Leatherstocking Tales

The Lehman's catalog! and thinking about butterflies

The Lehmans catalog came last night, and I'm so excited!  I was feeling pretty down about various things this morning, but this afternoon while rocking my babies I pulled out the Lehmans and remembered one of the reasons we came here.  I think I will have to get their "Lehmans Best" pick foodgrinder soon, because the babies are 3.5 months old and soon we will be doing baby food.  I don't think the local Wal-Mart has enough jars to supply my twins anyway!  I am also looking at their pressure canner.  It's expensive, and I'm not sure I have enough guts to can anything that might have a risk of botulism yet.  When I was a kid all my mom did was pickles and jelly -- hot water bath canning.  I figure I'll start there.

I also noticed their tank-free hot water heaters.  They're expensive, too, but our hot water heater is electric and with the amount of hot water we use with 5 kids and 2 of them infants, our electric bills are really getting out of hand.  I'd asked dh about replacing ours, but it's out in the garage.  He thought the wind would just blow out a pilot light.

Gardens are shaping up... at least in our imaginations.  The butterfly garden will have coneflowers, black-eyed susans, and asters in it for sure.  We're working with the lists in The Family Butterfly Book, which has lots of good info in it about attracting, identifying, keeping, and raising butterflies.

Right now we're trying to determine where to put a bird feeder.  We hung one up close to the house, but it hasn't been visited by a single bird yet.  The only birds I've seen around here have been crows and chicadees.  Do any other birds stay in upstate NY for the winter?  We're pretty close to the southern Adirondacks.

Lehamans Tankless Hot Water Heaters

09:31, 2006-Jan-21 .. Posted by motherearth

My husband use to do heating and air work, he swears by the tankless hot water heaters, however the downsize is that if you need electric they won't save you a penny. The real savings is if they are gas.
Yesterday morning I saw a report on the Today Show about these and how the technology is changing and the man on the show said gas was the more efficient model over the electric, and the larger tanks were better.
If I were you do research before buying. We are all electric and my dh was ready to buy this, until we learned it wasn't going to be a savings to us....

Lehman's Tankless Water Heaters

09:49, 2006-Jan-21 .. Posted by AngelAndrewB

Thanks for the info :-). My husband and I were talking about it last night. We do have gas pipes, if we could put the water heater in a different place. But I don't know if that would be more trouble than it's worth.