Month: May 2021

Pumping the Rain Barrels

We’ve had over 1/2 inch of rain since we set up the rain barrels on April 27, 2021. That’s 10 days! The rain barrels were probably full after the first rainfall, but today was the day Bert got around to pump them up to the holding tank in the garden. I tried to document all the details of the equipment he used, but hopefully you’ll get the gist of the process.

First, Bert put one end of a long garden hose into the holding tank in the garden. Then he ran the hose down the hill to the little pump sitting behind the shop. He says it’s about 100 feet.

This is the first barrel he will pump. He removed the lid and screen. You can see how much pollen and junk the screen collected. The red hose on the side handles the overflow if the barrel is full

And the barrel is definitely full!

The first batch of water to go up to the holding tank gets about a cup of Clorox added to keep bacteria from growing in the tank.

This is the motor he uses. It’s a 1 HP Portable Lawn Pump. It pumps the water about 100 feet uphill at 70 psi.

Here are the various hoses and cords ready to assemble.

The garden hose (red) is in the foreground. Bert is holding a siphon hose. It is larger around than the garden hose and has a quick-attach adapter.

This is the other end of the siphon hose…called a foot valve.

He fills up the siphon hose with water.

Once the hose is full, he quickly attaches it to the motor. He also adds water to the connector on top of the pump which primes the pump housing.

Hard to see in this picture, but then he loosens the bleeder valve to release any air in the pump.

Next, he attaches the garden hose to the motor and tightens it. He also tightens the bleeder valve.

The other end of the siphon hose goes into the barrel. He tucks the hose between the barrel and the supporting wooden stake so it doesn’t come out while it’s working.

And then, he turns the motor on!

In 8 minutes or so, the barrel is almost empty. He quickly turns off the motor so it doesn’t suck air.

The lid and screen goes back on the barrel and it’s ready for more rain!

Bert picks up the motor and hoses and moves them to the other rain barrel to repeat the process.

When he’s done with that, he goes up to the garden and removes the garden hose. The holding tank is now about 1/3 full (about 120 gallons). It holds about 360 gallons.

Whew! I learned a lot today. We should have a full tank by the time we transplant our seedlings.

Thanks for following this story. If you have any questions leave a comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net. Enjoy!

Dehydrating Apples

Over a month ago, I bought a bag of nice small apples just to eat. The bag ended up in the garage temporarily while I was doing other things in the kitchen. I totally forgot to reach for them…out of sight, out of mind! Needless to say, they still looked OK but the they were getting soft. Before they were too soft to eat (that’s called rotten!) I thought I’d just dehydrate them. I know we’d eat them that way as snacks! Here are the 15 small apples:

First, I had to uncover the dehydrator. Most of the year I keep it covered and store it right outside the back door. It is already plugged in and ready to go. We keep a board on top to protect it from damage because that seems to be the place where we pile things…stuff to go out to the shop, packages delivered by UPS, etc. I went out to take a picture of it before I uncovered it…and sure enough, UPS had dropped off a package already this morning!

Then I pulled out the manual to check how long to dehydrate apples. They provide a color-coded map to help determine how long to dehydrate foods, based on location and season. Fruit should have 10 to 20% moisture content to store well.

For May in Pennsylvania, it said a range of 51 to 70% (indicated by yellow) or 71 to 80% (indicated by green) in the instructions. Then I look up Apples and find the yellow means 11 hours, and green means 13 hours. This is very important if I want to store them without refrigerating them.

So, curious challenge for today. It was already 2:00 p.m. when I finished peeling and I don’t like to leave the dehydrator running after I go to bed. At 9:00 p.m. I turned the dehydrator off and put the apples in a zip lock bag and put them in the refrigerator. They are still a little moist inside. In the morning I can always lay them out on the trays again and finish drying them for another 5-6 hours. I think we’ll just eat them!

Here’s the process to dehydrate apples:

After washing the apples, I made a bowl of lemon water to put the sliced apples into as I peel them. That will keep them from discoloring.

Then I laid the apples on the trays.

And put the trays in the dehydrator.

I set the temperature to 135 degrees.

After 7 hours, the apples were dry on the outside but still a little moist inside. They would need another 5 hours or so to be dry enough to store on the shelf.

Those 15 apples made a small pile of dried apples.

Next time I want to dehydrate apples, I think I’ll get larger apples and use the apple peeler/slicer attachment on my mixer…much easier! At least I didn’t waste this bag of apples and we have snacks for a few days!

Please leave a comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net. Enjoy!

Camel Ride in Eqypt in 1956

One of the things I treasure from my parent’s generation was their foresight to save many written stories of their lives. Sometimes it was an envelope of letters from a loved one overseas, or stories they wrote for historical societies documenting life “back in the day” like my Grandfather did.

Sometimes, they specifically wrote “Autobiographies” with photographs, assembled in their later years. My mother had even saved a handwritten autobiography she wrote in high school (around 1926) that shared her life up to age 12 or so.

As I get older, I feel like I’ve let the next generation down. Somehow, I was never able to document my life adventures as it happened with daily journals. In 2013, I had written several letters to my grandchildren which summarized my early life. The first story, which I posted here on April 14, 2021, titled “Born in the middle of the story,” shared some of my earliest memories. This account of my visit to the pyramids in 1956, when I was just 9 years old, was the second story I wrote for them. After this, I’ll try to continue with more memories from years ago and build my “Book of memories from Grandma Mary.”

***

In 1956, when I was 9 years old, my family was visiting Cairo, Eqypt for a few days as we traveled from the Philippines to London. We had spent a year in the Philippines while my Dad worked at the University of the Philippines.

One of the places we visited was the pyramids and the Sphinx on the edge of the city of Cairo. I thought we were going to make a long drive out into the desert because in all the pictures I saw, the pyramids were way out in the desert. But the city had grown and was quite close by.

It was hot, noisy and unfamiliar. There were camels everywhere with colorful tassels, bells and blankets on them. When they walked the bells would jingle. The men leading the camels around offered to take us for a ride…for a price, I’m sure! My brother, Mark, wanted to take a camel ride. My sister, Jean, said she would sit on a camel. I wasn’t sure about it at all.

We went to some camels that were lying down on the ground. They didn’t look so big. First my brother got on the back of the camel. He didn’t seem scared at all. Then my sister tucked her skirt to look like pants (remember, in 1956 girls and women wore dresses not shorts in public) and got on another camel. Then I was lifted up to sit right in front of her. Much higher than I expected!

THEN the men had the camels STAND UP!

We were VERY high off the ground! The men holding the camels led us around a little. I held on tight but it felt like I was going to slide down the camel’s neck.

Finally, it was time to get off the camels. First, the men had to make the camels kneel down. The men took their canes and hit the camels in the back of their front knees to make them bend down. Of course, the camels didn’t like that! They made a terrible noise! It sounded like they had been hurt but the men didn’t seem to be worried.

Once their front legs were bent, they lowered their back legs to rest on the ground. Finally, I was lifted off the camel. What a ride!

Twenty years later I was teaching 5th grade in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. That year we had a unit on Eqypt where we learned about the people who lived there long ago and built the pyramids. Most of the students had never seen a camel. In 1974 there was no zoo nearby. The students researched how big camels were and we built an almost-life-sized camel in our classroom. Bert helped by building a wooden frame. It was so big he had to build it in the classroom! Then we padded it with newspaper and covered it with paper mache’.

The students painted it brown and it was part of our class while we studied Eqypt. (I couldn’t find a picture of the finished camel.) We didn’t want to tear down our camel friend at the end of our studies of Eqypt so the floor under his belly became a cozy place to read. He kept us company the rest of the year!

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Watch for more adventures from my past…posted under Around the Kisner Homestead: Memories from Grandma Mary.

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