Sandbox
The tale of two ladders[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 27 August 2016 at 19:19 |
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This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
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| We really needed a good tall ladder when we first built the house, and one of our local hardware stores had two that could go up to seven metres high! One of them was a wooden one for R$300 and the other an aluminium one for R$600. I really wanted the aluminium one, but I couldn't explain exactly why so Beth decided on the cheaper wooden one.
But something reminded me why aluminium ones are so much better.... what was it again? Oh that's right, after Beth got crushed underneath it because it's so damn heavy that it takes a team of labour workers to move it! 
No just joking! Here she is with the pear tree, and they're both doing really well :-)
But seriously, the wooden one is so heavy that it really is an accident waiting for a place to happen, so last time we went to Canela we decided to get the aluminium one! We also had to get a roof-rack put on so we could carry it :-)
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Even Stanley couldn't handle the jandal :-([edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 4 August 2016 at 15:26 |
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This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
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| We've checked every hardware store we could find in five different cities, but never found a good strong garden fork to loosen our horrible compacted soil with. So when we visited New Zealand we got a good strong Stanley fork which is a brand renowned for excellent quality and workmanship.
We carted the thing all the way back here on three planes ad numerous taxis and buses, and finally started using it a week ago! It was really good for a while, but after a few sessions it became clear that even the best fork from the west wasn't good enough to handle our situation out here :-(
It looks like we're going to have to find or make a proper broadfork which is made to be able to handle the full body weight forcing it through compact soil even if it's full of stones. The main differences are that it's wider so you can do more with each pull, it has two handles so you can stand in the middle to use the full weight and momentum of your body, and its prongs are very wide in the direction needed to resist the force of the earth against it, but narrow horizontally so it cuts through easily. 
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No gherkins forks?![edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 3 August 2016 at 17:36 |
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This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
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| I've recently discovered the horrifying fact that there are some places in the world where you can't buy a gherkin fork - that can be a real problem if you just bought a huge jar of gherkins!
But not to worry, you can chop the outside prongs off a normal fork, file it down nicely and bend the remaining two outwards a bit at the ends - works perfectly and looks just like a bought one :-) 
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