Life goes on - Summer 2018

Summer has been good to you over there, despite the unending rains to start!

I recognize the yellow pepper, its a variety called manzano in Mexico. Formidably hot, black seeds. Actually a different species from all the other chiles, originated in Peru.

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The Fergie is a 1947 and has no hydraulics. Loading is all manual work.

I’ve always done all my milling in the spring and I’m a little worried about how winter will affect the outdoor drying process of the dimentional lumber. Mold and so on.

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I thought Ferguson invented the 3 point hitch system and all his tractors had hydraulics?

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Yes, it does have a 3 point, but no external hydraulic outlet for anything like a loader. It was introuduced in later years.

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If it is the same as the Fords what are very close you can get a later model control valve and add a set of remotes. A friend of mine does that with Fords alot. But he likes the 800 series which is about a decade newer.
I added a front mounted hydraulic pump to my Allis Chalmers for remote hydraulics it makes life so much better. Loading those by hand is a boat load of work.

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But it is honest work :slight_smile:

Also, depending on how rough the ground is with stumps or rocks and debris, the operating area to employ a loader may not be available. For bush work, a full log bunk and grapple system would be the way to go, or just keep it simple and low tech…

Me no like loading big heavy logs by hand.
My grandfather did alot of that in his day with my arthritis I like hooking on a chain and letting the hydraulics do the heavy lifting for me. :wink:

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We usually consider winter-harvested trees to make better lumber --when the sap is down.

When I was a teenager I had a logging business. For the first several years we loaded pulp wood (putt-wud) by hand. Lots of hard work. I’m paying for it now.

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It gets cold enough down there for the sap to actually drop down? With all those gardens you plant I was beginning to think it never got cold enough for a frost.

Dan, thanks. Untill this spring l have barely eaven heared about sweet potato, and imagined its a tropical plant that culd never thrive here. Guess what…

The first pic is the hydraulic grape press. Here preety much every house has one. This year was wery generous with grapes, and they had good quality. I pressed around 900l all together.

Garry, indeed. After a crappy start things turned out good. Tomatos and potatoes were wery ill, so did most other plants actualy but the peppers and chillis just seem to love it.
Ha! Im afraid you missed this one. No idea of the name but those are perhaps the best chillis l ever had. Wery mild heat, but the intense aroma of a habanero. But wait a second, they do have blackish seed, perhaps a hybrid of the one you described?
Ha, if you want heat, look at the litle red firecrackers next to the yelow chillis. African birds eye. Its amazing how much bang is packed in such a small package.

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Tyvärr har ganska mycket allt flytande dött. Nu är vi fasta med Google översätt för att fylla i luckorna.

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Yeah, It gets cold. Usual first frost is about mid November and last one toward the end of March. We actually had 13" of snow last winter. But that hasn’t happened since 93. Usually every other year we get a little snow. An inch or 3 at a time a couple times a year. The rest of the time it’s just cold/warm and muddy slop. Many from the north say it’s harder here than up there because we have freeze/thaw over and over all winter. Makes for lots of mud. But we don’t usually have real hard freezes. Which means that people don’t build for it, and then when it does happen there are major water freezing problems.

Also, we have virtually no infrastructure for dealing with snow and ice. Sometimes in town they will throw some sand or gravel on the bridges. Otherwise, no equipment exists. Plows, salt, etc.
It’s the best time to have a horse and buggy.

A 1/2 inch of snow will cancel schools if the buses can’t run on the back roads…

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I consider it exercise and a bit of fun. The small amount I’m working with doesn’t justify a lot of equipment with costs, maintence and storing, which in turn are the kinds of work I find less productive and less fun.

True. Instead I try make stumps and rocks my helpers when loading :smile:

Very true, but most of these saw logs are trees knocked down by the wind resently. It hurts just turning them to firewood when firewood already is everywhere as is.

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Jo; In one of these threads they are talking about sawing wood with chain saws and building their own band saws. I would like to see you jump in and give us some better pictures than that one Youtube your daughter did of your “swing blade” saw. I had only heard of that type mill a short time before you posted a YT of your home built saw. TomC

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Hey Billy .

Been there done that . I always say if anybody complains about picking cotton means they have never loaded paper timber :grinning:

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I don’t think manzano or similar can hybridize, different species.

I expect there is variation in the kinds, manzano usually is bigger. Growing heat and drought stress seem to have a lot of influence on heat in peppers.

The other is a dead ringer for piquín, regarded as one of the hottest peppers in Mexico. It has exactly the same leaves as Trinidadian ghost pepper.

I did make another video. At your request ( if I remember right). The mill will soon be set up again and I could take even more pics if you want.

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Thank you for the new YT! In this one I see that the frame is more than just some 2x6’s nailed together and understand that you don’t just store the power head durning off seasons. The entire frame has rails/roller/and cables, which makes it more of a kit that is saved from year to year and set up when needed. One more YT as more of a walk around would be appreciated. (at my age, I have no plans of copying it but I do enjoy the engineering behind of it. The swing blade is not well known in this country. When first hearing about them I went to a shop that specializes in saw blades and they didn’t know what I was talking about. ) After watching this YT a couple of times your original YT of the mill showed up, and just the video work on that one made me watch it a couple of more times. TomC

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Swinging by to say HI!

Hope all is well with you all

My truck is still going strong however I need to find time to replace the ammo cans, they have rusted out.

I also need to do some new plumbing.

M O T I V A T I O N…

I picked up a 1980 CX500 motorbike from my neighbor for pennys and I have been working on stripping/rebuilding that for next summer. So that is where my priorities lay. I think I may end up taking the system out of my truck completely and cleaning, re organizing the entire build.

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Great keep-you-alive-by-moving-working Mr J.O.

There are wood moving techniques scaled-below just big-powered equipment.
Transfer moving my big Douglas Fir butts cut-off’s taught me something very-old, new to me.
I have moved many modern metal 42 and 55 gallon barrels. Some loaded down with metals scrap up to 1000 pounds. Hand-truck equipment. Need hard surfaces. Never let fall over.
These butt cut-off’s were similar diameter versus lengths proportions. O.K. to roll straight. Very hard to turn. But when even diameter v. lenght proportioned and then 600 pound’erd easy to roll&tumble move any-which-way even falling flat side down with my peavy-pole.
But getting the longer ones to roll-turn . . . grrrr.
Until . . .
I accidentally rolled one centered up onto a 4" limb stick. Hah-ha! Pivot turns, by hand, quite nicely then.

Stupid. Stupid. SteveU. THAT is why wooden kegs and later aluminum kegs are bigger in diameter in the middle then the ends. ANY keg-mover for the last 800 years could have shown me this!
Then my long butts moving got a lot easier. Technique. Experience. Woodgasification-Done-for-Real.

tree farmer Steve unruh

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