Growing Home: Cold and rainy weekend

Mowing and tilling done between rain

I shouldn't classify the entire weekend as rainy, but the ground was wet a fair portion of it. We only received about 1/4" of rain the entire week according to my rain gauge. Anyway, when we got there Friday it had finished raining only a few hours earlier but the ground was dry enough to till (at least the front patch was), I raced out and tilled the front patch. Then mowed the front lawn before it got too dark to work.

I went out early Saturday morning an tilled the other two patches and mowed up around the pecans and back woods area. While mowing near the woods I discovered a weird thing:

Looked like this on the ground for about 100ft diameter around tree!

Some kind of tree blossom

Katherine searched google and asked in facebook group and couldn't find a good match. I will keep an eye out! Very weird. Never seen anything like that before.

Pecan survey and cleanup

While I was out there I mowed around the pecan trees. I took off the black plastic weed suppressors and lifted the tubes to check on the trees. They all survived the winter! Although, one looks a bit rough and may be dying. All of the other pecans looked rather good and I am hopeful that they will get some good growth in this year. I am considering spraying Roundup (or equivalent) around the trees and fence areas. Trimming it so time consuming and risky (I accidentally trim the trees or shrubs sometimes!)

Pecans are still alive and doing ok!

Strawberries are coming along fine

On the way back from mowing I looked in on the strawberries. They are blooming! Well, starting to bloom anyway. I need to get some wood chips on them soon, it won't be long before the weeds take over!

I know they are hard to see in the pictures, but there are blossoms there!

Quick tilling job

I wasn't sure the ground was dry enough but I figured I would risk it. Too often I have been caught in the spring rains wishing that I had my gardens tilled! So I jumped on the tractor and tilled the "big" patch and the paw-paw patch. Now I am ready to plant

Front patch - only a few problems with roots this year! Still crap for soil though

Paw-paw patch - this soil looks pretty good!

The "big" patch

I seem to have plowed up some big rocks this year. I will have to pull those out!

Oh, and mowing!

I decided to stop mowing "everything" and just mow where I don't think the flail mower would be effective. I need to get the flail mower connected up soon. Some of the weeds are getting too big and I don't want the little volunteer trees turning into problems!

Elderberry progress

I took some time and trimmed around some of the new elderberries. They were getting crowded pretty bad by the field grass.

The elderberries that I planted out by the sheep

I will need to trim those too. Grass is taking over!

YAY! Some of them are getting blossoms!

The original patch is doing quite well

Trimmed around the new plants that were planted near the big patch

I couldn't see these sprouts when I was mowing and it scared me that maybe these plants weren't going to make it!

I don't see sprouts on all of them yet. But I know from experience that these things can come back after months of looking dead.

All trimmed and pretty!

The berries that I planted in the old section of the big garden.

Looking good lil buddy!

Chipper Knives

Since it was raining Saturday afternoon I decide to get to taking care of the chipper knives. They were dull and made the whole unit vibrate, especially when chipping oak boards! While I have replacement blades for the flywheel and the bed, I was happy to learn that all I had to do was flip the already installed blades over! The flywheel blades were easy.

The bed or anvil blade was a pain in the ass!

I did find the part of the manual that described what to do...

Here is the sharp side of the anvil blade.

Here is the the dull side of the anvil blade.

See where it lives? I had to remove the feed chute and even then it was a pain to get to the thing.

Was really tricky getting it aligned right too. It has to be between .02 and .03 from the flywheel blades - those blades are at an angle to the flat of the flywheel making alignment of the anvil very tricky.

I got to use my torque wrench for the first time! I dialed in 40 ft-lbs as prescribed. Worked like a charm!

I still need to put some of the chipper back together and lube it up and stuff. I will do that when I have time. Probably next weekend since it looks like its still going to be too cold to plant then!

More arbor work

I got to do some work on the new arbor for the mill. I turned the shaft portion (the part that fits into the spindle) close to dimension, leaving space for the taper. Then I cleaned up A LOT of turnings! Oh, and cutting oil. Then I mounted the existing arbor into the lathe between centers so that I could dial in the taper on the compound feed.

Here is the arbor so far. Its close to dimension. I left a little so that I could grind it to final dimension and get a perfect finish.

Although, the finish looks pretty good just with the carbide bit! The shoulder there is where the taper will be cut.

I returned the sacrificial center that is sitting in the 3-jaw chuck.

The other side of the original mill arbor is in the tail stock here. This is a live tailstock - but it doesn't matter for this work - I am just holding the piece there to get the compound feed adjusted.

I dialed in the taper - I think i got it damn near perfect! Took me 2 hours! I did check that the arbor was centered and aligned. TIR on that arbor in less that .001" over that length! I did have to adjust the tailstock though. I should re-check it before I cut...