Yeah, I think for most of us Midsummer and Christmas are equally big.
You mean weather wise?
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Yes, the worst summer ever. Still one big mud party on the land. Raining big time almost every day. Around Eindhoven there were roads closed, and it is a sand area overthere. Unbelievable, still 20 cm on the road and I drove there a few days after a cloud-break ( 
free translation)
We live in a polder on clay, but after seeing that I wont complain anymore.
A few months ago I took the mountainbike to go to my parents, 22 km straight and if you take a de tour trough the Drunense Duinen ( biggest natural dunes in West Europe) it is 44 km. I had better bring a boat! It is 20 or 30 m higher then our place but full of water. On sand! And now, three months later it still is. Couldnt believe my eyes. Called my wife to pick me up, no way I was going back through that mud. A summer to forget.
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Hm…strange. We had a rather cold and late spring,(I don’t want to rub it in, but…
) since late April, early May it’s been mostly nice and sunny - not very hot, but this upcoming week close to 30C is forcasted. A Baltic sea high pressure will wisk hot air up from the south-east.
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Clipping the pasture with a machine that should have been in the junk pile many years back . It always amazes me what can be done with duct tape and bailing wire
Warm in Dixie today . Right around 100f and I am beat 
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Even in the shade I’m melting. I almost didn’t want to turn the welder on today.
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Usually the bearings or gearbox go on those. Otherwise not much more to them besides the deck which gets eaten by acids from decaying organic matter and dirt. 
sometimes it is only marginally more expensive to buy a new one. 
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Yesterday, I ran the cultivator over the ruts left from spring break up. Rather than simply letting the chickens eat all the grass/wheat/barley seed, I broadcast it over the old road bed.
The broadcast seeder is made out of a T-model Ford rear end. It worked perfectly for the speed I needed to traverse the rocks.
Four passes with the cultivator and the rocks that flipped up were too big for the springs on the cultivator, and it just dragged them along.
When you compare Wayne’s photos of his field to my photos, notice how yellow our plants are…no sun, no heat, and no Nitrogen. The Finlanders, here, just raised pigs until they all left in 1954. It’s all rocks. Now it’s all rocks piles. I’d love to get a jaw crusher, and farm some gravel!
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Pigs cause a lot of erosion. Soil bacteria/biology would make a difference in natural nitrogen along with lightning rain storms. It also wouldn’t surprise me if wayne put some nitrogen down. Even the no-till folks put some down.
If you are going to farm it, I personally would look at no-till with a disc planter and a stripper header. I posted video’s in Georgio’s thread.
I would also make like compost teas and such to make sure you have the microbiology in the soil should help.
The erosion control of no-till, and the limited amount of chemical inputs is catching on across farms across the US.
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Worst thing I ever heard about your neck of the woods was that there is some kind of ameoba in the waters that wrecks havoc with you. Never heard about an exodus of Finns. That must be an interesting story.
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Hot day hauling a fire with us
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On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced that Ford Motor Company would pay its workers $5 per day for an eight-hour workday, which was roughly double many workers’ salaries at the time. Ford called this compensation “profit-sharing” and intended it to motivate employees to be productive and efficient at home and in the factory. However, the plan also required employees to live in a certain way, as monitored by a “sociological department” that sent investigators to their homes. Investigators asked questions about employees’ spending habits, marital relations, and alcohol use, and ensured they were abstaining from alcohol, not abusing their families, and contributing to a savings account. Other requirements included learning English and attending classes to become “Americanized”. Women were only eligible for the bonus if they were single and supporting their family, and men were not eligible if their wives worked outside the home. Many workers felt that this was an intrusion into their personal lives. -Copilot
Up here, on July 23, 1913, began a Copper miners strike. The Finns that lived on this land were tramming in Tamarack #4 (where Ruth Ann Miller perished in 1966). They were the last ones to get here. No one would willingly take such rocky ground, except the Finns.
Trammers got less than $2 per day moving poor rock to the skips.
So when Ford announced the $5/day plan, and the trammers had no rock to move, because the miners were on strike, there was an exodus to Dearborn.
Mrs Boliwaar (nee Anderson) was the last person to live here, and she moved out in 1954. She lived here off-grid too. She had a bucket well, and kerosene lamps. She kept pigs.
There is evidence of wagons here, and tall narrow car tires from the 1930’s. There also is evidence of wood fired cook stoves. There was fences too, made with cedar posts, and wire rope from the mines. Then there are the rock piles. Generational piles of rocks. One cannot imagine the motivation it took to pile those rocks.
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My dad used to deer hunt in the U.P. before the bridge was built. Seems odd now that we are overrun with deer but back then the whole area was cherry and apple orchards and farmers were allowed to kill any deer in their orchards and everybody was a hunter back then so the pickings here got pretty slim. I remember him complaining about sitting for a whole day waiting for a place on the ferry with miles of cars in lines.
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Hi All,
I burnt up the years grow-in from behind our Grange building. Been stack drying for a few weeks.
Not the day I wanted. Sunny - too warm. But the only day I could get a second person to stand visible on fire-watch while I collected and brought more in.
Anyhow. The lake wind picked up and I had to quick quench cool-it-down before complete burning down to just ash.
The Wife will love this charcoal for her BBQ.
All deciduous hardwood saplings.
S.U.
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Baa baa brown sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, two bags full!
I think I’ll be getting this much wool for the foreseeable future every year so if someone wants to grab a garbage bag full stop on by. These are two 55 gallon sized bags.
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hello bruce, interesting your seed machine…can you show some fotos of details?, inner mechanism, crop distributer-thrower…we also have a lot of stones…a proverb says: a lot of stones and only a bit of bread…
grows a lot of fuel around in your place
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I have met a tenant of my compost.
It’s female of European stag beetle, biggest beetle in our country.
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I saw this spreader advertised and thought it would good for spreading quail manure on my lawn.
I am too cheap to spend that kind of money so I made my own for less than $20.
It spreads a nice even layer and keeps any big stuff inside.
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It looks a lot like one if those things that pick up walnuts. Great job though!
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Funny thing, my mother is really into Pickleball and bought a jumbo version of one of those to pick up the pickleballs without bending over. Works great for walnuts too.
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