Hodgepodge
A couple weeks back, I went to our local nursery to secure some strawberries to plant in the new garden. They usually disappear quickly and so I wanted to make sure we could get enough to start a small bed that we can gradually increase in size. While there, I saw some rhubarb plants next to them. They certainly weren't on sale and my wife would have a fit if she knew the price, but the way I look at it, I can depreciate the cost of them over the next 15 or 20 years and so depreciated out, they were just a few pennies a month for the things. A steal!
I brought them home but the next two nights were forecasted to be below freezing at night so I kept them in the greenhouse and then planted them the first nice day that arrived. I hope to have a mini-hedge of rhubarb growing on the south side of the greenhouse which should keep us more than amply supplied in pies, tarts and cobblers for much of the summer months. I have frozen rhubarb to use over the winter quite successfully but may have to research other ways to use and preserve it if it reaches full potential.
What you see above it the motor end of my chainsaw, more specifically the carburetor. For nearly 20 years, I had a chainsaw that never started. It was only after much fiddling, swearing and yanking my arm off, I might occasionally get it started and use it though I was already exhausted from the starting process. At the time, it was a model of chainsaw with "soft start" capabilities which was later largely panned by other users for making it very temperamental to start. One day the main bearing in the starting mechanism went out and it was going to cost me more to get it fixed than the saw was worth. I happily gave it away as parts and bought a better chainsaw.
It has served me well over the last four years and even as late as the huge snow dump we got this winter when I used it to cut up some branches on our driveway. However, I have spent three days working on it and still can't get it started. It has fuel, it has new spark plug and a new air filter and yet with the three essentials for an engine, I can't get it to attempt to turn over. If I ever need it in an emergency, I just can't count on it.
So I did what I should have done last time. I bought an electric chainsaw.
It should arrive in three days and I can finally accomplish the task I set out to do three days earlier. I already own a couple tools that use the DeWalt 60V platform so I should have plenty of batteries to run it and the best part of all, it will run EVERY SINGLE TIME!
When you said 'electric' I was picturing a cord and was wondering. 😊
ReplyDeleteOf course, I do have a corded lawnmower, so I guess that was a natural first thought.
If I had a lawn like at my previous house, a corded electric would do just fine and be a bit lighter to carry around. But with three acres and trees mostly around the perimeter, I don't have enough cords to reach and so a battery operated electric chainsaw seemed to fit the bill.
DeleteI received it, put a battery in it and used it to buck up a tree for someone wanting some wood for a project. It worked well and had lots of power. I should have bought one ten years ago!
I love my electric weed whacker; I have two batteries for it. Rhubarb, yum. Rhubard custard pie is one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteI now have a weed wacker, leaf blower, pole saw and chainsaw that all use the same batteries. I've never made Rhubarb custard anything but it sounds great. I usually make rhubarb crumble or a rhubarb strawberry pie.
DeleteYou'll have to report on how well the electric chainsaw works. What brand is the one you're replacing? I think the one at our house is a Stihl. Or maybe a Husqvarna.
ReplyDeleteIt is a Stihl MS311. I had a friend who had a Husqvarna though in all the years I've known him, he always borrowed mine because he could never start his.
DeleteCongrats on both the rhubarb find and your new chainsaw! Lots of delicious pies and felled trees ahead!
ReplyDeleteI hope I don't have to fall any trees anytime soon. There aren't too many trees in my yard anymore as they have all died or fallen down. Mainly what I cut up these days are the ones that fall out into where I mow or onto one of the nearby roads.
DeleteYou can can rhubarb, my Mom used to make a rhubarb sauce and it was so good! I used to have an electric chain saw I loved mine it had a cord...one day when I wanted help loading the generator onto the wagon behind the three wheeler to go into the woods...my electric chain saw disappeared.
ReplyDeleteCanning is my go to method of preservation since we don't have a lot of available freezer space. I thought making some jams or sauce out of rhubarb would be a good way to preserve some of it. Unfortunately, I won't know until next year when the first two plants I planted last year are allowed to be harvested.
DeleteMy rhubarb is coming up. Rhubarb is very tolerant of frost. In my chain saw days they didn't make electric ones.
ReplyDeleteOur rhubarb seems to be thriving in this cooler wet weather we've been having of late. I seem to recall picking some of it on the farm nearly into June before it started bolting. Even in my early days, there weren't electric ones.
DeleteI'll be really interested in how the electric chainsaw works out. I would love to have a small one that I could handle for my small clearing projects in the woods.
ReplyDeleteThus far, having used it for 15 minutes bucking up a tree limb a foot in diameter, it worked great and had plenty of power. For small clearing projects though, I would probably go with the smaller 16" bar one and not the 20" bar one that I got. The trees that fall, tend to be older and thus larger trees for me to process up. My brother is a wildlife biologist who does and teaches chainsaw work to junior rangers in his forest district. He really loves the electric chainsaws and says for clearing small stuff and bucking up larger stuff, you can't go wrong. He says their one weakness is using them to do a plunge cut when hinging large trees to the ground. He says to do that, you need a bit more horsepower that a gas powered saw can provide. Since I don't cut down any trees myself, it wasn't a deal breaker.
DeleteOur elderly landlord in Chicago decades ago would pull the neighbor's HUGE rhubarb plant stems through his fence and cut them when they got big to make jam. He was such a character. I've never seen rhubarb plants since and certainly don't see them in Hawaii, but as soon as I saw your young plants, it brought back the memories.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, every farmstead had a rhubarb plant or two. These days though, it has nearly died out and I don't see it so often. I think it is largely a generational food that my generation doesn't have a lot of experience with.
DeleteDo deer like rhubarb?
ReplyDeleteI have seen the deer go up to it and nose it but they have always left it alone and grazed away on the grass. It is pretty sour to human taste buds when raw so I'm guessing that is why they haven't eaten any.
DeleteI love my electric weed eater. Tim is the chain saw person here. He's got several, probably because sometimes they won't start. I noticed a new one in the basement the other day. I was going to ask questions, but got side tracked.
ReplyDeleteI really love my weed eater and leaf blower. I like the pole saw too though I don't often use it, sort of like my chainsaw. But they are nice when needed.
Delete