Drying Fruit, Loosening Bolts, Van’s Brakes and a Big Pot of Vegetable Soup

Sunday August 12, 2018 Guerneville CA.

Need some fruit drying trays

I’ve been thinking I need to get something together to dry some plums and prunes.

I checked what I had and found I had one sheet of half inch plywood, but didn’t really want to use that as I would have to add some wooden strips around the sides to keep the fruit from falling off and I’d have to find a place to store it when not in use which would be most of the time. I’d also have to find some way to get it up off the ground to keep varmints from getting into it and eating the fruit.

Maybe some steel roofing sheets

I thought I might be able to use a piece of steel roofing so I went out to look at what I had. I had some long pieces but I didn’t really want to cut them shorter as they are too valuable long and I’d still have to get them up off the ground too.

A much better idea

While I was looking at the metal roof sheets I went by this old trailer made out of a truck bed and was thinking I could put some metal roof sheets in the back, but wait, why not just put the fruit on the floor of the bed and I wouldn’t need anything else and it was simpler and it is also up off the ground away form pesky animals.

The old trailer

Here’s the old trailer. It needs some cleaning up, mainly inside the bed.

it also needed some blocks put under it to keep it from tilting when I got up in it. I found some blocks and stabilized it nicely.

Cleaned it up a bit

I then rounded up my broom and sweep this stuff out.

And then I got the water hose out and hosed it off good. Clean enough for drying fruit.

Chickens

I gave the chickens some fed and checked and filled their water. Then I gathered some weeds from the yard and gave them to them too. I also turned the water on for their grow pens to give them a little extra shot of water. Water comes on automatically every day, but an extra shot of water gives things a boost, especially on hot days.

Ripe fruit dries best

I picked a couple bowls of plums just before dark so I have a start on getting some fruit dried. I plan to pick all the plums off the one tree I like and then pick a bunch of French prunes as soon as they are ripe enough. They dry best when they are real ripe.

Toyota brake master cylinder

I also still need to replace the brake master cylinder on my Toyota Land Cruiser so I put some more oil on the rusty bolts I’ll have to remove to replace the master cylinder. That can soak for a bit.

Working on the van’s brakes

Another project I had to do was remove the van’s back tires to check out the brake shoes dimensions as I needed to measure them to get the size for some new ones.

I jacked the van up and put some jack stands under it for safety. The air wrench makes it all pretty easy. Looks like I need the larger shoes. I plan to order them from the local auto shop in the next couple days or so.

Huge pot of vegetable soup

I collected a bunch of vegetables from the gardens and cut up potatoes, a big onion, some beans and tomatoes and carrots and cabbage and forgot the squash.

I put it all in a huge pot and filled it with water and boiled it for a couple hours until the broth was real tasty.

Yummy stuff

Yum is that good. I’m not really much of a vegetable eater as I like fruits better, but I need to eat more vegetables as I can get them corn less and they are good for me.

Putting them in a big pot and making broth makes them a lot more edible and I can eat a bunch more of them this way than any other way or I can use the broth to make something else which gives most anything else a lot of flavor. Yum again.

I ate two bowls of the stuff for dinner.

That was my day for a good one.