Homemade Woodstove Toaster

A friend related a story about a homemade toaster that involved an old can. There are lots of uses for cans, but this is the first time I heard of one being turned into a toaster. Now ya know, I've used camping toaster thingies, the kind with a long handle and a mesh basket on the end. Slip a slice of bread between the mesh then toast it over a fire. But you can't use that thing atop a wood stove.

I've toasted bread in a frying pan, too. It works though its not as toasty, not as dried. Definitely fried, not crispy thru & thru. But hey, I've pan fried many a piece of toast in my day. 

So here's the tin can idea. Take one big jumbo can? Cut off both ends. 

Use something to support a slice of bread --- mesh, grill, couple of chop sticks or skewers, etc. Set the can atop the woodstove. Add a slice of bread. 

Then watch it closely until crispy on one side. Flip it over and toast the other side. Only takes a few minutes. I gave this thing a trial run this morning (it was 52 degrees in my house the morning I did this...brrr). Works great. In fact, I made myself another piece and put farm fresh honey on it. Yum! 

More Pallet Boxes -- or Utilizing Truckloads of Weeds

I'm helping to clean up a local garden area down the road and have been hauling truckloads of weeds away. Rather than dumping the debris at the local trash station, I've been using the windfall to expand my gardening efforts. While I already produce enough food for ourselves (hubby and I), I'm working with the community garden group to produce food for them and our community. So lots of extra grow boxes surely would come in handy. Especially for slug prone crops like various greens. 

The limiting factor for these boxes is the fill. I have access to plenty of pallets. Enough material for lining the boxes. Enough area to erect them. But each takes a cubic yard or more of fill. Believe me, that's a lot! 

A truckload of weeds and trimmings looks like a cubic yard, but don't be fooled. It's mostly air. Once the material is transferred to a pallet box and stomped down, it's a lot less than you'd guess. Then give the material a few weeks to start decomposing, and the volume goes way down again. 

The box pictured above is half filled. I stomped it down but the material is a bit springy, so the box looks fuller than it actually is. To fill the box halfway has taken 9 trashcanfuls so far, plus several buckets of dirt and manure. 

This is how I'm using these old weeds. The stuff is rather woody, which means that it will be slow to decompose, is low in nitrogen, and will need fungi to break it down. Plus it is loaded with weed seed. With all this in mind, I'm loading a foot deep layer of the material into a pallet box. Then I add a 5 gallon bucket of dirt that I spread around over the layer. Next I sprinkle a couple shovelfuls of compost that I had previously inoculated with mushroom spore (I collect mushrooms from the county parks around here), then a 5 gallon bucket of manure (rabbit, chicken, or horse), then wet it with about 5 gallons of water or more. Repeat. Repeat. Climb in and tromp it down real good, then start all over again. 

Using these old weeds means more work in filling the pallet box, but it will make a nice growing media. I've done it before so I know that it will work. This material will heat up. No surprise since its just a boxed compost pile. But that means that I can't plant into it immediately like I can the other "cold" pallet boxes. It will take 3-4 weeks for it to cool down then be topped with 3 inches of good garden soil. 

So how much old weeds is needed to fill one box? I'm going to guess 18 standard full trashcans. Maybe 20. And that's just the first filling. I don't know how much volume it will lose as it goes through it's initial decomposing. The stuff is rather woody, so I'm not sure. Surprised to hear 20? Well so was I the first time I tried filling my first pallet grow box. It surely takes a lot of weeds to make a cubic yard of packed organic compost. And what also surprised me was that within two months the soil level will drop a full foot, and after 6 months the pallet box will only be half full. But the beauty of the system is that I get to utilize weeds, purchase zero fertilizer, get a lush crop, and end up with a half cubic yard of gorgeous "soil" that I can use to make more boxes or apply to garden rows that are rather sparse on soil. 

I plan to grow chard, kale, and lettuce is these new boxes since I've had requests for those crops. 

One more thing.......

I've already related how I line the boxes with something to help keep  moisture in -- old tarp, cut open feed bags, old plastic sheeting. Up until now I use to use a staple gun to attach the liner to the pallets. But the plastic tends to pull through the staple during the filling/stomping process. So I'm trying something different. I'm taking old milk gallon jug tops, making a hole for a nail in the center of the top (with a drill or a soldering iron), then using a roofing nail to hammer the liner to the pallet. 

The bottle cap grabs the plastic liner quite nicely. This way the liner shouldn't pull through. We shall see how well this works. 

Using Old Metal Roofing

The vast majority of houses around here have a metal roof. With the volcano erupting, the rain has been especially acidic, causing the rooves to rust away. While people patch their leaking rooves as best they can (Ace Hardware stocks plenty of gallons of Henry's Roof Patch all the time now), eventually the time comes when it needs to be replaced. We're no exception. The older roof, now ten years old, was never properly flashed by the original owner. So unknown to us for several years, it built up debris where the flashing should have been between the two roof slopes, and eventually rusted away. A can of Henry's roof cement helped for a while, but we finally gave in and replaced it when we could no longer stop the leaks in heavy downpours. 

I'm not one to throw away anything reusable. I'll find a use or give it to someone who can. Giving the old roofing away never crossed my mind for one second. I had the perfect job for it. Put a solid roof over the dog pen and parking area. 

Quite a while ago we had made a roof frame out of tree trunks and recycled 2x4's. Up until today we used tarps over the frame. But tarps wear out quickly in the tropical sun and whipping tradewinds. I've been keeping an eye out for old roofing material, but everyone around here also puts old roofing to use. So far, no luck. 

Ah-hal got my OWN used roofing panels ! So today they went up onto the frame. 

Had enough to do 20' with some short leftovers, which will be saved for some other project. 

Hubby's little VW would fit if we remove the big lava rock along the back wall. The farm ATV will also fit comfortably under the roof. 

The dog pen (for the two incorrigible chicken slayers who can only run loose on the farm under supervision) has its own roof. Once I locate more roof panels, we'll run the metal roof all the way to the end. 

Pallet Fence Update

So far the fence is working. The gusty tradewinds have been defeated! Score one for the farmer. 

Gates --  making gates out of the pallets could be done, but I had a better option available. Salvaged from the dump, I have three sections of worn out chain link panels from a dog pen. They are 4 foot high and about 5-6 foot long. By simply tying them to a pallet with the poly hotwire, they are very easy to open and close as gates, and they are sturdy enough to keep a curious horse or sheep out. 

By setting two together, I had an entrance wide enough to drive a truck through for delivering compost and mulch. 

For people gates I happen to already have two damaged chain link gates that I picked up cheap at a flea market. I haven't set them into place yet, but tying them with the poly hotwire will work. 

Several people have asked me what is this poly hotwire that I've mentioned. It's a fine braided rope that has wire strands braided into it. It is highly flexible, strong, not apt to break. It is used for hotwire fencing for delivering a shock when touched. But in my pallet fence application, it is not attached to a charger, thus no shock. 

Tree Protection

Young trees, especially fruit trees, need to be protected. If not, my sheep and goat will surely eat them down to the ground. Yes, I lost some trees early on because I wasn't aware how fond livestock can be of eating them. Not just leaf nibbling. All the twigs. Then the small branches, off goes the bark, and finally anything they could get between their teeth. I would come home to find a 15" long stick sticking up out of the ground. They ate the whole thing while I was in town! That's very expensive livestock food! 

I wanted to come up with protection that would not only work, but would be quick, easy, and cheap. Fencing would work, but I'd have to buy it, plus buy posts to mount it on. So I looked around for a better solution. I didn't have to look further than the pile of wood pallets. Four pallets tied together make nifty tree protectors. I could have nailed them together, but I wanted to be able to easily take them apart. So tying them was a better solution. 

To date the sheep and goats have left the protected trees alone. The sheep totally ignore the trees. The goat occasionally stands up in the pallet and reaches over for a nibble. But by and by, he loses interest and moves on. 

I control the worst of the weeds inside the pallet boxes by using cardboard and grass clippings as mulch. Works for me.