Xmas over-view

Lots of stuff - too busy to post!

here is just a bunch of pictures.

This is how I brought it home!

Its off the trailer now.  I had to put the flail mower on the tractor because the sawmill package weighed to much and threatened to tip the tractor!

Sawmill on the ground and out of the rain

Unwrapped

Sawmill head removed from packaging

Sawmill rails laid out.

Sawmill rails leveled and aligned (this took about a day and a half!)

Sawmill head placed on the rails!  Whew.  Nervewracking

First cut!

Root beer ready!  A short break

Its very fizzy, but the flavor isn't what I remember.  

Milling a long ash log (I think)

5 inch cant

Got some nice boards - 16 foot, if I recall

Can make some really thin boards on this mill!

Ahh, there's stress in this cant!  Look at how it bows!

Moving a big piece of maple to the mill.

This one is close tot he tipping point of the tractor even with the flail mower on the back!

I found this hayloft door that I think could be useful for ventilation 

Marked off my planned woodshed.

Used the auger to dig some holes for the poles for the woodshed

Here are the poles

Made some "E2"  - added water tot he elderberry pulp left from the earlier jelly making and got enough good juice to the make these 7 half-pints of "E2" jelly.  This stuff is actually pretty good!

I debarked the poles and put them up to paint them with my copper napthenate

9% copper napthenate

After "painting" with 2 coats.

Connected the 2 sides of the canning shelves.  

Ready to cut the actual shelving boards.

Poles are dry and ready to plant

The poles are aligned using the boards

Poles are backfilled.  Ready for the next step!

Bandsaw mill and elderberry jelly

I went over to the woodmizer outlet in Shade Gap this morning.   Talked with them quite a bit and am pretty much sold on the Woodmizer LT15.  I watch the guy demo it.  It sawed through oak like nothing!  Was very fast, although it was freshly harvested.  They did say that some people do she their lumber before sawing.  Up to a year.   So maybe my logs are OK?   I should get some useful lumber out of them anyway.

I did up the last of frozen berries tonight.  Elderberry!   I got 5 cups of juice from which I made 9 half-pints of jelly. I will boil the pulp and get the 2nd juice tomorrow. I'll probably just freeze it for later. Or maybe make elderberry soda? Hmmm

Pumpkin leather

I pulled the pumpkin leather out of the drier and wrapped it up.  I got 9 nice little rolls!  I also took the dehydrated pumpkin out and powdered it as best I could.  This was the cooked pumpkin leftover from making the leather and it had some oil in it from the baking pan.  I am keeping it in a separate jar from the other dehydrated pumpkin. 

More sawmill and jelly

Woodshed

I decided to build a small woodshed to store the firewood currently in my shop.   I have about 3 cords of fire wood in the shop and I want that space!   Anyway, I  will be building a polebarn type frame and need 6 poles.  So I searched my lumber pile and found 4 poles that are about the right size around and long  (9-10ft).  I have a number of long poles that are larger diameter, so I took one of those and used the chainsaw-mill to cut it in half.  I  still need to clean the bark off these poles before I can place them in the ground.

Making jelly from frozen berries

I finally got some time to make jelly from all of the frozen berries in my freezer!  I started with the raspberries and blackberries (they are all mixed up - so I just made a mixed jelly!)  Here is the "jam" that I made - this stuff is GREAT!

Yeah, there is more than one canner load shown here.  Was dicey, but I made one batch of jelly and did 2 canner loads from it!  Not normally advised, but this jam was very forgiving.

I made 6 pints and 12 half-pints!  

Weekend before xmas

Chain-sawmill

I finally got to do some milling with my chainsaw!  I really want to get a bandsaw-sawmill, but for now this will do.  I sawed 5 boards out of a piece of the maple I cut down last year.  I adjusted the mill to give me 1.25" boards - approx.   I used the rip-chain on the Stihl saw.  Worked well, although it can be a bit tedious and frankly holding the chainsaw throttle open would surely limit how much of this a guy could take! 

This shows where the log I sawed up used to be - LOL!  You can see the ended slabs from the log.

5 1.25" boards. Well, actually, just 4 1.25" boards and one just under an inch.

It's a bit rough - I am not sure if this is a normal finish on a chain-sawmilled board. These will have to be planed.  They should turn out nice

The rip-chain makes quite a bit finer sawdust then the regular chain.

More fermented soda

I left my champagne yeast and the filler tube stuff down in the city, but I none-the-less was able to bottle 2 bottles of root-beer and 2 of orange.  I used the Montrachet yeast - I hope it doesn't cause problems!

 

Pyracantha Jelly

I got the pyracantha (and all of the other berries) out of the freezer so that I could make jellies this weekend.  I started with the pyracantha since this is something I have no experience with.  I looked at a bunch of recipes I found for it on the web and finally settled on this one.  One thing I noticed was that many of the recipes added a lot of water to the berries to extract their juices.    Many of the recipes use only a very small amount for the berries and stressed not pressing the berries.  I also noted that many recipes added grapefruit juice and one even noted that the firethorn berries taste is very subtle in the jelly and that the grapefruit can easily overwhelm it.  With that in mind, I opted for a recipe that used LOTS of berries!  Even so, I used 5lbs of berries with 5 C of water, boiled them for 20 minutes and then crushed them with a potato masher (off of the heat).  Then I put them in a jelly bag and squeezed out as much juice as I could without getting too annoyed.  I ended up with 5 C of juice.  Yep, 5 C - the same amount of water that I added!  But the juice was definitely not water, I could tell it actually had a good amount of pectin in it.  I added the lemon juice (3 tbsp) and pectin and 5 C of sugar (following the jelly prep directions, of course).  I was barely able to get all the jelly in the jars as it was setting fast!  I got 8 half-pint jars of jelly.  The taste is very mild - kind of floral, maybe a bit like a wildflower based honey.  It is pretty.  I honestly don't think I will make this again.

 

Pyracantha update:

OK - totally unexpected, this stuff did NOT set!  Still like a syrup in the jars!  I swear I was afraid it was going to set before I finished putting it in the jars!   What happened?  I will reprocess, but I am going to wait until this evening.  I should also note that I thought about reprocessing the apple jam I made early this year, but... I went to get it from storage and lo-and-behold, the stuff is now jelled!  So now I am wondering if this pyracantha stuff will jell after a week or so?  I read that some jellies, like pepper jellies, can take up to a week to jell.  Hmmm.  I am concerned that I may have a bad batch of pectin.  The last sure-jell pectin I bought was in a pack of 3 (I think).  The first I used from that pack was the apple jam.  The 2nd was this pyracantha.  Should I risk using the last pack?   

Pyracantha update 2:

I reprocessed the Pyracantha jelly.  I added a full package of the sure-jell pectin for sugar free use.  This time it set nicely.  I lost about 3/4 of a cup of jelly to processing.  Ended up with 7 half-pints.   Still tastes "blah".  There is no reason to make this again!