Looking for a Farm vacation?

I don't know about you but every now and then I get these urges to start a farm. Of course I am in no position to do this nor do I know anything useful about the day to day operations of larger scale farming.

I was blog hopping this morning and I came across this website that lets you sign up to work for a short (or long) time at any of a bunch of organic farms IN THE WORLD!!!

I found one here (about 17miles out of town) and I'm thinking about thinking about checking it out.

here the site: http://www.wwoof.org/americas.asp

How to install a dishwasher...trial and error style

Lets just start by saying that I won this fight overall...it took me three hours, but I won! For those that don't know, we got this dishwasher for free when we moved in. It looked like it as in pretty bad shape but lucky us, it was just dirty. All it came with was the dishwasher it's self...no hardware so after some quick messurements, off to ACE (Carter Brother's to be exact) we went.


Side note: I love ACE hardware because the employees always know where everything is and how to help you do almost any project.

From ACE we picked up a few hoses, some clamps, a valve splitter, two black trash cans (compost bins), and an air gap that we ended up not using.

First I turned off the house water and switched out the old valve with the split valve and attached the faucet and the dishwasher to the two valves. (Split the hot water line). Then I attached the new inlet hose to the dishwasher and ran the drain hose from the dishwasher to the air gap to the disposal making sure that the air gap was above the disposal unit. Once all was tight, I turned on the house water and turned on the valve...no leaks!

We fired up the dishwasher and it sounded like it was eating glass and the spin arms would not spin...bummer! A quick google search and we were back in business. Turns out that the dishwasher need to be primed so we added a half gallon of water. Result - no more noise but still no arm spinage. Back to Google....we checked the float and it was clean as a whistle. Hrm, I had a feeling that it was not getting enough water pressure so I decided to take apart the inlet valve and clean it. I knew that this would take me about 30min so I decided to try some more water first...if a little prime was good a bigger prime must be better right? Oh YEAH! I added another gallon of water and everything worked great! almost

Once we got to the drain cycle, the dishwasher threw up everywhere! Turns out where I mounted the air gap was a bit to low....this was a problem because it was as high as I could get it under the sink :( We let the dishwasher finish it's drain ccyle with me holding the air gap over a bucket in case it felt the need to throw up some more.


The air gap is not needed for the drain cycle to work, it just helps protect against a backflow of water. Some cities require you to have one but I have no idea if Reno is one of those. I was getting tired now so I disconnected and reattached a few hoses bypassing the air gap and fired that bad boy up. Perfect!


I still had to little leaks from where the last person had removed the door screws but that was a fairly easy fix...just two screws and a little sealer stopped that leak right quick!

The last thing to do for the night was to slid the dishwasher back into place and run a test load. No leaks and a clean dishwasher!

Thank you Google for your answers and thank you Love for your excelent Googling. Morgan looked up "GE DISHWASHER ANGRY NOISE" hehe

Oh yeah, I think we ended up using something like 6 towels during this whole thing.

Dang computers

Well it seems that I am back to blogging via my phone...

I think it might be time for a new battery for my laptop. Forthe past
6 months or so it has been dying when the battery life is between
18%-32%. There is no system or pattern to it, it just dies. The only
thing I can do is remember to plug it in once it gets close to the 35%
level. Oh and it has been messing my mornings up because the clock hit
stuck on 6:18am

In other news, the house to do list is growing smaller everyday. Last
night we fix a leak in the kitchen, put in a drain stop in the
bathroom sink and tub, attached a new hose holder, and put the spice
rack shelves and spices up. We also bought a portable swampcooler on
Monday that we trying....so far it's been so so. It's not as cold as I
thought it would be and the house feels humid now! As anyone used a
portable swamp cooler before? Is this normal?

In other news....the Jimmy tried to blow up on us the other night.
White smoke pouring from under the hood. I need to check all the fluid
levels and I hope it's not a head gasket!

So little time.... (Ramble Alert)

I feel so stressed lately.

It so weird because even when I am stressed, I don't FEEL stressed. You know what it really is, I think I just feel super unorganized. There is so much racing through my head that it's hard for me to even think straight enough to even write this blog.

Moving has thrown off my groove. We are all moved in but still have half unpacked boxes all over the house and I think it's slowly eating away at my sanity. The problem is that for the longest time we weren't able to unpack because we had to finish the remodel. Then once the remodel was done, we had to put all the big furniture where we wanted it and THEN we were able to start unpacking.

The other problem is that I am a list person and have a really hard time getting things done without a to-do list. When I try to work without a list I tend to get distracted and start doing another project right in the middle of what I was doing. Either that, or I start getting overwhelmed by the second task that I end up doing a poor job on the first thing I was doing.

Morgan and I made a to do list tonight after dinner and seeing everything on paper makes me feel better about everything. Always the "J" Morgan also broke the list down by deadline date so now we have three lists to work from....all three are long.

The first deadline date is Aug 8th because Morgan is hosting a baby shower for a friend of hers here at the house and we want the place to look nice for that. The second date is Aug 18th and is when all of Morgan's nursing homework is due by... (Poor wife...I told her I would do her homework for her but she never takes me up on it!) And then the final date (for now) is Aug 22 because that is the day that we thinking will be good for the House warming/Birthday party/Final summer shin-dig...Watch your inbox for your Evite!

(plus my wine turned sour!)

Things I want to make part 2

Here they are....the things I want to make...in no order of course

(except for these towel holders...I am going to make them as soon as I find the piece of wood I misplaced in the move)

The above sewing room shed would of course be for my lovely wife...could also be an movie theater)

Things I want to make....

Things I want to make....

As I surf the net and read through the various blogs I follow, it
seems that I am always coming arcoss things that I would love to have
around the house. I seemed to always find myself saying, "I can make
that" to which my loving and beautiful wife responds, "Yes but will
you?"

Problely not I think but I think the real fun is in dreaming. I just
recently created a folder on my desktop called "THINGS TO MAKE"

Do you have a similar folder or bookmarks full of great things that
you want to do sometime? If so, let's hear about it!

Here are the things in my folder...enjoy!

House to do list "small things"

House to do list "small things"

Flashing in front planter box
Window wells- hole, wells, sump pump, basin, trench
Pull locas weeds -again :(
Hang bikes in garage
Breakfast bar bracket
Get wireless network running w/ Internet
Fix small leak at sink
Build towel holding rocks
Wash windows
Split/store firewood
Key all locks the same
Put latch on patio gate
Organize gear closet
Run more plugs to garage
Put garage on new circut (2)
Run phone line into office for Internet
Build worm house in yard
Enjoy the garden
Finish making to do list

Thanks for hanging in there!

I know that it seems we (Morgan and I) have been a bit out of touch
lately but that will soon be over! The remodel and move have sucked
way more of our time then i thought it would.

The Internet guys should be here today so I'll be able to blog on a
regular basis again. I still have Seattle stories and pictures to share.

We have been living in the new house for 5 days now and as of today we
are clear of the Walker house... Cute little place but I'm too happy
here to miss it!

Now that we are living here, we are trying to unpack and finish the
few dozen "small" projects we have. Things like installing flashing
between the front planter box and the house, digging out the window
wells, and putting a latch on the patio gate.

Come get an early tour if you're free, other wise the house warming/
big reveal is coming up soon!

Bees anyone?

So the worms are doing their thing.... Turning trash into garden gold. While the potatoes have exploded and are already ready for their 4th tire! What to do now?

Seeing as the ducks and mini corn field are still a year away, I've started to spend a fair amount if time thinking about apiture...aka beekeeping.

Before we bought the house, I started following a blogger from VA and her adventures as a new beekeeper. You can our her blog here called My Own Beeswax.

After we started the garden in the new house we quickly realized that the garden wall was full of honey bees!!! Now that most of the flowering plants in the garden have started to do just that, the bees are busier (and I think happier) then ever!  We are hoping that having them to pollinate the flowers will lead to lots and lots of fruits and veggies this year.

I have just recently gotten in touch with the local Reno apuntire group (website) and I am hoping to learn if we can convince the wall bees ro swarm and move into a new hive in the yard or if we should start with new bees all together. I also have a lot to learn and i am hoping to try beekeeping for awhile with a groupmember.

I will gladly keep everyone posted and what I learn.

Helping us pack

Legos at the CWB in Seattle

Good Morning Seattle

I slept outside last night and this is what I got to wake up to!

House update

House update

The floors are now done and they look amazing! There is sill one more
light final coat that will go down on Monday but seeing as we are
still on vacation until Tuesday, I can say they're done!

The garden is amazing and doing SO well. We have decided that the key
is LOVE....as it is with so many things in life I'm learning. Today we
added some worm jucie (extra water that drains out) to the plants and
moss in the front yard and are excited to see how they look when we
get home. (Thanks for watering Mom!) We also bought some empty tea
bags to make so fertilizer tea when we get back to Reno. I did smuggle
some worm castings up to Seattle with us for BIL (brother in law) to
try so hopeful we will do that this weekend and take it to his plot at
the P-patch. I can't wait to see his potatoes and their tower.

For more wonderful information on the house, garden, and vacation
check out Morgan's blog @ http://fireflyskies.blogspot.com

P.s this and all blogs posted over the next few days have been typed
out on my phone either on a plane, a deck, at a coffee shop, or on a
sailboat ( I hope!)