Category: Sawyering

What to do on a Wednesday

Yesterday Missus had us down to town to pick up some supplies she needed for the Artist’s business. We also went to see a couple of cars on the used market.

I did my chores when we got home then put the five-foot log from the log stack onto the sawmill. I kept that simple and took a couple of four quarter boards then made a cant out of the middle. The final measurements were ten inches square by five feet long. After cleaning up the sawmill mess, I sealed the ends of the cant, but it is still our on the forks of the tractor this morning.

I might cut it in half and use it for the base of a little shed to store fuel in. I’d like to have a little shed just for fuel to keep it away from all of the other buildings and yet still shaded in the canisters. The shed would not amount to much more than a set of shelves with well vented walls and a roof to keep all the fuel cans and some of the oils and such in. Might seem like overkill, but I don’t have the space for the stuff in the shop or the barn, and I’d like to make it fire-safe by keeping it away from the valuable buildings. I’d also like to keep it light enough to possibly lift with the pallet forks so I could move it about if needed. Just set the bolsters that I’d cut from this cant on a few cinderblocks, and there we go.

It is early Thursday morning. I will deliver the girls to the school bus stop shortly, then we have help coming by to target Missus’s cottage for clean-up. She is going to try to organize and get her workspaces so she can find things easier. It’s going to be a busy day! This cleaning project may just end at the cottage door, or it might extend into a few other places.

Lastly before I end, I need to figure out a place in the yard to put up a gourd tunnel. I have got enough cattle panels to do twenty feet of it. I’ll need to till a spot then drive t-posts and wire the panels to them. I’d like to till a couple of times over a few weeks before putting in the tunnel. I’d also like to see it in where the garden hose is close by. We’ve only one hydrant on the place, so that really narrows the options.

Time to get the day started. Have a good one yourself!

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.

Christmas Report 2023

Time for an early winter’s nap. We had the kids around last night and this morning for our Christmas celebrations. They have grown so much and are learning the importance of family over gifts and that is very gratifying. Still, we shared gifts and time last night and today. They have gone now, and we had a little while to relax a bit and enjoy the quiet. The evening drew closed in single digit temperatures. Now that winter has come, we are feeling more like the normal cold we experience this time of year. The autumn will always be remembered as the warmest we have experiences so far.

I got the girls and Missus each an alpaca blanket. The boys each got an external hard drive with all the photos I could find on my computer from their early days back in England. They are old enough now not to squirm and complain about how embarrassing the photos are. They were very happy about it, and both expressed excitement and anticipation for the contents of the drives. I am thrilled to have given them the photos and let them have their memories from those days before. The older one said he didn’t really have any proof that he grew up in England till now. What a laugh.

Our oldest also said he might like to have a go at building a dining room table for his house. I’ll have to keep an eye out for a decent type of wood to make it from. It would be nice to find him something other than poplar.

The day is over now, and tomorrow we will celebrate Boxing Day before we get back to normal for the season. I am looking forward to that! I also will say, I looked at Facebook for about a minute or two. No interest in that. So, I checked out again.

Next thing to come along now is the New Year. We are a quarter of a century after 1999. That is amazing! I really cannot even believe it.

Off to sleep now.

Summary of Yesterday

It is Thursday morning, and it is raining a little. It has been all night, apparently. I went out last night to get firewood in just before bed, and it was 45F. Really lovely for the time of year it is, and for nighttime. But I went up to bed and just as I settled in, the wind started kicking up and rain began to fall.

Yesterday I got one of the short poplar logs up on the mill and cut into bolsters and stickers. Then I put up an Aspen log and milled it into boards. Most of the output was 6 inch by 8 foot boards, but there are also four sort of 16-inch ones as well. All of them were milled to 1 inch thick. They should come out at 3/4 finished thickness. Then I put them up to dry on the bolsters and with the stickers I had milled.

I helped Missus out with some of her work after the milling, then went to get the girls from their bus stop after school. It was a busy day, and I got a lot done. So my reward was to spend a couple of hours playing a VR game in the evening. It was good and relaxing, and a nice change of pace. I don’t play games much. But I will play one or two once in a while.

This morning is still wet, but as soon as it dries, I should get down and pick up some hay and maybe get that log milled that I put on the mill last night just before changing from the forks to the bucket on the tractor to bring the firewood in. I have some work to do with Missus this evening taking photos of products to put on her website. Meanwhile I will be figuring out this farm and fixing the broken joint on one of the kids’ bed.

Off to get my day started!

Nearly Done with the Rounds

I got out today kind of mid-morning and started splitting the rounds in the Service Yard. Got a break when the kids came over to pick up our grandson from us where he had spent the night. That was good times as always. After they left, I got in a short nap and went out later in the evening to get at it again. I think I could fill the bucket on the tractor three more times, maybe four and that would be it.

When I finish the rounds I am on about, I will be picking up all the little pieces that are from branches and from mill slabs and sorting them out in the woodstove bunk or in the fireplace bunk, as I keep two separate collections of wood because each appliance can take a different length of wood. I also prefer to budget what goes into the fireplace as it does not produce as much heat, and us used more for ambiance than for heating with. Who’d want to burn up their firewood on a fireplace and not have enough to get through the winter and stay warm with the woodstove, which definitely produces more heat?

I am fixing to get the wood covered soon and get milling the logs out back, too. I still need a couple of cords of firewood, but it is not a complete disaster now that our son helped us split up as much wood as he did. I think I could get to it before the snow starts falling as long as I put my effort and mind into it. I might get the splitting done tomorrow, but there is another chore to get at then.

I need to finish that rabbit hutch, which will require planing a board down tomorrow. I want to do it in the electric planer and get the thickness just so. I’d like a nice finish on this hutch, with the hope it will last many years to come.

I have wood set aside in the shop to make a butcherblock style top of our kitchen island. I admit it is poplar, but that is what I was able to find for free down at the dump where I get my firewood. I have heard of people finding black walnut down there, but I have yet to actually see a log. So, the poplar will do. I am still trying to figure out if I will do a smooth finish on it or give it the scooped plane finish with a scrub plane. It would make it interesting and fairly easy to repair cuts and scratches on. I’d plane everything down to a consistent thickness with the power planer and then glue up and add the scrub plane finish, then top it with some Odie’s oil. That’s what I am thinking at the moment, anyhow. I think I would aim for a two-inch-thick top. I am pretty sure I have nine-quarter heavy. If memory serves me. Or I could walk out and measure it. Nah. I’d get sucked in when I would rather go to bed soon.

Maybe I’ll just do a smooth finish. Who knows?

I finished most of what I needed to do in the trailer for Missis to use as her little shop. I’ll have to make her some more quarter round, I am sure. I also need to frame in a pegboard that is next to her register desk. But those are easy and won’t inhibit her from getting the thing done and open. Hooray!

Moving Wood Processing to the Service Yard

What can I complain about muscle sore. It is so much easier than the pain in the bones due to the arthritis. But I am chronicling days without it, so today I was muscle sore. To make it a bit easier, the heavy work I did today was all in the tractor. So it was pretty easy. Don’t get me wrong. A person gets tired from driving a tractor. The go pedal is quite a bit stiffer to push down than a car is, and there is a lot of steering in a tight space like I was working in. It does wear a body out.

Today I started moving the firewood from the back by the mill to the Service Yard. Most if it looks like it is cut, though there are some smaller rounds that do need to be cut to length, and some slabs from the mill. There is a decent pile out back still, but it is going to have to be put into the bucket and carried up as I am not intending to do a land transfer. The bucket picks up too much dirt, and the pallet fork drops all the long slabs and little rounds left out back. It is to be manual labor then.

I’ll have help again tomorrow. I can either ask him to help with the loading of the wood out back or have him run the splitter and I go get the wood out back. But the strategy is meant to include me lifting the logs to the splitter table with the tractor. Save backs. I could also use some help with the table saw and/or the planer to get that wood finished for the rabbit run. Tough choice with a rainy week coming up, and I want to have the wood piled and covered as soon as possible. I also want the rabbits covered in their new home as soon as possible, too.

I will be finishing this blog post up in a moment, and it will be 6:30PM, then it is off to work outside some more. I can get an hour or two in before evening rest. I am eager to get this sorted out so I can get to work on other things, such as setting up blanks for the lathe, or milling some wood to build a fuel shed and a woodshed, and even a new chicken coop or an open front shed for the tractor implements.

I look forward to milling the wood in the back for more than just making lumber. I am eager to get the practice in so I can open up a small milling service and hire to the public. Might as well make a little money!

Well, off to work!

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.

Troubles Getting Things

Does nothing work right now? I have tried to order a set of mower spindles for the mower deck on the riding lawnmower. I ordered a pair from Walmart because I could get three pairs of them for the cost of one pair off the manufacturer’s website. Walmart’s website is still showing it as not delivered, but the tracking button leads me to the USPS website, and that shows it as delivered and left on the front porch in Boise, Idaho, which is not where I live.

I got hold of the obviously foriegn chat to secure a refund, then I went to Amazon and ordered two more spindles for about the same price. I hope since Amazon has a track-record of delivring correctly to out house, they will show up soon.

The parts are so cheap compared to the manufacturer that I don’t know if I am getting weak knock-off’s, or if the manufacturer is way over inflating their prices. I am going to have to find that out the hard way, infortunately.

Meanwhile, while all this is going on, I am watching the economic summaries of what is going on with other countries, and where the US is decoupling with China, and China has a severely crashing housing market, and there is Russia and its sanctions, and the German economy is not growing, there is a severe economic forecast on the horizon. While the US stands to do well over-all, I think we should expect a serious influx of immigrants as many other countries will be affected by the recession this will kick off. So, however wrong it feels to try to order parts now, I think things are not going to get better anytime soon. It’s the best time ever to be settled on our little farm.

Oh, and as a final, weird little side note; Hurrican Hilary is meant to make landfall in southern California Sunday night. One of the most densly populated parts of the country it about to get hit with torrential rain, howling wind, and everything its dirt-made mountains need to really raise havoc. It’s like the train is approaching the site of the broken rails on the track, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it before a crash. This stands to be not a pretty sight.

Today might be a free to work day for me. I really only have one thing left to get done to move major repairs along on the farm. Yes, I am still having troubles getting someone to show up and replace our septic. I need to get in touch with the company that currently holds a copy of our permit and has promised to get back to us. Other than that, I have been milling boards to repair the barn, and need to finish getting those set up. I may also start milling some boards to put around the front windows of the house where the old ones were taken down when siding was put up. We took the siding off the front porch, and now have to replace those.

Well, this has been a pretty Doom & Gloom post. Not to be a worried old man, but just to chronical what is going on that will undoubtedly affect everyone, and our little homestead here, too. Next we muster up our way forward.

Straightlines

Last night I brought my eight newly milled boards to the table saw to put a roughly straight line edge on them, then took them to the shop where I could use a #5 1/2 jack plane to make good on that line. They all stand in the shop against a rafter now, continuing to dry a bit out of the sun, and ready for me to put some more work into dimensioning them. Here is what I need.

The side of the barn in this location is good enough to repaint. There are other places where it would be bad practice to do so.

The boards are about 7 1/2 to 8 inches wide in a shiplap that has an angle at the deep tongue to allow water to flow off. The groove under the bottom lip is not too deep at only 1/2 an inch. It should not be too hard to make the boards into new ones, though I am a bit unsure of how much I can expect them to shrink along the width if I am to work them green and ready them to put up soon. I will of course go to the maximum width I can and put them up, though I may deepen that groove and allow for a bit more overlap, say 3/4 of an inch. I think that would be a no fail solution

When I nail the boards up, I figure it will be best not to put in many nails on the width of the board (top to bottom) so it can shrink. That should reduce the chance of the boards splitting.

The eight boards translate into about seven and a half once linear material is removed with bark on the sides that run too deep to remove when putting in the tongue and groove. Each board is about 9 feet long. I should net about 66 feet of boards, all poplar, to replace the bad sections on the barn. Shiplap should be relatively simple to remove and replace, something I think the old-timers factored in.

At $28.44 per piece, or $3.16 a lineal foot for 7 1/2 inch boards, the total value of the wood I have cut is $213.30. That is before it is shaped. The most similar shiplap sold at Home Depot is $210 without tax for the same amount, though it is sold in packages of six, and I would have to buy two of those, so actual amount is $280. But there would be three more boards. Those would require modifying as they are not really made for exterior use, as they have no angle at the bottom of the tongue and would collect water on a flat surface and rot. They are also pine.

My cost has to calculate the cost of the mill, the percentage of tractor use dedicated to wood milling, and saws and fuel and tools and so forth. I don’t charge me for my labor. Factor in that there is the truck and trailer to go get the wood, too.

What cannot be easily factored in is the most excellence of being able to take a log that was grown locally and make it into the wood necessary to repair holes in the barn. That satisfaction extends to the use of local material, DIYing, reducing waste, using slow growth trees, being old school, using hand tools, independence to a degree, and the development of personal skills.

Milling A Little Today

It was not too hot today, so I got out to the mill and put the blade through some logs. There were three 6×6 inch by 9-ish foot posts against the granary when I started the day. Then I cut up another one to finish the corners of what I need for a woodshed. I then cut three 3×10 inch by nine-ish foot beams for the same woodshed. I’ll be double-checking my books before I decide where those are going to go. I also got a couple of four-quarter boards out of the wood, but they don’t have a straight edge, so they will need to be used for spares or small pieces in some project sometime.

After adding the fourth post to the collection I have a complete set of corners for a woodshed.

Incidentally, I have some spindles on order for the riding lawnmower, which ought to improve the shape of the yard. For now, the grass and weeds are getting a bit long.

After it got too hot to carry on, I leaned the wood I had finished for the woodshed next to the granary and went in for a needed break.

I may need thicker beams for the outsides of the woodshed at the tops of the posts. No worries. There are still several logs ready. Ideally, I would like to build a woodshed in the autumn, and load it up with enough wood to hold us through three or four months of winter, then add another shed or two next summer. This would be a first build for me, and I do have several other structures I could use, such as a place to hold the tractor implements as a sort of roofed rack. I’d also like to add a free-standing chicken coop to the farm! All need to be practice before I put together a fun structure as a work-shed or something of the sort. I have no building experience, so this is all a learning curve for me!