Using Wood From the Farm for Winter Crafts

Two of my sons have found some ways to use some of the smaller pieces of wood that are available or accumulate around the farm.

James uses some of the smaller branches when we cut firewood to make coasters for our glasses around the house.

First he picks a branch of the right size and starts cutting blanks that are about a half inch thick.  He keeps them around for about a month or so to get rid of the ones that develop cracks. Most of them are usually okay.

He has tried freezing them as a means of keeping them from cracking. And he has tried putting them into a zip-lock bag to keep them from cracking, because this supposedly keeps them moist and makes them dry out more slowly with less cracking. Both of these methods really don't work any better than just letting them sit for a while.

Once he thinks the wook will be okay,  he breaks out the wood burner and gets to work. After the design is burned into the wood he usually coats them with some polyurethane clear coating.

Michael likes to carve thngs from wood he finds around the farm.

He uses knives and other hand tools to make his creations.

When he is finished carving he usually coats them in some type of oil. A lot of time he just uses canola oil. Sometimes he uses olive oil.

He also makes handles for knives, hatchets and axes.

Most of the time he makes something functional, but sometimes he just carves something whimsical.

Just a Winter Update

It's starting to snow outside. I just got in a bit ago from putting some old hay down for bedding in the Highland area of the barn. They're up in the top field, but I expect they will come down to the barn as we have a winter storm warning and are expected to get 3 to 6 inches of snow tonight. We will get 6 or more up on the ridge here.

Gave the Angus cross steers some extra hay and water as they were watching me from the pen next door, and I could tell they were hoping I was going to add a little hay to their pen too.

We had something dig a hole and get into the chicken coop yesterday. No damage done, but probably a rat based upon the size of hole. It went beneath the cement that I put down in a trough along the base of the wall. I dug it up on the inside and outside of the wall and filled it with Sakrete. Our cat jaguar must be getting a bit soft. We haven't seen a rat since we bought the place years ago.

The chickens got out the past few days. We had unseasonably warm weather lately, and they were out grazing on the grass and whatever else they could scratch up in the gardens and the woods. The yolks will be a bit darker this week because of their forays into the wild. Our eggs are always better than any, including the most expensive, eggs in the stores, but in the winter if we have a long period of snow the yolks lighten up a bit, never as pale as the factory farm eggs, but not the dark orange of spring, summer, and fall eggs.

We have been doing some crop and cattle contemplation this winter. We have been considering some Belted Galloway, Angus, and Hereford. We bought another 15 acres, 8 field and 7 woods, that adjoins our farm, and are thinking about what we want to do with it. There are three springs on the new land, which we really wanted. Two have houses around them, though one is in need of repair. My son Michael has started working on it. We hope to be able to stop hauling water thanks to the new acquisition.

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.

Leaves for the Strawberries, Rhubarb, and Raspberries

About this time of year I start to use leaves as a mulch in the garden. Most of our leaves are Maple leaves. These are a good leaf to use as they break down quicker than Oak leaves. I think that most other types will probably also break down quickly like the Maple leaves.

My youngest son and my daughter are in charge of this task. They rake up the leaves in the yard behind our main garden into huge piles and jump into them for as long as they want to. When they get finished with their fun, they open up the big gate at the back of the garden and rake their piles into the garden.

After this we let them just sit there till about now when the ground has gotten colder, and we are expecting to get some really cold weather. Then we all go to work. We mulch around our strawberry patch first. We heap the leaves up a bit higher that the plants between the rows and around the patch. I did this quickly yesterday by just laying my small wheelbarrow on its side in the leaf pile and raking it full. Using the large leaf-rake as a clamp on the leaves I tipped the wheelbarrow up and get a nice load of leaves.

I then just wheeled them up to the patch and dumped them as I moved the wheelbarrow back. I don't like to cover the tops of the strawberries completely. I think they do better if they get to breathe a bit through the winter. I also use hardy varieties, Ozark Beauty and Fort Larmie berries. These are tough plants that will live through our Western Pennsylvania winters without mulch, but they do much better with my leaf mulching, plus the leaves keep the weeds down between the rows, big time.

After I leaf mulch the strawberries, I lock the chickens out of the garden. They love to scratch in the leaves, and will break up the mulch too much.

I also much around my rhubarb plants about the same time. I fertilize the rhubarb with wood ashes and cow manure prior to the mulching, so I like to let the manure and ashes get rained on and weathered into the soil for about a month or so before I apply the mulch pretty much the same as I do for the strawberry patch. I never fertilize the strawberries; they don't need it.

Rhubarb with manure and ashes; it will get the leaves in a few weeks.

I scatter the leaves that I have left over in various spots around the garden. If I have a lot, I will put some on the path between the red and black raspberries. Which I against all advice have had in the same vicinity for ten years with no problems. They both grow and bear like crazy.

I also keep a reserve pile near the gate in case we get some serious winds that scatter the mulch too much. It has to be serious wind to do this. It is not too uncommon for us to get 40 to 50 miles per hour winds up here on the mountain, and usually the mulch stays put. Sometimes if it is going to be 10 or more degress below zero - Fahrenheit, I will sprinkle the tops of the strawberries and  with some leaves. Usually not the rhubarb though. It just kind of dissappears as the winter gets worse, and I don't pay much attention to it.

Anyway, the leaves are free, effective, easy to work with and organic. I can't understand why I drive through neighborhoods and see black plastic garbage bags full of leaves ready for garbage/landfill pick-up. Every kid should have their own strawberry patch in their back yard. That's some environmentalism I could get behind.

A Recreational Walk Around the Farm

I like to just take a walk around the farm. It is interesting to see what the kids and the animals are doing.

I started by walking into a small woods behind the house that the kids have played in since some of them had been babies and all of them hadn't started school yet. My second son Michael has kind of colonized this woods for the past few years. I often say jokingly that he was born in the wrong century because if you give him an axe he'll soon be a chopping and a building. Sure enough he was chopping and had just built a small fire.

He has been cutting down and up trees for a few weeks and has about twenty log piles scattered through the woods. He also has been getting logs ready for some building. So far they are just cut and he has taken the bark off of a few of them. I don't think he has had the adze to them yet.

He has been building things in and out of the woods for some time now. Some of his buildings are bigger than they look in the pictures. The story and a half chalet type building is about 20 feet high at the peak. This is one of the benefits of living in the country for a child. If they like to build all they need are a few tools, and they can find their own raw materials.

After visiting the woods I walked back up into the yard and took a few shots of our cat who thinks he is a chicken, visiting with his flock. For the whole story on this check out the post of the same name on this blog. He really loves being with the chickens. When they are out he is with them.

They really are used to him and don't seem to care if he is right beside them even Pab the rooster who is right in front of him in this picture has no problem with him.

As I was walking up to the barn I noticed our now 2 week old Scottish Highland bull calf Monty licking the mineral block. He is still on milk from his mom and will be for about 6 months, but he always has to try out what Annabelle and the Dun are eating. He chews on hay and grass with them, and he eats a bit of grain and molasses feed with them and licks out their bowls. We just give them a bit of this feed in the morning and evening so that they will come anytime we call them. They can be anywhere in the fields and if I start yelling for them they come.

If this seems like a lot of hay on the ground it is. We have been putting a bit extra out for Monty to sleep on. Today was a nice day, but it is cold out at night and the Highlands sleep outside, old and young alike.Inside the barn Doggie and Red and some chickens were hanging out, and some chickens were laying eggs.

When I went in Annabelle, Dun, and Monty came into their pen, which is next to Doggie and Red's pen. I was trying to get a picture of Monty, but he kept hiding behind Annabelle, though I did get one anyway, but not a great one.

 Red and Doggie were sniffing and licking my old Carhart coat, and I could tell Red was going to try to lick me. He has the longest tongue I have ever seen on a cow. He will use it to grab leaves off of the trees in the summer. Well anyway, I took a picture just before he could lick the camera.

I guess this isn't my usual topical post, just a bit of rambling. Hope you didn't mind.