The Mad Gardener of Bowlus

The challenge with the type of DC cords the refrigerator/freezer came with is that they can jostle out of the socket when driving. Since I was going to connect these to external batteries I purchased cables that click together and its virtually impossible for them to disconnect on their own.

I use three of these large totes, in the van, when going on long trips, they can be found on Amazon and their strength allows me to put my two Car Freezer/Refrigerators on top of them!

Propane appliances have been exceedingly useful when camping and traveling especially when I am short on time and need to get food prepared quickly. Both wood and charcoal can take as much as 20 minutes before you can cook over them whereas propane provides immediate heat and we can be eating even before I could begin cooking over the former! Don't get me wrong I definitely enjoy my steaks, pork chops, etc. grilled over propane but for some foods it really does not matter.

If you have done any amount of camping or traveling with propane appliances, that use those one pound takes, it does not take long to realize those tanks don't last long!

This is especially true if you are heating or baking with it. Enter the 20 pound propane tank and an adpater for it. Also, 20 pound tanks a whole lot cheaper to refill or exchange!

This oven/stove combo, available via Amazon proved to be very useful when both camping and traveling! It allows us to prepare just about any meal at campsites, at a way side rest, or while visiting a National Park! Why eat at some greasy fast food joint when you can take in nature's beauty while cooking and eating your food!

Not a typo but turning popcorn into cornbread! Decided to give it a try after several successful popcorn harvest that we can not possibly eat it all as popped! Also have a lot of maple syrup so used that as a sweetener!

A long time family favorite that I obtained from my Grandama. I have added notes to her recipie based on what I have learned over the decades I have been making this pie. Only change I have made is that I use gluten free cookies.

16 graham crackers or chocolate wafers crushed (just over a cup of crushed crackers)

or

12 whole chocolate sandwich cookies (Oreos) crushed (I always leave the frosting on the cookies as it will help them stick together).

3 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup sugar

Mix crackers/wafers/cookies with melted butter and sugar.

Camping Pie Iron a simple cooking tools but makes for some great pizza or pies. All you do is take two slices of bread add filling between them as you would a sandwich and then place it in the fire for a few minutes. Length of time varies depending on how hot the fire is!

Pro tip - since they unscrew from the handles I re-seasoned these in the oven. I have often found that cast iron, even if sold pre-seasoned, benefits from having another "treatment".

I spent the last few days concentrating really hard and end up with 3.75 gallons of Maple Syrup! Trees were tapped on March 13, 2022 and it took a few days before there was any flow, started out slowly but has been between 16-20 gallons per day the last few days!

Lots of popcorn for watching movies this winter!

Well the potatoes are in! There were actually three other pails but one has already been eaten and I sold two!

Now that is one odd looking potato! Tasted good though!

It looks like I am going to have some huge potatoes from the three rows of russets!

I have found yet another item to my, "I Have to Try That List"! You apparently can make charcoal from corn cobs! http://web.mit.edu/mmadinot/Public/corn-cob.pdf

Yes you read right! It is still in the research and development stage but "glass" can be made from wood! https://www.inceptivemind.com/transparent-wood-material-window-tomorrow/... also see https://phys.org/news/2019-11-transparent-wood-material-future.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparent_wood_composite

I am sure we have all spent half a night pondering just how to dolphins sleep. Dolphins, being air-breathing mammals do need to surface, regularly, to breath in air which would pose a problem for sleeping! Dolphins are able to achieve this by having one side of the brain sleep at a time. So while the right half is sleeping the left half stays awake and allows the dolphin to swim, surface, and breath. After about 20 minutes the left side wakes up and the right side goes to sleep.

Looks like I will have plenty of cabbage to last me the year! Most of it will be turned into sauerkraut but will make cabbage and pork soup with a bunch as well!

This year brought a plentiful sweet corn harvest! The first two rows went in the freezer and the second two rows I am going to ferment/pickle!

Still have more to harvest but glad I will have enough for the winter!

The beans are really producing this year! I had kept seeds from last year and not only did they grow but they were true to color! This is actually the second batch not counting all the beans we have already eaten!