WARM WINTER

It’s going to be a warm winter because we almost have all of our firewood cut split and in the woodshed. Thank you to our friends Ron and Sherry for the availability of the wood.

I thought I should give folks a little update, there has been a lot going on, in fact so much I have had no time to do any fun posts with pictures and all. This time of year, actually starting at harvest, it is time to deal with the fruit, nuts, and vegetables that our Heavenly Father has provided for us this year. As it looks right now, we have about a couple weeks with food preservation, then we can get back on the retaining walls, and other projects we have planned. 

Spring 2018

This year we started a big project, fencing the hillside and planting trees and bushes. We are also working on a couple of retaining walls. The reason is that with the goats on the hillsides they eat almost everything and we were starting to fear the hill sliding. The first thing we did was put up a temporary fence.

This was actually phase two of this project, planting the hillside. Very hard to see but we planted several Redwood trees, several Nobel Fir trees, some currents, service berries and a few other misc. things.

The very first part of this project was starting a fence down by the shallow well, and continuing up along the bottom of the hillside. This particular picture is up the fence a ways, looking up hill.

This next picture is looking down to where we first started the lower fence project. the first 3 posts in the picture had water in the bottoms of the holes when we dug them.

This picture is at the bottom where we put a walk through gate. You can also see the old shallow well way down at the end.

another pic. of the upper hillside.

The first retaining wall we did was about sixteen feet from the one going right next to the chicken coop flat. behind this wall we laid stepping stones in a level pad for a water tank to sit on without being punctured by a rock.

 This tank will be for irrigation when done. There is a drain just on the downhill side of the driveway, which will have the pipe extended and emptied into the tank. we will also pipe the outlet down along the hill so we can gravity irrigate items in the terraces we are planning.

 We later started on a retaining wall just below the flat the chicken coop is located on, as this hillside was washing away pretty badly.

These posts will be continued down alone the hill about another six to eight posts at four foot apart. This should stop the hill from washing and give us an area we can terrace and plant fruit trees and other garden stuff. I should mention that the soil will be filled to the top of the six by sixes, and the top four by four posts will be lag bolted to the top of the six by sixes and have stock panels attached to them. Needless to say we have a lot to do with this particular project, and will update later.

Well  this update is being made in December of 2019, finally got to work back on this project again with quite a bit of progress. We now have the retaining wall down eve with the big stump and have a corner for the water tank to sit into, and it is partially back filled.

 The wall ended being five two by twelves high and the ends are staggered so as to afford better strength. the weirdness of the second post from the current end is due to having to place the post out from our wall line roughly six inches due to one of the roots of that old Fir Stump.

 We plan on putting another lower retaining wall out a little from where the soil drops down now.

 We are also planning on extending the wall on down past the chicken coop, and in order to do this we need to extend the drain for the coop floor out past the wall.

 The goats are very curious about the wall, they used to be able to run up and down this hill side.

The corner makes the wall stronger and is a good place to have the water tank sit.

 As can be seen in the pictures we lined the wall with about four layers of ten mil plastic.

There is still a lot of back filling to do.

 This is still a project in progress with much yet to be completed.

It will be nicer once the water tank is pushed back into the corner.

SUMMER 2017

Another project we worked on in the summer was replacing the well pump and pressure tank on the old shallow well along with fabricating a new lid for the well. This was the original well on this property. It gets low on water and the water turns brown late in the year. the lid was easy, have the supplier cut the circle I and all I had to do was make the handles, install them and paint the lid.

This is the well as done as we have it thus far. I still need to build a small shed over it. This used to have a small round shed over it , but you could not hardly fit inside. The next one will be much bigger.

 

SPRING 2017

Wow this post is very very late being put up as life has just gotten in the way this year. This spring I started setting up my Rock shop again. I used to cut stones a lot of years ago, but have had stuff packed away for a lot of years.

When I started this post it was in the spring of 2017, now it is the fall of 2018, just a couple of years late.
I picked up another faceting machine, a facetron like I had before. I really love this machine. easy to use and very accurate. Both of my sons even tried to learn to use my last one. currently I have a pretty good selection of laps, as can be seen in the corner behind the facetron.

 This little Lortone combination cab and saw is like the last one I had also, the grinding is set up with diamond for fast cutting. The sanding drum, I still use carbarundum belts on an expanding drum. diamond belts are available but these are currently cheaper.

and on the other side of the room I have set up my jewelry fabrication area. this is the area where I keep my rolling mill, pickle pot, tourch, and other assorted items. 

Cutting rocks and making pretty things is a fun hobby and something that I can do when it is wet out or cold which happens now and again.

I also have a 24 inch rock slab saw and lots of rough rock, Agate, Jasper, Obsidian, etc.

and in the corner I have my polishing area. Presently I'm only have my rock polisher, but will soon have a metal buff as well.

This is my Richardson Ranch stone polisher.

 OK, so I may have a few slabs of rock

The slab saw I purchased this year is in very good condition, although I do need to build a guard for the belts and pulleys on the left side of the machine. 

Also if I run out of slabs, this is my excess rough rock.

I am still lacking a casting machine. I have plans on building a vacuum machine out of stainless steel.