatstick devices, with probes, and a bridge. It's supposed to be best in the bidness, but I give it no more than 3 stars for it's wonky software. It told me to take the ribs off yesterday after 30 minutes, because the internal got too hot when the fire got hotter. I kept it with me on the phone the whole time, and I had to keep the phone on to monitor the fire temp. That's my temp control issue with the vertical - South wind kept me on my toes!

And after this winter, I gave them a couple weeks for things to calm down, but I told the wife I'm raiding my retirement this year for a whole house Generac, hooked to our Natural Gas line. I finally heard back from them this week, for my quote contact.......they will come see me at the end of MAY! Guess they were busier than I thought!

 

Sometimes those old pitmasters are much better than modern electronics!

Did you lose natural gas during the power outage? Compressor stations are about 40 to 100 miles apart. They use natural gas to run them but still need electricity to run the equipment. Quite a few didn't have backup generators in good repair, so no natural gas was available in some cities. Oops. Mother nature really did mess with us this year.

Years back, a friend had a Cat Tractor who was using it in the hills. He stopped and got 1 gallon of gasoline for the starter. I was what? Yep, it had a tiny 1 hp gas motor; start it, engage it, and it just keeps turning over that diesel engine until it fires up. Something was satisfying about spending a day with the beast. All the diesel in the world didn't help if you couldn't get it started. One time he hauled in 50-gallon drums of diesel but forgot the gas or a siphon hose for his truck.