A small plot of land, where “serious” machinery has no room to work, can really only be cultivated properly with a walk-behind tractor. That is why a thrifty rural owner, having decided to get such a machine, will first choose its make and weigh its capabilities. And only then will he think about a cart, Read more…
A torn-out magazine page with a photo of a neat little table was lying on a park bench I sat down to rest on. The table — or rather its design — caught my interest (in the past I used to make furniture both for myself and to order). The photograph, like the table, had Read more…
With the approach of the summer-cottage season, this bed in disassembled form can be taken to your country plot even by suburban train or local bus: its parts are easy to dismantle and reassemble. The bed consists of a headboard and a footboard, two side rails, two support panels that serve as legs, and two Read more…
No one in the small gardening cooperative near Bryansk suspected anything miraculous. The gardeners had only one thing on their minds: extracting water from wells. In hot weather, every able-bodied resident was tied to the heavy handles of cast-iron pumps. They had to pump bucket after bucket to water the thirsty seedlings. One of the Read more…
Small cozy Latvian villages, half-hidden by the curly greenery of trees, are densely scattered across fields that are as flat as a table. They are sometimes only a few kilometers apart, like the villages of Rude and Nica in the Liepaja district, and their life is closely linked by such close neighborhood. Many schoolchildren from Read more…
You can’t carry much cargo on an ordinary two-wheeled bicycle, even if it has a luggage rack. Meanwhile, bicycle owners often need to do just that. So it is a good idea to make a trailer for the bicycle. The design of such a two-wheeled trailer was described by Zbigniew Hennel and Andrzej Fedoruk in Read more…
Any garden or household plot, as a rule, yields a return and delights its owner when there is a sufficient amount of… water. If there is a natural source nearby or a central water supply, the irrigation problem becomes simpler, but in most cases one cannot even rely on a source. In a hot summer, Read more…
For small apartments, a balcony is a substantial addition to the living space, but it is neither all-season nor all-weather. To provide those conditions, the balcony must be protected from precipitation and wind — that is, at least glazed, which was not the case in houses built in the Soviet era. Fitting out balconies at Read more…
I invite the magazine’s readers to get acquainted with an original design of a universal self-propelled vehicle built by my brother Alexander. As he claims (jokingly, of course), the idea of making such a machine came to him out of laziness. He really did not want to spend his whole life doing hard, low-productivity work, Read more…
The various curtains and drapes popular with homemakers on windows and interior doors, consisting of two sliding panels, are often hung for greater decorative effect on wooden rods with large rings. If the material used is dense and heavy, opening and closing such curtains by hand is not so easy, and with abrupt efforts the Read more…
