Sweet potatoes and tomatoes...

Milling Arbor work

I got to farm a bit late.  I immediately got to work mowing the front - all the grass is tall because we skipped last weekend.  I didn't even get the front mowed before the rains came.  I decided to go out to the shop to try out my new keyway milling cutter.

I grabbed an old piece of junk steel - probably some hot rolled stuff - and turned it relatively true (I really just turned off the rust and pitting)

Then I just placed the rod in the milling vise - did a slip-shod eyeball alignment and started cutting!

It actually cut very nicely.  The measure width is 0.191"  I should check them width for fit before I do the arbor.

I will "dial in" the actual arbor to make sure everything is good.  I still haven't confirmed that the tool will fit into where it needs to be for the arbor keyway.

Since it was raining so much this weekend I couldn't get out to do much on the farm, so I went ahead and dialed in my abor on the milling machine.  I had to really mess with the setup to get things aligned - but I finally got it good enough!

My duplicate arbor

the original arbor

Both new and old - side by side.  Very close match!  I couldn't mill into the flange as far, but I did a fit test into the spindle and mine fits perfectly!

Not bad for my first "woodruff' keyway cut!

The fact that the edge of the cut looks square indicates that I was aligned with the center of the shaft.

Garden planting

I worked all day on the paw-paw patch.  I first mowed around the patch to make putting the new fence up easier.  It fought me - but I got the fence in and the sweet potatoes and tomatoes transplanted. There is still plenty of space in the patch yet.  I only had 37 sweet potatoes - 13 had died because they were shipped so early and hanging out under lights since then.  I started planting them about a foot apart, but expanded them out to maybe 2 feet by the end of planting.  Its just 2 rows of sweetpotato.  I had 18 tomatoes to transplant - I just spaced them out to fit in one row.  

Here is a new garden layout diagram:

Fence is up and the sweet taters are in

Paw paw patch still has room for something

Sweet potatoes are in - 37 of them out of the 50 I bought - the rest died :(

All of the tomatoes are in

It was raining so much that I barely had time to plant any corn.  I did manage to get 3 rows of "old" seed in.  This might work out OK - they suggest staggered planting so that you have fresh corn over a wide range of time.

The brassicas that i planted last time are looking good!

Elderberries

They are blooming!  

Sugar and Frisco

We took the puppies out for walks.  Katherine is scared to death they will get lost out there in the woods so I bought some fencing and will try to put it up next weekend.

The puppies resting after playing hard!