Eric: Hey real quick. Before we start here, I just wanted to give a little shout out a big shout out actually to my good friend, Rick, co-host Rick for you all. He had a bile duct stone or several stones and then a gallbladder removal. He was like off my radar for a couple of days and I’m like, what’s going on? And then, I got an email from him that he sent to his, I’m presuming close friends. I hope I’m a close friend of yours, Rick to, let everyone knows going on. Rick’s spouse partner is a retired, registered nurse. Much like Rick, She was in the Navy. So he is in good hands. I hope he’s doing everything that the nurse tells him to do, but I just want to say, Hey Rick, we were thinking about you. And, Rick just posted on the Facebook GardenFork Group.
So he must be feeling better and he’ll share his story with us. I’d like to do an episode with Rick about, I mean, we talked about this a lot, but the marvels of being alive in this time and the fact that we live in a time of antibiotics, anesthesia and laparoscopic surgery, you know, Rick was in the hospital, but in a matter of days, he was out walking his dog. So that’s pretty good. So Rick, I’m thinking about you and, I’ll talk to you, I guess I just pick up the phone and call you. Maybe you want me to do that? Alright, here we go.
Today We talk about what we think are interesting things, and I hope you think are interested as well today. We’re answering questions from my Facebook discussion group and Will is here.
Will: Hey sir, how are you doing Eric?
Eric: My body hurts actually
Will: The last time we talked, there was snow on the ground. So it’s been a little while.
Eric: Today was 95 degrees in New England and I decided today was the day to get a cement core driller and drill a four inch hole through a 10 inch concrete wall.
Will: W I, you sent me the picture of that and I was like, that’s amazing looking, but at the same point, what exactly are you drilling?
Eric: We have a cistern that sits on top of a natural spring at the end of our backyard. It’s in the woods, actually. It’s about a hundred something feet from the house and for the first, 60 or so years of this house, life, it drew from that spring, that sister and for all the house water and up until a few years ago, we did as well. We ran it through a UV sterilizer system with a carbon filter and a sediment filter. And these UV systems are amazing and we drilled a regular well, cause we had some extra money one year, but I still use it to water the garden and the yard. And as a backup source for the house, if the well ever goes dry. So then I asked the question that everybody’s probably asking right now. Sure. So most people are on probably city water.
Eric: Some people are well water. What exactly is cistern? Like what is that? I explained that a little bit. Well, the sister is it generally, it is a, some sort of constructed underground tank near your house and you can either collect rainwater in it or, well, you know, water from a spring or a Brook can flow into it or it can be filled by a truck that delivers water to your, to your house. And then there’s a pump in the bottom of it or at the top of it. And it pumps water into your house for drinking water and showering and washing machine and everything.
Will: Do they, I mean, do they still build these or is this kind of old technology or an older style?
Eric: This is old school. They now are above ground. Most of them, they might still be called cisterns. There they’re like oversized rain barrels.
Eric: They’re they can hold hundreds of gallons of water. They’re very popular in arid areas that will do rainwater collection. Interesting. And mine, the overflow drain hole is very small and has caused some problems with clogs of, there are, you know, like a frog gets stuck in there or something. and the system was not sealed very tight last couple of years. Cause I, I was just busy with a lot of things. So I decided to make an oversize drain hole. So it’ll never clog again.
Will: Did you rent that tool or did you have that tool?
Eric: No, that’s a very special too. It’s called a core drill and then you rent an appropriate diameter core bit and it is, it’s like a hole saw if you know what a hole saw is to drill like really big round holes, cut holes, round holes in wood.
Eric: It’s basically, it’s not like a spade bit are a corkscrew circular, but you’re not removing all the material. You’re only removing the material around the outside diameter of the hole. It’s basically a core drill bit is a big steel pipe with diamond industrial diamond, material along the cutting edge. And it is water jacketed. There’s a system to inject water into the center of the core drill and that keeps it cool and also removes the cement dust as you’re drilling. And I had to hold it horizontally about three feet off the ground and that kind of hurt to do cause you have to hold it level if you can, because once you’re once you’re three or four inches in it’s, if you, if you just move the drill a little it’ll bind. So a lot of core drills have a, it almost looks like a tripod setup or a, a drill press kind of setup attached to it. But because I had to do horizontal and I didn’t have a lot of money to rent the fancy thing, I just got the $50 a day core drill. I got a done, but, I’m pretty sore.
Will: I would say that. I mean, we’ve used concrete saws before and have the little thing to inject the water. It’s a knock the dust down and kind of clean it up, but it goes back to the story that we talked about many of times on the radio program, which is find out what tools your rental places nearby have, because it’ll really define what kind of projects you can take on and what you can do and renting a tool like that is probably saved you a ton of time and effort in comparison and money in the sense of not having to buy that tool. Cause I’m guessing that tool is not cheap.
Eric: No. And another way to put a big hall through a cement wall is to drill a bunch of smaller holes with a hammer drill and like a three and three eight spit or something like that. And then you chisel it out, but that would have taken all day. I would have burned out my hammer drill. I would have burnt out a bunch of drill bits and it wouldn’t be a smooth bore hole. I wanted that four inches cause three inch PVC pipe, with a, connect, not at what’s called a connector. What’s that called? Basically the female, the female connector slides right into a four inch diameter hole really nicely and it’ll seal tight. So if you had drilled it with your smaller drill bit and then chiseled out a hole, it would be jagged. You’d have to use hydraulic cement to patch the whole thing. And it was expensive and it was two trips down to the big town, which is like 20 miles from here. But still it was the one thing I was going to do today was the big project of the day. And I got done in by three o’clock. I was done. I took a shower and boom, here we are.
Will: Awesome. It’s always good when you can rent tools and it makes your day go pretty good.
Eric: And the cool thing is since it’s a core drill, you’ve, I’ve got this core of old school cement with the old stones in it and some of my side porch. And now it’s a conversation piece because people are being like, what is that?
Will: You should put some like a polyurethane on the outside of it to make it kind of shiny. You can make it like a paperweight for your desk or something.
Eric: It’s actually kind of polished. It’s kind of like, you know, remember that rock polisher thing because the metal pipe has been rubbing against it as it drills through the 10 inches of cement. Awesome. Maybe I could send it to you. It could be like a,
Will: That’s an $80 thing. You’ll mail to me because of the weight. Yeah. I got an idea. Let’s get a chop saw with a diamond blade on it. We can cut it into thin slices and make coasters out of them for, in your house.
Eric: Right, right. Get right on that. All right. So that was our, as we know are a collectic here. that was something that I sent, well, the pictures and he’s like, what’s this? And I said, we’ll talk about it on the podcast. So, but the other day we asked on the garden fork discussion group, people wanting to know questions and we have a couple of, we thought we’d just answer people’s questions today. What do you think that works for me? Wanda has a quote. Well, someone named will said, how does he keep such awesome hair all the time? Thank you.
Will: I’m just saying that the product works. It just, it does awesome. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s looking good today, even though it’s humid, it’s looking really good.
Eric: Wanda, who is, very active, on the discussion group sharing a lot of neat stuff. you’re both outdoors men. Do you do any serious birdwatching? Do you have bird life birding life lists? Do you have feeding stations on your various properties? Awesome question. You want to go first or should I, you go?
Will: so we live in bear country. So for us birds during the season, I’ll say from basically about mid April to about mid-October is a no go for us. Unfortunately, we just can’t have bird feeders out. Cause every night the bear would come by and destroy them. Or, and we lost a number of bird feeders that way. But in the fall we set up bird feeders. We have bird houses on the property. In fact, actually this last week we were taking care of a baby bird at the resort that fell out of a tree and happy to say the bird survived in his back with his family and everything is good, but we do do a lot of stuff for us though. It’s always in the winter months, we’ll have bird Peters set up. They come in. It’s nice because we have like a book that you can go through and see the different types of birds, things like that. So we’ve done that. The other item we have is on our property. We have a number of deadhead trees and we have probably three or four pileated woodpeckers that have been frequenting the area. And you will know you have an affiliated woodpecker when you see a gigantic pile of salt, as it looks like somebody dumped a garbage can have sought us at the bottom of a tree. And they’re huge chunks. That’s an pileated woodpecker doing his job.
Eric: Yeah. They, they will tell you which of your trees are dying.
Will: Absolutely. They, and they’re an awesome creature to watch. I mean, they are huge. They’re probably, I mean, some of them I want to say are between 18 and 24 inches tall and you see the same moving up and down the tree and you can hear it forever when it’s doing its thing and drumming on the tree.
Eric: They, they look prehistoric to me. Yes, definitely. We, we also live in bear country. So I actually, when we first moved up here, I had some sewage on the tree, you know, I, I strung it across two trees on some cable trying to foil the squirrels and then a bird feeder. And the squirrels of course figured out the bird feeder and everything. So I got a little obsessed with it. So the camera operator bought me this, it’s a tube feeder and it has a ring around the bottom where the birds perch right to, to nibble at the food that comes out the bottom, but also built into the bottom of the tube is a pressure sensitive switch and a motor. And if the squirrel lands on the little round ring, the feeder, the perching ring, the motor turns on and flings the squirrel off.
Will: I was, I was fearful to wonder what the motor was going to do, but I’ve seen many of feeders that do that.
Eric: And that was more than a hundred dollars. And I had it maybe three months and then the bear came and destroyed it. So that was the end of my bird feeding. But what I do do is plant a lot of bird friendly bushes. I have winter Berry, I have elderberry. I don’t know if they eat wild, like blue, you know, blackberries and raspberries, but we have a Bush of them. And I’m trying to make more bird friendly, shrubbery, maybe as the word, because I can’t, since I can’t feed them at a feeder, I would like to have some stuff that they can eat as they migrate. And also, I mean, we, we know what some of the birds are when we’re on our woods walk, which I sometimes record for the patrons, by the way. we will try and identify and figure out what birds are making the different sounds. And we’ve, we’ve gotten pretty good at it, but there’s still a sum. And you’re like, what is that? So I’m not an official birder and I don’t have a birding life list. but I do have natural feeding stations now instead of, a big tube of sunflower seed.
Will: I will say that one thing that we do, and remember when we had the conversation about mushrooms and going mushroom poor gene out there, and you have a book and things like that at the same place where we got the books for that, we actually got a book from our region. That’s a color book that talks about the birds. And when we see something, we’ll sit down with the boys and we’ll be like, Hey Cameron, what is that? And he’s like, Oh, that’s a pinch. And then we talk about where it comes from and does it live here or does it migrate and all that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s kind of a neat thing. There’s a ton of apps out there that do it. But the old fashioned analog book is kind of one of my favorite ones to do. So we’ve got a bird zone, Wisconsin, and it works really well.
Eric: Yeah. I think I wish I could know all the birds, but it’s, I’m just kind of busy. I’m just a little busy on the weekends.
Will: Let me ask you one other question about birds. Do you do anything with hummingbirds? Cause we have our first hummingbird feeder we’ve ever put out and we’ve actually now had success with them coming in and they’re very brave. I mean, you can be standing in there and they’ll just come right in and do their thing with you just standing right next to it.
Eric: Yeah. I, my neighbors have them. I it’s just, hasn’t been on my list. We have some hummingbirds of buzz around here because we have a, I think they like dailies and things like that. But if you keep them topped up and also you have to watch that the sugar syrup does not get moldy there, they are pretty amazing. They’re they buzz around. They almost, when they buzz around, you think it’s like a giant deer fly coming after you or something?
Will: Absolutely. There’s many of times where we’ll see people in the backyard and they’re just kind of moving around all kinds of funny. And that’s what it is, is the hummingbirds are coming in, but it sounds like you’re about to get buzzed by a giant wasp or something like that.
Eric: Nicole asked, who is a patron what’s going on with the cistern. And we just talked about that. So it is the hardest parts are over with the cistern and I did the cement repair and I just bore the hole for the overflow. And then I’m going to build a new wooden roof for it. It won’t be wood, it’ll be, some plastic wood and then pressure treated wood and an aluminum corrugated tin on top of that.
Will: I was going to say you can’t forget about the second part of your question. Cause I know that Erin and I are wondering also what’s going on with the canoe repair. Cause I know that we had a conversation, I think in the after show about whether or not you were going to use PVC or wood. And I’m curious what happened.
Eric: Well, I have an older fiberglass canoe that has disintegrated, but it is my favorite canoe and the gunwales, basically the gunwales disintegrated, which were wood and the seats, which are fiberglass kind of disconnected. So I have bought the PVC. it’s basically molding, it’s like a one by two molding. I bought the glue to glue together and I need to make 16 inch long, 16 foot gunwales. So I bought a 10 foot piece and an eight foot piece and I’m going to do a, not a butt joint. I think it’s called a scarf joint is where I’m going to make an angle cut across the two pieces glue and clamp them and then start assembling it. So once I’m done with the cistern, which will be this week, I will start working on the canoe and make videos about it.
Will: Is that kind of like a French cleat where like one angle fits into the other the opposite way. And then they squeezed together to make a solid piece when you’re talking about that. Okay.
Eric: I think a French cleat also has a tensioner on the inside. Yep. It does. Cause a, I have a neighbor who restores, post and beam buildings and I’ve seen some of his work and I see that cleat a lot with a hand hewn wedge in the center of it, detention it up. It’s pretty amazing.
Will: Well, a lot of people too are now using the French cleat style for their shops. So you can put the one half of the cleat on the wall and then you have the other piece where all your pieces for your shop, kind of where you can Mount tools to the wall. And you actually don’t put the tension on there because then if you lift it up, you can remove it from the wall, use it and then, you know, clean it right back on when you’re done.
Eric: Wow. So are we going to see this in your new shop?
Will: You know, actually I’ve, I’ve been starting to work on it, but it’ll be, I have a big plans in September, October in the shop to do a bunch of work. And actually that’s one of the things is to figure out a way to hang a lot of stuff on the walls because the walls are 14 feet tall. So I feel like I’ve got a lot of room to work with.
Eric: Alright. Helen asks, what is your favorite garden hose? Is there a trick to preventing kinking
Will: Garden hoses? I will say this, you get what you pay for with regards to garden hoses. What I did when we did the Apple orchard, one of the farm supply shops had kind of a heavier duty, like it’s called professional hose. and on the end of it, I actually think the ends are more important than the hose itself. you know, you can get the kind that are the cheap kind of molded ones and things like that, where you screw onto, but there are some cast aluminum ends on the end of this hose and it had a little bit thicker of a, a feel to it. The hose was expensive. I mean, it was, I think like 60 or $80 for a 50 foot roll, which is a lot more expensive than the regular green stuff you see at the normal home improvement stores.
Will: But I’ve had that hose for now. I’d say five or six years, we bought a hose reel to put it on and we move it around the property. I’ve never had a kink. I’ve never had a hole in it that connections have never linked and I’ve only had to replace one gasket. So I think we’ve got probably a hundred to $140 into hose, but buy it once and use it for a long time versus buying the cheap green stuff that you get at the home improvement store. It makes all the difference on your hose. Just my opinion.
Eric: It really does. There is a brand that is the hoses kind of terracotta, kind of a red terracotta. And I bought it at the local true value because I mean, they carry the green cheapy hoses and this was substantially more. But, and on the ends, if the, if, if the end where you, screw on things, you know, you’re your squeezer, what’s a squeezer thing called the sprayer. If that looks like it’s been kind of a crimped instead of cast in metal, that’s a, that’s a, that means it’s a cheap hose and it will, it will eventually break. And I have a brand whose name escapes me, but it, it was advertised as kink free. It’s actually a dark green and it has this, it looks like a piece of coiled metal in the rubber hose and it does not kink. And I think it’s because it has this, it looks like a slinky. That’s been kind of expanded throughout the holes. And I don’t, I don’t have the brand. It’s just, it’s outside now, but you really get what you pay for.
Will: It’s a fortified, rubber hose is what it is. There’s a it’s impregnated into the hose itself. And that’s, that’s exactly what the, the hose that I have has in it is if you cut it, which we’ve had to do at one point, cause I was making a connection for something and the end of it, there’s a w there’s wire meshed into the hose as a, as they make it in it, it also comes down to how you store it too. If you just coil it up on the ground and it’s sitting on the ground and you don’t actually coil it up in a way that it’s nice and smooth and laying on itself that will lead to spots as a hose where it’ll kink myself. I went the extra step and I actually bought one of those little hose carts. I don’t know if you ever seen him at the home improvement store.
Eric: Yeah, that was my next thing. You just stole my thunder.
Will: Oh yeah. You got to get a hose cart because if you store it on the hose card, I got a, the main hose is on there. But then on there, there’s a little basket where you put all your note nozzles and you can put a little zip tie with a whole bunch of the gaskets on it and kind of like everything you’d need to make the hose work. And then they actually make this little, I don’t know what you want to call it. It’s like a light almost translucent hose. That’s super tightly wound. And it’s very small in diameter, but it’s like a big slinky. And I use that to like, if I need to relay the hose out and then I need to get into somewhere and work on something, you can do that. And that hose will. And I can’t either, it doesn’t have the same volume as a regular garden hose, but if you’re watering plants or just filling up something, it works really good for that.
Eric: And don’t buy the cheap garden cart, garden hose, cart realer. If you buy the plastic one that it’s going to break. Yup. Yup. Northern tool, I think has a pretty good one. If Northern tool, they have a catalog and a, and a website
Will: That’s actually exactly where I got the garden cart from. I didn’t get the hose there. The hose came from a regional place here called fleet farm, which is a farm supply store, but you get what you paid for on it. And I would suggest just biting the bullet if you’re serious about running water and a garden hose somewhere and, and buy nice hose by a nice way to start and then buy some nice ends. Don’t buy the plastic, spray nozzles, you know, the $25, brass ones are some of the cast ones and things like that last 10 times longer than the cheap plastic ones you get for five bucks.
Eric: Yes.
Will: Coming from a firefighter. I know hoses. I’m just saying I wasn’t a retired firefighter. I know how to, how to handle and deal with the hose and having nice stuff is always important.
Eric: Wanda asked another one, favorite adhesives for what and why? And Aaron, the impatient gardener. Second that saying, that was a great question. What’s your favorite one? Eric? I, I really like gorilla glue. Yep. But you have to use it properly.
Will: I think one of the big mistakes that people have with adhesives is there’s actually very few brands out there that are poor. The challenge I think that people run into is they use the wrong adhesive on the wrong material. Like they make it, he uses specifically for plastic or concrete or whatever. And so it’s not a one, one fits all type thing like, Oh, this brand is the best one out there for this. Well, it all depends on what you’re gluing together. Sometimes Loctite is better. Sometimes gorilla glue is better. Sometimes the cheap stuff is better. It all depends on why you’re using it for
Eric: Elmers glue is amazing for wood. If that’s all you have, you know,
Will: You know, for me, the one thing that’s really surprising and I didn’t realize it until a couple of years ago, but I always, always, you know, let’s nail things together. Let’s put screws and things together, and I never realized the importance of glue when it comes to dealing with woodworking. I was always just, you know, I just screw it together. It’ll last forever or whatever it is. And now that I’ve kind of learned about how glue works with, with wood. I’ve realized that you could glue something together and it’ll hold way better than nails or screws.
Eric: The other thing with glues is that the, surfaces that you’re going to glue together have to be prepped and they have to be compatible. And a lot of times people are trying to glue things that just the glue isn’t going to hold them together.
Will: I would say on some of them too. you ever see like the super glues or the, you know, the really super sticky stuff. If you get it on your fingers, you can put your fingers together. Like in a second type deal. I like to buy those in the multi-packs where they have like seven or eight little tubes in it versus one big tube, because I never used enough of it to burn up the whole tube before either the clock at the end of it gets clogged or whatever. And no matter how much I try to store it in a good place, it always seems like I get one or two uses out of it. And then it dries. So buying the little ones, you could have a whole bunch of them in a plastic bag and take it out, use it a couple of times. And if it dries out, you’re only losing a little versus if you buy the big tube, you definitely run into situation where you’ll throw it out. And it’s kind of wasteful
Eric: Harbor freight. and I would be willing to bet dollar stores also sell it. But Harbor freight has like a three pack of those tiny little tubes. It looks like little tubes of toothpaste. Like they’re like one and a half inches long each one. And it’s like two or three bucks. So I, I buy a couple of those cause invariably one of my friends shows up with some project and wants you guys super glue. I’m like here, go away to the point of, to digress here for a moment, one of my friends came over and one of his crowns popped out of his mouth and he had read online that you can superglue the crown back in. And so he did that and that’s a stupid thing to do.
Will: That’s real DIY right there. Do it to yourself.
Eric: He had to go to the, he had the dentist had to do extra work to redo that crown. So yeah, just, just go back to the dentist,
Will: I will say, and this is an odd one, but, superglue actually, if you have, if you’re ever out hiking in the woods and you get a very serious cut, of course, you know, apply direct pressure and make sure that a wound is clean, but in a pinch superglue actually works really well to seal up a injury. before you go to the hospital, if you’re really bleeding badly on a cut.
Eric: Yes. You can buy a version of super glue. I mean, it’s, it’s called sodium Cilla fuck. And it’s got some kind of big word. Yep. The generic chemical name for super glue, but they have a wound repair. It’s a medical grade version of super glue that they sell at the drug store. And it works really well. It’s great for Labradors because they run through the woods and like a tree limb is sticking out or something and it, it, it gives, they get a cut and you’re like, okay, well it’s Sunday afternoon. The vet’s closed. You can, you can clean it. You know, you clean it with beta Dyne and then you can glue it shut. And I didn’t go to the vet and they could go take a look at it afterward.
Will: Well, and actually to go even further with that is like on my quad or on the UTV. When we’re out in the woods, driving around, you know, you have a little medical kit throw on a couple of things like that, and they’re actually make all the difference. Normally when you buy a med kit, it doesn’t come with, but spending little bit of money to have it in there. It lasts forever. As long as it’s closed and you keep it in a glove box or something like that, where it doesn’t get dirty, it can save you in a pinch.
Eric: My other favorite glue is, it’s called JB weld and it is a, epoxy, it’s a two part epoxy, but I’ve seen people glue back together, exhaust pipes with that thing.
Will: My dad actually used it two weeks ago to fix his boat. So he’s got a really old Illuma craft boat and there was a crack seam on it and he just bought some JB weld and I’m like, that’s not going to work. That’s not going to hold the water on. And he’s polished it down and put it on there and let it sit for 24 hours. And he was out on the water and it didn’t leak and it’s been two weeks now. So I was pretty surprised.
Eric: Yeah. That is a good use for a good product. And I think you can buy JB weld at Harbor freight too, or, or a clone of it, you know?
Will: Yeah. Any, any improvements or, I mean, there are certain APOC CS and things like that, but it’s all about knowing what you’re gluing together. You can’t use plastic glue on concrete and you can’t use, you know, poly or poly glue on wood and stuff like that. You just have to kind of match it up. According to what’s on the label,
Eric: A really good line of construction adhesives is called PL and they have them for mortar. They have them for fixing your roof. They have it for crack repair in cement. there’s one called PL premi which is waterproof, which people use to build plywood, boats, big hint there. so that may be in our future,
Will: Actually the bringing up PL brand, that’s the same. A remember when we did the epoxy floor and the basement on the house at the homestead. Yeah. That’s actually the brand of product that we used to fill in the cracks before we Polly a proxy, the floor and still to this day, four years later, it still has not leaked. It’s holding well. And none of the epoxy came up and that stuff worked great with it.
Eric: It’s it’s cause it flexes, it’s a mortar repair material that flexes and that’s important.
Speaker 3:
Yep.
Eric: I imagine by now you’ve heard me talk about the garden fork patrons and the pre show and the after show. And I thought I’d give you like 30 seconds of what that’s all about. Basically, there are people that listen to the show that contribute to the continued production of the show on a monthly basis, kind of like a, you know, like NPR or PBS, where you sign on for X number of dollars a month. Like I’m a member of PBS and it’s $6 a month. And for that, I get access to the older episodes of like Nova and their science and history shows and that kind of thing with garden fork, if you sign on for $5 a month or more, if you have more, that would be a quite nice. but if you don’t do not do that okay. But for that, I send out just kind of the mind of Eric kind of emails that also can show up on the app if you get the Patrion out and also the pre show and after show, when I record a show with other people, cause invariably, Aaron and I, or will, or Rick and I are talking about something else after the show, because we forgot to talk about it in the show and that’s sometimes fun.
Eric: it’s really fun to listen to Rick, tell me what I’m doing wrong with the show, but in a good way, because you need feedback like that, but you could also provide that feedback, becoming a patron. So that information is in the show notes of today’s episode. You can also go to patrion.com/garden fork for more information about that. Alright. So think about that. We’ll go back to the show, see it
Speaker 3:
[inaudible].
Eric: So we have a question from one of our new, garden fork patrons, Johnny from, granola, shotgun, the granola shotgun website. Who’s your, who’s going to be on the show soon, as soon as like, as soon as I get out of the cistern, I have my act together again. I promise everyone. and he says, for those of us who don’t live in a farm or a suburban home with a large lot, for people with high water tables, that would be me. Is there a good alternative for an urban root cellar, preferably passive and non-mechanical if possible, urban root cellar.
Will: I’ve heard of people taking cinderblocks and making, I hate to say an outhouse looking type, but basically making a, a box out of cinder blocks and then using that, that, that dense material of the concrete to make a cooler area, the other way that people used to do at way back in the day, if you can look back in history, back when they used to cut ice out of Lake superior and then bring it down. And that’s what you use to, you know, refrigerate back in the day is build a building and then fill the walls with sawdust. And that material actually would help keep the temperature under control during the summertime. So either cinder blocks to make a space or, build a building and I hate to say put sawdust in it, but that’s the way they used to do it. And then they’d bring these big blocks of ice in, and that’s how they’d store it for your refrigerator during the summertime in a lot of rural areas. So that same technique would work to build a root cellar. I just don’t know if it would get to the same, temperatures as you would. Normally
Eric: I would think any kind of structure with an exposed floor would be cooler and have a better chance of having a good moisture. I think the moisture thing needs to be, is it 50%? Someone’s yelling back at the podcast right now. My other thought was if you have access to a basement, I mean, if in an apartment building, a lot of times, there’s a storage, communal storage in the basement of the building and opposite of wherever the furnace is, you could build out of cement block again, you could cordon off an area or you could build it with, homicide and then maybe polystyrene. That’s not most politically correct stuff, but some sort of insulation material. And you can, you can make a cooler area is because my thinking is it’s not exposed to the outside air and it’s in the basement. I think that would be cooler as well.
Will: I will say this one thing that I do know for sure is inside of our pole barn, a couple of days ago, it was 107 degrees in our pole barn. I know this just because we have the thermometer in there to manage temperature for the solar system, the batteries. Yeah. And I built a storage building or a storage space in the corner of that, which has a concrete floor and the walls are insulated just to try to keep it a little bit cooler so we can start painting those types of things. Cause at 107 degrees, your chemicals and all that kind of stuff, it just, it wrecks them. So I try and figure out a way to make longevity. So it’s kind of the same theory, which is we made a space inside of there and I bet you with 107 degrees outside, I think it was in the mid seventies, inside the space on the inside. So if you had a garage, you could easily make a, a space inside the garage. It has kind of a clothes closet. And that concrete on the floor definitely stays cooler. Well, if you can keep the air and the, the light from hitting that space, you can definitely least hold a cooler temperature.
Eric: Very intriguing question, John, he’s talking back to the podcast right now. He’s a very interesting person. Granola. Shotgun is his website there. Oh, penny has a question. Fireworks. Are there names for the different shapes or kinds?
Will: Interestingly enough, a lot of people ask about how they make those shapes and how that all works. When a firework is made. One thing that people don’t realize when you see a, let’s say a shell go up in the air and you see this, it, you see it in one dimension, but in all reality, it’s three dimensional. So when that firework explodes and you’re looking at it, it looks like a flat circle on the sky, right? But in all reality, it’s a sphere because if you look at it from all different angles or if you’re in a drone or something like that, you can see that it’s actually a sphere. Well, the way they build the fireworks that make the shapes is the firework itself. The shell is a sphere and inside the sphere, they make a three dimensional shape. So if it’s a star or a ring, the ring is actually made inside of the shell.
Will: And then as that shell explodes, physics says that basically everything will continue to expand at the same rate, as long as you know, all things are equal. So in that scenario, when the explodes in the middle, that shape, that’s a circle in a very, very small or the square or whatever it is inside of the firework. When it explodes, they all travel at about the same speed, which means it holds the shape and it just basically expands into the shape. So when you see the heart or you see the cube or you see the rings, those are actually in the shell that way, when they start really very small and when it explodes, they all expand out to the right size.
Eric: If that makes sense. Yeah, that is, it is an amazing, art and craft to do that.
Will: I actually shot a show a couple of days ago. I’m back on doing 4th of July show. So I did a show in Western Wisconsin for everybody on is nice.
Eric: Oh, great. We’ve had, in Brooklyn there, basically when I first moved to back after college in Brooklyn, the 4th of July was an insane time because there were, illegal fireworks brought in. And, it was pretty crazy the week of July 4th. And then the city straightened up, basically a lot of, things were fixed and that has been in decline. But during the pandemic, the police are pretty busy dealing with sick people and things like that. So they haven’t been great about policing, fireworks being brought into the city. And so basically sold out of a trunk, you know, on the Avenue. So it’s been, in a way interesting and spectacular, but also a little dangerous cause some of the stuff that these guys are blown off is clearly commercial grade and I’m like, someone’s gonna lose a hand.
Will: I will say one of the cool things that I did see this year, based on kind of what’s going on out there. there was a park that was going to cancel their fireworks and they worked out a deal with one of the, I dunno, it was a big box store that was nearby, but they basically had everybody in the parking lot pull into the parking lot in their cars. Like it was a drive in movie theater and everybody was pointed the same direction. And then they shot the show. So everybody watched the show from inside their cars and everything else and, and were able to have family time and a bunch of people sitting in the back of beds and pickup trucks and that kind of stuff. They shot the show. And then at the end, everybody filed out of the parking lot and drove away and they kind of made it a big tailgating event versus kind of the thing in the park. And it was kind of a cool way to still do the 4th of July and, and, you know, be safe about it.
Eric: Yeah. Have fun and, and no one got sick. Yay. So is there, is that it for our questions? Could that be, are we that, did we talk that much?
Will: I was going to ask you actually, one thing I had a question for you, I saw your video about a sugar snap peas and planting them. You made a comment in your video about planting them during the summer to have them in the fall. Yes. Like where does that fall into the equation? Cause like my summer is about a month and a half year as you know, we’re going to be in winter soon here in Wisconsin. So like how does a person know when to plant their false stuff, to be able to still take advantage of that? How do you figure that out?
Eric: We have to wait for the next video. Ooh, no count back about 75 days from your frost date. Okay. That was great
Will: Video by the way. A lot of fun,
Eric: You know, it’s kind of funny cause that was so UN not spur of the moment, but I had been saying, you know, I want to do another sugar snap video because it’s of what I’ve done this year. And I didn’t really wing it, but I just talked about based on my experience, what inspired it is. I’m working again with Troy, our big sponsor this year and Aaron and I did some Instagram live streams on Troy belts. Instagram channel. It’s, it’s a little, it’s a little nerve wracking. When you take over a big corporations, Instagram that gives you the password to their Instagram account.
Eric: And they’re like, yeah, log on and go live on our Instagram account. And you’re like, okay, yikes. But they said, what’s what Troy belts go. mission this summer is to provide people with garden and yard information because everyone, so many people are staying home right now and they want to work in their yards and they’re dealing with a lot of problems. So Erin and I also working with, a couple other people who I’m blanking on their names, I’m sorry, but we all took over the, the Troy belts, Instagram thing. And my thing was to talk about, DIY gardening was one of them and also just garden passes, a big theme and raised beds. And I just, I talked for an hour about raised bed gardening and I was like, why don’t I just do this for the garden for YouTube videos? And so that was one of them talking about the sugar snap peas where there’s, I’ll let you behind the, behind the curtain here a little bit.
Eric: I’m on YouTube. There’s a lot of pressure to please the algorithm because then you get more views and YouTube will suggest your video just because you subscribed to garden. Fork does not mean you’re going to be notified when I have a new video out, you actually have to hit the notification bell and no one tells you that. But so there’s this, there’s this kind of angst behind your videos going, Oh, I have to make the algorithm happy. I have to have a catchy phrase. I have to have a catchy title and a cool thumbnail. And there’s times I just want to make a video and share stuff. And I throw that out the window. And that was, what I did with the sugar snap piece. Cause I was like, I just want to talk about my piece. And so that’s what we did.
Will: It was a great video. I mean it covered all the bases. It looks like you guys had some fun. I mean, I love the thumbnail, the thumbnail for it was awesome. A little bit different than you normally do. And I think it was great.
Eric: I’m trying to make better thumbnails because, the title on mobile, the title isn’t easily read and I’m trying to simplify the titles. Aaron from new patient gardener is inspiring me to make better thumbnail. She’s really good at it. And she actually made me a thumbnail when we did a collaboration video for Troy about she, the thumbnails and they were really good. So
Will: I will say that video that you guys did together was awesome. Just how you went back and forth and answered the questions and everything like that. That was pretty cool.
Eric: It was really easy for me to make because I just had to ask the questions. Aaron’s yelling back. I did the editing though. So, I get credit. I put the whoosh sound in there. The, when you jumped to the next, I was like, Eric’s got sound effects. Oh, neat. I dunno. I just add it. There’s there are times where that is appropriate and times where it’s not. And I thought to do a transition sometimes and I use it to kind of signal that we’re going somewhere completely different. So that’s and I saw a whoosh whoosh sound. Is that it
Will: There’s always room in life for a whoosh sound.
Eric: Yeah. You like them? Oh, here we go. Are you going to, make some video soon? Okay.
Will: I actually hopefully will be making, I did something kind of smart this week. I’ll, I’ll give everybody a little, trip behind the curtain here. So you might know or might not know that we own a resort in Wisconsin. And actually now that we’ve completed our expansion, we own the largest resort in Sawyer County. And one, one of the largest ones in the Northern part of the state, which is a handful of all of its own. And for the 4th of July, which was a couple of days ago, we, hired a photographer to do video and photos of a day in the life of the resort. And we’re going to use it for video purposes and stuff like that. But it was kind of neat to have somebody around where we’re just doing our normal thing and they’re kind of capturing what’s going on. And we’ve looked at kind of some of the first edits of the photos and things like that.
Will: And it’s, it’s really neat to show our guests what they’re doing, what the behind the scenes are, you know, what some of the facilities look like and stuff like that because it’s, it’s impossible for me to make photos and videos. I looked at my phone and like the last photo that I took was probably about two weeks ago on my phone and it’s right there in my pocket. You know, it just, everything is so busy and everything that’s going on. And you know, our staff has grown. I mean, last year we had two people. Now we have, I think, 13 on staff and you know, all these different things are happening. and the support of the community has been awesome, but it’s almost impossible to even get your phone out, to take a video or a photo of stuff. So we hired somebody for the 4th of July and if it turns out, well, we might end up doing it again when we do some commercials for the property, which hopefully will lead to me getting back into doing videos again, because there’s a lot of times where even if I did the reality show videos of quick snippets of the day and stuff like that, the amount of things that go on in the property and behind the scenes are pretty interesting to know about.
Will: I should probably start documenting them.
Eric: Cool. Yeah, you’ve been a, you’ve been on a tear. So, maybe in the winter, when things calm down a little,
Will: We, I will say this. I mean, we’ve had a group of individuals even through all this stuff that’s going on in the pandemic and all the other things that have been going on, you know, the property itself, we were able to successfully finish the largest construction project I’ve ever done. We were able to finally open after all of the situations that were going on, you know, with regards to everything. And then we’ve been able to actually safely produce a product for folks to come and visit and spend time at and feel comfortable to come to. So, I mean, we’ve made all the changes and all the compliances to everything that you’d need to do to have a functioning property. And, you know, the, the nice thing is, is people have been coming and enjoying themselves and getting a chance to get away from everything else is going on. So it’s doing exactly what we hope it will do.
Eric: Yay. All right. We’ve been talking for a while. So I think people have probably got to their destination or they’re exercising right now in their basement. Maybe.
Will: Yeah, no, they’re re they’re really fit now after this one
Eric: Planning their urban root cellar, you know, so sadly there are no new iTunes reviews.
Eric: Hello, everyone out there it’s really kind of important. I’ll leave you on this weekend. Cause that sounds alright. But if you have any comments, it’s [email protected] will, and I are going to stick around for a minute for the after show for the garden fork, patrons more about becoming a supporter of garden fork. I will be in the show notes here, but it’s, it’s really kind of great to hear from people. It’s been a very crazy time and it has affected me. Let’s just say adversely. so it’s great to hear from people and it’s [email protected]. Thank you, sir. Awesome. Thank you for having me. It’s been an awesome talk garden fork. Radio is executive producer is Jimmy Gootz. You can find more information about Jimmy and the custom hollow books he [email protected]. Our theme music is used under license from unique tracks.com. Other music used in the show is used under license from audio blocks.com.
I want to be able to see photo in the guide book and say to myself, “Hey, that mushroom in the book is on the same kind of tree as those I found.”
