Gettysburg, backhoe, grape mulching and, leaf collection

Gettysburg

I headed straight from a business meeting in Gettysburg, PA (where I stayed in the very hotel Lincoln stayed in!) to the farm late Friday.

Starting and moving the backhoe

Well, I finally got up the nerve (and found the time) to move the backhoe!  I, of course, forgot which pedal moved it forward an reverse so I backed it into the back wall of the garage.  It pushed out a few screws but its basically still intact.  I don't think I will need to fix the problem.

A bit of a bulge!

Popped the head of a couple of the sheet metal screws holding the siding on the garage.

The pile of wood on the forks (left) is for the woodshed door (or wall, depending on what I decide) . That's all milled by me on my own mill from my own trees!

A couple of the stringers got dislocated, but the wall seems to be pretty strong yet.  Not going to mess with it now.

I moved the backhoe to the front of the shop - I had some old scrape wood from building the woodshed in its frontloader.

I moved the backhoe down in front of the shop.  I had stored some scrap wood leftover from building the woodshed in the frontloader of the backhoe.  The scrap was mostly too wide to put through the chipper, so  I used the upright bandsaw to cut it into manageable strips.  Then I used the chipper on the tractor to make some more wood chips.

Mulching the grape vines

I finally had enough wood chips to mulch the grapes!  I first weed whacked around the vines and then applied the mulch.  I was careful to make sure the wood chips weren't up against the vines themselves.  I put down a fair amount of chips around the vines, but I didn't want to put down so many as to get into the way of the mower.  I think I chose a good amount.

I am hopeful that the wood chips will protect these little vines over the winter!  They are having a hard time thanks to the rust.  

It looks a bit better anyway!  

Leaf gathering

I fired up the husqvarna (just barely - it needed charging and some ether to start!) an got the leaf vacuum going.  I vacuumed up the entire "local" yard, around the paw-paw patch, the red-barn and the driveway and hazelnut area.  I didn't vacuum in the orchard, grape vines, and cherry trees; just wasn't enough leaves down there to bother.

I bent the frame of the vacuum bag trailer - I don't know when.  I think it was this year.  I had to dump the old sunflower seeds first.  

Front yard after vacuum

piling the leaves near the front gardens this time

You can see some of the frost in this picture.

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.