Old Common, Day to Day Technology. Waht do you hang onto?

[Jstpssng]

Blackberries here are far from amusing as they can take over in a matter of months, we simply don't get the frost to knock them back, one corner of our place is overrun with them as the adjoining property won't spray his, I spray them four times a year but they just bounce back, they are controlled on my side but the other side are spreading like wildfire, the coldest we get is about -2°C but only about half a dozen times a year, we curse the English botanist Von Mueller who introduced them here as a food source a few hundred years ago.

The birds are our problem, eat the ripe berries then spread seed filled superphosphate (that was being polite).

We have many plants here which were brought over as ornamentals for the housing boom after WWII which are causing problems now. Several of them have big berries, which the birds eat as you say, then spread through out the landscape; Autumn Olive and Honeysuckle to name just two. I also am seeing (native) elderberry and sumac in places where it never was before, in forest openings we've created.

 

[the old grind]

... Autumn Olive and Honeysuckle to name just two. I also am seeing (native) elderberry and sumac in places where it never was before, in forest openings we've created.

Then there's that 'cane grass' AKA phragmites australis AKA common reed and what is used to thatch roofs the UK. It's on a watch list in maybe half the states. I 'hang onto' glypho because spraining it in Sept is the only way to keep this prodigious and pernicious rhizome at bay.

Then there's willow if you have water and buckthorn and mulberry that birds spread like any other. It takes 'old technology' to keep this stuff down and I 'hang onto' a rowboat to spray shoreline that the backhoe, grapples, and saw cannot get to easily. :laughing: Here cane grass I sprayed last fall and willow fluff I have ~ 4 ac of as of this morning.

 

[fried1765]

Old common technology?

Pretty much everything around this old (1905??) farmhouse. When Dad inherited it 60 years ago he 'updated' with a lot of second hand items that were already old. The 'modern' sheet metal kitchen wall cabinets are Youngstown Kitchen from 1940~1948. One still has its doors, years ago the hinges fell off irrepairably on the other two so they are open-face shelves. Today authentic Youngstown Kitchen is an expensive retro line. They were throw-away back then like Ikea stuff today. These cabinets literally may have come from the dump.

The lower kitchen cabinets by the sink are from some previous remodel with 1/8" plywood doors to maximize space in the too-small kitchen. I think the house itself is a Diamond Lumber precut kit because there wasn't rural electricity back then and it was only 500 sq ft. Kitchen cabinets on the other side of the kitchen are made from the same grooved 1x4 t&g fir as the kitchen's walls and ceiling, and the same lumber used milled-side-down is the floor throughout the house.

I'm sitting at a dining table that was well used, had been replaced by something newer, when we bough it from a neighbor in the mid 60's.

I've maintained Dad's style, preserving what I can of the early California farming atmosphere of the house and the 120 year old apple orchard, while neighboring old orchards have been converted to premium small vineyards to sell to new-money San Franciscans. Now I'm the view providing the ambiance they came up here for, as they look out across their sterile soulless but very profitable high fence vineyards that aren't fun to walk in.

Everything I've described here is old common day to day technology that still works as intended.

So I don't see a need to update. My kids don't agree, they see how much work it is to maintain old stuff!

As I am sitting here responding to your post, I am doing so, from inside my 290 year old house!

 

[Gary Fowler]

Technology is great, but I / wifey don't depend on it. We still write checks and actually mail them!

That is the one great technology that I like, debit cards and electronic banking. I write about 2 checks a year, one to pay my property taxes and one to get my sprinkler checkvalve certified. Both dont take debit cards. I always hated carrying around a checkbook and writing out checks. I got the standard box of checks when I opened my current bank account in 1990 and I just last year had to order more.
As for old school, hammers, chisels, end wrenches, screwdrivers, hand saws basically all hand tools I still have, but I go to the power tool first if I have a job to do. I like to work smarter, not harder.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Still use a shovel to dig a hole; still cook on an outdoor charcoal grill, still use toothpicks, have a land line telephone, open my shop door by hand, use Noxema shaving cream, paint my house with a brush and own a 1959 and a 1960 Chevy.

WoW. That is just nuts!!! All my garage doors are electric except the one man door which is how I get in if the power fails. But then again, why go to the shop if no power? Dig a hole-backhoe. Grill, propane and has been for 40 years. I do still have a landline but I paint with a high pressure airless sprayer. I only use a brush for really small jobs and then it is a foam throw away one.

I do admire those who fix up old cars, actually drive them and have the fortitude to suffer the heat with no AC, no power steering and only AM radio(if it has a radio at all).

 

[Gary Fowler]

Muscles, and crowbars for leverage.

There are just some things that either havent been invented or just do better by hand. Driving a nail with a hammer for instance, how would you put a nail in the wall to say hang a picture if you didnt have a hammer. IS there a powered device that takes the place of a crowbar for pulling nails or prying up a board? If someone invented something that worked as well as the hand tools, I might buy one. My muscles arent as strong as they used to be. I was recently tearing down some old buildings for my neighbor and salvaging the wood. Finally I got as much wood as I could use, got tired of pulling nails(literally thousands of them) and prying boards and just used the backhoe to rip the last one down and burn the scrap, thousands of nails and all.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Light sticks are a great idea that never crossed my feeble mind. I have half a dozen led lanterns scattered around the house for extended outages. We also use automatic lights that illuminate when the power goes out. We use these to get to the lanterns and then turn them off.

With extended outages, we fire up the 2K watt Honda to run the well pump, heaters or freezers. Life or Diaster can be so simple, if prepared.

Once upon a time, we had a 3 day power outage and I bought a 8000 watt generator after it was over. It happened in the winter due to an ice storm. We used my Coleman camp stove to cook on, LED lanterns for light, a propane infrared heater for heat. I got the new generator and it sat for 5 years till the next storm. When I went to use it, the carb was messed up, took it to a repair shop and they found a spring missing from inside the carb (factory screw up) that took him just about 10 minutes and $20 to fix and it ran like a champ. We ran that for 6 days day and night. Now it is back in its storage hole, waiting for a new disaster to happen.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Gear drive tractors... ya'll can have that hst ...

MY LS is gear and I did about 4 acres of bush hogging yesterday for my daughter in law which required a lot of clutching and backing due to much of it in a thicket of pine trees. MY legs are a bit sore this morning as well as my arms from all the fast steering around corners and trees.
I will take the HST anytime over gear. When I bought the LS, all I had ever used on the farm were gear tractors but that was in my youth.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Watches? Watches? Don't need no stinkin' watches! Retired folks have no need for watches. I always figured "What's time to a Hog"? No place to go or to be.

I threw my alarm clock in a drawer when I retired, but I still like to know what time it is, if for not other reason than to know when I have to leave for my doctor appointment and lets not forget to eat lunch at noon so I keep my blood sugar level.

 

[Gary Fowler]

I still have a dwell meter and timing light in my tool box. Have not used them in years but still have them

I know the dwell meter is useless since the mid 70's when electronic ignition came out. Do timing lights still work on a car, havent had a need to use one since I had a 1970 Torino.