Homesteading Mayhem

[This post has nothing to do with 3d printing. You’re welcome to go to https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/ and order something.]

Homesteading is chaotic. So much shit can go wrong. God has a sense of humor and makes it go wrong all at once.

While I was asleep, the furnace ran out of fuel. We’d let the woodstove die down. The firewood I’d hauled to the house ran out. The house was 57 degrees.

How was your morning?

Before I was fully awake, a contractor showed up. He’d been avoiding my inside work until the weather drove him indoors. The cold snap (that coincided with no house heat) was prime time for his arrival. Before I had my first sip of coffee I had three situations to handle.

Some days are like that.

I pointed at the ceiling. It had sagged so much it was comical. The contractor started attacking it with a hammer.

The dog was royally pissed off at this assault on our house. I locked her in a room and moved on to the next challenge.

For the furnace, I thought I’d utilize a 15 gallon jug of tractor fuel.

If you don’t know how fuel works there’s things you need to know. Semis, big pickups, and the occasional old Mercedes run on diesel. Diesel ain’t unleaded.

Truck diesel is “on road diesel”. It has road taxes added to the price.

“Off road diesel” is the same material dyed red to show it hasn’t had road taxes. It’s meant for, wait for it… things that don’t go on the road.

Rural folks use lots of shit that doesn’t go on the road. Think of tractors and logging equipment and bulldozers and such.

Older style house furnaces (called “oil furnaces”) use diesel too. This is different from more common “LP” furnaces which run off huge white propane tanks that look like Godzilla suppositories mounted in rural yards. You need special equipment to fill an LP tank. City houses have natural gas furnaces. Natural gas is delivered by pipelines that, like mass transit and light rail, cannot reach deep into the countryside.

My oil furnace has a 250 gallon tank which had run dry. Why? I’m an idiot.

Usually, I pay a tanker truck to deliver furnace fuel. Mrs. Curmudgeon made many calls to the delivery company. They weren’t delivering today. In fact their truck was in the shop, so maybe not this week. Life is like that.

This ain’t my first rodeo. I have an oil furnace specifically so I can buy off road diesel at the local gas station if needed . A furnace that uses the same shit that powers a John Deere can be fueled in any society that feeds itself.

I put my tractor fuel jug in the back of my truck. I drove it through the snow and across the lawn to the fuel port. I uncoiled the cheap plastic filler hose and… nothing.

Diesel comes in two kinds #2 (which can freeze) and #1 which costs a lot more. My hose was froze solid. Shit happesn.

As an adaptive Curmudgeon I didn’t despair. I wheeled the little fuel tank into my wood shop and fired up Betsy the woodstove. I her firebox with 2″x4″ end cuts and the dregs of pallets. Soon it was 60 degrees in the shop. The hose would thaw.

Meanwhile, I busily hauled ceiling tiles to the truck. They’ve got to go to the dump. Trucks are for dump runs.

Did I mention my kitchen floor is shit? The contractor was already pulling up the old floor. Good riddance. The floor was terrible when I moved in two decades ago and it’s complete shit now. The load of debris in my truck bed was growing.

I pushed and shoved to make squeeze the tractor fuel jug back on the truck but I managed. I drove back across the lawn, uncoiled the hose, and now the fuel flowed. It’s just gravity flow. I stood holding the safety nozzle and slowly freezing. Disappointingly, all I had was half a tank.

Something is better than nothing but I couldn’t start the furnace yet. I had to “bleed the line” to get it going again.

The house wasn’t yet freezing up and I was running out of daylight so I ignored the furnace and started up my tractor intending to bring a “quick load” of firewood to the house. Cutting firewood is very hard. A labor saving device I like is IBC totes. These are steel cages originally used to haul bladders of industrial liquids. I chuck the bladders (which held anything from food safe vegetable oil to truck paint) and use the tote “cage” to store / move firewood.

IBC totes can be lifted and moved with forklift forks. How awesome is that? I have a 3 point hitch “forks” implement. Ideally, I can back up to 1/3 cord of firewood and move it to the house in just a few minutes. It’s a huge labor saver.

Unfortunately, the forks I own are cheap. They bend like a politician’s morals. There’d been an ice storm and the tote slid off the bent & icy forks like a cartoon slapstick joke.

It’s a setback but no biggie. Firewood in a tipped over IBC is just like any other firewood. I’ll use it a little at a time. It’ll probably be gone by Christmas.

I had one last tote left. It special wood meant for Betsy. Antique kitchen stoves need different wood than house heating stoves . I used a chain to keep it on the bendy forks. I moved it to my workshop and unloaded. That’s my last IBC tote this year.

The house was still unheated but it was 55 degrees inside; I wasn’t out of time. The sun had set.

I put the fuel jug on my truck (which was overflowing with ceiling and floor detritus). I  strapped everything down so shit wouldn’t fly out of the truck bed and headed to town to buy off road diesel. Mrs. Curmudgeon had gotten off work and suggested we meet at town.

I was freezing. I’d been outdoors most of the day. A meager 14 gallons of off road diesel filled my little tank. Mrs. Curmudgeon arrived as I thawed in my heated cab. She was concerned with one of her car tires. I took one glance and made a diagnosis. “That tire is flatter than a pancake. You aren’t going anywhere on that.”

Mrs. Curmudgeon was distraught. She likes her car. I don’t blame her. But I’m only one man. Fixing a flat in the dark in sub zero temps sucks. Doing it while the clock is ticking on a cooling house is too much. You gotta’ pick your battles. I coaxed her into the truck and we abandoned her car.

Back home I drove the tractor to my woodshed and hurriedly filled the front bucket with firewood (wood that’s NOT in IBC totes). I drove to the house and handed it through to Mrs. Curmudgeon who bravely helped stack wood. Soon she had a fire in the woodstove. Awesome!

I stayed outside in the dark. I put the tractor’s bucket near my truck’s tailgate and tried to swap the heavy, full, off road, tank smoothly from one to the other. It wasn’t smooth and it fucked up my back. Ugh.

Back at the furnace’s filler port I got the gravity flow going again. It still was just a trickle so I lifted the bucket head high, jammed a wrench in the safety nozzle, and left it there. I delved into the basement and bled the furnace line like a pro. I could hear the diesel tricking into the 90% empty tank. At least the furnace was running. How long will <20 gallons last? Dunno’. When will the fuel company repair their truck? Dunno’. Everything else was a tomorrow problem.

I slept in a house with a running furnace and cheery woodstove. I was tired.

Epilogue: The next day my kid showed up and we enjoyed the pleasure of male privilege. We jacked up Mrs. Curmudgeon’s car in the icy parking lot, removed the tire, took it to be repaired, remounted it, and delivered the useable car to Mrs. Curmudgeon. Then, because we’re so damn privileged, we drove to the dump and yanked a half ton of building scrap out of the truck bed. I couldn’t help grabbing a few nail free wood scraps that I spied on the huge dump pile. Betsy loves kiln dried wood.

That was my day. How was yours?