Getting the gardens ready - kale, potatoes, and garlic

First, the raised beds and the new starts

I got busy and turned the soil in the raised beds at the "city" house.  Soil is looking much better!  I planted some kale from the seed I gathered from last years plants.  I also planted some potatoes that I saved from last years crop.

There's kale planted in the back 2/3rds of this bed.

All 4 beds turned and ready

This bed is planted full of potatoes.  It has the best soil I think.

The little ones are coming along!  Still no sprouts from bok choy, peppers, or eggplant.

Some barbed wire removed

I really wanted to take more out, but this is a good start.  Maybe I can get more down in the coming weeks.

Removed a good section from down along the road.

Would really like to knock these raspberries down a bit.  They are a bitch to mow around and they are invading my field too much!

OUCH!  I might even get in there with a hand mower.  It is just too hard to get to with any of my machines.

The view from beside the "big patch"/  I would like to plant some forsythia along the road here like on the other side of the driveway, but time is running out this year and I have a lot of trees and things to plant when my order comes in next Friday!

This is where I stopped this weekend.  I got pretty far!

Looking back toward the "big patch"

Deer used to cross here because the fence was down.  They can cross anywhere now!

Potatoes and garlic in the front patch

I plowed the front patch (the fenced section) and tilled it this weekend.  Even though it is plenty early I decided that it should be ok to plant the potatoes and the garlic.  I was upset that my only saved sweet potatoes from ;last year went bad.  I did put one in some water to see if it will form suckers, but I doubt it.  I will have to buy some to sprout I guess.

The white potatoes that I saved from last year are fine!

The sweet potatoes molded! I put the one on the upper right of this picture in some water to see if it will form sprouts.  Its a long shot...

I plowed and tilled this patch this weekend.  Also planted a row and a bit more of potatoes and most of a row of garlic.  I saved the garlic heads from last year!

I put the black plastic down so i knew where the rows where.  Besides, it helps heat the soil and keep the weeds out.

I also weed wacked the weed heads off the strawberry mounds on the left.  I did not see any signs of life in the strawberry patch.  I hope they make it!  I saved some space in this patch for another 2 rows of strawberries that I have on order for next weekend.

There is actually 2 rows of strawberries there - one on each side of the plastic.

New toy!  I got a metal cutting bandsaw!

I have wanted one of these for a long time!  I stopped at Foltz in Hagerstown on the way up on Friday afternoon.  I also got some extra blades and some drill rod for Katherine to make some tooling with. Their prices are actually very good!  I check out this band saw online and the prices were comparable. Of course , buying it local is always a plus - but this one was preassembled and they help load it!  getting it mail order would have taken me awhile to put it together and manhandle it by myself.

I tried it out - OMG!  It is a dream!  I cut off several pieces of scrap angle iron with it.  It cut through them like butter!  Nice cuts too - straight and accurate and clean!

You can also set it up to run in verticle mode if you want to do some fancy cuts, I guess.

Details on the motor.

I like it!  I foresee much use of this baby!

Wait, I thought it was spring...

I was working outside without a jacket on Saturday, and sweating my butt off too boot.  Then the winds picked up Saturday night and I woke to this...

Good thing I got the garden ready! lol

At least it was a pretty sky though.

Not much metal work, but I got a little in.

I managed to get out to the shop Sunday morning and bore out the thread protector a little more.  It's almost to 2" bore now.  It needs to go to at least 2.115" (I think).   I had to readjust the clutch on the apron feed.  I hadn't touched the powerfeed since the big apron cleanup.  I am still not 100% happy with it, but I will keep fiddling with it.  At least it works!  Getting close to doing an internal threading here.  Kinda anxious about that.

Thread protector coming along.  The bore is almost to size.

I also brought up some stuff I ordered for the mill.  I got a wiggler/edge finder and a drill chuck that will fit in a 1/2" collet.  The drill chuck will let me do precision drilling on the mill.

A visit to Foltz of Hagerstown, family easter, and spring chores

Easter at Mom's

We all got together at mom's place on Saturday for our Easter celebration.  Was wonderful weather and good food!

Tom did the camera work.  He set it for time delay and was able to get in the shot.  Great job!

After the meal we went on a quick walk around the place to fix some damaged fence stringers and just take in the spring beauty.

Katherine and me! :)

Katherine and I are trimming mom's Elderberry bush.

A visit to Foltz in Hagerstown, MD - AMAZING!

Katherine had done an internet search to find places that sold metal stock that were on my way to our farm.   I have been getting some stock through the mail, but shipping can be a bit high (metal is heavy and awkward).  She found a place in Hagerstown that we decided to stop at on the way to the farm. The front of the store, what you would see if you just saw it from the street, is nothing particularly special.  However, I asked to see what metal stock they had in their inventory at present and was permitted to go into the back section and look...

This is the metal stock rack!  Plenty of hot rolled and a bit of cold rolled steel.  Even some brass and copper!  A good selection

OMG - the old, wonderful machines!  this is a Mill/drill - looks to have about a 8-10 foot throat!

Millings machine

A metal lathe with what look like a 6 foot swing and a 20 foot bed!  The owner says this was brought in from Baltimore by horse and cart in 4 sections.  It was used to service the trolley system in Hagerstown.  That face plate on the lower right is about 4 feet in diameter!

The old machines were powered by a steam traction engine out back of the shop.  Here are the power distribution pulleys

Another view of that faceplate!  You can see the headstock of the lathe better here too (up and to the left of the faceplate)

Drill press.  Massive.  Hard to get a good sense of size in this picture.  It must have been about 12 feet tall,
maybe a tad more.

This place also has some nice deals for machinists metal workers near Hagerstown.  They still have one gentleman on staff that can fabricate stuff, if you have a need.  I might have to visit them if my tries at making my milling arbor don't work out...

Gardens resize and plowed!

I wasn't feeling great this weekend due to springs wonderful allergies, but I was able to get out long enough to pull and move some garden posts and to plow all the patches.

The big patch was pretty much cut in half.  I sectioned off the "clay" region since that was not very productive anyway.  I plan to plant some of the new elderberry plants there in a couple weeks.

"big patch" - not so big anymore.

Plowing went very well.  No broken shear pins and soil didn't stick to the plow blades.

Here you can see the unplowed old section that I am not going to garden anymore.

Soil looks fairly decent.  I may still have some water issues, of course, but this should help by keeping to the section without so much clay.

The "new" section of the front patch plowed much better than last year due to the fact that most of the tree roots are now gone.  The soil is still not up to snuff, but it will get there - just need to keep putting mulch on there!

I left a bit more room on the left between the blackberries so that I can mow easier.

Again, plowing went pretty good.  Very few tree roots left.

The soil is still crap, but it will improve as I add amendments.  

The paw-paw patch also changed shape a bit.  I moved the patch up the hill a little bit and extended it toward the road a few feet as well.  I sectioned off the wet section.  I redrilled the posts but did not put up the fence yet.  I figure that can wait until after I till.

The grounding rod for the electric fencer put up a hell of a fight!  I never did manage to pull it!  I think I will just cut it off below ground level and bury it.

The soil in the paw-paw patch looks so rich!  This is where the sweet potatoes go this year.  I think I have beans scheduled to go here too - although it might be corn.  I can't remember.

These patches will sit like this for a months or so before I till and plant.  This will give some of the organics in the mulch to decompose and get integrated with the soil.

 More flat-electric fence put up

I didn't get to do a lot on the farm, but i did get some more of the flat electric fence up.  Just did the blueberries.  This stuff is way more visible than the old polystrand.  I hope the deer take notice!

More work on the spindle thread protector

I mounted the thread protector into the 4-jaw chuck and dialed it in.  It is within 4-5 thousandths of centered, which is fine for this purpose.  Then I used brill bits in the tailstock drill chuck to drill out to about 1 1/8".   After drilling to 1 1/8" I was able to mount up a boring bar and start boring to the final dimension (I am not 100% sure what the final dimension is yet, but I have a ways to go before I have to worry about that!).

I found these big drill bits in the stuff I bought from Ken's family.  Biggest is 1 1/8".  They have .5" shaft so that worked out well!  I am not sure drilling bigger than 1 1/8" is advisable.  The drill chuck did slip a couple times in the MT3 tailstock.  No damage was done, but anything bigger I think would cause excessive spinning in the taper possible causing damage.

Showing boring bar and hole in center of spindle-thread protector.

When boring I noticed that a lot of chips go inside the spindle.  I guess its ok to use air to blow those out.

Looks like at least another 1/4" to go.  The bore is about 1 3/8 right now.

Discovered some Wilton Vises!

While looking for some drill bits to enlarge the bore in the spindle-thread-protector, I discovered several little vises - about 2" jaws.  Two of them are Stanley, and two of them are Wilton - little bullet vises!   Very nice!  I really need to get a workbench surface so that I can mount these - I need a vise or two installed!