Big melt off

Fast Melt 

The snow didn't last long.  Weather warmed up quickly and the snow was melted off the roads within a day!  The rest of it took longer, but still most was gone quickly

Had some fun watching the snow melt off the roof of the garage!  Look at the icicles!

First round of tree planting for the year and a big snow

First Tree shipment has arrived!

My shipment of birch trees (27), poplar trees (60), maple trees (60), bald cypress (55), and white pine (100) arrived!  Planting time!

Hard to believe all of those trees fit in those two boxes?

They are really small trees!  In fact I thought they forgot to ship some of them, but discovered that they were all there - most in that little bag on the right!

The weather was - mostly cooperative

The white pines are planted every 8 ft apart on the steep hill

The bald cypress are down there in the swamp

Another view of the pines - none of the maples, birch, or poplar.  Nothing to see really, they are so small!

I rushed to get them all planted before Tuesday when a big snow storm was predicted...  I got all the trees planted just in time - I was out late Monday evening.  I tried to leave Tuesday morning, but the snow was coming down too hard to make it. So I spent a week at the farm!

Over a foot of snow!

First "real" snow of the season!

SNOW!

We finally got some real snow.  Still was less than 5 inches.  Cold as a bugger though.  

Snow! Very little

This is a good amount of snow to have.  Not much! - LOL

Odds and ends

Oak canning shelves - continued.

I pretty much spent the entire weekend working on getting the shelves made and starting to finish them with polyurethane.

But first, some SNOW!!  Ack!

It all melted by the next day afternoon - so it wasn't as bad as it looks!  Whew!

OK, on to the shelving.

I had planed a bunch of boards last weekend but after I cut them to width I discovered that I needed to plane a few more.  I found some more short boards in my old barn boards  and planed them down and cut them to width.  The next step was to start to polyurethane them.  Katherine wasn't with me this weekend so it was perfect timing to get some finishing work done (she has trouble with asthma so I don't like to subject her to hydrocarbons unduly).

Aren't these gorgeous?  

Add caption

to think these were old barn crap boards!

LOL - there are quite a few of them.

I figured out that at 2 foot by 3 foot and 9 shelves that i have 54 square feet of oak shelving in the basement drying.  This is just the first coat.  They will need a light sanding and another coat to be done.

And of course, this need to be sanded and urethaned too!

Moving the shelving frame into the basement wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  None-the-less, I am glad its finally down in the basement were it will stay!  I really want to get this finished before the summer.  Once the summer kicks in I wont have time to mess with it and I don't want it absorbing moisture before I get it finished!

Thanksgiving weekend

First Snow of the season!

Katherine and I drove up to the farm Wednesday afternoon, through the first snowstorm of the season!  The GPS directed us up through McConnellsburg instead of the usual Breezewood route.  We stopped at Save-a-lot at got some pork and a country ham!  They had great prices on the pork and ham.  We also got some Chinese food from Main Moon.  It was pretty good!  Here are some pictures from the farmstead after we arrived:

Attic Vents

Well, I did a lot more out in the shop other than simply build these vents.  I assembled the large shelving that I got at Walmart last year and used it to hold the stuff from the old crooked shelving next to the radial arm saw.  Then I straightened out the old shelving and braced it (as best I could) so that I could put something on it without fear of a collapse!

front view of the restored little shelf

back view of the restored shelf

I also put the radial arm saw up on the roller-stand that I purchased when I got the one for the table saw.  This time it went together quite quickly.  I also unpacked the chop-saw (its NICE!) and the small drill press that I had purchased earlier this year but never got around to using.  I used the chop saw to cut up the reclaimed pine boards to make the attic vents.  Below are some pics of the vent building jig and the vents themselves.

I put the jig on a piece of scrap OSB.

Oh, and I finally got to use the air-powered nail
guns and staple guns!

here you can see the stack of cut pieces i used to assemble the vents.

And here they are!  Well, this is one

both together

both together - another view!

I found some exterior paint (primer too!) and was going to paint these today, but I decided to patch the holes with some wood putty instead.  The putty takes a while to dry and needs to be sanded before I paint, so painting will have to wait for now.   Even though they are somewhat out-of-square and a bit rough, I am happy with this accomplishment!  I still need to make the mounting frame and of course, paint everything, but so far so good!

Pumpkin Drying

I dried some more of the pumpkins.  The house was very humid due to all the breathing and cooking! I let the dried pumpkins sit in the dehydrator too long after they finished and they re-absorbed some moisture.  This extra moisture made it hard to get a good fine grind in the vitamix.  None-the-less, I got a bunch stored away and vacuum sealed in mason jars:

Grain Grinding

I also brought up the NutriMill grinder so that I could grind up some of the corn and wheat for bread and stuff.  Here are some pics of the finished products.

Corn meal on the left, flour in the center and right

close up! lol

 Thanksgiving with the family

We had our family thanksgiving celebration on Saturday the 29th which was also Mom's birthday!  Tom, Julie, Connie, Mom, Katherine and me all ate too much and talked loudly at each other - lol, good times!  Unfortunately Ben wasn't able to come along since he was out hunting deer.  He called during the shin-dig and reported no-luck that day.  His back was hurting him bad - I hope that doesn't develop into a real problem!

Katherine made pulled pork and candied sweet potatoes - we were going to make a pie and some kind of dried corn casserole, but we reflected on how much food we always have (too much) and decided to pull back a bit!

Katherine spent most of the time cleaning the house - she did a great job.   Things are finding there places now.  I still need to build some shelving to hold the canned goods.