Reclaim The Skyline

Lenny is in the shop this week getting a much needed break job. I miss him already! In two weeks will be driving up to High Country Bus Festival in Crumpler, North Carolina. This was our first camp out in the Bus as we got him on the road just a day before! It will be great to celebrate our anniversary with other Buses, tubing on the New River, and beautiful mountain air.
Stay tuned for more things VW!

In the meanwhile I have started a new blog, on my garden, things I make and new ideas. Please follow me here too as I will be updating this one more frequently. I am going to be learning how to do things on my own- from growing plants to making breads and sauces. I also will be posting different ideas I have about ways of life, etc. Check it out!

Bell & Jalapeno Peppers thriving~ now getting too hot for sad tomatoes, beans and cucumbers. Although there is hope! A cool, wet week ahead may help some fruits blossom! Beans have been pulled up and replaced with garlic and potatoes.

Potato sprouting up~ take a sprouting tato, cut each eye out & plant a bit apart

Weekend Getaway

Last weekend we took Lenny out to camp just an hour from where we live. The campground was only $7 a night on Lick Fork Lake here in S.C. As usual Lenny ran great; however we found the sink isn't working at the moment, which probably means a loose wire as the fuse was not blown. The camp spot was shaded and we got to relax and remember what it was like on our trip, being able to do nothing all day and be cool with it. While hiking, we passed a tree that was crackling and we looked up to see it was leaning hard so we took a few paces back and got to watch the tree fall. Apparently if a tree falls in the woods someone DOES hear it!
I managed to get one shot of our site with much finagling with my camera before it finally went capoot. Sand infiltrated my Cannon while trying to shoot pics of Flaming Lips & Paul Simon at Hangout Music Festival a few weekends ago. 3 full days of music on the beach will do it I suppose. Lenny didn't come because it wasn't a camping festival, but I really want to go to Allgood Music Festival in 28 days which has a lot of the same line up, but late night shows and camping in Lenny!
There's a lot of camping opportunities so we are going to spend the next few weeks getting parts and fixing him up, and doing a full tune up. I also want to try and tighten up the steering, get new windshield put in, and maaaaybe eventually do a new paint job. We are going to take the fiberglass off the top, leaving the canvas attached to the top- so we can sand some rust spots on top of the bus and in the gutters, and paint it because I sort of never did the part! Luckily it blends in with the canvas ;)
We were toying with the idea of buying a different bus and tricking it out but we are just going to put our efforts into Lenny since we love him, and he is a great bus! Besides, anyone who does a lot of camping knows that things get dirty~ I wouldn't want to dirty up my fancy bus so often. We'll just wait until we find a good Truck Bus (single cab) or Squareback to come along. :)

Double Cab VW Truck

Squareback

It would be a lot easier to find these types of VWs out West so maybe we will have to make a trip out to get a good find some day. :)

Cucumber Trellis

Here's a picture of my cucumber pot today~ there are some sticks for the beginning trellis and yesterday I added the metal swirl (bent from a coat hanger) which the Boston cuke has already grabbed on to with a few vines. Tomorrow I plan to hike out into the woods to find some more branches for a natural trellis~ I love the way it looks and its free!

To be honest I am not a huge fan of cucumbers, so I look forward to trying different pickle recipes in the future~ especially spicy pickles with some jalapenos we grow!

Now I am trying to decide if we have space for a worm composting bin because I plan to garden winter plants as well, and hopefully keep it going in the containers until I own land to do what I want and create more permanent structures.

More Gardening, Less Camping

We haven't camped out in Lenny in a few weeks, the last time was just at a friend's house for a night. I had planned to go camping for a few days for my birthday but the weather was too cool in the areas I wanted to go with scattered storms so we ended up moving into a new house which gives me a lot more space for my plants~

Most of them are in Lowes or Home Depot buckets, but some I have been able to find and re-purpose. Usually there is too much paint or plaster in them to re-use for food plants though. My soil mixture I got out of a greenhouse book~ 1 part top soil 1 part peat moss 1 part vermiculite. The vermiculite is enriched with fertilizers so I haven't had to fertilize yet.
To keep slugs away I always have beer out in 2 cat food dishes which is perfect for slugs to crawl in, get drunk and drown. I also like to spritz the leaves with soap nut solution (2 soap nuts per 1 cup water, boiled 30 min and cooled) and used the left over soap nuts to rub around the rim of the buckets. So far, so good! My cat lies around the buckets a lot during most days so hopefully that will help deter squirrels, and this week I plan to get one of those fake owls to guard my fruits and veggies from other creatures. The buckets help protect from bunnies though~ a plus!

"Sweet 100" Variety Tomato

First Bean I got to eat~ beans sprout, grow and produced the quickest

2 Variety Cucumber, Dill and Carrots in 20'' Pot
(adding more sticks for natural trellis)
today as I write this they are already much bigger

"Better Bush" Tomato~ has 9 now!

Only Tomato that survived from seed~ she's quite the Champ!!

In all I have~
3 Tomato plants and 3 Jalapenos that are pretty mature that I bought as seedlings from stores
3 Bush Beans grown from seed
1 Cucumber bought from store
1 Basil plant bought from store
1 cilantro plant bought from store (and not doing well)
1 cucumber started from seed
1 tomato started from seed
lots of~ Jalapenos, Bell Peppers, Dill, Carrots, Onions all started from seed

I thought most of the pepper seedlings would die off but surprisingly none of them did so now I am over run with baby pepper seedlings, but I am quickly finding out that they make great gifts!

Hopefully today will be the last run to the store for buckets and soil mixtures!

The Bus Movie

A documentary film by Damon Ristau coming out this fall about VW Buses! It looks like a super fun movie, I can't wait until it comes out.



Click HERE for more information about the movie on kickstarter.com.

Sprouts

Today I got to eat delicious organic sprouts that I sprouted this week. Last week I ordered Organic Alfalfa sprouts on Ebay, but hopefully I will be able to find some locally next time. I put some seed in a mason jar and filled it with water two times the height of the seed. I used just a little bit of seed because I wasn't sure how much it would yield, and the seeds have a guaranteed 80% sprout rate. I let them sit in the water over night, then rinsed and drained all the water out. I topped it with a rag and rubber band and let the sprouts hang out in my dark cupboard with the potatoes and onions for a few days. Every morning and night I rinsed them with water and drained them and shook them around so they didn't clump so much.
I figured today they are big enough to eat~ and they are tasty! For now they are stored in the fridge in what used to be a sesame tahini container, now a wonderful anything container. But I don't think they are going to last very long...


We have been eyeballing a 73 Westfalia (named Biscuit) close by that is going for very cheap. The body is in much better condition than Lenny's, with only one huge problem area~ the entire front "floorboard" is rusted through in many places. The engine and tranny is out which will give us a chance to go over everything and do it right this time. We don't want to abandon Lenny, but we know that he isn't a good candidate for a full on restoration. His frame is warped from the collision he was in, and the bondo is chipping in places with rust coming back. So we may just try to keep the working components good on him and fully restore the 73 slowly and completely and still get to have Lenny to go camping in and have fun with in the meantime.
I feel like I should put a warning on my page~ BEWARE~ VW addiction may soon follow purchase of only one VW Bus~

Solar Oven Experiment #1

A long time ago I mentioned the use of Solar Ovens~ I hope to make a heavy duty one out of wood and better materials, but for now I have one I made out of a box~


I used a Keurig Coffee Maker Box which is pretty perfect for a solar oven, but not so perfect for a Coffee pot. Purchasers of the Keurig also have to purchase small plastic and foil pods full of grounds for a single serving of crappy, old tasting coffee. For about a box of 24 pods it costs something like $7 or more, a lot more expensive than a conventional bag of beans or grounds.
Grounds and filters(most) are great for compost, and if you compost with worms~ they love it too. The Keurig takes something completely biodegradable and surrounds it in plastic to not even be recycled~ but thrown in the trash. Unless people want to take the time to cut off the foil, empty the grounds, rinse and dispose.
I highly recommend never entertaining the idea of purchasing such a worthless product, unless you have hundreds of dollars to throw away, in that case please donate to my Bus fund instead and I will make you better tasting coffee every day. Working at a coffee shop where we roast our own beans a day or so before we grind and brew it really does turn you into a coffee snob!
I used a slightly smaller box than the Keurig box inside, with more cardboard surrounding to insulate. Then I covered the flaps with heavy duty aluminum foil, shiny side out, placed my pot inside and covered it with a plastic wrap I found, securing it to the box with tacks.
The pot is a black saucepot with small handles on the sides with a lid. It is the large kind, so I will be getting a smaller one since heating up a lot of food like that at once takes longer and would be more suitable to be cooked in the desert of Arizona instead the shady yard of my house.
I cooked a veggie soup from random cans of veggies, soaked beans, pasta, tomato sauce, and spices. I made way too much to be cooked in the solar cooker completely but after about 6 hours in the sun the pasta was cooked. So I did have to finish cooking some of the liquid off on the stove.
I found out that smaller amounts work better, canned/already cooked works better because it cooks faster, water will not boil out since there is a lid keeping moisture in. I also need to get a thermometer so I can check the inside temperature so I will know in the future how long it will take to cook other things. My design worked very well though, so no problems there! It makes me happy to now have an environmentally friendly device I created from the PACKAGING of a very UNfriendly device.
What shall I try next...