JAP69's Blog

Back when I was younger people use to do more canning and preserving than they do now. I can remember our basement stocked with home made canned goods, crooks for pickling and of course we had a large freezer.

When I buy vegetables at the market these days I prefer packages of frozen vegetables. Has more of a taste of freshness in my opinion.

I have relatives that dried a lot of their garden harvest that were suitable to be stored dried.

Do you know storing potatoes improperly could give off a hazardous gas. Look it up on the net.

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How Much to Plant Per Person in the Vegetable Garden

https://www.thespruce.com/how-many-vegetables-per-person-in-garden-1403355

Went out and watered the plants today, Staked up the Siberian tomato plant. Put some ferlizer [bone meal] on some flower plants.

Lettuce in small basin is doing good. More radishes to be harvested. Got a couple spinach plants that finally came up in the 10qt container.

 Two radishes and two scallions. Maybe I will check and see what flower petals are edible. I heard about eating flower petals but thought it was only old wives tales.

I mentioned in previous post that it cost $375.00 plus or minus to set up the container garden. Now that it is setup for planting it should last a great many years. The wooden containers will probably rot to the point of being unusable at some point in the future.

The yearly cost after setup should be only for seeds, ferlizer and products for pest and treatment of plant ailments.

Expanding the container count could also add to the cost.

Chalk it all up to being a hobby, learning experience and having my own fresh vegetables and some flower plants for admiration.

Just in the yard checking on things. The radishes [ Raphanus sativus] finally grew some roots large enough to harvest for my salad tonight. The bunching onions [AKA scallions] have a couple plants that look large enough for my salad tonight.

A couple radishes and a couple scallions will be in my salad tonight.

Tonight's harvest feast being my first real harvest since starting cost me about $375.00 +- and four months of learning container gardening with more to learn and a few dollars more for supplies to get next years growing season off to a good start.

The flower plants are doing well. The pansies I dead headed and trimmed back has one of the two remaining pansy plants with one flower in full bloom.

The rest of the vegetable plants are still alive. Struggling along with cool weather now.

Swedish fish filet knife

https://www.surlatable.com/product/PRO-683425/?adpos=none&creative=113913132488&device=c&matchtype=&network=d&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImMq6zI_f1wIV3HjBCh3wLA1JEAEYASABEgKoA_D_BwE

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I have one that was made in Finland. Sharpest knife you ever want to see. Honed sharp as a razor. The steel in those knives are grade a number one.

I got mine at a yard sale for something like 5 or 10 dollars. Mine has a wooden handle. I have a two sided wet stone with honing oil so I can sharpen knives to slice a piece of paper with one stroke.

I learned how to hone knives when I was young for obvious reasons living on a farm.

Yep, we had a bad ass farm dog. That dog was a woodchuck hunter among the best. He would sneak up on a woodchuck and the woodchuck would sit up on his hind legs when it spotted the dog. Our dog would see that and then start running circles around the woodchuck. The woodchuck would pivot around on his hind legs at the speed the dog was circling him. The woodchuck would get all dizzy and fall over and our dog would go in for the kill grabbing the woodchuck by the neck and breaking it.
Woodchucks are bad if they took up residence in the cow pasture. Woodchucks dig and entry hole on an angle and an exit hole vertically. A cow could step into the hole and break a leg and it would be all over for the cow. Best to see the woodchuck meet their demise rather than a valuable cow.

We use to plant corn with what is called a corn planter which was attached to the back of the tractor planting two rows at a time. The planter was calibrated to drop a corn kernel in the row so far apart from the last kernel dropped. We would finish planting and sometimes a crow or crows would come swooping down to where we planted the corn kernels. The crows would see where the corn rows were and walk over and find a kernel of corn. Then you would see the crow walk the exact distance to the next kernel in the row and pluck it right out of the ground. They did not need to grub around in the corn row to find the next kernel as they knew the distance on how far apart the next kernel was planted.

We had chickens on the farm, hens and roosters. We kept maybe a hundred or less for eggs and eating to be sold. I use to feed the chickens occasionally, gather the eggs and what not to tend to the chicken flock.

Well we had this rooster one time who grew up thinking he was king sh!t and a bad ass. He got to the point where he would come charging at me and try to spur me accomplishing it a few times. I tolerated that for about one week and one day he came charging at me. I had a small club in my hand and clubbed that bad ass rooster up side the head. Need less to say that bad ass rooster ended up making the main ingredient in a pot of bad ass soup.

True story.

We use to have maybe three or four milk cows on the farm that we had for our own use.  The cows use to be put into stanchions at night which had a gutter on the tail end to catch the urine and excrement. We use to wheel it out with a wheel barrow building the manure pile. Generally every spring when it dried out enough we loaded up the manure spreader by hand. When it came time to load the manure spreader I took off my boots and shoes and plodded through the manure squeezing it between my toes and up to my ankles while loading the manure spreader.

Makes a young lad grow tall doing that.

When I got the roll of untreated burlap cloth and the untreated burlap bags for the container garden the aroma of the burlap brought back the memories of how I like the aroma of burlap. It also brought back memories of my youth on the farm of the fall harvesting season. We use to grow various grains on the farm, wheat, oats, buckwheat and maybe some rye. We use to hire a neighbor who had a combine. The combine cut the grain stalks and it went into to the combine to sort out the grain kernels which then went up to the bagging area of the combine which had two chutes for the grain to fall into burlap sacks.

I use to ride the combine maybe in my middle teens and be a bager.  The grain would fall down the chute into the burlap bag and when it got full enough I would trip the chute lever to the other chute with an empty burlap bag. I would then tie off the bag with the grain in it and drop it down a side chute to the ground to be picked up. Then I would set an empty burlap bag onto the chute for the next fill up.

The aroma of the burlap and the harvesting of the grain on a bright sunny day is a memory not forgotten.

When I lived at home when I was young we had timber frame barns and the house was timber frame. I have a pretty fair memory of what the barn looked like inside and out. Think I will build a scale model of the old barn. I have a pretty good judgement of measurements. Our barn had four bents spaced about 20 feet apart making the barn about 60 feet long.

In this video it was all manpower and brute strength. When I was younger there were still some old timers around who worked on barn raisings. They told of the dangers that use to occur and there have been many accidents and deaths during barn raisings. 

You see in the video the men lifting up individual pieces for the barn. Solid timbers that long and that size are stinkin heavy. Those main timbers used in barns are something like 10 x 10 inches or there about.

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Historic Timber Frame Barn Raising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpBCIv-yTok

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"This is a list of harvest festivals around the world."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_harvest_festivals

I thought about it and think the 1/12 scale might be a little small for me. I think I will go with the 1/6 scale. That is 1 inch equals 6 inches. Will have twice as much body to the scale lumber than 1/12 scale. May be easier to break down with an inch ruler.

1 inch = 6 inches
7/8 inch = 5 1/4 inches
3/4 inch = 4 1/2 inches
5/8 inch = 3 3/4 inches
1/2 inch = 3 inches
3/8 inch = 2 1/4 inches
1/4 inch = 1 1/2 inches
1/8 inch = 3/4 inches

I think I have that right doing brain calculations.

I may just do a farm spread layout in the backyard. Log cabin house, Post and beam barns with vertical board and batten siding, post and beam horse and implement shed with board and batten, Build the hen house and hawg pen the same style as the barns.

May even put in crops. They sell 1/6 scale seeds for 1/6 scale crops.

Maybe see If I can get 1/6 scale live poultry and livestock.

This is the style of log cabin I would use in my model.
See where the log timbers lay on top of each other rather than having a traditional gap between the logs. You can see the carpenter using a draw knife to cut an angle on each corner of the timber starting at the 0930 time mark. You can see the bevel cut through out the video on the outside of the cabin. You can see the bevel plainly at the 1128 time mark.
I may build a log cabin model to start with that is small like in the video. I would build the model so the roof can be removed to have access to the inside. If I was building a two story model I would have the roof section removable and the the second story removable for access to the first floor.
Would be a great doll house for the child in a grown up. A strong enough child should be able to lift off the sections. Would not be like a traditional doll house with one side open.
 
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Traditional Finnish Log House Building Process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3J5wkJFJzE