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• Post #4465809

  So many Youtube DIYers don't know about concrete vibrators and do shitty concrete pours or add excessive water to make it more "flowy". Mine was €60 from Ali and has done a fantastic job so far. Especially with casting against the old foundation it really gets the concrete flowing into the gaps between the stones to lock them in place. I see the air bubbles pop out of them when getting the tip near one and the concrete level drops as it flows in. Same for making sure it flows int...

• Post #4355686

  Underway, #Knirps spotted this tractor and demanded we rescue it, so I pulled it out and chucked it in the trunk. Going to need some cleanup and repairs, I think. #Tractor #Toy #DumpsterDiving #Recycling

• Post #4349072

  Chilling in the shade. #Funcik #Dog #DogsOfMastodon #DogsOfFedi #Garden #Well #Shade #Summer

• Post #4323173

  Did ETA (Electronic Travel Authorisation) for an IT-inept relative who needs (not wants) to travel to Brexitannia and jeez, what a faff. Then you get to pay £20 in addition to the hour it took to get a photo in front of a white wall and a photo of the passport that their OCR could read and then pay through my Revolut account because their bank blocks foreign payments and each time restart the entire process because there's no login and the session expires and must be restarted from scra...

• Post #4323172

  Uprooted bush refuses to believe its dead. Perhaps I should just replant it somewhere. 🤔 Also a good indicator of how much it rained this summer 😆 #Bush #Life #Roots #Uprooted #Homestead

• Post #4323171

  Excellent Danish documentary on the practices of Ikea and the FSC in greenwashing the clearcutting of forests in Romania: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSV7RlgQtWc Well worth watching. Especially as they got Ikea to respond and send someone with very strange answers to every question. Or the sudden appearance of oak seedlings in plastic tubes after someone has been asking inconvenient questions. Also plain Mafia methods of intimidation against anyone investigating. #Ikea #FSC #Forestry

• Post #4249926

  When the stork is fully charged the head pulls back, the beak faces downwards and it gets this smug look about it. #Stork #Bird #BirdsOfMastodon #FediBird #Homestead #Grid #Electricity

• Post #4213785

  The last of Alan Birch is finally split and stacked. This was a tough birch. I thought I lost my mojo but some ancient oak and fresh maple logs did split just fine so it was just that this birch was really tough. Probably because it didn't grow in a forest but on its own on a windy hill. Sadly it rotted inside as forked trunks often do. As you can see I resorted to the chainsaw for some of the knottier pieces, the rest with wedge and axe. #Firewood #Birch #Homestead #Splitting #Wood #Wedg...

• Post #4200656

  Oak. Outside it looks like rotten junk, inside it looks like it could've done another century with ease. #Oak #Wood

• Post #4096884

  The woodworking section of the museum. A small model of a pit saw, or I guess since there is no pit, a trestle saw. And a working and relatively modern foot powered lathe. #Woodworking #Museum #Alanta #Tools #Sawing #History

• Post #4092071

  Looms. And those things we have in the attic. I'm not sure what they are for. Some kind of winder. Perhaps for setting up the warp or just storing yarn? Its quite fun to go to the local museum and find pieces you have in your attic and work out what they were used for! :) #Loom #Weaving #Craft #Museum #Alanta

• Post #4041675

  More professional outdoor electrical installation work, same park as before, powering the lights on a swing. To up it a notch, they used a GOST socket, which avoids pesky RCD trips because it has no PE contacts. 👍️ This has evidently worked well, as it looks like it has already caught on fire once. Its a nice park, but don't sit on the swing when its wet. #Electrical #Moletai

• Post #4018903

  More supplies. These were cheaper than the "Basic" ones (Specialist brand, I think), let's try how they fare on rock. There are supposedly special rock drill bits (these are concrete ones) but they were astronomically priced and nobody had them in stock anyways. #Rock #Drill #Bit #Tools #Makita #Granite

• Post #3967039

  Pakidge! #Pakidge #Homestead #Barn #Tractor

• Post #3896086

  Late again, but progress was made. Hacked away the clay and some boulders on this stretch. This was more manual labour than on the previous side, because with the concrete overhang the excavator couldn't get as close to the wall. Also because it was hot and this is the south side and I of course ended up doing it at noon 😰 Next a lot of drilling, finishing the final hole as my last SDS bit melted. These rocks are really hard. The same drill bit will go through concrete like butter but die...

• Post #3818817

  Garden update: Sunflowers doing well and growing tall. Sweetcorn is growing well too, although I've just spotted some brown patches on a stalk. No idea what that is, perhaps overwatering from recent biblical deluge? All three cucumber transplants have made it and we have the first cucumbers to eat. These loved all that rain. Peas are doing very well too and we've been eating them for a while now. Beans have started to flower. Pumpkins haven't flowered yet but have started to pr...

• Post #3747154

  Fiber cement panels. For when you want your house to look like the death star. #FiberCement #Panel #Building #Renovation #DIY #House

• Post #3725671

  A spell of sunshine before the next rain front hits. The young storks are facing it with glee. Each front arrived today with strong gusts of wind that blew stuff around the yard and let the juveniles hover above the nest and practice flying without the risk of leaving and being unable to return. Although at this point I think they're just being big chickens. One was several meters above the nest before dropping back down. You're basically flying already, mate! Get out there. #Stork #S...

• Post #3668431

  Flight school. Our young storks still do not dare leave their nest for the first time, but they've advanced to hovering. The other two siblings have to keep their heads down because there is only one helipad and its also where everybody eats their food delivery and sleeps. At least they've soon learnt how to poop over the side. Should really move the compost heap under there for all this free phosphorus. Meanwhile the parents are either out collecting food or perching on a nearby chim...

• Post #3635694

  Still no foundation digging weather with all this rain, so I grudgingly have to do some other stuff. Been down in the valley with the brush cutter, clearing a path through the jungle to get to the crooked old shack there. Inside is some old wood that may have once been the old sauna building by the river which is long gone but was stored here for re-use. Hauled a load up to the farm. Some usable stuff, although full of big nails. And some fuel for the sauna boiler. There are many more treasu...

• Post #3590623

  Mushroom identification please. NB: I wasn't going to eat it. I was going to feed it to social media safety advisors. Plenty of those around and nobody is going to miss one if it turns out poisonous. That way they can finally be useful. #Mushroom #Identification #Lithuania

• Post #3558014

  Traditional builders: We mix everything from clay, lime, cement and sand in specific ratios. Modern builders: We buy a bag of mix from the shop. What's in the bag? Who cares! What a loss. And the BagOfMix industry would prefer you not finding out that for example this bag contains only cement, quartz sand and a little bit of chopped glass and you could mix that just fine yourself. #Building #Industry

• Post #3513622

  Stay off my lawn, err, corn patch. Damn weeds. #Scythe #Mowing #Gardening #Homestead #Sweetcorn #Weeds

• Post #3508905

  These look ready. #Beetroot #Garden #Homestead #Harvest

• Post #3388940

  Dear German Soldaten, come to Lithuania, it's nice! In summer its not so hot, for winter we built you a nice new Kaserne with brand new road. We still have real snow in winter! The Kebap is not so expensive as in Germany either. You might even spot your old car driving around that you sold 10 years ago. Vilnius has everything to offer you come to expect from a big German city: good coffee shops, expensive food, mediocre public transport and traffic jams. You can try learning the fiendish...

• Post #3380654

  Mowed valley. On paper, this is a peat bog. As you can see, there is no peat, nor is it particularly boggy, except behind those alders on the right hiding a small river. We pointed this out and were promptly informed it doesn't matter, peat bogs are irrevocable. Good for us. Plowing peat bogs is forbidden, therefore this is no longer valued arable land. Which apparently means we're allowed to let it go and reforest itself or help along with tree plantings. So from next year, this w...

• Post #3360451

  Second strimmer fixed, the one with the metal disc for thicker brush (and not leaving bits of plastic string everywhere). Honda GX35 4-stroke. Shook out most of the pieces of the shattered cam pulley, then flushed out some smaller ones with old petrol. Had to take the head and clutch cover off to find the timing mark on the flywheel. I don't remember doing that last time, I guess I just poked a screwdriver down the spark plug hole to find TDC, which works too. The replacement pulley has n...

• Post #3341117

  Unlike me, the potatoes seem to have enjoyed all this rain and are thriving. The weeds don't stand a chance anymore and the gaps between rows are closing up. Looking forward to this harvest! Although I still have to make a tractor attachment as that is way too many potatoes to dig by hand in single-player mode. #Homestead #Gardening #Homesteading #Potato #Growth

• Post #3303212

  Peas got tied up. This took forever because I was scanning the garden for enough small sticks to tie the string to and then poke into the ground. These peas are doing well so far. The beans mostly too, two of them died but those were the "meh" seedlings that I just planted because there was space. #Gardening #Homestead #Beans #Peas #Bondage

• Post #3301817

  Pulled some radishes for a snack. While we also had many failures in the garden, these radishes were an amazing success. We kept the seeds from plants that bolted last year and unlike the ones from the supermarket seed pack, these germinated like crazy and grew densely packed to decent size. Definitely going to keep seeds again from these! #Garden #Gardening #Radish #Homestead #GrowYourOwn #SeedKeeping