Garden Hose Holder

Plenty of hose length is the modern homestead equivalent of the irrigation channels the Egyptians dug into the banks of the Nile when they were inventing civilization. But unlike the Egyptians’ floodwater ditches, garden hose can get out of hand!

5 old hoses I got for free from Freecycle

So for just as long as we’ve had garden hoses to tangle, we’ve been thinking up ways to keep hoses neat and tidy so you don’t trip over them or run them over with the lawn mower. And wouldn’t you know it, many of them are sized at five gallons. Continue reading

Flood Preparation with 5 Gallon Buckets

In the last 10 years, we’ve seen some of the worst flooding in American history. In 2005 New Orleans was drenched by Katrina, then in 2012 Hurricane Sandy filled up New York City’s famous subway system. Today, June 23 2013, floods are washing away great portions of Calgary – even though the city itself is nowhere near the ocean. So almost no matter where you live, floods from an increasingly bipolar climate can affect you.

flood damage in calgary

I’d like to propose an uncommon strategy for dealing with flood waters – keeping sealable 5 gallon buckets around to hide your possessions from water inundation.

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Cutting Open a 55 Gallon Drum

Recently we decided to brew up a batch of nettle tea, which is a good high-nitrogen fertilizer. It’s something we can make free since nettles grow so prolifically here.

Normally of course we’d use a 5 gallon bucket to make the tea, but we needed a large batch to use on a large growing area.

We have a bunch of these 55 gallon drums which we bought 2nd hand from a pickling operation for 20$ each. But 55 gallon drums only have a small spout where we wanted an open top like a 5 gallon bucket would have. So it was time to do a bit of surgery.

blue 55 gallon drum

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Parabolic Microphone

Reporting from Vancouver today with something I’ve never seen before – a 5 gallon bucket parabolic microphone!

I stared awestruck at this proud recording equipment today, cursing myself for not bringing a camera. This would have been the first bucket parabolic microphone on the internet.

What is a Parabolic Microphone?

A parabolic microphone looks like a satellite dish. It’s primarily used to collect and amplify ambient noise, such as the stadium noise being collected here.

5_parabolic_microphone_lesson

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