Category: Firewood Gathering

First Wood Collection of the Year

Things have been busy around here on the old farm lately. I have been doing some cleaning out in the yard to get ready for the season. I also got fed up with the grass at the front of the house, and how the land leans and keeps water too close, so I got into the tractor and sorted that out. Now there is no grass there, and a couple of old water troughs that leak set there as planters. I filled them up and will be putting in some flowers soon. I was ready to get at some work the day before yesterday when there came a knock on the front door.

The knock was the guy who owns the house just down the road from us. He lives in town and was having a tall pine tree taken down in his yard up there. He asked me if I wanted it. Well, that’s a silly question! I went up and spoke to the tree man and specified how I would like the wood cut up. Then I got the trailer the hay was on and took it up for pickup. Sadly, I did not have much luck getting the hay off the trailer in a neat and orderly fashion as I was not sure how long I had till the wood was ready to start piling on. So the hay ended up knocked over in the yard, and of course it rained since. So that’s a bit of a problem! But in the end, the gentleman who owns the tree decided to have a second, shorter tree taken down too. It was under a power line, so it was actually wider in the trunk than the tall one because it had been topped over the years.

So I have all that wood in the yard now. I am thinking I want to do the milling as soon as the ground is dry, then put on Anchor Seal to reduce cracking. That stuff has worked really well on the wood I milled last year. I think a couple of pieces will get milled into large blocks, and the long pieces will be milled into boards. I’ll have to see what the knots in the cant look like! The rounds and branches can be put into firwood, and some of the smaller branches want slicing into coasters and Christmas ornaments for the laser. Maybe there are a couple of signs hiding in there to be laser cut too. I’ll be keeping an eye out.

Spring Cleaning was begun this morning in the kitchen. Some sense and order is being applied to make things more serviceable in there. It was pretty bad. But we made good progress on it today till we wore out, and we will finish it tomorrow, I am sure.

Despite the warming weather, I see two frost days coming up this week. As that is the forecast, and it is always guessed at about two degrees warmer than we actually get in our specific location, I think there may be more. Missus has me warning her each night so she can do any quick saves required.

The kids attend school for four more weeks till they are set free for the summer. I am really looking forward to it! It will be nice to have them about, and to free up the schedule so I can start going out to get wood for the fire and for the mill. It is time for me to start drawing up plans for the woodshed. I have been thinking about it plenty, but I have not put pen to paper on the topic yet. I think I know what I will have to put in place, though it is not exactly what I want. But perhaps I can refigure as I recently found out I am allowed a larger build than I thought without a permit. So, there is that to look at first.

Well, it’s evening here now, and time to get settled and ready to rest for the fight of another day!

2024 Begins!

Happy New Year!

There are a lot of things to be done on the farm this year. There are a lot of personal things to sort out too! This Holiday Season is coming to an end for our household, and to be honest, while we really enjoyed the family time, our health in this house has been absolute rubbish. So, the first thing is to see about getting up and about and up to things. There have been good days and bad ones, and clearly, I am going to have to make some adjustments to deal with my changing age. But I have experimented, and I think I know what I need to do. But all of that is on the personal side. On the farm and professional side I will push forward with what we have spent the last few years setting up for, and get this place finished and operational. It’ll be a challenge, but meeting it will pay off, I think.

So, what’s the big plans?

We have got to get this farm running as a profitable farm of some sorts. The immediate thing to do is sell llama fiber, and to make plenty of firewood. There will be byproducts of all that, but on top of it, Missus will be opening her little shop soon for local buyers, and as a basis for her Etsy and online shop. We’ll mess around with products, but our goal is to make enough to get by on or better by making what we want from here on our place. It means to be home manufacturing at a higher level of quality than comes out of mass production. Face it, it is every homesteader’s goal. I will be getting things going at last on The Prospering Peasant, too. I already have the idea for the first proper post there, so check soon.

My projects on the farm will require a lot of work. I have cameras for some basic filming and hope to put some videos on YouTube showing those, and a bit of furniture making. Everything is dependent upon hos I get through this little health crisis I have been having this winter, of course. The arthritis inflammation can derail the whole thing. But I won’t before I get a chance to get started, so let’s take this as it comes. As far as the furniture making idea goes, even if poplar is the only wood I can get access to, building from solid poplar has got to be a step up from the rubbish sawdust wood that people get online. It’ll cost them more, and it will be painted because of it being poplar, but I plan on Milk Paint and the farmhouse style. And then there are wooden spoons and the like.

All of this can really get going come spring. I’ll do what I can in the shop in the cold, but again, arthritis. Meantime I have everything I need to get the candles going in the house. I have a couple of things to work out just before I get an Etsy shop going. There will be several beeswax-based products, including candles, tool-wax, and beeswax impregnated food wraps. The fabric is ready for cutting and dipping! As for the candles themselves, I am starting out with molded candles circa the Colonial American period. I’ll provide either cotton wick or hemp wick candles as requested. I have considered hand dipped candles and for some occasions I perhaps will, but if time is a constraint, those will be the first thing I’ll give up on.

I will also look to get my firewood piled up for the next two years so I can go a year in advance after that. Then I will try to do excess to sell. I’d be happy to do the same with the lumber I cut and don’t use once I am adequately stocked up in advance.

Projects that I need to do are a woodshed, a fuel shed, and it would be good to put the sawmill in something. Once those are done, I think making chickencoops would be a good side hustle. None of these things can happen in a vacuum. But also, again, arthritis. So let’s see how it goes.

Photography is a lifelong hobby of mine. I never quite made a business out of it. It has to be a part of this even if only for the purposes of listing things online. The photography is not to be trifled with. I intend to do that well.

So all this is what I have in mind for 2024. I will be happy if we can get by on our efforts. If we can do better than that, then I will be elated! Look for changes coming to my online presence soon. No more excuses. That is what I intend to be about this year. Life is slipping by too fast to mess about.

A Lovely October Day Working

It has been a day of work and family down on the farm today. Our second son came by and helped out with the wood again, and it was very welcome help, for sure! There was a distraction from getting started, and I should have seen to it before we walked out to the log pile and started the splitter.

First things first, I sent the kids off to school. After coming back from meeting the bus I back dragged the driveway where there is a bit of mud in a couple of places. Always good to have a flat drive, and the weather promises to be in the 60’s and 70’s this week.

The distraction was the cardboard in the trailer. I suggested we could either throw it out on the ground temporarily, or we could go up to his place and get all his cardboard, take it all to the recycling bin, then come back with an empty trailer and get started on the wood. He took that option. When we got to the bin with all the cardboard a whole heap of wasps started circling one of the big boxes from his house and confused us because he has kept is cardboard inside, and it has not been there that long. Made no sense that wasps would build a house so quickly this late in the year. I grabbed the box and tossed it in the bin, nonetheless. It was only then that I realized we would be stopping into the salvage yard next door to drop off the broken microwave that I had dumped in the trailer at the very beginning of loading it a week or so ago.

At the salvage yard the guys there were friendly and helpful as always. When asked if we wanted it weighed, I passed as it was not going to net enough to walk in and collect on. There is only so much worth actually dealing with.

We came back to the house, and I took the trailer with the tractor to the back and set it down next to the end of the log splitter. Then I began the job of picking up the wood with the tractor to set it on the log splitter, rather than lifting it all by hand and back. Most importantly by back! I lift it all in the bucket and then use the bottom of the bucket as a table even to the table height of the splitter.

Son kept his self busy splitting as fast as he could, and tossing the readied logs into the trailer to carry around to the log bunk all in one go.

When it got close to time for him to want to leave to get ready to pick his son up from school I suggested we stop a little early so he could go visit with his mom a bit first, rather than run in, run out, and go. He wanted to do that rather than get in trouble with her.

After it all, I rested a spell as I was still tired from all the work. Happily, I was muscle tired, and the bones are well today. I Am thrilled about that! I got the girls from the bus stop, ate supper, then took a nap.

The evening found me putting water out for some animals that had run low, and getting a couple of huge logs from the front of the service yard, as I might was well get them processed and burned so I can clear up the service yard. It is getting to be a mess in there, and it really doesn’t need to be. Far from!

It’s 8:00PM now, and about time to start looking forward to bed. I need to get ready to do more wood processing tomorrow, and hopefully even get some boards sorted out for the long ends of the rabbit hutches. I have the water carrier ready out front so I can go fill up some more animal troughs. I suspect there are a couple who could use a top up. I am also informed that we are down to one gallon of milk in the house, and that the whole corn in the feed bin is about gone. There are two more jobs to get at as soon as I can.

So that’s it for today. Time for this old man to go wind up his day before bed.

1 October, 2023

Last week there was very little firewood in the bunk to begin with. I now have it a quarter full and have a little saga to tell about. The logsplitter was doing pretty good handling the wood I had out there, it’s little Honda motor whirring away, giving me confidence in the machine. But somehow the little lever that stops the hydraulic system in lieu of a detent got caught up, and bent. When I noticed it, I tried to straighten it back out, but while I could get it horizontal, it was still bent latterally, and caught on the end of the hydraulic cylendar on the next return, and apparently caught the seal on it. I did not see it do that specifically, but on the next run it popped the cylendar, and dropped hydraulic fluid all on the ground.

Well, needless to say, this was very unexpected, and it is a repair that is above my pay grade. I might be able to pull it off by replacing the clip/seal, or even the whole cylendar, but it is not something I felt I had time to learn how to do. So I got a new logsplitter whithin two hours or so, and had it up and running right away.

The new logsplitter is rated at 37 tons, the highest I have owned yet, though none of mine have ever been below 32 tons. It has features that I am not super happy with, especially the track the maul rides in. I was loving the fact the now broken one clasped the rail and did not collect debris. I am back to cleaning out debris, and especially watching that the logs don’t get caught between the track and the sides of the maul. That is a great way to slowly break apart the welds on the beam and caust the thing to fail.

Today is Sunday, and that is different. I am taking it off to relax. My muscles have gotten sore this week, but that is because for the first time in such a long time, my bones are not in pain! I have felt what I think most people feel as normal. My muscles can’t keep up because the work I have done has always been limited by the tolerance I have had in my bones. I could only ever do so much before it hurt too much to continue. I have felt well for the last couple of weeks, and before that I cannot remember the last time I was not in pain. I mean, I think there was a time back in 2005.

It’s a bit rainy today with tomorrow and the next day forecast for more. The temperatures will be dropping to just above fire lighting cold. I tell you, I could do with this being our year-round affair. Some rain, some sun, and temps that are okay to work in. Suites me right down to the ground.

It’s the first day of October. By the end we will undoubtedly have snow visiting on the ground readying for a winter-long home. That’s how it goes around here. It turns white by December, and it stays so till mud season… I mean, “spring.”

Snow on the Mountains! Peachick!

I am sat down with a hot cappucino at hand and lip, and am reflecting on the day I had today. It was a good one! I have nothing to complain about. But there are comments.

First, I managed to keep the snooze button on any anxieties pressed till 6:00AM, then got up and got a good start after getting well rested. That made a nice change from the normal routine I follow! Then I took the girls to their school bust stop. After I came back, I got ready to face the day in the firewood yard down at the dump in the city. It was sprinkling a bit before I left, and on the way down that picked up to a decent rain. Breakfast at McDonald’s did not give it enough time to clear, and before I knew it, I had my snacks and drinks picked up and was sat in the woodyard, dreaming of those sunny summer days. Well, let’s be fair! I hate those sunny summer days for their heat, so I got out and got to it.

The first two logs I picked up were of a yellowish wood with white bark, and a decent smell of honey. I cannot identify it for sure, so I won’t try to say. I also got some willow, I think. It had the right type of bark and white wood, but there were no sprouts of any kind, so it may have been different. After loading some 3,000 pounds of wood I decided that was enough for the day and took off. I was not too sure of the weight till I hit the scales on the way out, so I decided to leave before I overloaded the trailer. Turned out I had a bit of room to spare. Not much, but some!

While loading wood I tried out the little device I made to fit over the top of the trailer’s front, top rail, and has a hook under it to hold the snatch block that the winch rope goes through. I built it because the chain never stays in the right position. This device worked perfectly, and made the whole job a lot easier because I was nto spending so much time preventing the rope from dragging through the second rail. That wears the rope severely. I have already broke one.

Happy with my device, and with my wood haul for today, I came home to help Missus with several things she had going on, then unloaded the trailer. That is a process that does not go perfectly, and I am still working out some kinks, especially to do with getting the log tongs to grab hold and let go when I want them to, as they are not mechanically driven.

I helped with a couple of short jobs while Missus was making a shepherd’s pie for supper, then went and got the girls from their bus stop. It was on the way there that I noticed that there was snow on the mountains! This is the first I have seen any for this year, and it sure made me want to go get more wood and get it all cut and split!

After a lovely meal, I went out to feed the chickens that I remembered were out of food. That’s when I found that another peachick has hatched, and the poor bird was getting tumbled by the chickens. I grabbed it up right away, and brought it in to Missus, as the peafowl are her project. It is now sat across the room from me under a heat lamp in a wash tub with a bit of wire mesh over top of it. It sure is noisey, and I think, quite healthy. We did not have luck with the lest couple that had hatched, so we are really hoping and trying to get this one off to a good start.

Now it is about an hour till bedtime, and I still have to get the rubbish out to the curb for pick-up tomorrow. Apart from that, I would like to relax a spell. It has been a busy, and really quite exciting day!

Worked on the Trailer Today

It’s meant to rain tomorrow and Monday. It would interfere with work on the trailer, so we got up and got at it today. My main focus was to build on the backing and top of the shelf Missus is using to set the checkout on. I wanted ti to come out pretty good, so I gave it a bit of effort to give it a decent finish. Missus wanted the end that sticks out towards where a customer would come in to be rounded to reduce chances of injury, so I did that. It was a nice challenge for me as I was using a saw that makes straight cuts. (Resaw blade on the bandsaw; some rounding mut not much.) Then I gave it the correct finish with a handplane and finally 120 and 320 grit sandpapers. It came out right.

That’s bee most of my day today. Not the rounded pine board worktop, but the whole shelves to cabinet and then worktop thing. I did mow quite a bit of the grass this morning, and I cleaned up where the memorial garden used to be. It is set in a wagon made from a likely pre 1920’s truck frame converted to hay wagon which has since fallen to disrepair. The earth under the wagon had become hilly and impossible to mow, so I leveled that off with the tractor and made it so the grass there should recover fast, and the area be easy to manage.

Our weather forcast for today topped out at 81F, and over the next ten days it is not forcast to get higher than that. We are genuinely in get things done season! At least for a bit! Cooler outside, cooler inside! So if it rains, I can always go work on the den and get it ready for the cool season, and to do some candle-making and hopefully get started on some leather work, too. I would like to spend the winter doing those things where I have ready access to plenty of heat! The shop is hopeless, and will get too cold to work in for several months.

Finally, it is September now. The summer will end in just over two weeks. I gathered firewood yesterday and the day before. Well, some of it was for the saw. But I always have scraps to burn from that, as I cut off generous slabs to get right down to the lumber and make sure I have good pieces to add to the cordage. What’s more, I always grab a few rounds to top the trailer off and come home with something to split, too. Even when I am gathering primarily for the mill. With the weather cooler, now is the time to get all the last of the wood gathered and split, and some for next year too, if I have it in me to do it, and there is time. I have a yard to clean before the snow falls, and I have a lot of jobs to get done. I won’t list them, just say when I have done them.

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I got the truck ready last night to go down and get a load of firewood, so I could get up, drop the girls off with the school bus, and head right down to town this morning. As I tooled down the highway, I realized that this was the first time I have taken the trailer out since putting a sign on it with the web address to this site on it. “The Peasan’t Manor Farm .com” is more or less how it reads. I was just a little nervous about announcing myself in public like that! There is still a little shyness in me.

After collecting most of the logs I found suitable for splitting and burning, I went up in the the wood collection place thinking of seeing if anyone else in there wanted some help loading their trucks. After all, with my winch set-up on the truck and trailer, I still had some energy and and was not sore, so I wanted to go help someone else out. I got up near a guy and his wife that had pulled in, and he walked towards me with a smile and said, “I know you!” I mused for a second to think where I might have met him, but nothing sprang to mind. Then he continued, “Well, I don’t know you know you, but I have read your blog. You have that little place out in Fairview?”

He was right and I very was surprised! Well, without giving out too much for the sake of his privacy, it was good to meet you and your Missus today, Mr. H!

We had a good chat, and I was happily surprised to realize he was wearing a hat with Vandenburg AFB and a little picture of the Space Shuttle on it. I spent a bit of time out that way myself as a local resident when I was younger, so that was a fun conversation topic.

When I got home, I was very happy to see Missus and our No. 2 had got her windmill together and it was stood up in her herb garden. I had a little break then got the trailer off the truck and pulled it to the back with the tractor and unloaded it. Two of the pieces were short enough to split, so I got at it, and found they were likely maple, so that was pretty exciting. There were a fair few ants on them, so I loaded them in the tractor bucket and took them around to the shop to spray them lightly. I have them still there, and if the wood looks clear tomorrow, I will put it in the wood pile for winter.

Today was a great day, from meeting people to just plain tolerable temperatures. I got some stuff done, and I had a relaxing afternoon. Supper was a spicy shrimp curry! Mr. H asked about what I am doing on the lathe lately, and I am thinking I need to do an update on everything soon. The simplest answer though is that it has been a hot summer and I have honestly had to avoid the hot places to keep conscious. The temperatures are breaking in the forecast though, and I expect to get more done now. I am about to nod off to bed, and I smell rain. Roll on September!

Do I Need to Tell You?

It is hot! Summer weather gets a bit unbearable at this time of year. I think there are places where the temperatures have exceeded their normal range by a bit, and records have been set. Our highs have been a bit more in line with the norms of the past decade, though I have not looked in the records to compare. It seems like fairly normal hot weather. So why would I be moaning about it then? I suspect that it is because summers in say, southern Nevada, get hotter, but winters stay much warmer. If the lows barely break into the freezing range, compare that to our winter low of -21F this year. Our total range has been closer to 120 degrees F in total. I am not speaking for anywhere else, so much as just saying that the reason I am feeling overheated may be because of the severity of our temperature swings throughout the year.

This coming week we have a lot of work to get done! The weather will give us a break, and it should be much more bearable for a bit, so we will be taking advantage. We have really got to get a few last pushes through in order to get our home-based businesses started. We have things to organize, and we have some cleaning to do. IT is time to see about things like windows on the house, too. I have a bit of work to do around the old chimney to try to prevent a leak where it meets the roof. I hope to see a man come by to offer a price on getting our septic redone, so we can get the yard into a state we can live with. There are many projects to get done!

My personal push needs to be to get the shop in a working state, with all the workbenches cleared off, and the tools organized and put in places. I have the likely last of any major purchases on order now. It is a set of blades for my plough plane. I’d like to do more than just build, though some of the blades will help with that, but also be a bit decorative, which some of the other blades will accomplish.

About that firewood…

I have a happy setup established with the trailer, a winch, and the tools required to bring home logs just shy of ten feet long. Those are great for the mill, and produce some scraps for the firewood pile. I also need to get some proper splitting rounds to add to the firewood pile. It has taken longer than I hoped to get the collection tools gathered and working properly, and while I can work in the mornings when it is still cool, it heats up quick and puts a damper on getting the job done in a day from collection to putting everything where it belongs here ready to process. It is best for me if I can do that. Hopefully a little break in the temperatures will turn into a long break, and I can get down to get more wood soon. It is always one of the things that is hard to get my head around; going out in such heat to get firewood! One has to keep in mind just how cold it really gets here in the winter!

It is getting pretty close to time to eat! I am off to have a lovely Friday evening and enjoy the company of family before we spend our last weekend as people who are not in a hurry running our own businesses.

End of February Update.

It is definitely still winter here at the farm. We have good chances of snow for most of the coming week. Looks from the weather radar that whatever does come will likely have to form, as nothing closer to the west coast seems to be heading our way. It was warm today, though! We got up to 38F according to our weather station.

The SDR Radio I got the other day worked as expected. I got it running that day and played around with it, then delivered the second one to the desktop computer upstairs but did not yet set that one up. It’s fascinating how it can read or see the whole spectrum, and portions of it visible at once to tell where different signals are and have a hint to what kind they are. FM Radio signals are amazing, especially where they have digital encoding on both sides of the frequency. Even stations without that digital encoding are amazingly powerful compared to the rest of the spectrum. I will have to work on reception and an improved arial.

The tractor reached 200 hours yesterday. That’s just shy of five months! I cannot believe we are coming up to five months of ownership already! It still seems new to me. Most of its work here has bene snow clearing, but as soon as the weather breaks to spring, I think it will see a total shift! I may move big snow piles into the orchard just to get the trees started for the year. I may have to move a lot of hay off the garden and start it for tilling. I want that space tilled four or more times prior to planting in May and June. There will be post holes to dig, too. I am going to have to reset some fencing and clear some old areas out. Then there is the firewood. I don’t expect to muck about with that this year, since I want to be two years stored by autumn, and since I want to have a load of wood to work with. I hope to see this whole area of my chores severely altered to what it has been in previous years.

I got the second GoPro camera that I have been thinking about. If I am going to do a YouTube channel, then this setup I have is good enough to do it with. I would benefit from a lavalier mic, but I have a separate sound recorder that can also do the trick for now. I’ll have to give it a try. I am having a card reader delivered so I can put one on my laptop and one on my desktop to unload videos and edit. I have tried out the GoPro cloud, and I am not terribly thrilled with any of it, apart from the discount they offer to users while shopping. I’d rather keep the filed local, I think. Then I’ll only upload final cuts to the Internet. I have yet to see any real advantage apart from having apparently all the space I need to keep every crap video file I make. That may turn out to be the seeds of a problem. But who knows? Maybe in the next few weeks I’ll get a video created and uploaded to the channel again.

Mondy is anticipated to be the day we have our deli slicer delivered. I have been wanting a proper one for many years now, and we have what appears to be a decent one on the way. It is a Berkel 300 Redline. I am a little worried about it after seeing the shipping details. For whatever reason, it is listed with a shipping weight of 122 pounds. I am having trouble believing that, but I worry that I believe wrong. I guess we’ll see what it is like when it gets here. But honesty, how can a home line slicer weight so much? Maybe they packed it in a wooden crate?

I have very few hand tools left in my wish list now. A shipment arrives also on Monday. It is just a few things, and while there are a couple more planes to be desired, I think I have enough to get a real start in my workshop. Spring will give us access to the barn for cleanup, and to rearrange our storage. I have a permanent wall to fix into the old garage door of my shop. That wall wants a window built into it for some heat and light. Missus has a kiln on order that also wants a home in the shop.

So, a lot is going on this year. I think we will be able to reach closer than ever to self-sufficiency. I have always said that it is a very expensive state to reach. On the upside, I am where I can start building some of the remaining tools I need. I am even considering building my own travishers. I’ll still have to buy the blades, but the handles and bodies will save me around $100 each. That’s not small potatoes. Small potatoes come from my garden.

There you have it! An end of February summary. That’s what’s going on, and where we are at, and where we are going for the moment. I am excited to be at the point in life where I feel like I finally have a life, and all the things that that entails. Having moved country twice and other events that have left me with next to nothing, it is a hard thing to recover from. But I feel quite like I have arrived. Everything else is just improving things up and building equity. For me, that’s a good place to be. Oh, and I am about two weeks short of my 52nd birthday.

A Working Bench

I started the process of ordering a work bench for the shop at the end of December. Then I realized I had ordered the short one on accident, so I cancelled it and looked for the longer one. The shop I had originally ordered from did not have any, so I tried out another shop. That was the next day. I put the longer bench on order and have been waiting since. Today, it finally arrived.

The box was in perfect shape, so that restored my confidence after imagining that the bench was going to come in a manky box, looking utterly destroyed from its long journey. The driver came to the door and asked me where I wanted him to put the box, but I said if he would give me a minute, I could get a pallet fork on the tractor and get it out myself. He was quite excited! Especially as the yard did not look ready for him to run a pallet jack across it. Once I had it outside the door to the shop, I opened it and got the trestle put together with the help of my youngest daughter. Everything went together easily and well. Then came time to put the top on.

I lifted the end of the top, and considered if I could use the dolly to get it into the shop and do a partial lift at one end of the top to the kneel saw table, then up to the trestle with the other end, then slide it up. I lifted it again and sent a message for help. With two grown men lifting the top off the forks and into the shop and right onto the trestle, it took a lot out of us! I think the trestle must have weighed forty pounds, and the top weighed the rest of the 290 pounds the paperwork said it weighed.

The next tasks were to try it out for a couple of simple things, then get to cleaning the workshop! The place has been a mess, and I have not wanted to deal with it till I got this sorted out to get an idea of the final layout. The shop, being an old garage, I want to close off the car door and turn it into a wall with a window and a door in it, then build a rustic bench under the window to take working pieces of wood while I build on the bench opposite it. Going to plan, it will also be a great place to take some photos on the rustic top and under the window light. Well, that’s the plan, anyway.

Now, about the projects on the plan so far. I want to make a couple of blanket chests for the girls, and I have a few projects in the house that need finishing up. I also want to make a couple of weaving tools for missus, such as inkle looms and eventually, if I can get my head around it, some more complex looms, as well as maybe a drum carder. She has also asked for things like shuttles for the looms she already has. Then comes the furniture. I want to make reproduction pieces of things such as pie safe, and perhaps a Coolgardie safe. I would like to look at butcher block counter tops for the kitchen, handmade, of course, especially as a power plane for such big pieces is challenging. We could use a cabinet for the kitchen that would also work as a good-sized bread bin, since that seems to be a family favorite. Then there is the big goal. Since seeing Anne of All Trades on YouTube working on Windsor chairs, I have had a real hankering to build me a couple of those. I have always loved the styles, and the proper joinery to hold them together. I think that would be a real accomplishment to be proud of. Well, if it comes out half-way decent! Time to learn how to use milk paint! My interests lie in 18th and 19th century designs. With the Sjoberg’s Elite 2000 now sat in the shop, I have my “…official Red Ryder Carbine action, 200 shot, range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing that tells time.”

The next thing and perhaps final for the shop’s power tool collection should be a band saw. That’d be handy for resawing and preparing stock for the lathe. There are a few more planes and hand tools to get, too. I have the basic sharpening tools on the way to finally sort that out, and to keep the plane irons in top shape. Especially important now that I have a bench to do the work on, and I plan to keep the planes busy. I could use a mill for outside to reduce logs to lumber, seeing as I always seem to have access to logs thanks to the pursuit of firewood.

Am I excited for this? I think so. I am about to embark on a life’s ambition to really get into woodworking and to start building my own furniture, as I am so unhappy with what’s on offer down at the furniture store. I have held off because I was convinced to try hand planes by my Missus, and I did, and soon discovered that a proper plane is easier to use than the old ones I had used in the past, and that I really needed a bench that would hold the workpieces properly while I planed them. Believe you me, with this bench that excuse dies. On I go.