The most favorite meal in the backcountry at Tardigrade Outdoors is homemade biscuits and gravy. It may take a little time, but I'll savor every moment of preparing this delicious vegan meal in the backcountry while sipping on some estate-grown home roasted coffee.
But, this backcountry breakfast is actually easier than one may expect.

I'm getting ready for a backpacking trip for next week, so I've been catching up on some car maintenance. A few of the things I needed to tend to were replacing the spark plugs, somehow cleaning the headlamp covers, and replacing the engine coolant.

Today's blog post is about my experience using the headlight cleaning kit, Mothers PowerBall 4Lights Headlight Restoration Kit.

In what I am sure to be my least interesting post ever, I just picked up a new sewing machine that I am actually pretty excited to get into service. It's a Universal De Luxe Zig Zag MZB.

I'm mostly firing on a Consew 226, but I need a smaller workhorse to handle all the little bits and whatnot better than my other one, which is missing pieces and the Singer CE-200 which I only want to use for embroidery. I hope this will do it well.

I lived in Yosemite National Park for over eight years. I climbed a lot, backpacked a lot, but I was also able to pursue many projects that I thought up.

One of these ideas was a bear-proof composter for myself and other residents. I didn't have much support from NPS or the concessionaire, the company that runs the lodging and dining in the park, so I had to be creative. I couldn't find mention of a composter like this having been made before, so I didn't have much of a reference. I looked over the web and talked to a bunch of people, but nothing really materialized until I went to the dump one day. A bunch of old bear proof trash can pieces were being thrown away. My solution began to solidify.

At Ardeth backpacking gear, we love grapes and we love grapevines. We love how they provide food, how they look, we love the shade and the little ecosystems they create. So, we've been planting a variety of grapevines around our home so we can have our own, veganic and organic grapes.

Our overall plan with our new home was to buy an inexpensive home with a large yard. We have to keep our bills low to start the business, and growing our own food helps us to do that and to become more sustainable. Grapevines can be a part of that.

We get a variety of foods from grapes. Not only do we get fresh, delicious, veganic grapes, but we also get raisins, grape syrup, grape jam, and this year we might even try our hand at making wine.

We're started our first grapevines along our southwest wall to produce grapes and to help shade the house from the summer sun. In the winter, the grapevines are dormant, so we still get the winter sun to warm the house.

I built it with 2X4s and concrete reinforcing grid. It's been working out very well. Underneath it, we planted strawberries. Lawn care is obviously not a priority. Give me a break, I'm building sleeping bags.

The second phase was to continue getting different kinds of grapevine starts and to establish vines along the sunny southeast corner of the house. Small trellises would link and, as the vines grew, we'd build an arbor over the area. This would be the third phase. Presumably, we would be able to wait a year or two until we need to build the arbor. No, I am not a carpenter.

The key to saving money on this endeavor was all of the free grape stakes that I was able to get on Craigslist. After I brought them home, I took some time to figure out how I could best utilize them. What I really wanted was 1/2" stakes.
Ripping the 2"X2" ancient redwood grape stakes into 1/2" stakes was not so simple, but I built a jig that allow me to safely rip into 1/2strips. For the taller trellises, I ripped the 2X4s that I got for free last year and have been sitting in my resource sequestration depot. The resource sequestration depot has also been unflatteringly referred to as "the junk pile" by my doting wife.
I ripped the 2X4s into 1/2" X 1 1/2" strips in two stages. Then, I laid out a template on the workbench (an old door) and screwed and glued them together. I placed the surfaces that I wanted facing out down, as the screws were going to be on the upper surface, facing toward the house once the trellis was built.
I drove stakes into the ground and mounted my trellises to them.
They really didn't turn out looking as nice as I had hoped, but I change things around a bit in the winter when we prune the vines.

Not being so delicate with my equipment, I broke the drawcord threader. Looking closer at it, I realized there was no way this thing was going to last long anyways. I looked around on the net for a more durable replacement, but it just wasn't happening.

So, I went walking around Ardeth backpacking gear's compound to mull it over, and in the garage, I realized that the trimmer cord we had for the weed wacker would do just perfectly.

I cut off about a meter long piece and used one of my propane-powered mini torches and a pair of Kleins to shape loops on the ends.

Instant, indestructible, nearly free, drawcord threader!