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!

Choke cherry and choke berry planting

Choke Cherries and choke berries

The ground was finally was dry enough (just barely) to plant the remaining trees from my Cold Stream Farm order.  30 Choke Cherries and 25 choke berries.  They get planted close together so they don't take up a lot of space like the other trees.  All of these pretty much fit into the old garden plot! Fortunately, these plants supposedly do well in wet soils, otherwise this would be a very bad place to plant them.    The evening of the day that I planted these it rained again and this area was back to being a big mud puddle!

At the end of the row on the right I extended the row to hold an extra 3 choke cherries and one leftover chokeberry

It was still damn muddy!  Water was standing at the bottom of some of the holes I dug for these trees

Transplanted some pine trees and some locust trees

I dug up some of the locust trees that volunteered in the front patch last year.  I moved them to fill in the 3rd (bottom) row along to steep hill where the other locust trees are.  I also replaced a few of the ones that died last year.  I didn't swap out any of the ones that the deer damaged. I am hoping that they recover on their own. The deer tore the tops clear out of some of them, but these are tough trees and the root system should be in good shape.  We will see.  I transplanted around 33 of these little guys.

Definitely  need to get more surveyor's flags!  These things will be hard (harder) to see when the grass kicks in!

These trees are really taking their time in growing.  I have some locust trees (in more hospitable areas) that have grown to almost 10 feet tall in the same period of time!

I dug these pine trees up from near my wood shed.  I think there are more here this year than last year!

Different varieties too.

Dead

A survivor!

Several of these died last year during the drought.

Deer trimmed this one pretty hard.  I hope it will grow ok.

I believe I took three bucket loads of transplants

I am planting some of these closer together.  They were plenty far apart.  I want to reforest this area since its so steep and otherwise unuseable.

I figure I put in at least 15 new pine trees and probably replaced 4 dead ones.  I really want to reforest that back hill.  It is so steep and rocky, I don't think I would have used to for pasture - I would be afraid the animals would hurt themselves on that slope!

Plane reconditioning continues

I unpacked all of my planes and ebay buys for some pictures.

My Wooden wood planes!  These have blades too wide to sharpen on my Worksharp machine I think

I don't think that any of these "extra" components that I bought will be useful 

My Adze!

I did start sharpening some of the blades for the "extras" and the small block planes.  I got about 5 done I think.  So far, the plane blades aren't as bad as the chisels were.  I am able to start with 120 grit (I ordered a bunch more 120 an 400).  Keeping the blades square in the sharpening jig is not as easy as I would like.  When making the micro bevels I have to be careful to get them even.