Hand Tools and Machinery for Country Living

[j44ke]

First plow day. I'd give myself a C. Took me 4 hours to do what the plow guys do in 45 minutes or less. More snow than I expected. I was thinking 6" but was closer to 8-10" with deeper drifts. Dug a few holes but otherwise erred on the side of creating a luge course for the car. We'll see how that works. Tractor has mega-power and fancy plow was great. Hardest part was making the transition from the end of the driveway onto the local road. Sort of like trying to scoop out a melon with a girder. Hard to flick the hydraulics fast enough (and in the right direction) to make it smooth. I'll need to practice if I am going to plow Carnegie Hall.

Learned a lot and that's the goal.

[mnoble485]

Bonus points for your hat color matching the fenders. Style matters.

Mike

[Clyde]

Looking good
I plowed 1/4 mi drive with MF 235 and a rear mounted blade. Nothing nearly as fancy as yours! Took awhile but I got good enough with it. Takes some time to get the feel of hydraulics.

[rwsaunders]

First significant snowfall in two years on Saturday and we had friends coming over for dinner. Pulled out the Snow King 750 and pffttt…my trusty snowblower wouldn’t start. User error in not draining the tank the last time that I used the unit. I called around for some help in getting the unit up yesterday and of my supers swears by MIB, so I figured why not. Sure as hell, followed the directions, patiently waited the recommended 4 hours and drumroll…this stuff freakin worked!

[Tom]

My ritual with the snowblower is to pull it out of the shed in the fall, roll it over to the garage, put some gas in the tank and start it up. In the spring I roll it out of the garage, start it up and burn off the gas I put in it in the fall muttering darkly to myself before I roll it back to the shed.

When I grew up in the 1970s you could build an actual quarter mile toboggan run with banked turns and everything down the field behind the house, dig snow caves in the drifts and make igloos from the packed snow. One time we had a storm that drifted so high you couldn't see out of the picture window over the sink in the kitchen. Your nostalgic dispatch of the day from the Dorptown where it is 45 degrees in near mid January after about an inch of rain overnight. Grump.

[mnoble485]

RW,
Always trust old grizzled superintendents. Ask me how I know.

Mike

[j44ke]

Thanks to our backwards upside down weather, several inches of rain and near 50 degree temps Tues to Weds allowed me check my work. Gravel looks okay. I didn't remove the upper layer and deposit it elsewhere like our plow guy did, so that's good. I probably left too much snow if we were in a real winter where snow comes every 3-4 days. But context is everything I guess. I knew the rain was coming so I bet on "soft" removal and left a layer instead of trying to remove most of the snow to avoid having to sand the drive when the remainder turned into an auto-luge. The small trench there on the left is to manage the impending rain/melt water. There is a deeper one on the other side of the drive. The one on the left goes across the entry area for the garage to carry water runoff from the hill to a swale and catchment area in the pines. Works but needs a buried pipe so the car doesn't flatten it. In the spring I am going to put in a pipe and then dump gravel here and raise the level to restore the slope from garage to drive and then drive in the downhill direction. Right now things are a bit too flat.

[rwsaunders]

My grandfather would have hounded the owner until he/she bought a tarp.

[j44ke]

Nice old field tractor. Seems a lot of those tractors end their lives attached hay/field mowers and brush cutters. And then they just get parked.

[j44ke]

testing thread updating.

[j44ke]

Spent yesterday taking apart an old hop hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) that got taken down by a massive pine in the last wind storm. Hop hornbeams are one of my favorite trees - slow growing understory tree that produces lovely filtered shade and lots of seeds purple finches love to eat. The tree that came down was twin trunked so a lot of wood overall, and the wood is very dense so the weight was significant. Unfortunately it was out of reach of the tractor (steep slope plus nice mud layer over frost) so we had to employ the all-terrain hand-truck. Perfect tree to get a hernia lifting, because everything looks small but is 3x heavier than you expect. This trunk section probably weighed 70lbs if not more. Ring count reached 60 years old but might be older due to double trunk. That's my pal Jeff the woodworker/cabinetmaker who is pleased as punch he has the wood for furniture.

[Tom]

Also known as "ironwood". Best firewood there is, but that's the nicest log of it I've ever seen and good to know it isn't going to get burned.

[j44ke]

Also known as "ironwood". Best firewood there is, but that's the nicest log of it I've ever seen and good to know it isn't going to get burned.

Yes. We have the hop hornbeam (the flower and seed clusters look like hops) and the American hornbeam, which is called "musclewood" because it has a smooth trunk that looks like it is muscled.

https://mortonarb.org/plant-and-prot...ants/ironwood/

https://mortonarb.org/plant-and-prot...ican-hornbeam/

Hornbeam evidently comes from the use of the wood to make double yokes for oxen teams.

[bigbill]

I guess the Texas version of hornbeam is bois d'arc or Osage Orange. The wood is incredibly dense and resistant to insects and rot. I grew up in a Victorian house that was pier and beam. The original part of the house was on bois d'arc beams from the 1890s, the newer sections built in 1915 are on brick piers. My grandfather's barn, built in the 1880s, had bois d'arc threshholds, beams, and some of the stalls had bois d'arc floors.

The farm had a sawmill that was still in use when I was young. It had been built in the 1870s to make lumber to build the farmhouse and barn. It was originally powered by a steam tractor and later from a diesel tractor PTO. The sawmill had a large, five foot diameter blade, with no guarding or any kind of safety devices. I operated the equipment starting around age 9 until 13. I cut 4X4 posts and 2X6 planks. Smaller trees were cut into fence post length. The homestead, 1842, has bois d'arc fence posts, and the wire is tied on the post, because the posts are too hard for staples.

The scary part, besides the potential loss of limbs to the giant blade, was the need to segregate the wood so it didn't end up being firewood. A bois d'arc log will spit sparks and continuously pop, flinging chunks of burning wood out of the fireplace. With a modern fireplace that is mostly for show, or a wood stove, it's okay, but with a shallow fireplace found in older homes, the wood has been known to cause house fires.

[TonyP]

I guess the Texas version of hornbeam is bois d'arc or Osage Orange. The wood is incredibly dense and resistant to insects and rot. I grew up in a Victorian house that was pier and beam. The original part of the house was on bois d'arc beams from the 1890s, the newer sections built in 1915 are on brick piers. My grandfather's barn, built in the 1880s, had bois d'arc threshholds, beams, and some of the stalls had bois d'arc floors.

The farm had a sawmill that was still in use when I was young. It had been built in the 1870s to make lumber to build the farmhouse and barn. It was originally powered by a steam tractor and later from a diesel tractor PTO. The sawmill had a large, five foot diameter blade, with no guarding or any kind of safety devices. I operated the equipment starting around age 9 until 13. I cut 4X4 posts and 2X6 planks. Smaller trees were cut into fence post length. The homestead, 1842, has bois d'arc fence posts, and the wire is tied on the post, because the posts are too hard for staples.

The scary part, besides the potential loss of limbs to the giant blade, was the need to segregate the wood so it didn't end up being firewood. A bois d'arc log will spit sparks and continuously pop, flinging chunks of burning wood out of the fireplace. With a modern fireplace that is mostly for show, or a wood stove, it's okay, but with a shallow fireplace found in older homes, the wood has been known to cause house fires.

That was a life worth livin'.

[bigbill]

That was a life worth livin'.

Sometime in the mid-70s, I threw a bunch of bois d'arc logs into a ravine to help prevent erosion. They're still there.

[ides1056]

Sometime in the mid-70s, I threw a bunch of bois d'arc logs into a ravine to help prevent erosion. They're still there.

I planted them on my property, the seed obtained in Central Park. The wood is a beautiful orange color and is highly rot-resistant. Planted in rows they can form a living fence, complete with barbs.

[Tom]

The only I know of bois d'arc is the mention in Choctaw Bingo, a song by James McMurtry. I've been listening to the version on Saint Mary of the Woods album to hear that piano part as part of my learning. McMurtry writes good lyrics too.

[j44ke]

When trees fall and pull their roots out of the ground, if at all possible, we cut the trunk as near to the roots as we can so the roots and dirt around them falls back into the hole. Sometimes it happens immediately so beware! don't stand on the wrong side or you will get buried by several hundred pounds of dirt rocks and roots. But other times it happens gradually - like the hornbeam roots from the trunk above - as the snow melts and everything subsides back into the hole.

[ides1056]

There's a formation in the woods called pit and mound, characteristic of old-growth forests in particular. A tree falls, the root balls tips up and rots, leaving a pit and a mound.