Fall garden cleanup started

Picked the Sweet taters!

I dug the potatoes in the big patch Friday evening.  That ground was fairly wet and HEAVY! UGH.  Sweet potato tops looked really good here, but the results under the ground were less than exciting.  I am guessing that there is too much nitrogen in that soil.  Also, the plants ran for about 4 feet in radis from the center of the plants!  It was a lot of digging for not many taters!

The potatoes on the right are from the paw-paw patch.  They looked better!

The nest morning I got up and dug the potatoes in the paw-paw patch.  I had less hope for them since the tops of those potatoes didn't look so nice and they were overrun badly with grass and weeds.  Well, I was surprised.  I got some fairly nice potatoes!  I am planing to pressure can the bad ones and try to save a few for seed potatoes for next year.  Next year I figure I will only put them in the paw-paw patch - on the upper side since that is where the soil is well drained.

Pie-time!

I am out of blackberries but I have some rhubarb left in the freezer!  So I grabbed a bag and got some frozen strawberries (purchased) and made a pie.  I was not real pleased with the flavor though - just didn't taste like I remembered them!  Maybe I will get enough strawberries from my own plants next year to make a pie.

Strawberry-rhubarb pie.

Castor Bean seed collecting

I cut the seed "spires" off of the castor bean plants and placed them in the dehydrator.  They were a bit damp so I wanted to get them dry to they wouldn't mold or rot.  I put them in the dehydrator at 90F and ran it all weekend.  I kept hearing them popping the whole time!

Those pods are prickly!  I had to use gloves to take the pods off the spires.

I took them out of the dehydrator an removed the pods from the spires before I left, but I will have to wait until later to separate and shell the rest of the beans.

More UTV issues

Actually, I guess its really the same issue again.  I took the beast out Friday evening when digging the sweet potatoes in the big patch.  When I got on it to go back to the house, the shifter was REAL mucky - not at all easy to move - like pushing through bubble gum.  By the time I got it back to the house I couldn't shift at all!  I parked it in "H" for the night.  Next morning I checked it out.   I remove the end of the cable at the transmission side and determined that the transmission was able to shift just fine - it was the cable causing the problems - AGAIN!  I didn't have time to remove the cable and look for the problem.  I will get into that later.  Just a reminder that I had just replaced that cable the year before last!

Garden cleanup

With the sweet potatoes and tomatoes done the paw-paw patch and the front patch (the un-fenced part) were ready to be cleaned up.  So I removed the black plastic (no small task!), picked up the rocks, and mowed over the patches.

I am thinking about using some roundup on the fence line now since there is no worries of killing any vegetable plants.  The grass in the fence lines can get rather nasty.

Tomato patch all cleaned up.  Took a while to get all the rocks off of this patch!  Not to mention all of the staples an paper holders ( those red plastic ones).

More maple milling and wood chipping (and general cleanup)

I got the top part of an old maple tree and milled it up.  Got some nice wood out of it - not as much as I got from the bole last weekend - but still a good amount considering its age and the number of limbs.  After I got that log out from in front of the barn I decided to mow where those logs had been laying.  I got in the with the zero-turn mower and got wedged between the big log and the old barn door.  Darned if the old barn door didn't break!  Almost in two!  I had one board holding the entire weight of the door - and it was bowing quiet significantly!  I rushed back to the house to get a jack and a come-along (not to mention screws and power driver) and went about straightening the door structure and putting some new support boards in place.  Fortunately things turned out ok and I didn't have to rehang the door!  Whew!

Door is restored!  Better than it was last year now!

Cleaned up the weeds and grass where the logs were laying

Just a few more logs to go! LOL

After milling and cleanup (and door repair), I was able to do some chipping.  I chipped a the scrap from last week and this week as well as some miscellaneous stuff I had laying around.  The maple scrap had an annoying habit of jamming the chipper - so I had to stop and clear that - 3 times!

I am guessing that I got at most 1 cubic yard of chips there.  On the lighter side I might have enough saw dust now to finish mulching the blueberries!

More harvest

I picked more Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and a cabbage this weekend too.  There wasn't as much broccoli, just enough to steam and eat Monday night for dinner - for one person.  The cabbage will be put to good use as slaw - I am sure.  I didn't get a picture of the sprout plants, but they look pretty much like they did last weekend.  

Cleaned Sprouts, ready for blanching

Frozen and vacuum sealed

A very pretty cabbage!  This was in the "flood plain" and barely survived!

Hawk?

As I was finishing picking the sprouts and cabbage I looked up an saw this bird - pretty sure its some kind of hawk - but I don't know what kind.  I wish I had my camera and not just my phone.  I could have got a nice zoom on him as he sat there on the dead limb.

Storm Doors and barn doors...

I haven't updated the blog since last weekend because I have been so busy with work and getting stuff ready for spring.

Last weekend I made it up to the farm and immediately went out to shop.   I wanted to get replacement attic vents for the gables.  The weekend before I had removed the gable vents on my farm house because they were holding many wasp nests and were looking rough.  To counter the wasps, I was just going to put a screen over the front of the gable vents but once I had a closer look at the situation I decided to just tear them completely out and rebuild them.  Anyway, I was looking for replacement vents and thought that since I was out I might as well get the hardware for a new barn door (I had measured and taken pictures of the existing door hardware before I left for the store - it wasn't a spur of the moment decision!)  I have also been thinking of putting a storm door on the front door and replacing the screen door on the kitchen door.  Well, long story short:  I bought all the hardware for the barn door, including the material I needed to build the door, as well as 2 storm doors!

Barn Door

Here are some pictures of the barn door hardware I had to replace and match:

I considered replacing this bracket, but decided against it - this one looks sound and usable. 

It's hard to see from this picture, but the rail/track is bent to the point of being unusable.  Fortunately, only one 10 ft section is all that need replaced.

I also needed to get two brackets to hold the door to run in the tracks.

To build the door, I just found three 12 ft oak boards in my pile of lumber and just quick nailed (using my new battery powered brad nailer!) three pieces of 5/8" thick T1-11 to them:

Here it is laying on the barn floor.  12 foot wide and just over 8 ft tall.  It is not light weight - those three 9x1, 12 ft oak boards are easily as heavy as the T1-11 sheets!

Notice that I extend one of the oak boards about 4 inches below the T1-11 sheets.  This extension is to allow me to attach sacrificial boards to the bottom of the door as these doors often take significant damage on their bottom edges.  

Putting the replacement rail went very smooth.  However, putting the door hardware on was tricky mostly due to the fact that the door is freaking heavy!  While I was out shopping I stopped at Tractor Supply Company and picked up 2 farm jacks (one 48" and one 54") that were on sale ($60 and $70, respectively) because I anticipated this issue.   I used the jacks under the lower edge of the door and jacked the door up the side of the barn until it was positioned close enough to the rail to bolt on the roller/brackets.  That was the plan anyway!  Well, what happened was that while jacking the door up I discovered that the wind had picked up and the door was easily pushed off perpendicular from the jacks - causing the whole door to fall to the ground.  This happened 4 times!  It landed on me the last time!  After that, I kind of lost it and hooked up the UTV to the door and dragged it out in front of the barn where I proceeded to lean the door upright against the solid wall of the barn next to the doorway and then I ran the UTV right up against the door to insure it wouldn't fall on me again!  After using the UTV as an extra brace, I was able to use the jacks again was finally able to get the door bolted on!  Whew!

You can see some dirt that got on the door when I dragged it across the ground using the UTV!

The wood brace at the bottom left of the door is to help keep the door pushed against the building for the night since it was windy and I hadn't yet put any fixtures on the door to latch it down.

Unfortunately, I was so busy last weekend I never got the chance to take a picture of the door after installation of the bottom boards and fixtures.  I will try to add a picture here when I get a chance!  Anyway, the barn is now locked and I feel it's now secure enough to use for storing my tractor attachments and maybe the riding mowers (during the summer months).  In that area, it is probably safe to just leave the barn open with my farm implements inside judging by the fact that most of my neighbors leave theirs visibly open and have even more stuff then I do!  However, they are there on location most of the time and I am only there on the weekends.  This extra security just makes me feel better.

Storm Door

While at Your Building Center (YBC) in Everett PA, I found a nice screen/storm door design that was also quite reasonably priced (some storm doors are more expensive than the entrance doors!).  I got two of these doors, one 35" wide for the front door and one 32" wide for the kitchen door.  The kitchen storm door is a great door, except that it is rusting out and it is no longer able to close correctly.  I may not replace the kitchen door immediately, but the front door desperately needs a storm door!  Here are the doors as purchased and ready to install:

The new kitchen storm door, ready to install.  Maybe later..

The front door storm door is in the box seen on the lower right of the photo.  The front door has never had a storm door and it desperately needs one!  Cold air comes in around that door and the rain sometimes hits the door itself during storms!

Here is the front door before the storm door install:

And here are some pictures after the install:

I have never installed a storm door before, but this was VERY easy!  The hardest part was making sure everything had good clearance and that the latch worked easily.  The storm door installation needs to have a 1"x1" corner on the outside framing of the entrance doorway.  Fortunately, the front door had just that clearance so things worked pretty smoothly.  I looked at the kitchen door storm door installation and can see that the door frame evidently didn't have the necessary clearance and whoever installed that door had to make some adjustments.  Anyway, I am doing that one later... I am actually thinking of replacing the upstairs entrance doors now that I have replaced 3 entrance doors already and really like the way the new doors look.

And finally,..

Ditch digging!

Finally, the weather is starting to allow me to get back to ditch digging!  Late last fall I was working on putting in a drainage tile so that I can get rid of the unsightly (and dangerously placed) downspouts and sump pump outlet pipes.  Here are some before and after pictures for the weekend.  I still have lots of digging to do, but this is a good start!

Before renewed digging this weekend.

After this weekend's digging effort.

This was all done by hand.  I was able to attach the auger to the tractor and drill down a row of holes in lines with where I have to dig in the future.