FRUIT HARVEST 2019

Our Heavenly Father truly blessed us this year with a bountiful fruit harvest.

 Today Janice and I took three and a half hours to harvest our apples and Bosc pears.

 The variety of apples we picked are Spartan (a cultivar of Mackintosh) these were the two boxes at the front of the bed and the two buckets, these were the most numerous. Then there were the Liberty apples which are the two boxes stacked next the Bosc Pears (the dark green fruit in the left rear of the Gator. 

 Then came the Honey Crisp, love these, they are the box just left of the two buckets.

 The next variety was Freedom Apples, in the box on the passenger seat. the Liberty and Freedom Apples were both developed is a study in New York State. The freedom trees are still very small in fact this is the first year some trees started producing. we have a total of six Freedom Apple trees, one stating to produce pretty good several only had four or five apples this year, a couple had none yet.

 The next variety is the mystery apple. When we purchased the tree it was supposed to be a Yellow Delicious, when it produced it's first fruit it was green and stayed that way into November, so we assumed then it could be a Granny Smith. Well then the apples started to get a slight blush, and were decidedly sweeter, so now they are the mystery apple.

This is not to mention the Bartlett Pears and the Asian Pears that were ripe a month ago. I absolutely love the Asian pears, really sweet and supper juicy along with pretty crispy. We have three Asian Pear trees but this year we only harvested one tree, and one tree the Racoon's got to before we could, the other is not producing yet. I did not mention the two Fuji Apple trees, they actually produced very small apples but we need to move them to better locations as they are in well tiles alone the driveway and don't do well there. I also did not mention that many of these trees I grafted myself while teaching grafting for the local Master Gardeners.

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.

SPRING BREAK 2016

Well Janice was needing to go down and visit her parents this year and since I can not reach my left foot, one of my Grand Daughters, Natasha, came to stay with me while Grandmother went to California. Natasha and I enjoy doing projects together so I had already decided that we needed a new incinerator door and frame.

 As one can already tell the first door and frame were made from scrap steel, and after being in place for almost sixteen years they needed replacement badly.

At first I thought that I would only need to replace the door, wrong, the frame was just as badly rusted away.

 Natasha really like to do photography also. So she caught me fitting the door to the frame

 Natasha did a good job of catching the sparks off of the grinder.

 This is one of the hinge tubes Natasha welded on, not bad at all for a first time welding.

 The design for the new door and frame really didn't change much, although I had decided to add a handle connected to some linkage, in order to work the door latches. Natasha let me know right away that I should have stayed with the old design, but my reply was "we had to make it interesting."

OK, OK so she caught me smiling.

 Toward the end of our project Janice had gotten home and was in the basement with Kaitlyn painting, so Tasha took our knob in and put this spiffy new paint job on it.

 Got all of the old caked on ready to install the new frame and door. scraped off of the incinerator ready to install the new door and frame.

 As you can see from this picture I even designed a couple of damper vents into the new door.

Natasha was correct from the start. Because of the allowance for space in the joints so the linkage would not rust tight, the whole setup was too loose and I had to remove the linkage and go with separate handles.

All in all the visit with Natasha went very well, I really enjoyed her visit. We did get into a little trouble when I told her Dad, I had taught her to do "cookies" in the jeep.

LAST BABY OF THE YEAR

Well, a week ago tomorrow our last nanny kidded, giving us another little buck baby. That is three bucks and one doe this year. 

He didn't really choose the best time to be born as it was stormy and nasty, he was born just outside the door, and with all of the people coming and going as our eldest son and his family were here over the weekend. Meg, the mom, didn't have a good chance to bond with the baby until Monday.  Our youngest grand daughter loved being able to see the new baby and hold it, but we were all very worried that at first the baby and mom were not bonding and the rest of the herd were picking on Meg. 

But mom and baby are now bonded he is growing and even traveling down to the pasture with the other goats.

 Meg and new baby

 Meg keeps good track of her baby now and is yelling for him most all day.

 Momma and baby just hanging out in the sun.

 This is a picture of Brownie, her two babies this year and the two first year nannies which were Brownie's little ones last year, Ginger and Meg, and of course the new baby.

 Ghost is our oldest goat, who we retired last fall when she was done milking. Ghost is also the mother of Brownie, who is the mother of Meg and Ginger.

This is Ginger's little boy from this year. He was the first baby we had born this year.

SPRING IS COMMING

I decided that since spring is close to coming, I should get another post done for our blog, so here goes. Today is sunny and clear, a little chilly  but not too bad. Janice and I have been pruning trees, shrubs, and vines.



 We have the Filbert trees at the top of the yard done and they look so very much better. We have removed one rooted sucker and still need to remove two or three more, and will give to the kids.

 While pruning the filberts, we dug up the strawberries and after we finish filling the area with soil we will re-plant them.

 This Spartan Apple looks so very much better since it got it's hair cut.

 This Asian Pear looks weird because the tree still has two varieties grafted onto it. When I bought it the tree had two Asian and two European pears grafted to it. Needless to say that is the last multi-varietal tree I purchase as I don't care for the look of the trees, and they are extremely hard to prune.

 In this picture the little tree in the fore ground is a Honey Crisp, then the Bosc Pear at the end of the greenhouse and another Asian Pear behind the garden shed. The two Pears are pruned, I have not pruned the Honey Crisp yet as I want to use the trimmings for Scion Wood for grafting some root stocks that I have as well as the large Spartan I am top working.

 Well if you remember from the last post the plum tree that was horribly over grown, is now pruned and looking better. The Spartan in the fore ground was cleft grafted last year, but only one graft took, so I am going to graft most of the brushy twigs this year and then choose which to leave later.

 The Kiwi are cut back to the top of where we are building the Pergola, and back to single stems.

 Unfortunately when you prune plants you get lots of waste that will need to be chipped or burned.

 Just another pile of chipper food.

 The pond this time of year is very nice, clear and full.

 I truly love the pasture this time of year, but we still need to cut the fallen tree and branches.

 The other day Janice and I dug out a small clump of bamboo (see second from the bottom) that was too far out the other side of the group, and re-planted it into an opening where it is seen now.

 Janice's Linton Rose is blooming to beat the band right now. It usually continues for a long time in the spring.

This is Janice's over grown herb garden and the contorted Filbert it has as a center piece. If you look close at the Filbert's branches closer to the Bay tree, you can see some Catkins (blooms). It will be interesting to see if it produces nuts this year.

 Another sure sign of spring is time for babies. This is a little buckling born last night to Ginger, one of our babies from last year.

He isn't named yet but he is friendly and so very cute, makes you want to just hold him forever.

Our little Ginger looks like any other mommy goat now, but she is unsure of things. but taking great care of the baby.

The little one weighed in at seven pounds. The next one due to kid is Brownie (Ginger's mother) and then Meg, Ginger's sister is due to kid last.

While out there, I have been wanting to remove three small Hemlock trees from the Bee Yard, so that was completed as well as Janice pruning most of the lower branches on the Cedar trees in that end of the property. I took the Hemlocks and gave the two lightest ones to the girls (goats) and the fullest one to the two boys.