Daily Archives: March 13, 2013

Early Bird Spring CSA Week Two

Posted on March 13, 2013 by AnnieRie

While all the guys were raising a tower, I headed out to Breezy Willow to get our second CSA delivery. Cold day, after starting out warm. No real lines this week. People are settling into the rhythm.

What did we get?

Five oranges
Five tangerines
Four red delicious apples
Four Jonah Gold apples
Brussels sprouts
White potatoes
Lots of onions
Acorn squash
Turnips

The dozen eggs, and this week I picked a Toasted Sesame Seed whole wheat sandwich bread from Great Harvest.

Great looking stuff. Already into the oranges and an apple.

We did pretty well last week using up most of what we got. I still have the kale from last week, and most of the carrots. This week we are home quite a bit and the only thing I haven’t figured out how to cook, i.e., what recipe to use, are the turnips.

As for extras I bought this week, I had to have some of the lemon yogurt from Pequea Valley Farms. Plus, love these egg noodles with chicken and in my soups. A closeup of the bread with the yogurt and noodles. This bread will be perfect for toast and for egg salad sandwiches. I saved last week’s eggs so they could age a bit for hard boiled eggs.

hocofood@@@

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The Hexbeam is Up

Posted on March 13, 2013 by AnnieRie

Long live the hexbeam.

The first tower, although it is the crank up one, not the 90 foot permanent one going in the meadow, is up and running. Lots of work for about three hours as one of the tubes ended up being misaligned and the tower leaned. Kind of like the leaning tower of Pisa. Back down and a replacement section later, it was up and operating at 48′ above the ground.

It was so worth it for him, when he worked a country and got a report of “you are 59 plus 10”. In other words, a booming signal. Amazing what directionality and a good location can do. The wires will be coming down for all but a few frequency bands. This beam handles 10, 12, 15, 17 and 20 meters. All we need is the monster wire all the way down the property line out front for the 80 meter band, and the 30 and 40 meter wires in the back yard. Soon, a second crank up will handle those two. This summer the rest hopefully will get done.

It was a windy cold day. It even had snow flurries while we were out there. Wind gusts made putting the beam on the top of the rotor pretty exciting. Then a matter of cranking and adjusting guy wires.

The Glenwood DX chapter did a great job. My husband owes them lunch at the next meeting at the Lisbon Town Grill. Living out here in west county are lots of “hams”. Amateur radio operators who came out here for the space and the lack of covenants. All the guys out here today have towers and live less than five miles from us. They help each other with tower projects.

And now you know the answer to the question, How many hams does it take to put up a rocket launcher? Five. Thanks, guys. My OM is happily working rare DXpeditions as I type. Spratly Islands anyone?

One more picture. The difference between the altitude of the wire antennae and the new tower.