Back in Omaha for the winter

Hello everyone, long time no post.

As always, there's a good reason for that. The laptop is on its last legs, but everytime it seems to get better at the last moment so I don't replace it. If the laptop's electric is bad, the van's electric is worse, and I have to resort to electroshock therapy half the time to get it moving. Going into town from my homestead became such a chore that I ended up dreading it, and avoiding trips for all but the most important things, because it'd often be a day or two before I could get the van moving again.

It's not the battery, and after extensive unprofessional diagnosing I'm pretty sure it's not the alternator either. I haven't fully ruled out the spark plugs, but I don't think it's that either, because sometimes when the electric is low the AC will randomly come on even though it's off. That is a symptom of every Chrysler owner's most dreaded problem: a fault with the electric brain. The electric brain is a part that never used to exist, it's not strictly necessary to the operation of a motor vehicle, but it improves gas mileage at the cost of rendering the vehicle a particularly well-engineered brick when it dies. The electric brain itself isn't particularly expensive, but like many things in a Chrysler it's buried someplace almost inaccessible, in this case inside the engine block. So a few hundred dollars of part is accompanied by about a thousand dollars of labor.

The van isn't undriveable, after all I did get here in the end. But it's touch-and-go enough that I won't be leaving Omaha in the spring until and unless it's fixed. And it was getting less driveable as the weather got colder, which is why I called the season a bit early and came home. But at least this way, I get to see the leaves fall.

Speaking of Chrysler vans making things almost inaccessible, I got to replace the same tire twice before I even left, which meant downloading a video to figure out how to liberate my spare tire from its stowage. The nearest town to my homestead makes a significant chunk of its living repairing vehicles broken down on the way to somewhere else, so I don't suppose they'd have much of an incentive to sweep metal debris from the roads. Knowing this, I will spring for the tire warranty from now on. It can be Walmart's problem. And yes, I gave my business to Walmart, because they're inexpensive and they're also the only tire shop in the entire county open all weekend. The techs there have come to adore my cat, and I've gotten to know some of them.

I also got my battery tested, being pretty sure it wasn't the problem but knowing Walmart would charge it for free. I used that free charge in Elko to get all the way to Omaha in three days. If I don't run any electric whatsoever, but just drive, I can do that. But no electric means no AC, no radio, and most importantly for these purposes, no headlights. So I could only drive during the day; every day I'd hit the road just after sunrise, and every evening I'd pull over for the night just before sunset.

You may also notice a distinct lack of photos from the road, which tend to accompany my other travelogues. This is because I didn't dare risk pulling over to photograph anything, because I couldn't be sure that I'd be able to start it again. It ended up not giving me trouble, but I only pulled over in places with a lot of people so that if my own electrical infrastructure couldn't get me going again, I could get a jump or some other sort of help. So I only stopped to get gas, and for the night. I even took I-80 home, which means that this is yet another trip down I-80 where I haven't taken any pics of the Great Salt Lake.

One other problem caused by the electric is that, when the electricity is low, I have trouble descending steep hills. Not climbing them, for whatever reason. The van does fine with that. But I know that when the engine is on but idling, for whatever reason it doesn't charge the battery. And when I'm descending a steep hill, the engine is effectively idling because I don't need its help. On the way to Elko to change my tire before I left, I had this exact problem and had to pull over and charge my battery for an hour and still needed a jump to get going. This isn't a huge issue for the most part, especially on I-80, but there are still steep parts along it. Parley's Canyon east of Salt Lake City is the worst of it: 6% grades for nine miles. There's also Sherman's Summit east of Laramie, WY; and let's not forget my beloved Pequops and their outquoppings back in Nevada. The latter bunch I just powered through and hoped for the best, and it happened to work. But I didn't dare tackle Parley's Canyon, and looked for a way around.

Fortunately, truckers have this basic problem of needing to avoid steep grades for a different reason, and they have message boards where they talk shop to each other. So I learned from them, and from Union Pacific Railroad, whose way through the Rockies many of them try to follow. So I got off of I-80 to head north on I-15, and just shy of Ogden I got on I-84 headed west up Weber Canyon. I-84 merges back into I-80 in Echo, Utah, and the route is only eleven miles longer and much less steep. Granted, it's much less scenic than Parley's Canyon, which is absolutely gorgeous and worth driving through if one has a good vehicle. But I didn't, so I followed the Union Pacific line instead.

My only other great insight from this trip home is that if you've got to stop for the night on I-80 in Wyoming somewhere, do it at one of the two Little America truck stops. They have colonial-era architecture and a level of advertising obsession only equalled by Wall Drug in South Dakota, so you can't miss it. And if you are filthy from, say, harvesting a whole bunch of your own crops and doing some last-ditch construction nonstop for a week, they have marble bathtubs you can use to soak off all the dirt. There's also 75 cent ice cream cones, which isn't my absolute favorite food, but, y'know, 75 cents is cool. It's also got all the typical tchochkies of any roadside attraction, but nicer. When I was a little kid, I would often blow my allowance money buying semiprecious stones from places like this, and they have one too. If I ever end up mining turquoise, it'll probably be sold retail at places like this. I forewent the bag o' rocks for a mortar and pestle made out of this marbled green rock. I can't find my old one, and I grew so much basil this year that I can get a lot of use out of it making pesto, so it was a worthwhile investment.

As for that harvest I've been alluding to? I got a decent amount. The tomatoes were growing even in wintry weather, because my house is well-insulated even without central heating or air conditioning of any kind. (That image to the right is them growing just fine as it snows outside, to prove my point.) But because I had to call the season early, I harvested a lot of them before it was their time to go. So most of my tomatoes are green and tiny, but there's enough larger red tomatoes that I know that in principle, my system works. Next year though, I'm planting beefsteak tomatoes instead of the romas and cherry tomatoes I planted this year, so hopefully my harvest will be larger.

No, the real no-limit soldiers of the harvest was the basil. I grew it in the same buckets as the tomatoes, and the harvest probably gave me about fifty dollars' worth of fresh basil. Putting it up as pesto, it'll keep as long as I need it to. My egg sandwiches have been bedecked by pesto ever since, and it's delicious. One day I'll have walnut trees and homegrown garlic to add to the homegrown pesto, and maybe eventually I'll even have olive trees and dairy cows to make Parmesan cheese. That'd be wonderful. But in the meanwhile, I'm going to plan for a harder, stronger basil harvest in the future.

I got very little in the way of onions, which grew in the same buckets as the basil and tomatoes, but that didn't bother me. I saved the chive parts of it, and already ate that up. I've still got canned tiny onions to use up at some point, but only a single can. Like I said, it doesn't bother me. The real "crop" I was growing with the onions wasn't an onion crop, but a basil and tomato crop. The onions kept the mice out of the buckets. I'll be planting them again next year, and I might even plant a proper onion crop the way the locals do - outside, in an ash-heavy soil.

Only one pepper plant survived the year, mostly because I didn't have any obvious polycultures to insert them into. But the one that survived ended up doing really well, and giving me lots of peppers that I dried out and will be eating for at least a couple months. They're delicious and spicy, and I will be saving and replanting these seeds.

The huckleberries really, really hate not getting a lot of water every single day, and at one point in the summer they died out a bit. But they don't die for long, and new shoots immediately sprang up to replace the old. I ended up with an okay crop, just a few handfuls of berries but given the circumstances, it was a pleasant surprise. I also got a handful of blueberries, which was an even bigger and more pleasant surprise because I wasn't expecting any for two more years. The blueberry bucket and the hucklebuckets are currently in Nevada in my backyard, overwintering and taking in the frost and snow they need to thrive next spring.

My blackberry didn't produce any berries this year, but i wasn't expecting it to. The real "crop" this year wasn't berries, but when I chopped the various blackberry vines and threw them in a bucket with water for my trip home. One of the first things I did upon getting here was to replant them in local soil here in Omaha. They're gonna overwinter outside, and it's only been a few days, but I think most of the eleven cuttings I made are going to make it. In fact, they all might. They will eventually grow on the retaining walls that will surround my house and the property; blackberry thorns are one of the few things mice don't have time for.

I did end up getting a couple sunflowers, nothing really amazing, but the seeds taste good and I saved some to plant again next spring. My modified three sisters doesn't really work in a five-gallon bucket; I never got any watermelons (or melons of any kind) and I only had one beanstalk sprout, and almost immediately die. I won't be planting the latter two again until I have that greenhouse finished.

Speaking of, it's not. I got a lot dug, but I also figured I'd have more time than I did. I did start building a retaining wall though, but again, the van's faulty electric was a limiting factor that prevented me from quarrying enough stones to finish it.

That's most of the basic news from this year. I've got all kinds of articles that I wrote, and pictures that I took, that I will slowly post up over the next few months. Thanks for reading this far, and stay tuned for more of the same.