Peach Tree

When I was growing up, my parents had fruit trees. My favorite was the peach tree. I love canned peaches. Jennifer and I have wanted fruit trees at our house too. It has an apple tree and now we just planted a peach tree. IFA had them on sale for $19.99. My mom and dad bought two peach trees and one cherry.

The boys were helpful in putting in some root stimulator and compost mix. Carter kept adding more and more. Luckily you can't add too much.

IFA says that this little tree should produce fruit next year. We will be very happy to can our own peaches.

New Shower Valve

The valve in our shower needed to be replaced. The adjustment for the water temperature was very stiff. While showering the water would be too hot, then with any adjustment it would be too cold. It was difficult to get it just right. Sutherlands was having a big sale. On February 29th, they were doing 29% off most everything in the store. I figured it was a good time to buy a new shower valve. Since it was 29% off, I almost bought a new drill as well, but resisted the temptation.

We took everything apart to see if we could figure out how to change it. I told Jennifer that we could take everything apart and mess it all up about 30 times for the price of hiring a plumber to do it once. Luckily we just messed it up once and had to redo it.

I used a reciprocating saw to cut the pipes going to the valve. Got all the old pipes out of the way and new copper fittings screwed in place.

Cut the copper pipes. Clean the copper pipes. Flux the copper pipes. Solder the copper pipes.

We did as much soldering outside as we could, so as to reduce the chance of burning down our house. It is also much easier to solder standing up, rather than kneeling in the back of the hallway closet.

After it was all put back together, Jennifer did the final step. She handled caulking around all the new fixtures.

It is very nice to be able to adjust the water temperature in the shower. It was also fun to learn how to solder copper pipes. One more project down and on to the next one.

Zack's Seatcover

Zack got his grandpa's old truck. He has been fixing up a lot of thing on it. The driver's side of the seat was a little worn, so Zack wanted to get a seat cover to protect it. He found some nice ones that looked like they would last for years, but they were too expensive ($50). He did not want a cheap one that would get a hole in six months. Jennifer decided to make him one.

We found some good, heavy duty fabric at Walmart for $3 a yard. We bought 3 yards, so it only cost us $9. We used denim from some old pants to make straps to tie it to the seat. We even put a pocket on the front.

The seat looks good. We were not able to do anything about the red interior.

Homemade Jerky

When I was doing sheet rock with my bishop, he shared some homemade jerky with me. It was great. We decided to make our own.

We found a great deal on ground beef. The bishop gave us his recipe. It includes: tender quick, brown sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, liquid smoke, onion powder, teriyaki, and molassis.

We mixed up ten pounds of ground beef with all those ingredients. We let it marinade in the fridge for 24 hours.

This is a jerky press. It works just like a caulk gun. You load the ground beef into the tube and squeeze the trigger. The meat is pressed through a flat tip that shapes the jerky into the desired shape.

The bishop let us borrow his dehydrator. Its old, but worked pretty well. The door does not stay closed tightly. A few pieces of blue painter's tape did the trick.

12 racks full of jerky.

Hours and hours later (11) the jerky came out all done. Seth and Carter were very excited. They wanted jerky for breakfast. It turned out pretty good.