gardening, self-sufficiency, homesteading, food preserves diary
Blog documenting progress in transforming new property (50 acres - mostly wooded) into garden-farmette . Trying to become more self-sufficient and more self-aware.
We got together on the 6th of January at Mom's house. Unfortunately, Connie, my sister, was unable to attend. She had come down with a bad cold and had to cancel at the last minute. The rest of us got together and had sauerkraut and pork. Lots of cookies too. Too many cookies. LOL. Ah well, its tough time of year to be on a diet! I was doing pretty good. I was down to 245 just the day before the party. That's 40 lbs down since October!
COLD
The weather is in it's 2nd week of single digit temperatures. The doors on the country house where actually sticking due to ice condensing between the doors and the frames! We had a dog-grooming scheduled for Saturday morning, but they rescheduled for the 13th due to the cold weather. I guess it was considered too dangerous for some of the pet-owners to get to the shop. I have been doing work in the shop as much as possible to avoid the biting cold winds.
Welding practice and Nutcracker build
Last week I was just running beads and welding silly stuff together to practice my MIG skills. That was ok, but it got boring, so I decided to see what I could find on Instructables for small welding projects. Well, I stumbled on a nutcracker design that sparked an idea. I designed my own, similar to the one that was presented but using my old square shelving tubing (of which I have a LOT). I scrounged around a bit and found enough steel to give the build a try. I am winging a lot of it.
Since the walls of the tubing is thin, I decided not to drill holes into it, which would further weaken it.
Instead I welded the pins to the surface of the tubing.
I made tabs of steel and drilled holes through them and welded them to the sides of the tubing. These tabs are thicker than the tubing walls and provide a better bearing surface.
My welds are improving. Its still damn difficult to see the weld while its happening though. My breath fogs the helmet!
Oh. I got a new welding helmet too. Its auto-darkening, and unlike the old one, it seems to work more reliability.
I have a concern that maybe I didn't leave enough room between the hammer and the anvil to fit a nut in!
Here it is with the pusher rod attached and forward
And with the pusher rod pulled back.
I have 4 more tabs to cut and the main lever rod to put in place. I tried to get it done Sunday, but it was too damned cold to be outside for long, so I decided to just wait. It's just for welding proactive anyway.
Post wood-treatment continues
I was only able to get another 2 posts done since we weren't there very long this weekend. I didn't even take the tractor over to get the remaining posts to saw to length. I did pull them out of the stacks though, They are ready to grab and saw when I get there this coming weekend.
Another post is in soaking. At these temperatures I think it takes longer to soak in! I let each post sit overnight when I first put them in. Then at least 4-6 hours when I flip it over. Sometimes overnight for the second side too.
Seven (7) posts done by the end of this weekend!
The variety of wood is quite apparent here!
The darker wood is red-oak. I am not sure what the lighter wood is - maybe basswood or poplar.
I pulled these seven (7) posts out of the lumber stacks to get ready to trim them to length. It was just too cold to go and trim them this weekend!
I still have two (2) posts already cut to length and ready to go yet anyway. There is also one soaking in the trough. So I have 17 posts. I need at most 13 for the fence, and 2 for arbor post replacements. I might replace other arbor posts though, since I am betting there are more that will rot off soon.
I have another 5 posts cut to length (I cut them to 98 inches long) and ready to soak. I counted the posts I have still in the pile and am pretty sure I have about 17 in total. There are 2 that are 4.5x4.5 inches, I will probably use these as the arbor posts. I am considering using 3 posts per corner of the grape fenced region. I will need one (or two) for the gate. So I will need 17 JUST for the fence! I need 2 more 5x5s. I might actually have them in the barn. I have to look over the lumber stacks.
4 posts done! 5th one is in the trough soaking. Interesting how the color varies depending on the type of wood. I think I have basswood, red oak, and white oak here.
Considering how much I splash out, I am glad that I decided to do the soaking out in the barn and not in my shop!
This all amounted to almost 3 lbs of leather - 2 lb 10 oz. Not bad. Space saving is remarkable! This is equivalent to about 8 quarts of applesauce, or about 1/2 bushel of apples!
Chemical treatment trough
I desire to do a really good job at treating this wood so as not to have to replace these posts very soon. Therefore, I decided that instead of painting the CuNap solution onto the wood posts, I would instead soak the posts. I used some of the scrap lumber to make a wooden trough which I then lined with heavy PVC sheeting. I used hot glue to attach the PVC to the wood.
I dry-fit a post inside to be sure that there was clearance. I used some old antenna wire to raise and lower the post in the trough.
The trough is about 100 inches long (needed it to accommodate an 8 ft tall post). The height of the walls and the distance between the walls is about 6 inches to allow room for a 5x5 inch post.
This shows a bit of the process I used to place a post into the trough. I first move the post onto a couple of strips above the trough to align it with the trough. Then i place the wires around the post. After that, I go to one end and lift the wire and the post, then remove the wood strip and lower the post. I repeat for the other end. Then I add the chemical solution to fill the trough.
I bought 5 gallons of the cuNap (88%) chemical from Poles, Inc.
In the cold, this stuff flows like molasses! What a mess! I mixed 1/2 gal of this compound with 4 gallons of diesel fuel to make the treatment solution.
We had purchased some eating apples from costco that tasted like crap, so I decided to use them instead to make some apple leather. The idea was to mix the new apples with some of the old canned applesauce that I had up at the farm. I really like fruit leather in that it is convenient to take as a snack to work and greatly shrinks the space needed to preserve the fruit.
I did a number of estimates to get an idea of the caloric value of apple leather. My best estimate is about 83 Cal/oz. This is a bit higher than what is referenced in some databases. I am considering mixing the apples with pumpkin or squash to lower the calorie count but keep the flavor non-squashy!
Here are some pictures of the apple-leather process.
This leather took a while to dry. I set it to 125F for 23 hours. I think I added some time though.
I read this label and realized that the canned applesauce from 2014 had a batch that I had burned! We will see how this turns out! Hopefully it won't be too bad. Mising weird tasting new apples with burned applesauce. Yeah, that sounds promising!
More hickory shelling
I worked on shelling more hickory nuts while the apple-leather dehydrated.
Well, it warmed up today so I went out to scout around a bit. Look what I found pon the back pf the garage! Ugh. I wonder if this is where the European Hornets are staying? I am not going to check while its this warm!
Water tanks thawed!
At least enough to drain them, and that's all I need! Yayyy!
