Composter Results!

 Today was a perfect day for gardening:

1.  After weeks of 90* temps, we hit a high today of 70*, thanks to a rainstorm that blew in overnight.
2.  I was all ready to teach my Friday class this morning to cover for a coworker, but he made it back from his trip in time and I didn't have any prep to do for tomorrow.
3.  Kaylee, who has stepped out of gardening duties due to a bug or plant that is driving her crazy out there, had a meeting at 3pm.
4.  I harvested the last of the cherry tomatoes this morning, leaving just a few onions and a couple cabbages in our plot.

So it really was the perfect opportunity to spend some time with my girls, digging in the dirt.

Well, when I say "dirt," what I really mean is sand.  That's pretty much all it is.  We didn't do anything to improve it on our last gardening attempt and it didn't produce much except cherry tomatoes and a few green beans and cukes.  We're really hoping to change that with this composter.

I've been wondering how well it was working.  I can't spin it with the door open, obviously, and I really hadn't rummaged around in it much until last week, although I could tell it was fairly mixed up.  The girls and I set a 1/2-inch screen on the wheelbarrow and got to work!

Naturally, we talked about a lot as we worked, but the girls were very curious to know how weeds, grass clippings, chicken manure, lemon rinds, and a lot of other things turned into such nice dirt.  They also wanted to know how it was going to help our garden.  So they got some science knowledge out of the deal as well.

For my part, I was a bit shocked at how well it turned out.  I thought that screening it that fine would surely leave a lot that wouldn't pass through.  It turned out to be maybe 3 shovels-full of rocks, various fruit pits, and a few sticks that hadn't broken down.  And the material we got was excellent!

After we finished cleaning it out, I loaded it up again with our dead tomato plants and then raked out the chicken yard again for the manure, wood shavings, and uneaten fruit/veggies.  It's all loaded up and ready to start working again!

For details about the compost tumbler itself, see this post: Project: Compost Tumbler

Junior Tinkers: Pink Paint!

Our organization has been going through some changes here that involved sorting through a lot of old tools and supplies to downsize.  In the process, I came across about a quart of pink paint!

The girls' school table is a rough beast that I bought down in the Cancha and then whacked the legs off of, over a year ago.  Over the past year it has cracked and twisted and gotten colored on.  We decided it was the perfect place to put pink paint!

While Kaylee was at the church's ladies' retreat, I had 3 days by myself with the girls.  I thought a special father-daughter activity would be a good highlight to the weekend, so while the girls napped, I pulled out my angle grinder (from the same place as the paint!) and put its sanding disc to work on the top.  It's too fast for a really good finish, but it got the job done.

Then, when the girls were up from their rest, it was time to get the paint out!

They wore some of my work shirts

I had to clip their shirts at the shoulders, so they would stay on!

On Sunday, the four of us were getting ready to go to church without Kaylee, but while I had all three girls in the shower, the power went out.  Remember, our shower is an instant-hot electric "widow maker" (I wrote about that here), so it went cold fast!  I had to rinse them off with cold, which didn't go well.  Then, while they dried and got warm in front of the propane heater, I hunted for, found, and fixed the short circuit that caused the problem.

By that time, it was too late to make it to church, so we did church at home, with the new table!  Because of the situation we're in with our landlord and moving, we talked about and colored the story of Paul and Silas and their response to hard times in the Philippian jail, and the blessing that came from it.

Junior Tinkers: Airplane

Our girls have recently started the formal process of homeschooling with Kaylee.   You can read much more about that on her blog, A Day in the Life: Missionary Wife.  As a father, I have an important role to play in that process, and I, too, want to teach my children.
     -Because I am a Christian, I teach them about God, through the Bible
     -Because I am a musician, I teach them songs and music
     -Because I am a tinker, I plan to slowly teach various other skills as well

Oftentimes, these skills will be passed along informally, but some formal "classtime" can be very helpful as well.  On Saturday, I found a little metal-frame airplane kit in the market (for $3), and thought it would be a good project for Anne to learn something about basic tools, nuts and bolts, and following a schematic.  While her sisters were napping this afternoon, we pulled it out and got to work!

 She was very excited to see that the kit included a wrench and screwdriver, just her size!

 She helped grab parts and set them in place whenever she was able to.  She also did most of the fastening, after which I tightened everything down.