A Busy Weekend

Yesterday, I made a bit of a bike ride.  I've been trying to do more of that, as the temperatures allow!  On this ride, I went nearly 28 miles, including this crossing of the new Interstate 69 construction a few miles west of our place.

I-69 heads north to Indianapolis (eventually)

I took a break in just about the only shade i could find, at this closed market stand.

 It has been a busy day today.  I ran some errands this morning and watered the tomatoes for a while.  A farmer friend called and said he could get up to our hayfield over in Martin County and bush hog it for me.  I've not mowed it for a couple of seasons, but can't stand to see it grow up after having put so much effort into keeping it open.  I met him over there and 'supervised' while he used his big bat-wing mower on the field.  The small persimmon and sassafras trees that were sprouted there are mowed back and it looks great now!  I have another neighbor that may want hay off of it next year.

Back here, a neighbor called this afternoon and asked for a ride to the neighborhood 'grocery store' to get some sugar for a batch of plum wine he was working on.  I obliged, picked him up and ran over to the store.  As we were leaving, we made a little jag over to a relative of his and got some more plums.  We got a lot of plums!  They weren't real big, but they are at the peak of ripeness.  The relatives who own the tree are tired of putting them up and happily let us do some picking.  We picked 15-20 pounds of the fruit and headed on back.  I kept enough for a small batch of wine, he kept the rest.  Now, I'm getting ready to put the fruit to soak once I wash them and remove the pits.  More on that a bit later.

 I also tweaked a couple of lamps I've been putting together.  As you can see from the photos, I have adapted a regular lamp base to a lid that fits on an ordinary fruit jar.  That gives a nice, full quart of burning capacity.  It's easy to replace if it gets broken, too.  One small problem was the wick. The ones that came with the burners were too short to reach the bottom of a quart jar, having been designed for a regular lamp.  These burners also use the narrower wick and I couldn't find them to buy by the inch (or foot).  So, I simply used an ordinary stapler and stapled two of them together.  That will make sure that every bit of fuel is available to be burned.

The burner screws into a special lid that fits a regular fruit jar.

I stapled two wicks together to give them plenty of length.

Ready for the storm.