My Farm has died

I came home from the Thanksgiving weekend in Colorado today and I found my whole entire farm died. Everything is all dried up except for my avocados. I am pretty sad about it. The cause of the death of the farm is not so important right now. I am especially sad that my tomatoes died. I am not sure where I am going to get more tomatoe seeds. THe ones I had were a little unique. One of my coworkers gave me the tomatoe and I took the seeds out and planted them. They were doing so well.

At the end of the day though, all you can do is get back back up and plant some more seeds and try again. If I have one skill it is not giving up on things I care about, and I don't intend to give up just yet.

Pickled Green Tomatoes, Chiles, and Carb Cleaner

Back when I wrecked this motorcyle into a fence, I always suspected that it needed its carburetor cleaned. I talked to my roomate about it, and based on what I told him happened he agreed. Step one is to make sure the engine can still run. I decided I better go ahead and clean the car so that is what I did.



It took a little bit of persuasion to get the carb out, but it could not resist.





Definitely a little bit dirty in there. I cleaned all that gunk out with the carb cleaner. Not I just need to stick the carb back in. Hopefully this weekend I will fire it up.



On an unrelated note my tomatoes started coming in. It was a bit of a suprise. I had not seen them grow at all lately, but when I took their syran wrap off they were already sprouting pretty good. The seeds from these tomatoes come from a tomato A master-gardener coworker gave me from her garden. I took the seeds out, dried them, and stuck them in the dirt. These tomatoes are similiar in nature to some pickled green tomatoes I had at a really good restaurant in Seattle. They were really delicious. Once they grow I will pickle the tomatoes.



Finally some of my peppers started to grow as well. These are Santa Fe Grandes.

The proving grounds

Recently my roomate gave me a heads up on an abandonded pumice mine located on some BLM land nearby. We went to go check it out since I needed a proving grounds for the motorcycle-engined remote-controlled/autonomous dune-buggy I am building in my garage. This place was basically out of Mad Max. Shotgun shells were strewn all over the ground along with the carcasses of refrigerators and TV that ended up on the business end of a 12 gauge. The mine was located on top of a Mesa. Multiple cars were wrecked on the side of the hill. I am not to sure if people were playing chicken on the top of the mesa, but that is the story I am going to believe until I hear otherwise. The place had dirt bike trails everywhere. I can't wait to start making use of it.

Lawn Furniture

This morning my roomate and I finally got around to makeing some benches. I have been wanting to put a picnic table out by my garden so I could eat dinner out there. My roomate likes collecting firewood, so we took some of the logs he picked up and made these timber benches. Now all we need is the table. All in good time.

I also finished fertilizing and breaking up the clumps of dirt in my garden. Now all I need to do is wait till spring to plant.

Plowing the plantation

I am currently getting my plantation ready for the spring. I just finished plowing it. The space measures 32' X 11' which means I have 352 sq ft of growing land. I overturned the soil with a shovel. It took about 2 hrs. Next I need to add the fertilizer.

The Commune - Step 1, Farm the land

One of my goals in life is to create a surfing commune with robot farming. The idea is that robots will do the farming and I will do the surfing. It will probably be some kind of artist colony as well. If you know of any beach front real estate in Baja let me know. I am in the market. In the mean time I am improving my farming skills. A couple weeks ago I went to the grocery store to buy a bell pepper. It cost $2. I decided that was too much so I decided it was time to get to work on the commune. Here are the current results.

This is my farm. It has basil and oregano and strawberry's and bell peppers and chives etc, etc.

As soon as the oregano is done growing I will make a pizza out of it.



Here is the rack I made to give the plants light.




This is the future site of my plantation.



This is the precursor to my guacamole forest.



Grow baby grow...

Mobile Host wireless sensor networks

My paper on the mobile host wireless sensor network has been published by the Journal of Sound and Vibration. Here is the citation:

David L. Mascarenas, Eric B. Flynn, Michael D. Todd, Timothy G. Overly, Kevin M. Farinholt, Gyuhae Park, , and Charles R. Farrar, Experimental studies of using wireless energy transmission for powering embedded sensor nodes" Journal of Sound and Vibration
Volume 329, Issue 12, 7 June 2010, Pages 2421-2433

If you are interested in mobile host wireless sensor networks please take a look at this youtube video.