Mother's Down-home Country Lore

Image Gallery

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Many readers wrote MOTHER In response to Donald and Cindy McBride's item in issue 70 about recycling charcoal. Apparently there are a number of ways to get the most out of your briquettes. For instance, Lafayette, Indiana's John Jordan (among others) suggested using tongs to transfer the hot coals to a metal bucket with a tight-fitting metal lid. The embers will suffocate in a short time ... saving you the hassle of dousing and drying the coals.

Lima, Ohioan H.W. Oats added another twist: He uses two metal pails, fills one of them with dry sand, and then pours a two-inch layer of the gritty substance into the empty pail before putting in the hot coals. Next, H.W. dumps the remaining sand into the first bucket, suffocating the smoldering briquettes. When he's ready to barbecue again, Chef Oats simply pours the contents of the first pail through a piece of 114 "mesh screen into the second ...and ends up with nice dry coals and clean sand!

Connie Toops turns half-gallon milk cartons into handy bird feeders around her home in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. First, she makes 2" slits parallel to (but 1 inch up from) the bottom at all four comers. Next, she folds the carton's edges inward above each cut, creating four little access ports, and runs two 8" lengths of 114" dowel—to serve as perches—through holes punched below the ration stations. Then the bird lover suspends the feeder by a cord and fills it, through the pouring spout, with seed.

Much to Ms. Toops's delight, her feathered friends now frequent her "milk bars" all year long. (She reminds us, however, that birds will come to depend upon their free food, and may starve if the handouts stop during the winter.)

Two of our readers in Mexico came up with a simple but effective solar water heater. Harrold and Nancy Andresen spread out a 300-foot coil of 314" black plastic water hose on their flat roof ...hooked its inlet into their domestic water system ...and connected the outlet to the waterline leading to the laundry room.

According to the Monterrey residents, the hose provides 25 gallons of hot water before it begins to cool off ...and is able to "recover" quickly enough to keep up with the demands of an automatic washing machine.

Cathy Amanti had long wanted a root cellar for storing bulk grains and homegrown produce. Since money was too scarce for her family to afford one, the Chino Valley, Arizonan decided to improvise. Cathy took an old garbage can (a 55-gallon drum would work equally well), cleaned it out, and buried the container in the ground ... leaving about a six-inch rim showing. She then filled the can with her perishables, secured the lid, and covered it all with straw. Finally, the do-it-herselfer built a little wall of loose bricks around the straw and covered the "insulation" with a piece of plywood weighted down by rocks.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print