More spring preparations

Cherry trees are blooming

The cherry trees in the front are blooming - the ones that survived that is.  Actually, some good news on the survival front, one of the tress that I thought had died is showing signs of life!   I didn't trim these trees this year in hopes that letting them go might help stabilize them a bit.  

Young (2nd year) sour cherry putting on some leaves!

Sweet cherry trees are blooming up a storm!

Thought this guy was dead, but see?  New leaves are coming!  The top did die out though.

Garden Preperations

I tilled the front patch in its new extended form, connecting the old front patch to the new big patch.  Now its all one big patch.  The front portion of the patch will hold strawberries and blueberries.

I just added two "permanent" fence posts for the corners.  I plan to just pound in some metal stakes to support the rest of the fencing.

Cleaned up the existing strawberry row.  There was quite a bit of weeds trying to take over.

I put the fence back in place until I can get the final fence put up.  Mom says that deer love strawberries so I figured I had better try to make them a little bit difficult to get to!

Tree Cages

I started putting up some more tree cages.  I started with the hazelnut since I figure they are the most at risk.    I used the old fencing from the big garden for a lot of these but I still had to use some new fencing.  I will need to buy more fencing!  I got all of the hazelnuts caged.  I also found another stash of old fencing that I will use first before any new fencing.   I also caged the new pecan trees.

I mowed this area too - it was still fairly wet as you can tell from the mower wheel marks.

Hazelnuts

Speaking of hazelnuts, the "old" hazelnuts are well into coming out!  I wonder if they get nuts on this year?

Birds nest

I found this bird nest right on my fastener shelf!  Even has eggs in it.  Damn bird.  Turns out to be a house wren, so I want to leave it alone.  Sigh.  Stupid birds!

I have seen her sitting on these eggs.  I try not to get too close, but its near where most of the stuff I need is!

Table-saw pusher

I was watching you-tube videos and noticed someone using this type of pusher.  Then I realized I didn't have one like this, so I made one out of some of the scrap locust.  I just eyeballed the design - sketched it onto piece of wood and then traced the handle from a hand-plane.   Then I used the little band-saw to cut it out.  I used the big belt sander to smooth most of the edges and the little belt sander to get into inside curves.  I discovered I needed some new sandpaper for the little belt sander!  I ordered some more from ebay as well as a new small belt sander!

I think it turned out pretty nice for about 30 mins of work!

More plane-blade sharpening

I continued to put my new wide blade tool to good use sharpening the wide hand-plane blades.  It takes a long time - so much more metal on these big blades!  I really like the new sharpening jig though.  I also attached the honing wheel and polished up the blade to razor sharp!

I also read about how far back to put the chip-breaker on this type of plane.  Basically, if you want big chips, pull the chip breaker far back.  If you want fine chips (ribbon thin) put the chip breaker about half a mm from the edge of the blade.  The chip breaker itself should have a clean edge - maybe run it through sharpening process to be sure (don't sharpen so much as put a clean edge on it!)

I put the micro-bevel on using the finest grit wheel that I have (I think its 3000).  Then polished it with green chromium polish on a leather wheel.  Mirror finish!

Amaryllis still going crazy!

These flowers are doing great things this year!  Beautiful!

General Spring stuff

I got my riding mower back from the shop

It looks great and actually can move up hills now!  I mowed some of the field grass around where I planted some of the trees, the ginkgo biloba mostly - some of the black walnuts.  Seems in good shape!

Water tanks filled

I got around to filling the new water tanks this weekend.  Since the spring rains have produced an enormous amount of running water in the streams, filling the tanks was easy!  Using the small sump pump that I have it took over an hour, maybe even 2 hours, to fill each tank!  I initially tried moving the tanks close to the stream. However, I wanted to fill them to the maximum level and if I did that I wouldn't be able to move them with my tractor forks.  So I got a garden hose out and just pumped the water to the tanks in place.

I gave up on this approach.  A full tank of 300 gallons of water would weigh more than the tractor forks can move!

The pump at work.

I placed the tanks along the driveway to the barn with their outlets facing the road.  I plan to get enough hose to reach the gardens and orchards.  They are higher than the gardens, I'm not sure about the orchards.  I can always pump the water out though.

I filled them to the top!

Dollar General, coming soon!

I saw this sign (and a bunch of construction) right next to the Twist and Shake (the local ice cream stand).  Seems like a unlikely place for one, but then again, they seem to be cheap to run.

Amaryllis in bloom!

They are really going at it this year!  I don;t know why, but they have been blooming so well since we brought them up here.  Maybe they get better light?

Wood wood-plane cleanup-restoration

I cleaned and applied some danish oil to the wood plane bodies.  I removed the blades and started sharpening them.  The blades are HUGE - too big for worksharp tool sharpener!  I ordered a special attachment to allow me to sharpen these blades with the worksharp, but it wont be in until next week.

Making some stakes for the tree cages

I found that I am almost out of wood stakes to use to secure the tree cages.  I will need to make a lot of cages for my trees since the deer are so out-of-control here.  I looked around the sawmill for scrap pieces of wood that I could mill into stakes.  I found some!  

Saw-mill, up and running!

I needed more stakes (I couldn't find enough scrap wood), and I need to mill up my old logs before they rot entirely!  So I started milling up some logs!

A few of the logs I need to mill!  Some of these were cut in 2013!  They really need to be milled before they get totally rotted out and/or worm eaten.

Squaring off a "cant" for further milling.

Some of these are good enough to get some posts out of too!  I am surprised.  They will need to be treated though.  I need to order some more copper naphthalate.

I even got a few boards off of this log! (just the 4 boards on top)

These boards are useless for various reasons, but they can be turned into some useful stakes!