Here we make a video on how to repair the power cord of your power tool. Don’t just wrap it in tape; here Eric shows you how he repairs the power cord on his circular saw. You can do this, watch the video and then repair your tools .
DIY power tool repair is within the grasp of your average person, if i can repair my drill, circular saw, or other electric tools so can you. This DIY video shows you how to fix a circular saw, but this can be applied to other tools as well. Basically anything with power cord can be fixed , just watch here and learn.
Its important to match the wires correctly when re-attaching them, you want the polarized plug to work properly and safely. And be careful when soldering wires, the soldering iron is hot, learn from my experiences…
And pay attention to where the power cord is when you are using a power tool, after we shot this how-to video, I proceeded to cut the cord of this saw yet again, and i repaired it yet again. Not unusual in my world.
Do you have a good way to repair the power cord on a power tool? let us know below!
Green Roofs are a great thing. They shade the roof a house, thus lowering the cooling bill, and add greenery to the city. But they are a lot of work to install and can be costly.
So here is my low tech green roof project.
The idea is to place large planters around my flat roof in Brooklyn, drill holes in the bottom of the planters, and plant vine vegetable plants in the holes. I have a water timer and soaker hose system that will water the containers. Then plants will sprawl over the roof and shade the roof while lowering our cooling bill. And we get food from our roof at the same time. neat. Here are some photos to demonstrate the low tech green roof idea.
Large Planters are placed on rubber roofing materialI use a hole saw to open up the bottom of the planterHere are some winter sqash and cucumber plants I started.This is the start of about 6 large planters on the roof. Manhattan is on the right in the background.
my raised beds seemed to have lost about 1/3 of their soil. Not sure why. It may be when I weed them some soil always comes with the roots of the weeds, or the soil is settling slowly.
Getting garden soil can be a logistical pain. And expensive. You have to order it and have it delivered, dumped onto your driveway, and then you move it.
BUT, if you own a Ford F150, you just drive down to the gravel yard, pay them $22, and get a huge load of soil.
The GardenFork.TV F150 gets a load of soilThe front loader operator but a bit too much dirt in, so we're looking like a low-riderThe bedliner makes it real easy to shovel out soil and gravel
This week Mike and Eric talk about Eric’s appearance on Martha Stewart Living Radio, Mike’s Farmers Market Report, Tyler’s Weather Predictions, and more
We’ve added a third hive to our beehives, and our package of bees arrived on Saturday. The weather was not great, cold and windy, so we thought we’d wait until the next day, Sunday. We kept our bees in the basement to keep them from overheating.
Sunday arrives with wind and 32F. Not good. But we waited until 1 pm and the temperature rose above 50F, and it was time to hive the package. Hiving the package went really well. The worker bees stayed close to the queen in the new hive.
The bees in the package are surrounding the queen cage and the sugar feeder in the boxOpening the top of the package reveal the queen cage and the sugar feeder canRemoving the queen cage from the bee packageThis is the queen cage, the fondant on the left is pierced with a small nail and the worker bees will eat thru this to release the queen once this is put into the hive. Two bent nails are inserted into the queen cage, with the fondant candy facing up, this queen cage then sits between two frames in the middle of the new hiveAfter the queen is placed in the new beehive, the bees are added to the hive by shaking the hive packageYou have to move the package back and forthThe worker bees cluster around the queen cage that was placed in between the frames.I tear open the screen of the package to allow the last of the bees to exit to the hive.An entrance reducer allows the young hive to defend the entrance from robber bees and yellow jackets. I did not have one of those wooden reducers, so I used a mouse guard.
I went over to a friend’s house yesterday to find he had lost a hive recently. There were few dead bees in the hive, but here was a ton of what I think is nosema in the hive, evidenced by the amount of bee droppings in the hive. Nosema is an intestinal ailment in honeybees, it gives the bees diarrhea.
And bees normally don’t poop in their hive, seeing bee poop in a hive, i think, is a sign of something wrong.
Both of our hives have signs of nosema, and I have been treating them with Fumagilin in a sugar syrup, spraying the hives once a week for 3 weeks.
You don't usually see comb spotted with bee droppings
and in the frames with honey, there was what looked like crystallized honey in some of the comb. Again, not sure what this is all about. Anyone know?
Naomi and Mario, of Living Today on Martha Stewart Living Radio on Sirius Satellite Radio and XM, asked me to come back on their show and talk about blogging today. Here is a clip of our conversation. A big Thank You to Naomi and Mario. If you are interested in Sirius Radio, you can get more information here. Below is the video tour I did of the Sirius Studios in Rockefeller Center for the Ford Fiesta Movement
We decided to move a beehive, so I learned how to move a beehive, and now we’ll show you how we moved the it. Moving a beehive is not hard, watch this Beginning Beekeping Series video and learn how.
Last week, someone posted on Twitter that they didn’t get the hype about certain ‘foodie’ foods, and ramps being one of them. I concurred.
Then last weekend, we had dinner at the camp, and I sat down to a plate of ramps.
WOW
photo: wfiupublicradio
For these ramps, the recipe was simple: Saute in olive oil.
That’s it. The cook apologized for not having any garlic to add to the dish. It didn’t need it. They taste like a cross between garlic and scallions, and sweet and buttery.
According to Wikipedia : Allium tricoccum, commonly known as ramps, spring onion, ramson, wild leek, or ail des bois (French), is a member of the onion family (Alliaceae). Found in groups with broad, smooth, light green leaves, often with deep purple or burgundy tints on the lower stems and a scallion-like bulb strongly rooted just beneath the surface of the soil. Both the white lower leaf stalks and the broad green leaves are edible. They are found from the U.S. state of South Carolina to Canada and are especially popular in the cuisine of the US state of West Virginia and the Canadian province of Quebec when they emerge in the springtime. A common description of the flavor is like a combination of onions and strong garlic
Ramps grow on the East Coast of the U.S. in wooded areas. So last Sunday, on our hike with the Labradors, I kept my eyes out for ramps, but found none. But I will keep looking, as my neighbors down in the valley have ramps, so I’m thinking they are up at my house as well, maybe they sprout a bit later. ( i’m hoping )
My Brooklyn neighbors, Food52.com, interviewed Hubert McCabe of Windfall Farm on their blog here, and he says: “They’re like a present … You stumble on them, and nobody will tell anybody else where their secret spots are.”
Thanks to Food52, I met a new Brooklyn Food web video person, Lisa, of The Funny Side Up, and here is her video about ramps, direct from her kitchen.
some other food bloggers who have written about ramps are listed below, please check them out.
This show we talk to Tyler, CEO of Allison House (GF sponsor) about his annual storm chasing trip with a 3 way Skype call. You can learn about becoming a storm spotter by visiting www.weather.gov . Edible Flowers, which are being discussed on our viewer forum here; The difference between hay and straw. Pressure Cookers. and the Labradors confront a bear. fun.
I’ve been constantly fine-tuning the Mark Bittman Jim Lahey No Knead Bread recipe. We’ve made a GardenFork Video here, and I’ve done blog posts about No Knead Bread. For a while there I was having No Knead Bread failure, and I finally found that I was not letting the dough rise long enough for the initial rise, and that the kind of all purpose flour changes the dough. Not every all purpose dough has the same amount of protien, it varies.
I also have started to rise the dough in a towel lined bowl instead of just on a board. I think it helps with the shape a bit.
I think the hardest thing about No Knead Bread is flipping it into the dutch oven.
So we took some pictures of how I do it. I’m never able to get it to flop right in proper, so I take a wooden spatula and scrape the dough off the sides of the dutch oven, and jiggle the pot to get the dough to even out. I don’t touch the dough.
The flip is a fluid motion, don’t hesitate, and don’t flip too fast, or too hard. The less you think about it the better. How’s that for advice?
What techniques do you have for better No Knead Bread? or any recipe variations? please tell us below:
use a wooden spatula to scrape the dough off the sides of the pot
Home Made Halloween Treat or decadent dessert, this salted caramel strawberry recipe is good. And you don’t have to make the caramel from scratch.
I asked Jaden Hair, author of the cookbook Steamy Kitchen and the website SteamyKitchen.com, on Twitter which of her recipes I should make on GardenFork.TV and her answer was immediate: a salted caramel strawberry recipe.
I asked that the recipe be simple, ( this is Eric cooking after all ) and this is super simple and super good. wow. yum
I used popsicle sticks for this recipe, but you could also use bamboo skewers, ideally cut in half. Or use what you got, if you have something that will work for you. You could also dip the strawberries using a skewer and then lay each berry on wax paper to cool, and be finger food.
At times, I’ve found supermarket strawberries to be under-ripe on the inside. There’s really no way to see if the strawberries are ripe inside even though they look red. If you can press on a berry, if they are hard, you know they are not ripe inside.
Be very careful with the caramel. Its hot and its sugar, and it can burn you. Slow and steady wins the race here. Start out with a small batch of the caramel to get the hang of melting the caramel if there is some trepidation.
Eric’s stove is out of a camper trailer. Why buy Farm Fresh Eggs? Buying discounted fruit and vegetables at the store. Knife sharpening: honing vs sharpening. Farmer’s Markets: deals to be had . Freecycle and Dog Parks, and Oil Paint vs Latex paint.
And of course, Viewer Mail and the Real World Green Minute.
Taylor Erkkinen, co-owner of the Brooklyn Kitchen, demonstrates proper honing technique and describes how and why it makes a difference to your knife—and, by extension, to you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLgkVRYcI4
A corn chowder recipe. When I made it, I modified some other soup recipes and just winged it. This gives you the general idea of how I did it: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/corn_chowder/
I didn’t use red peppers, but they look great!
