Pickled Peppers

     My garden did very well this year and my two bell pepper plants have produced twelve large fruits. These were labeled as Orange Peppers. As such, they would have started out green, then gone to yellow, then to orange. But instead, they went from green to red. I like red peppers, my wife does not. Yellow and Orange bell peppers ARE better though. 

    As a result, I am the only one eating the peppers and one of these monsters lasts me a week cut up in salads. I don't want they rest to go to waste so I decided to pickle some.

    I used the same technique I used to make my "Dilly-beans"; canned, pickled green beans. You can go back a couple postings and see how I did that.

    I had the leftover juice from two jars of "Famous Dave's Spicy Pickles". In truth, these Famous Dave's pickles are not all that spicy, they are sweet with just a hint of sharpness. I love them and buy them frequently. I thought the sweetness would complement the sweetness of the peppers. Hopefully they aren't too sweet.

    I cut two peppers into strips and filled two sterilized canning jars (pint size jars) with the cut up peppers. Then I poured in boiling pickle juice to fully cover the peppers. I left one half inch of air space in the jar. I lightly sealed the jars with the lid and ring, placed them in a boiling water bath, and boiled them for five minutes. Afterward, I took them out of the water and snugged down the lids so the jars could seal. As they cooled down, I heard the pop, proof they were now sealed.

    Time will tell how well they turned out. I will wait at least two months before I try them so that the flavor permeates the peppers. They should taste good.

 

Small Solar Powered Comfort

     I went camping in New York to do some kayak fishing this past week. I have access to a property where I can camp for free and it is near to a great river for fishing. But, it was forecast to hit 93 degrees during the days and go down to the mid-70s at night. That is warm when you are in a tent. A great time to test out my Ecoflow Delta 1300 Solar Generator and the 200 watt portable solar panel array.

    I took along a small fan and a small light to make the evenings a bit more pleasant. I like to read at night after a long day; it relaxes my mind and helps me sleep better. So, a small reading light would be better than trying to hold a flashlight while reading and turning pages. 

    The fan was awesome. It moved just enough air to make it comfortable (on its LOW setting) and the white noise masks my tinnitus quite nicely. 

    The portable solar generator I brought along for this trip is small, its battery capacity is only 1,300 watt/hours. That is more than a car battery and you can run it down to zero charge without damaging it. Lead acid car batteries should not be discharged below 50% . 

    I had both the light and fan on for about two hours and it only dropped the charge to 89%. I didn't really need to recharge it for the second night but I wanted to test out the solar panels. 

     I bought a refurbished 200 watt folding array a couple months ago from Ecoflow. There are four actual panels and each has a primary side and a secondary side. The secondary side will generate a little bit of extra charge from reflected light while the primary side is oriented to the sun. In perfect conditions it will generate 200 watts of power. I had far less than perfect conditions and was generating 135-155 watts of power, depending on the clouds. I was able to fully recharge the batteries in one hour and 45 minutes. It would take several hours to recharge the system if the battery was drained though.

    I just used some broken off branches to prop up the panel, trying to get it facing the sun as directly as possible. But you can tell by the extended shadow that it was not propped up high enough. I will make adjustable legs from dowel rods or old tent pole sections to do this better.

    These generators are very temperature sensitive so I used the panels to shade it. The generator also has an internal cooling fan to protect the circuitry.

    I also brought along an inexpensive solar charged, motion-activated light. I think I paid less than $20 for this. I charged it during the first day and then used it as a security light at night. Any person or large critter that would walk in front of it would activate the light. It is a nice bit of security. You can also just switch it on and use it as an area light.

    

    I fished in the early morning and late evenings when it was cooler and then hung out on a shaded porch during the hot hours, reading. These Amish men were not so fortunate; they were bringing in hay during the heat of the day, out in the full sun. God bless them.

 

Garden 2024 - Spring

   As readers might recall, I bought the components and set up an emergency power system using solar panels and battery storage. And since I had all that power just sitting around waiting for an emergency, I set up a simple grow light system. That grow light system allowed me to get seeds germinated and sprouts growing at least a month before I ever had done before due to the normal cold, wet springs in Pennsylvania. Now, as we roll into June (tomorrow), I already have a well-established garden growing strong.

  This smaller raised bed has about thirty lettuce plants and twenty onions doing really well in it. As the days heat up, the lettuce will be affected but until then I am eating salad every day and it is really good.

  In this longer bed, I have fifteen green bean plants two peppers, and four sweet potato plants growing. I intend to get a couple more pepper plants and will fill in the gaps with root vegetables.

  In the other long bed, I have two tomato plants and three cucumbers. I will do a second planting of green beans in the far side of this bed later in the summer to be my fall crop of beans.

  I planted two more sweet potatoes in this low raised bed and staked in a trellis for them to grow up to save ground space.

  I have about twenty potatoes growing in this bed. I will add wood chips and other organic matter to the bed as the plants' foliage grows. This bed was fallow last year, and I piled on six inches of mulched grass and leaves to it in the fall and covered with plastic, so it is raring to go. 

  I still have lots of open spaces that I want to fill. I just need to look through my seeds and see what I want to grow.

Pickling Beans

   I often end up with more beans than I can eat whether they are from the garden or from the store. Instead of letting them go to waste, I pickle them using leftover pickle juice from commercial pickles.

  We often buy gourmet pickles from local venders and these come in all sorts of interesting flavors. After the pickles have been eaten, I store the unused, leftover juice in the refrigerator until I have some extra beans.

  The first step is to clean and sterilize the canning jar. I usually use one pint jars for beans. While the jar is being sterilized in boiling water, I wash, sort, and size the beans, enough to tightly fill the jar. Make sure the beans are clean, select only young, firm, and unblemished beans, then cut them to length. You want the bean to be one half inch shorter than the inside of the jar height. This is to make sure all the bean is under the pickle brine when the jar is filled.

  Next, I pour the pickle juice into a pan and bring it to a boil. Generally, the pickle juice is sterile but why take a chance. Boil it for five or six minutes. 

  While the pickle juice is boiling, take out your now sterilized canning jar from its boiling water and dump in all your trimmed green beans so that you can blanch them. I blanch the beans for four minutes. Blanching sterilizes the outside of the bean and slightly softens the texture of the pod.

  

  While the beans are in the boiling water to blanch, fill a large mixing bowl with cold water and ice. This ice bath is used to stop the blanching process and chill the beans.

  At the four minute mark, scoop out the beans and drop them into the ice water to cool down. Stir them around to ensure they all get cooled down to stop the blanching.

  Once they are cooled down, you can start packing the canning jar with the beans. I hold the jar sideways so that the beans stack on top of each other as I place them in the jar. Once the jar is full, push down on the tops of the beans to make sure they are even at the top, about a half inch to an inch below the rim. Now, carefully pour in the boiling pickle juice until all the beans are covered. If there are air bubbles in the jar, tap the bottom of the jar or use a spoon or fork to move the beans around until the bubbles are released and rise to the top. Once the juice is in and the bubbles are gone, screw on the lid and ring until it is snug but not tight.

  Place the now filled jar into the boiling water you used to blanch the beans and let it sit for six to eight minutes. This heats up the juice and air in the jar, expanding it.

  Once the heating time is done, take the canning jar out of the boiling water, set it on some sort of insulated pad, like a hot pad or even a dish towel, and carefully tighten the lid until it is firmly seated. Let the jar sit at room temperature and as it cools down the liquid and the air in the jar will cool and contract, which forms a vacuum in the jar. At this time, the lid will slightly collapse and you will hear a metallic pop. If, after completely cooling, the lid isn't depressed and you can pop it by pushing down on its center, the jar didn't properly seal. You can still use this, but you'll have to store it in the refrigerator until you want to eat some beans. But if it sealed properly, you can store these in a cool, dry shelf area for many months. 

  I usually let this jar sit for at least a month or two to let the flavors sink into the beans. Once you open the jar, you need to then keep the jar in the fridge and try to eat them within a couple weeks. 

  This is a delicious way to store some excess green beans and use up leftover pickle juice that you already paid for anyway.

Repairing Oiler on Husqvarna Chain Saw

  Two weeks ago I was using my 20 inch saw and noticed that the chain was not being oiled. That isn't good, but, I knew what the issue was. Since I already had my tools out to fix another piece of equipment, I figured it was a good time to fix the saw.

  I mostly use this saw for milling lumber, it has a special narrow ripping chain installed now. But I  also use this saw when I need a longer bar and more powerful engine for big cutting jobs. So, the first thing to remove was the milling guide. (A Granville Mill)

   Next, remove the cutting chain and the bar. Chainsaws all use the same size nuts to hold the bar and chain in place and they usually come with a three-in-one tool that has two sockets (one for the bar and one for the spark plug) and a flat head screwdriver.  The parts I need to get at are under that gray plate, under the clutch. So the next thing to remove is the circular clutch assembly.

   To remove the clutch you need to immobilize the piston so that the engine doesn't just turn when you try to unscrew the clutch assembly. There is a great hack to do this. 

  You turn the clutch until the piston is all the way to the bottom of the cylinder. Once that is done, you pack the cylinder with rope. This prevents the pistol from moving too far when you crank on the clutch to unscrew it. I crammed about 12 inches of 3/8 inch rope into the cylinder.

   There is probably a special tool for this that a proper shop would have, but pump pliers and a vise-grip pliers work just as well. The clutch is marked with which way to turn it to remove. Just unscrew it like the lid to a large jar. It has reverse threads so Righty Loosey, Lefty Tighty

   The clutch is in two parts. There is also a roller bearing on the shaft that slides right off. All that gunk has to be cleaned off before you remove the access plate.

   Under the plate is the auto-oiler. All that gunk is why it isn't working and that all needs to be cleaned out. A small flat head screwdriver, a tooth brush, rags, and copious amounts of gas are used to clean all this up.

   Then, it looks like this. That linear gear is turned by a plastic piece in the access cover plate. This works like a worm-gear, the two parts are at 90 degrees to each other. The linear gear turns a small pump, the square black plastic piece and the oil is pumped through the plastic tube going up and to the left.

   The clean access plate goes back on and is held down with just one screw. The plastic worm-drive, the black disk on the shaft, can be seen here as I reassemble all the clean parts. 

   The clutch goes back together in the opposite order from the removal process. There are two notches in the bottom of this part that fit over the worm-drive. The two pliers trick is used again to screw it down. You don't need to crank it down really tight, it will tighten up as it is used since it has reverse threads. 

   The bar and chain get reinstalled. While I had it all apart I cleaned the air filter, the spark plug, and used high pressure air to clean off all the other parts of the motor. It won't stay clean long, but I clean it good two or three times a year anyway.

  Start the motor and rev the engine for a bit and voile, oil is now flowing to the chain.

 

   Some thrown oil on the driveway is more proof the chain is now getting enough oil. Good job and I saved myself at least $100 and two weeks of time by doing this repair myself.