Building a Basic A-Frame

Building a basic a-frame for growing vine vegetables on is pretty easy, and very very cheap!  The ones I build aren’t too large or very impressive, but it’s hard to beat the price, they work well, and they’re reusable.  I’ve used this one for two years in a row so far.

The paint's faded, but the string and poles have held up well

First go out and buy some string (butcher’s string works well) and some of those 4-ft long bamboo poles. You can get them from the hardware store.

25 in a package

For this project, you’ll need eleven of them. So you can make two a-frames per pack! Not bad… Take two of your bamboo stakes and a piece of string 12″-18″ long.

Make three of these.  Place them next to each other in your garden, about 1.5′ apart.  You should have used six stakes. Take the seventh stake and place it on top – use this to line up your stakes properly. Tie it on.

The top bar, going across

Now take your eighth and ninth stakes, and tie them going across, about 1.5′-2′ up from the ground.  The stake getting tied to the vertical supports goes on the inside of the frame, the stake getting tied to the diagonal supports goes on the outside of the frame.

Tie them to all three vertical supports, and all three diagonal supports.

a-like so!

Now take your final two stakes and break them in half.  You’ll only use three of the halves for this frame, but save the other one in case you want to make another frame later.  Tie them going across your horizontal supports, at each intersection.

You don't have to get as crazy with the string here, these stay in place pretty well

Once you’ve tied all three, your frame should be finished!

Finished A-Frame

Simple, effective, easy, and cheap.

COST: $4 for the package of 25 4′ bamboo poles, +$5 for a package of string (if you don’t have it already)

= $9 total, makes TWO A-Frames. $4.50/frame

TIME INVESTMENT: 30 minutes

We grow a variety of vegetables on ours – cucumbers, beans, green beans, peas…they hold up remarkably well.  One of ours began to lean a bit under the weight of all of our cucumbers, but it never fell apart and it never fell over.  We plant one seedling at each base of the stake – so it should hold six plants.

Cucumber Seedling

Happy planting! =)

Brewing Sake

Once upon a time, I looked up how to make sake, and ran across some easy recipes. Sounded simple – rice, water, yeast…wait. Then, however, I found out that this was not the best way to make sake. In fact, it makes really horrible sake. So my husband and I set out to do it right.

We found a wonderfully detailed guide here: http://www.taylor-madeak.org/index.php, and went out to buy the supplies and ingredients.

Brewing Bucket – $15
Sake Yeast – $7
Sushi Rice – $14
Koji – $14
Miscellaneous Brewing Equipment – $15
Bottle Capper – $15
Refrigerator off Craigslist – FREE

That’s $80 to start, for approximately three gallons of sake. That’s a lot of sake, but that’s also a lot of money. And what about time investment?

Rinsing the Rice

Fermenting...

Separating the Rice from the Liquid...

Moving the Sake into Secondary Fermenters...

Moving the Sake From Secondary Fermenters into Bottles...

As you may be able to tell, it was a lot more work than we expected. Steaming the rice was time consuming, especially towards the end, when it had to be done in batches. Stirring the sake a couple times a day was no big deal. Moving it into the secondary fermenters, and later into the bottles was difficult and took 1-2 hours each time. Keeping the sake at fifty degrees was extremely difficult. We eventually ended up purchasing a brewing thermostat ($60) in order to keep our sake at a regular temperature. This cuts down on time investment, but ups the cost.

COST: $80-$140

TIME INVESTMENT: 8-10 hours

And for an impatient person like me, the vast amount of time it takes to go from rice, water, and yeast to drinkable sake was tedious. 10.5 weeks.

I’m going to go ahead and say that this is not worth the time and money if you’re aiming for something quick, easy, and low cost. It’s fine as a hobby (which my husband has decided to take upon himself…after all, we have all the supplies now), but not as a sustainable activity.

My experience brewing beer was much more pleasant, and I’ll post on that in the next few days!