My general class amateur radio license test is in 2 weeks, so I spent most of my free time studying. I use the ARRL Study Guide and free practice exams from hamexam.org.
The soil in our backyard sucks, so we have about 9 raised beds that we use for some of our vegetables. It costs a lot of money to fill them with good bagged dirt though, so we’re getting into composting. We bought a composting bin from one of the online gardening supply companies. It came this week so I put it together and we’ve started our first batch on compost.
The biggest prep I made this week was ordering a Berkey water purification system. This was difficult because I had to talk my wife into it. Also kind of expensive (a little over $300) Actually, my kid helped with this one. His school starts next week and he’s been bugging us to buy bottled water for him to take to school. We keep forgetting, so in exasperation he asked if we could at least get a water filter since our tap water doesn’t taste that great. It was a light bulb moment for me. I said “That’s a great idea”. I told my wife I had a friend who owns a Berkey system and he raves about how good the water tastes after he filters it.
My plan was to just buy filters and a couple of 5 gallon buckets and put together my own system. My wife didn’t like that idea. She’s afraid I’ll screw something up, and she doesn’t think 5 gallon plastic buckets will look good in the kitchen. I tried to talk her into the 6 gallon system. She wanted the 3 gallon system, and we ended up compromising with the 3 gallon system (they also make a 4.5 gallon system). She also let me spend extra money to get the optional chlorine/arsenic filters. OK. So I don’t get to say I made it myself, but at least we have a water purification system coming. I can’t wait to get it set up and see if improves the taste of our tap water.
What did YOU do to prep this week?
Peace out,
porcupine
Our garden is about half done for the year and we’re already seeing what we need to do better for next year. Our back yard soil sucks, so we ordered a composter and started putting our veggie scraps in it. We also started some more bean plants and put in a couple bean towers. Might be too late in the year but my wife wanted to try, so it’s worth a try…