Cold weather is here!

Beautiful sunrises this time of year!

A brief "scare" regarding my tractor

I went out to the garage late Friday and decided to get the tractor ready for work on Saturday.  I started the tractor and moved it out of the way so that I could get to the forks that where sitting under the front loader bucket.  I removed the lumber I had stacked on the forks and went back to start the tractor so that I could install the forks.  Well, the tractor wouldn't start!!  It cranked, but no start!  I mean I was flabbergasted.  I had just run the thing no longer than 10 mins prior, what the hell!?

At first I thought maybe it was out of fuel and that I had introduced air into the lines.  Running a diesel dry is a big no-no - it can really be hard to start after that and you may even have to bleed the air out of the injector lines (each line!)  I went through this with the backhoe and it took me almost half a day to get it running again!  So anyway, Friday evening we went to the local gas station/local store and I filled up all my fuel tanks (10 gal deisel and 15 gal gasoline).  Got home and fueled up the tractor.  Still no-go!  Well, I ran down the battery good so I placed a battery charger on the tractor and called it a night.

The next morning I still couldn't start it!  At this point I am convinced that air was in the lines and proceeded to go through the fuel lines and try to bleed it out.  Every step of the way though I found that the lines had no air!  Solid fuel right into the injectors! At this point I decide to read the owners/service manual to get some ideas as to what I should do (I had pulled it out earlier to see where the fuel line was).   As I looked through the manual I stumbled onto some of the electrical system schematics at which point a thought occurred to me - maybe the wires to the seat-safety switch were damaged?  I went out and found and examined the wires to the switch and sure enough they were severed!  I bypassed the switch, shorted the wires together and tried to start the tractor - VROOM!  It works!  Whew!  I was back in business and I hadn't wasted too much time on it.

More sawmill work

With the tractor working again I was able to put the forks on and move some tree trunks from my stock pile over to the mill.  First I loaded up a junk piece of oak. Low-and-behold I was able to get a decent length of 5x5 post out of it (and some chip-wood)!  Then I loaded a much junkier piece of oak which did indeed turn entirely into chip-wood.  Then a very long piece of oak from which I got about a 17 foot 4x4 (and a bunch of chip-wood).

My trusty woodmizer LT15 still running strong!  I literally have done nothing in the way of maintenance so far (besides keeping the fuel and water filled and changing out the blades when dull)

Its hard to see clearly - but there is a LONG 4x4 laying on top of that pile!

Can see one end of it here...  I don't know what I need this for, but I NEED it!

Here is the end from a different perspective.  You can see the new 5x5 (hmm - maybe its a 6x6?) to its left.

I also milled up some maple this weekend too.  I think just 2 logs.  I got a good amount of lumber out of them, considering there shape (both were not really good lumber logs).  They weren't figure wood though.  Just plain maple.  I figure it might be useful to make a workbench surface?  

Most of the boards are about 8 inches wide by 5/4.  I am not sure of length.  10 feet maybe?  Maybe longer.

I stickered the big boards but didn't do the little ones on top.  The little ones on top are from a different log and are thinner)

Different perspective on the maple.  The pile on the far right is also maple.  The pile in the distant right is walnut.

Maple pile stickered.  Walnut "ends" in the dirt there.

These walnut end pieces actually look better than I originally thought.

Lots of sawdust!  i might put some of this on the blackberries?  Or maybe on the strawberries? Blueberries?

This is the chip pile at the end of the weekend.  I put 8 loader scoops full on the sour cherry trees.  I want to put this on the "new" sour cherries and the hazelnuts as well.  Lots of wood to chip yet...

These slab boards are too wide to put through the chipper.  I have a carbide bandsaw blade on order that I will try to use to cut these into smaller widths for chipping.

Still quite a few logs here to mill!  The pile near the house is almost gone though!  Lots of fire wood near the house though - thinking of making a lathe attachment for the sawmill so I can maybe make posts out of the smaller logs.

Here is where I put the woods chips this time.  These are the older sour cherry trees.  I want to place some chips around the dwarf cherry and the new sour cherry trees as well.  

I am not putting chips on the sweet cherry trees (4 of them on the left of the sour cherry trees).  Currently I plan on moving the sweet cherry trees out of fear that their roots are growing into the septic drain field.

Last of the garden

It got very cold (24F) overnight and I think it finished off the plants in the garden.  Even the Kale and Brussel sprouts have a limit to how cold they can take.   Although they might survive this cold, they are not going to be producing anything soon!

Kale is all sad now. :(

I harvested what I thought looked good.

I also grabbed the last of the red sprouts.  They are real small.  I don't know if I can use them or not.

I figure its worth a try!

A heap of kale!  I blanched them and then braised with onion and sweet italian sausage and even used some of my homemade canned chicken broth from last year.   Very tasty!

Here is a better picture from just before I cooked them.  blanched them and then roasted them - delicious!

Wood milling and more cleanup

Fall allergies have me in their grasp.  Very tired and headache most of the time.  None-the-less, I decided to continue on with the wood processing work because I need more wood chips and the logs are looking too far gone to last another season!

Friday afternoon I grabbed a couple of the old maple logs from next to the garage.  They were pretty wet from the passing storm (Hurricane Patricia remnants had moved through here a day or two ago and put down 1 7/10th inches of rain).  I was hard pressed to get any decent wood out of them, but as I was cutting the junk wood into strips to chip I kept binding the damn sawmill blade!  Its very dangerous to cut strips like that on the mill so I finally got pissed off enough and grabbed all of the pieces I wanted to turn into chips and took them over to the shop and used the big re-saw bandsaw to cut them into strips safely!

The re-saw bandsaw re-positioned in the shop doorway.

I had to move that pile of maple there on the floor to get the saw into position.  I cleaned up a lot of the bark off of that wood too.

 Most of the maple slabs I had were converted to chipping material, as planned.  But, there was a couple of pieces that caught my eye.  They had some decent wood and had some pretty figure properties, so I decided I would save these for later.  Maybe use them for accents or something?  Here are a few pictures:

A knot that I saved

Nice Spalting on this maple piece

Neat spalted pattern here

More spalted maple.

Anyway, after saving some of this nice figure wood I chipped the rest of the maple log and a smaller oak log (that I did slice up on the mill - it was still dangerous, but it was better then cutting the strips out of the thin boards).

The next day I decided to move the milled wood piles that I had been storing out in the lawn back into the barn.  So I grabbed a bunch of old locust fence posts (they were pulled posts - already too far gone to be useful for even fence posts - I had them in a pile marked for chipping) and used these posts as "sleepers" on the floor of the barn.  Then I took as many of the oak 2x4's, 4x4's and even 5x5's as I had and laid them out crosswise on those locust sleepers.

Then I started moving and stacking the lumber I milled earlier this year, stickering as I went.

Those two cants in the center there are HEAVY.  I am using them to weight down the pile/  That's a 8x8 by 12 ft on the left and a 6x6 by 14 ft on the right.  Both oak.

This is it!  All of the wood i have milled so far.  Well, minus what I used for the grape arbor and woodshed.

I had a half a day interruption by my neighbors.  They came over to get the slab wood that I had stacked off on the side of the barn (and woodshed).  Initially I had planned to use that wood for firewood, but then I realized how much firewood I have and decided I would instead use it for chipping.  However, chipping that stuff would require me cutting it into strips that would fit into the chipper.  A job I was not looking forward to.  In the meantime one of my neighbors asked about getting those slabs and I decided that was a better use - lol.  So, Sunday morning I guided and helped them get the slabs and even the old rotting firewood pile that was by the garage!  I was very happy about that - that wood was going to be too far gone for even firewood in another season or two.  The guy who took the wood has an outdoor boiler that he uses this wood in and can burn almost any quality of wood - so this was perfect.  Here are some pictures of the nice cleanup they did:

Yep!  No more unsightly pile of slabs or partially collapsed pile of rotting firewood!  YAY!

A little dust and dirt left - but that will disappear.

There used to be a big pile of slabs here - ALL gone!

I was able to get one big old oak log milled Sunday afternoon,  I showed some of the wood from it in the pictures above on the stickered stack.  In fact, the 6x6 by 14 ft cant is from the log I milled Sunday.  The slabs and junk wood that were left over I chipped, along with some of those old locaust fence posts that fit in the chipper.

Still not enough to do all of the grapes and cherry trees yet.

But it is a bit bigger!

Here are the old locust fence posts that I have an eye toward chipping.  Some are too big, I will have to figure out what to do with those.  Wedge split them maybe? I don't want to put them on the mill because they have nails in them!

Also, I cleaned the sawdust out of the mill run and put it on the blueberries.  Now all the blueberries have sawdust around them!

There are already weeds coming through the sawdust I placed around the blueberries at the far end of this patch!  I might end up just putting sawdust over this whole area.  

Brussel Sprouts

I harvested more of the brussel sprouts.  They did get bigger, so not harvesting them all last time was the right call.  In fact, i didn't harvest all of the remaining sprouts this time either.  I am hopeful that I will get another couple of pints of sprouts this year.

They are in rough shape, but they are still producing!

Cleaned and blanched and ready to freeze.  I got 2 pints here.

Pumpkins

Oh, and I dried more pumpkins!  No pictures of that this time since all the pictures look the same!  I only did 5.5 trays - too lazy/tired.