Category: Weather Talk

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!

The Last Tuesday of March, ’24

The garbage bins did not get picked up on Friday, and I did not want to let them sit another day as they were full, so I loaded them into the trailer along with the aluminum cans and any other rubbish that I could fine about and readied the trailer for a trip to the dump. To travel in the county with solid waste, one must cover their trailer with a tarp to help prevent anything blowing out on the roadways. I had to change the hitch on the truck from the heavy load hitch to the light duty one. Once that was done, I aligned the trailer to the hitch, lowered the tongue of the trailer, then locked the clip, only to find that the locking clip was missing. It took a bit to find a reasonable substitute, then I took off and went right to the farm store to get a replacement for the missing clip.

Once that was sorted out, I went to the dump to drop off all the garbage and throw out some of the debris from the truck. That went quick and was easy. I checked with them if they would do firewood, but they did not offer it. I didn’t bring any oil or anything, so it was easy and off to the salvage yard.

At the salvage yard it was also even easier. There was a guy there to help out! 56# of cans netted me $20. Nothing else there, I was right back home to help out with some of the tax work we needed to get done before soon. It was after we finished that for the day that I got out and did some chores.

I fed the livestock and removed the trailer from the truck as well as moved the trailer back into the house yard so I could secure it within the gates.

After all that, I was beat and needed to sleep off some of the arthritic pain and such, so I talked the kids into a DIY supper and letting me have a bit of a nap. It didn’t last long, but it was enough to knock the edge off, and that helped. Now it is time to do an evening and hopefully relax ready for tomorrow. More to do then, of course!

Hey, the weather was amazing today. It sleeted several times, most of the time I was outside for the first half of the day, as fate would have it, but it was on and off, and looked amazing interspersed with sunlight. What a show our mountain valley put on for us today! It is muddy out again, and I sure miss the dry earth we had last week, but it is not deep mud, so that is a great thing!

March Has Arrived, Spring Comes Soon!

It is snowing lightly today, and too cold to be outside for just about anything unless it is urgent or necessary. This morning one of the kids messaged and asked if he could come down and use our driveway to change his oil. He said the car was running funny and he thought it might have to do with him neglecting it. I asked how long it was since he last changed it, and he said 8,000 miles. Well, I don’t know if that is why his car lost some power coming up the hill, but I am pretty sure it will be much happier about its life in general for him changing it! Okay, he went way too long, but it was good to see him do the job all on his own, as it was the kind of work he never took interest in when he was younger and still living at home. Better late than never. It was especially good to see him at it rather than me! Oh sure, I handed him the ratchet, and helped him find a few tools, but he was the one on the ground, in the snow and cold.

It struck me as funny that it was only this morning that I checked our truck for its due date for the next oil change, and I was excited to find out it was not today! I have got some 800 miles left, which I’ll bet I can stretch till spring, and warmer weather! Suits me right down to the ground!

Missus asked me to go get her drum carder out of the craft cottage this morning. I don’t know what she has planned for it, but while I was out doing my chores, and helping the offspring keep on eye on his oil as it dripped out during the oil change, she cleaned it up and made it look nearly new.

I was also assigned the job of making a few more of the wire coilers she needs to wrap wire on to make chain male loops. They consist of a rod with a small hole at the far end, and a handle that helps her grip and avoid pain in her hands. I drill a hole in the rod and give it any finish work required. Then I make the wooden handle on the lathe, and drill a hole in the end of it for the rod to fit down into, tightly. Done right, it does the trick and when I am done, she will be able to make different sized loops in her wire. Good enough! I made a handle two weeks ago, and can put it to task on this job, and it will be fun to make some more.

This week is fairly free for me to work on the business. Where it is too cold to do anything outside, I can do some computer work, and things in the house. A nerve is pinched in my shoulder and hurting all the way down my left arm, so it will likely be computer work for today, though even that hurts. Painkillers first!

It is coming up time for the clocks to spring ahead. 2A.M. on Sunday morning, March 10th is when to set the clocks ahead one hour. I guess that means that where I have been noticing light in the mornings when I wake up to take the kids to school, we will not have that anymore till the days get longer still.

Late in the ten-day forecast the temperature guess is 50F! That’s short sleeve weather here in Cache Valley. I am hoping this year it will also mean I want to mess around with the cameras and make some YouTube videos. Maybe watch out for that. Meanwhile, I will surely be enjoying the warmer weather, as I have looked forward to it because of how low our firewood started out this year. This house does not really need a daytime fire going when it is sunny, and the temperatures go above 35F. Open the front door to the porch, and enough heat comes in from there to take care of everything for the day. 50 will certainly exceed that and make the whole experience more pleasant. I can switch off the wall heaters, and that will cut the electric bill. No more worrying about if the pipes under the house will freeze. Shop days and milling days will be unrestricted if the rain and especially the lightning stays at bay. But even on a rainy day, that does not slow the shop work down! None of this is to show any sort of enthusiasm on my part, at all. No. None. Not at all.

My tractor is already approaching 500 hours. Seems high. I wonder if the meter reads correctly. It seems crazy that it has gone that high. I should dig out the old stopwatch and give it a test. It probably is correct though, as I have always held to the idea that if I was going to spend the money to buy such a tractor, I best use it. I can’t imagine how high the hours would be if I could plough with it!

Before I call this post done, I thought I better mention that the chickens have started laying again. I think it looks like about two of the birds that have got going. I will have to collect all of the eggs then set up a reminder to do it each day to get them fresh. I’d like to make some serious changes to how we raise chickens here on the farm, and really get selling the eggs. What we do with these old birds is just the beginning of figuring it all out. I need some more time out in the coop to come up with some ideas, and to figure out how to set up for a free-range flock to keep the costs down and the health up.

It Stands to Reason

It was only this morning that I decided to break my temporary silence on the blog and complain about the warm weather we have been having, and the fact there has been so little snowfall. Apparently, I should have looked at the weather app, or at least out the window.

I am just back in from some chores and the situation is…

It was probably snowing when I wrote this morning’s post, and it is now noon, and it is still snowing!

Down the road where I go to feed the llamas on the back field.

The one thing I do know how to do to bring about the change I want is to jinx myself. Just a good complaint about how nothing is going right, and suddenly it does! The weather app suggests that the snow will taper off this afternoon but is likely to get going again tomorrow. It’s President’s Day tomorrow, so the girls will be off school, and we don’t have to go anywhere. Fine with me. Let it snow! Even if my farm is not growing hay and using irrigation, It sure does help the hay prices when there is enough water to grow plenty!

Not Winter-like

Taken just last week while waiting for the girls to come out to get a ride to the bus stop for school. Not cold enough to snow overnight.

These winter nights get down to the low 20’s, mostly. But there is seldom snow. We have had rain overnight lately. The days light up and the temperatures come to the high 30’s and sometimes even the mid 40’s. I have said for a while that this place would be more tolerable if the temperatures were more like Denver when I was growing up near there in the 1980’s. This year it has been trying it on.

Snowfall has been minimal. What has come down lately has melted quickly, and the older stuff from earlier in the year has left some remnants, especially where the snow has been piled up from clearing driveways. Rain and snowmelt has kept the ground muddy. I worry about the tractor getting stuck in the mud, especially in the Service Yard and the area of the driveway right in front of it. Water has trapped there, and the mud is deep.

So this winter’s conditions are such that the firewood is lasting despite being a minimal pile, but the ground does not support outdoor work due to this being an ancient lake bottom. A few days have got warm enough to put a fire in the stove in the shop and work out there on a couple of small projects. Based on the time of year, it won’t be too long till I can easily be out there daily. It certainly doesn’t feel right for having just passed mid-winter a little over a week ago. That is what makes everything a bit uncertain! Really, we could dive into typical cold weather or be inundated with typical spring snow.

I had a look online yesterday for arial photos of our place and found some as early as 1956. That showed where a couple of buildings once were on our property. I’ll be using the information to do some metal detecting later this year. There was one out on this side where I have found some metal last year by the northwest corner of the garden space. There was actually two across the street. One looks like a garage right about where the gate is now. I’ll like to look again to see how far from the roadside. In the 1956 photo the swale at the bottom of the pasture at the back of the property across the road was fresh dug with nothing growing on top of the piles of excavate. It was only by the 1974 image that the house was set on a single acre of land this side of the street. The property over the road has evolved a bit over the years with what looks like a small dwelling and a stand of trees right across from the house, but at the back, by the canal. It’s all interesting stuff, and I am glad I happened upon the sites that host these photos.

The wood pile seems like it will last till spring. We are not burning as much as we would normally be this year. I am not sure it would be too much trouble to go down and get more wood if I needed to. I am not panicked about it. I do worry about how hot this summer will get, but all we can do is ride it out and see.

Candle Making Night

In a change of fortunes on our weather forecast, we have snow predicted for most of the foreseeable future. It’s been so dry till now that it was beginning to worry me for the coming summer. Warm weather has been scary as is, but we have not been building up a snowpack for summer irrigation for our farmers. There goes the hay prices!

Today’s work outside got the wood to the door and the hay to the animals. I have also been messing about with the DigiBoil to try to get the wax in it to melt. That has not been going as well as I would like. I put it on last night and have let it sit all night and all day today, and it still has not melted down. I started it out at 150F, and now have it up to 160F. Hopefully it will melt through soon. The heat is slowly climbing the pot and can be felt through the jacket. In fact, I think I can feel it in the jacket more than I can when I reach under to feel the side of the pot.

I had to take a break from writing about 30 minutes ago and came back to find I could stick a butter knife through the wax at the top of the pot that was still solid. That allowed me to make a flow hole and push the top surface wax down into the pot a ways, which I hope will melt it rather than making temperature barrier with it that blocks the top to allow it to solidify. I checked the temperature of the wax that flowed up and it was right at 170F. That’s a little to close to burning for my liking, so I have turned the temperature down a bit to try to prevent that, even at the risk of creating problems with the final bit of the wax melting. I’ll check it again in a bit and try to determine if I should have just left the temperature up. I assume the wax is convecting in the pot, and the hot wax will rise rather than just stay low and burn.

So while the melted wax was at the top, I set up a mold with some hemp wick and poured it for some six-inch candles. I’ll be watching them for color and I will probably test burn two of them and put the rest into inventory.

Now I have just topped the candles for shrinkage and noted that the wax that was spilled out on the top of the mold was an excellent color, very light, and quite where I want it for selling. Maybe I will do some more molds tonight to lower the level of wax in the pot so the next time I melt it all, it will be easier. I think about three-quarters full is a nice limit if I am to keep a solid batch in the pot between pouring days. It is really hard to say for sure but spending more than 24 hours to melt it all down again is a bit much. I think it is better to add a block when required and try to keep the pot between half and three quarters full. That’s a hypothesis at the moment. I will write it into theory when I have tried it and know more information.

I poured two molds then let them cool before I started this paragraph. Meanwhile, the wax melted completely. I have shut the melter down to 150F. I’ll see how it holds overnight. I’d like to leave it till tomorrow afternoon.

I learned a lesson while doing these two molds. I poured a little in each candle mold, then came back around and poured more, then again to top each off. Not pouring each to the top left a little line in the candles that looks like they could break on that spot. I’ll be using them for test burns or personal or both, really. I could melt them down and start again, but why not set them aside to test burn them to be sure I know what I am selling?

Overall, I am happy with the gear I am now running and the methods I have developed over the last little bit. I wish there was a way of getting the wax from the pot to the candle molds without spilling and cooling. That’s really the most difficult part of the whole thing.

I want to make some old-style furniture, especially come spring. But sticking to the ideas of tradition, candle making was a part of the life for people back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s how they lit their nights. I’ll also be making some candle boxes. It is only sensible. I plan to offer them in the candle shop. Just got to get the arthritic hands through winter first!

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.

5AM Thoughts

The temperature took a dive last night into single digits. I am still fighting with the too recently split firewood burning a bit too cool for the weather. I mix it with wood that is drier and burn them together. The wet wood dries out and burns after the dry wood and is there to light the next load. It’s not great, but I am keeping an eye on the chimney situation ready to clean as necessary. The house was a little chilly when I went to bed last night, but by early morning it had warmed up ten degrees outside. There must have bene cloud cover that came in.

I have been catching up on some woodworking videos that were posted about two weeks ago by Lost Art Press to YouTube. The shop may be too cold to work in, but I can keep my head in the game. I have also been making candles and perfecting my method for the molded colonial style. I am quite content with the way I have worked out right now. I am able to wick the molds without using something like a wire with a hook to pull it through. It is a simple matter of priming the wick, then wiping it to narrow it take off excess. Then stuff it through the holes at the bottom and push them through. The holes have been enlarged with an auger and they would leak, but putting a piece of wax at the bottom to stuff the hole stops it. It has eased the fiddliest part of the job. I have also got the removal from the molds eased. That is a simple matter of running the molds under hot water to release the candles. Doing that works a treat and does not require any kind of mold release to be sprayed into the molds before. I like that. It keeps the candles pure and clean.

Christmas is getting close again. It feels like it is sneaking up on us again. I have my shopping done, nonetheless. It is card mailing that I am endlessly hopeless at doing. I’d like to make them custom to the farm with a nice image on the front. I’d like to have a pencil drawing of the front of the house and the shop on a white background. Trouble is, I cannot draw that well. Well, if I could. Maybe I can start from a photograph. If I were able to draw it, I would like a standard drawing for the year, and one with a snow-covered roof for the Christmas season.

Lately my ear has been turned to a few YouTubers whose expertise lay in Geopolitics and economics. One in particular specializes on the Chinese economy. For years it has been anticipated that China will overtake the United States in GDP. There have been problems. For one, they have millions of homes started in the country that cannot be finished by the developers. The companies are far overextended in debt and don’t have the capital to finish the work. Loads of people have their life savings invested and are likely to lose it. Factories are not ordering, and foreign investment is running out of the country. The Belt and Road Initiative is failing, which is great. China has been investing in economic imperialism, and building infrastructure in other countries who cannot repay the costs, leaving China in control of the infrastructure there. I am no expert, just learning and being made aware. The point of it all is that there is an opening for more US production, which hopefully opens the market here for small businesses to get started. I’d like to see more garage industry here, with better quality and makers who actually care about their product.

Well, that’s what’s on my mind now. See you in the next post.

First Snow 2023-4

This morning the snow is already on the ground the morning as I write this before sunup. The forecast calls for 8 inches over the weekend. I saw it out the front door a little bit ago, and now I am back in bed. I am still under the weather as far as the cold goes that has been going around the family. Nobody is really on top of it, except maybe our oldest daughter. She is doing fairly well. The rest of us are the dead walking.

I don’t think the snow is deep enough to use the new snow pusher on the tractor to clear it right now. Looks like it will be later. It’s a great day to have a cab on the tractor!

The new wax melters are out for delivery today. I cleaned out the burned wax from the new crock-pot and will be turning that in at the kitchen once it is washed up and ready to go to food service here at home. If the new wax melts are as good as they are meant to be, then the blue crock will go out of service too. I have one that genuinely keeps the wax melted at a temperature that does not discolor it. That one will be used for making beeswax food wraps. I look forward to getting that started later today if the delivery comes early. It should.

Wax, Warmth, and Colds

Wax working is on partially paused at the moment due to only one of my crocks keeping a temperature that does not burn the wax. My newest crock pot on its lowest setting has burned the daylights out of the block of wax I had put in it and turned it quite dark! That was unfortunate. I searched on the Internet for a wax melter but was not happy with the best I saw as it wanted to be cleaned out every time it was shut off long enough to cool. I finally found one that I could heat up and cool without having to drain it, and it has a temperature control knob that allows me to set the temperature where I want from around 100 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

I ordered a large one and a small one and will keep the one crock that runs cool enough to safely heat wax and keep it for a while. That one has been very reliable, which means that as a crock pot, it is probably broke.

Apart from that I have been enjoying the work with the wax. It has been slow because I am limited on what I can do, but I think I will speed up soon, and I may even be able to try dipping wicks to make candles that way, too. I’ll get everything set up when it arrives and go from there. No promises till then.

I have a new printer on the way that will allow me to print color photos and even labels for my candles. I decided I wanted to be able to print a photo from time to time, rather than just putting them up on the Mural. The Mural is great, but sometimes there is a necessary feeling of completeness in having a good old fashioned paper print in hand.

I ran us out of the wood that I had split a couple of years ago and had to resort to this year’s stock. Well, let me tell you, that did not go well. The wood I pulled from the freshest row is so wet that it hardly burns at all. It sure don’t put heat into the house. It is not worth much unseasoned, and would do well to sit a year, but I cannot when I need every little bit I can get to keep warm as winter settles in. Saying that, it seems quite warm this November. Warmer than any year gone by. Today was a short sleeve outside kind of day. (For some reason, it was chilly as can be in the house all day despite the almost temperate weather outside.

So, it is Sunday evening, and I am going to carry on making candles. I do have the one pot, and a mold that I think needs using quite a bit more before Christmas. It is down to the last hour or so before bedtime, though everyone has a cold here right now, and I am not so sure if anyone is going to school tomorrow.