Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without! This saying from the Great Depression shows the way to true frugality.
Provident Planning
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This has been restated in more recent years, the phrase "refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, and then recycle" might be familiar to some, though I'm more used to hearing "reuse, repurpose, recycle," which leaves out a key feature of the original; don't buy the damn thing in the first place! In the face of my own words to the contrary, I sometimes still end up buying based more on initial price than on lifecycle costs, as was true of the plethora of cheap plastic fuel containers I've purchased over the years. Buy the best quality you can afford, that's the lesson that I too often have to relearn.
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"Buy once, cry once," as another old saying goes
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Primal Woods
Looking back at my calendar the week was almost totally dominated by preparing for milling, milling, and the follow-up to milling jobs. I did manage to maintain my "Sharpen the Saw" routine, but just barely.
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Trailers at the ready for Tom's lumber haul
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Portable Sawmill Services A couple of sawmill jobs this week, the first for Tom in Niles, MI, and the second for Joe, my third trip to Joe's new homesite this year. The trailers are on Tom's job where we milled almost 2,300 bd ft from just 12 logs. And as usual, this is my third time out to Tom's since 2016, Tom is very well prepared on all fronts. A new metric I've been working on, which I call "Milling Process Efficiency," indicates that two factors are of key importance; 1) size matters, i.e. size of the logs, and 2) keeping the mill running, i.e. not starved for logs and milled lumber not preventing further cutting or loading of the next log. Tom got it right, and the result was a low cost per bd ft of $0.41; Mach Hrs:Clock Hrs was 79%; I'm thinking 75% is a solid target, when I've felt best about the job the number has been over 75%, when I felt like we left something on the table it was under 75%. In the portable milling context high Milling Process Efficiency definitely requires a collaborative effort between customer and supplier of the service.
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Site overview at Tom's
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Next up was Joe. What can I say, other than that we have together milled A LOT of lumber this year; I just did the math and we have produced over 10,000 bd ft of lumber from the trees taken down to make room for is home site. That's gotta be a record. The wood is going into decking, a pole barn, kitchen cabinets, etc. Waste not, want not.
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As mentioned last week and the week before, we are doing much better in 2021 than in 2020; up 26% now on last year. The amount of work might itself be a "problem," even if a it's a good problem to have. I'm noticing more and more often that I need help to maintain the quality of our service offering and to build out the Homestead at the same time.
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A Blueberry Pure Maple Syrup process improvement; 70 Quart stock pot, 2 ea.
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Pure Maple Syrup The "new equipment" I mentioned last week is pictured above. First time out we used a 24 in. x 33 in. pan with "drop flues;" let's just say that was less than ideal, and it literally took me all of a long day to make and bottle the first batch of Blueberry Pure Maple Syrup, and clean up after myself. I bought two of these 7 gallon plus stock pots, one as a new "pre-filtering" tank, and one for making the BB MS.
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Drop flue evaporating pan showing the flues in the bottom
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Two problems with 24 in. x 33 in. "drop flue" pan in this decidedly inappropriate application; 1) with a single, albeit large propane burner, it was impossible to heat the pan evenly, and 2) those drop flues caught a lot of blueberries. Anyway, lessons learned, problems solved, Batch #2 promises to progress much more quickly and effectively with the stock pots.
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