Further Progress On My Workshop

Although I spent some time helping Darryl, picking blackberries and doing other necessary activities I got quite a bit more accomplished on my woodworking shop this past week.  Here are a few photos.


The loft flooring is all down.  Toby is checking it out!


The two end stud walls were built and set up.


The two side stud walls have been built and erected.


Here is another view with all of the loft stud walls in place.


I got the rafters cut and put up Friday afternoon.  Hopefully, next week I can get the purlins and the roofing metal put on.  We’ll keep you updated.

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I Observed Something Unusual

 

 

 

I went over on the neighboring property this morning to pick wild blackberries (they are just beginning to ripen).  I was in the middle of a patch of blackberry plants when I heard something coming through the brush and weeds from the woods to my right.  I looked up to see a coyote come running into the grass of the pasture where I was.  It was headed across to the woods on the other side of the field, off to my left.  Immediately behind the coyote, about 30-40 feet came a deer.   The coyote ran on across the field, a distance of only a few hundred feet, with the deer right behind it.  The coyote went through the fence and on into the woods, the deer jumped over the fence, and it was obvious neither saw me standing to their side, maybe 40-50 feet away.  I was amazed to see a deer quite obviously chasing a coyote.

Some time later, as I had worked my way around the field picking berries, I was startled to have a small fawn jump up from a few feet in front of me.  It ran into the woods which was only a few feet from where it had been laying.  This spot was probably only 75-100 feet from where the coyote and deer had come out of the woods.  The picture became clear to me, the mother deer was chasing the coyote which was a danger to her baby. 

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Workshop Progress

Here is a photo essay of the work that has been done on my woodworking shop over the last two weeks.

The sills and the floor joists completed.

About one half of the flooring has been put down.

Here is the flooring totally installed.

The back stud wall has been built and raised into place.

One side and the front stud walls have been built and set into place.

The last stud wall in place, ceiling joists beginning to be set and the stairway to the loft area built.

  All of the ceiling joists are in place.

Salvaged rough sawn boards formerly used as purlins being put down for the loft floor.

This is a side view taken after all my tools were put away this evening.

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I Have Begun Building My Woodworking Shop

Last Fall I decided that I would like to have a small woodworking shop and knew I couldn’t afford to build one without coming up with some used material.  I posted about getting an old house to tear down.  (You can read about it here.) I finally finished that aspect of the project and Darryl took his trailer up and helped me bring the last of the lumber home. 

I have a back yard stacked with boards, rocks and metal roofing.

I have decided to build the workshop on block piers rather than  a full foundation.  This last week I got the blocks set and filled them with concrete.

This picture was taken before the blocks were filled with concrete.  You can see that my back yard isn’t very level!  The building will be 14’ wide and 16’ long.  I plan to put a loft in it for storage.  In the background in this photo you can see my barn and the woodshed.

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Sadly I Have To Report The Passing Of Annie

Annie came to us June 6th, 2005.  She belonged to a lady Darryl had gotten to know before we moved here.  Annie was an orphan, losing not only her mother but her three siblings at her birth in 1999.  She was raised for some period of time in the kitchen and became a real “people” goat.  When the lady was preparing to move from her small farm in the summer of 2005 she was seeking good homes for her animals and asked if we would like to have Annie.  We were thrilled to get her.  Although she had already raised several kids she was not a new mother when she came to Cedar Ridge.

In the nearly 5 years she was here she presented us with 13 goat babies.  On January 24, 2006 she had quads.  With a little help from us she managed to raise all four.  We still have one of her daughters from that kidding, Brownie.  The next year Annie had triplets on March 3rd, 2007.  The little buck was stillborn but we raised both of the little does.  We kept one and she is one of our current milking does, Zoe.

On March 28, 2008 Annie gave birth to two little does.  March 16th, 2009 she had twins again, a buck and a doe.  This year she again had twins, a buck and a doe.  We named them Abe and Abby.

Just exactly what was wrong we aren’t sure but Annie developed some intestinal difficulties and very quickly weakened and then died this last Sunday night.  Our immediate concern of course was for her month old babies.  With some effort they have both now, finally, begun to take a bottle.  Hopefully, we can find homes for them where they can be cared for.

Annie was quite special and will be missed by all of us here on the farm. You can read a couple of previous posts about Annie here  and here.

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Boy, Do I Ever Have A Lot Of Catching Up To Do!

Blogging hasn’t taken a high priority for the last few weeks. Upon our return from Oregon at the end of March we have been busy, busy, busy! I had put off doing any gardening or seed starting. That had to begin almost immediately after arriving back home. That went well and we have been having fresh radishes, greens, onions from the garden.

I did a couple of posts as reports on our trip and I have more to post. Bear with me, I’ll get it done.

Shortly after getting back to the farm we began getting baby goats. Zoe, the goat who refused to accept her kid last year, was the first to kid. She had a nice little doeling which we named Zaylee. A couple of days later Brownie also had a doeling. We named her Baylee. Not exactly twins but are half-sisters, from the same daddy. Their mothers are half-sisters also.


That is Zaylee on the left and Baylee on the right.

Annie waited a couple of weeks and presented us with twins, Abe and Abby. Annie is getting old and isn’t in as good a condition as in previous years. I’m not milking her, just letting her raise her babies.

I used rocks I hauled home from the old house I’ve been tearing down to level out Connie’s flower bed. (See my post on that here.) That took a few days.

When I built our deck in 2005 I used some “cull wood” from the sawmill as decking. Even though I have applied water seal a few times some of the boards were rotting. I replaced the deck floor with treated deck boards.


Here you can see some of the new boards that have been put into place. The blue/green in the lower left is one of my water tanks that are under the deck. These are used to hold some of the rain that runs off of the roof.

When we first arrived back home we were in a bit of a dry period here in South-Central Kentucky, running a deficit of about 8 inches. That has changed. Over about 4 days at the end of April we received over 3” of rain, which we really appreciated. However, the next weekend, Saturday and Sunday, May 1 and 2 we got 11 and 1/10 inches! Living on top of a ridge we had no major problems, just a bit of erosion from the gardens, etc. But, our little community suffered some major flooding. Nothing like Nashville, TN but still several homes and businesses were flooded. The city lake almost washed out. The highway was closed and several folks were evacuated as it appeared that the dam was going to wash away. So much water was coming over the concrete spillway and the earth dam was eroding on both sides. Thankfully it didn’t go but there is alot of repair work to be done.

I have spent nearly everyday the past two weeks working to complete the project of tearing down the old house and hauling home salvaged material. I’m close to being done.


This pile of boards, all 14-16 feet long, have yet to be hauled home. Darryl will use his 16’ trailer to haul them. As you can see my little truck just won’t handle material of that length.

As I have mentioned before we heat with wood. The wood stove we have been using for the last couple of winters is a cook stove with a large fire box. When we quit having to have heat Connie hated to go back to cooking on our gas range. She said if I had told her 10 years ago that she would be cooking on a wood cook stove, and further, enjoying it she would have thought them crazy. With the big fire box it just isn’t practical to cook on our Bakers Choice in the warmer months. We discussed moving the stove onto the screened front porch for the summer but that is a pretty big job and still takes more wood to get the stove up to cooking temps. We decided to look for a smaller and less expensive wood cook stove that we could put on the porch. That would become in essence a summer kitchen.

After doing some searching on line I discovered on ebay what we were looking for. The individual/business had 3 different stoves available, all new. One was pretty plain, one just like it with chrome trim and the third one had a slightly larger fire box and a water reservoir. The third one was the one we bid on and bought. The stove is much lighter in weight, is not air-tight and isn’t the quality of the Bakers Choice but is a good little stove. We are enjoying it. Connie is learning how to use the oven as it doesn’t heat quite the same as the one we have in the kitchen.


Hopefully, this brings you somewhat up-to-date. I’ll try to stay a bit more current and I’ll strive to finish my reports on “our big adventure.”

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Cedar-Apple Rust Gall

 

Following yesterdays rain we began seeing these alien looking things hanging on many of the cedar trees.  What in the world were they?  It seemed evident that they were some type of fungi.  After doing a bit of research we discovered that this is the Cedar-Apple Rust Gall. 

The following information is taken from the Kentucky Pest News Newsletter.

“Rust-infected Juniperus species (cedars and junipers) are revealing bright orange evidence of the rust fungi infecting them during moist periods this spring.  In Kentucky, we commonly see three different rust fungi on cedars and junipers, often on the same tree.  These rust diseases are cedar-apple rust, cedar-hawthorn rust, and cedar-quince rust.  All three rusts are caused by different species of the fungus Gymnosporangium, each of which must spend a phase of its life cycle as a parasite on Juniperus species such as native red cedars or ornamental junipers.  The other phase of the life of these rust fungi is spent on susceptible alternate hosts such as apple, crabapple, hawthorn, mountain ash, pear, and serviceberry.

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 Cedar apple rust.  The cedar-apple rust fungus (G. juniperi-virginianae) forms light brown to reddish or chocolate brown galls in the leaf axils of infected Juniperus species.  These galls are usually rounded and range from pea-sized to 2 inches in diameter.  As galls mature, the flesh becomes corky and the surface becomes pitted with circular depressions.  In spring, following rainy periods, slimy, yellow-orange tendrils, or “spore horns,” up to 2 inches long swell and protrude from these depressions.  A gall may produce many spore horns, which cause it to resemble orange-colored blossoms from a distance.  Severely rusted Juniperus can be very conspicuous.”

From the reading I did I found that these galls apparently do no harm to the cedar trees but can do damage to the apple trees.  There may be damage to the leaves and on the fruit as well.  It can weaken the trees and can cause them to eventually die.  In some areas in past years laws were passed requiring all cedar trees near apple orchards to be destroyed.  As many cedars as we have here on the farm that isn’t an option.  Hopefully, our young apple trees won’t suffer too greatly.

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