Making Some Hand Hewn Beams

We have a nice supply of Red Maple on the farm. It is a wood that we use for firewood, but it has a wide variety of uses. I just talked to a fellow who has a logging company, and he told me that soft maple is now in demand for kitchen cabinets, because everyone wants painted cabinets, so cherry is out; we burn that too.

Anyway my son Michael, who does most of the work with the cattle, and is also our woodsman, went out into the woods today and started working on some beams. He uses all hand tools. He buys them at flea markets, local auctions, and he sometimes buys the heads of hatchets and axes from ebay. He makes a lot of the handles for his refurbishing of  the tools from the wood on the farm. He keeps his tools extremely sharp.

Some of Michaels Tools in the Mud Room

He cut down some maple trees in the woods behind our house and cut them into two 9 foot logs. He then used a chalk line to mark off where he wanted to square each side so that he would end up with a 6 x 6 x 9 beam.

He cuts the bark on the side he is going to square into rectangles using his buck saw. He then uses his adze to cut out the sides and each section as he squares a side.

He uses a draw knife to finish and smooth it out after using the adze. The draw knife is by the teeth of the buck saw in the picture below. I took this when he was using the adze, and the knife is a bit hard to see, but it is a blade with handles on each end. You pull it toward you when cutting.

Buck Saw with Draw Knife on  Right

Doing this might seem like it isn't too difficult, but it is a lot of work to make your own beams. He worked for hours out in the cold today. It was about 8 degrees fahrenheit on the mountain.

He worked on them, and got them done. They aren't perfectly square, but they're pretty close, and now he has two nice 9 foot beams for his next project, which I believe is a building for the pigs he wants to get this spring.

Searching Seed Catalogs and the Watermelon Patch

Today was a pretty wet and dreary day on the farm. The Highland cattle are out eating whatever they can find in the fields and the Angus-Cross are in the barn with their large door closed to the weather. It's the time of the year that is a good time to look at seed catalogs to get ideas of what to plant in the gardens or fields.

We got our usual supply this year, Pinetree, Johnny's, Burpee, Jung, R.H. Shumway's, and Gurney's. Today I was looking at pumpkins and watermelons, primarily thinking about watermelons though. We usually grow a patch on black plastic each year. Some years we also grow cantaloupes this way in their own patch or with the watermelons, spaced apart so they don't entangle each other.

We have tried Sugar Baby and Crimson Sweet watermelons. Crimson Sweet is by far the better of the two. There are a lot of other varieties in the catalogs, and some of them sound tempting, but each year, I am afraid to switch from the Crimson Sweet. We have had really good luck with them.

I have grown them in the same spot for about 7 years, and I've thought about moving them, for crop rotation purposes, but haven't, with no ill effects so far.

We have never sprayed or dusted the watermelons, and they have been great. I broadcast some 10-10-10 fertilizer on the patch in the spring, about a month or so before I lay the plastic down, I then lay down the plastic, sorry I forget which mill I use. There are usually 2 choices at the feed store, and I usually go for the heavier and a bit more expensive one, but not always.

I just lay the plastic by hand with the help of a reluctant family, because I tend to be a pain in the neck when we do this every year. The trick is to leave some slack through-out the patch. Do not pull the plastic tight, the colder it is when you do this the better, within reason. One year I used the thinner plastic, and I pulled it tight when laying it on a fairly warm, sunny spring day. This was a mistake. When it got cooler, as it always does on occasion where we live, the plastic got really taut, and eventually I got some tears as the season progressed and had to patch places, until the plants covered everything. If you get some tears and some wind, you can have a real mess.

We just hold down the plastic with field stones, we use the same pile of them every year. I feel like I know most of the stones in the pile by now. We have no shortage of field stones on our mountain. In one of the woods there is a row of them 3 to 4 feet wide, 2 to 3 feet high and about 100 yards long. The folks did a lot of rock-picking when they carved out this farm from the forest.

In the seed catalogs it says the Crimson Sweet will get to be 15-25 pounds, but we always get 25 to 35 pounders. Mostly they are about 30 pounds. This is why I do not want to change my spot. They are also a dark red inside, and everyone says they are the best watermelons they ever ate.

Right now the patch is bare. I pull all the plastic off in the fall. I then pull out all the remaining vines and roots and throw them in the burning ring, eventually they get burned. I just leave the ground bare all winter on the patch. I figure this will kill any cucumber beetles that might pop up next year. We always get a few, but they never have given the watermelons the wilt.

 I have contemplated dusting the watermelons when I have seen some beetles, but have never given in to the temptation. Our gardens and fruits have been no spray or dust/organic to this point. I don't want to worry about my kids eating whatever they want from the gardens, whenever they want it.

Anyway, some of the varieties in the seed catalog I am looking at right now look and sound good, and I might try another patch somewhere else with another variety this year; some of the yellow fleshed varieties look and sound interesting to me. However, I expect the main patch will be Crimson Sweet in the "sweet spot" where they always are growing.