New year, new tractor

 I've changed tractors.  I traded up by downsizing.  I sold the IH 424, 40 HP diesel with front end loader.

It was just too huge.  It scared me to drive it or use it since it was probably capable of knocking over my house if I turned too wide or didn't push the clutch in fast enough.  It also had 800 pound rear wheels - that's the weight of each wheel!  What the heck do you do if you get a flat???  I should have known it was too big, but how could more power be bad?  Well, when the rear wheels require a path that's over seven feet wide, that's too big.

The new tractor is way more reasonable.  It's a 4 wheel drive Massey Ferguson 1010.  It has less than 400 operating hours on it and looks like it's brand new.  It came with a front end loader, a 5' finish mower and a post hole digger.  It has a 3 cylinder, 16 HP diesel engine which is just adorable when compared to the monstrous engine in the IH.

The paint hasn't even been worn off the bucket.

It was for sale about a mile from here by a guy who is moving to North Carolina.  I bought it and drove it home - now that's convenient.  Even the CFO and Homestead Manager is pleased.  She didn't like it when I confessed that I was afraid of the IH. 

Bring on the spring!  It's time to start gardening!

Stevens' laws

Years ago my father instructed me in some of the laws the he recognized as valuable for a young man starting off in life.  I remember some, I've forgotten others and I've added my own to the list.  What follow are the current list of Stevens' laws (as compiled by yours truly) with explanations as necessary.

Stevens' laws

1. Never live west of work.  If you do you'll be driving into the sun in the morning and in the evening for several weeks out of the year.
2. You never have your own kids.  The kids always seem to have traits and interests of others in the family, you can always see more of somebody else in them.
3. If it's worth doing it's worth overdoing.  Why spend time almost doing something right when you can completely overdesign it with just a little more effort.
4. If it's not worth doing it's not worth doing right.  It's amazing how much time can be saved when frivolous tasks are done with a minimum of effort.
5. Every former homeowner is an idiot.  ...and someday you will be a former homeowner to someone.  No matter what you do, sometimes there is a shortcut to be taken, or the original reason for something is gone and what's left makes no sense.
6. Inside every project is an ever bigger project just waiting to get out.  No matter how much planning and research you do, the job will get bigger once you open it up and get a good look at it.  Sometimes it's because of Laws 3 or 5, but it's worst when it's due to law 4.  (This law was shamelessly lifted from Jan Slater).

The Bean Harvest

Last year I discovered the joy of Good Mother Stallard beans.  I bought a packet of seeds and grew one 15' long trellis.  They did nothing all summer, then at the end of August they started going nuts.  It turns out they're a cool weather bean that won't set beans in the heat.  When the nights begin to cool down the beans finally start to set.  You let them grow and mature to full, lumpy pods, and continue to let them hang there until they become dry and crispy.  At that point you pick 'em, shell 'em and store 'em.

So at the end of last year I had a good quart of pretty red and white beans.  I picked out a big handful of large beans for seed stock for this year, and the rest went into soup over the winter.  Those beans made the most incredible soup ever.  The flavor was superb to the point of being irresistible.  I resolved to increase my yield this year so I could have more of that incredible soup.

I planted a 10' row of beans in a row with the spring peas (which were still producing).  By the time the peas were done the beans were just climbing the strings and getting started.  I also planted a 30' row of Mammoth Russian sunflowers and put three or four bean seeds around each one.  The sunflowers went to 8' and when the heads matured I cut them off to dry to feed the chickens as a winter treat.  The beans went up the sunflower stalks and eventually outgrew them, leaving a huge mass of foliage at the top of the insufficient, dying stalks.

I tried to prop the whole thing up with some ropes, but the stalks became too weak and fell apart.  I had to resort to throwing the vines over the rope trellis I had laid out in hopes that some of the beans would mature.  Ultimately I cut the bean vines off at ground level and carried the whole tangled mass to the open shed for drying.  My long suffering wife and I picked the beans off those tangled vines and set the bean pods in the basement to dry some more.  After a week or two in the basement, with a little help from a cozy fire in the wood stove, the beans were dry enough to shell.  We spent two or three romantic evenings settin' and shellin' together.  It's amazing that marriage counselors don't recommend this as a means to a healthy marriage.

So our hard work is finally done.  Now we have a bowl of about 6 quarts of the prettiest beans you've ever seen.  Even taking out another big handful of seed stock for next year, we should have enough for plenty of tasty soup recipes for a chilly Pittsburgh winter.

 The beans on the left were also dried and shelled, but there's only a few cups of them, and I don't even know what they're called or if they're any good.  That's a story for another time.

Dropping a large tree

In our annual quest for 4 cords of wood we do manage to drop a lot of trees.  I never top them or do anything fancy - I look for standing trees that I can turn into lying trees for easy cutting.  Today's adventure started like most others - badly.  I normally throw a line into the tree so it can be "helped" to the ground and guided in the direction that I would like it to fall.  Today the tree went straight up for 20 feet then forked with a narrow crotch that made a challenge of throwing anything through it.

After 10 or 15 minutes I managed to get my rope and branch thrown through the crotch (the branch is about a  foot long, with the rope tied in the middle - you throw it through, give it a pull and it (ideally) wedges crosswise and you can pull against it easily).  After I got the rope through I made my cuts.  The first cuts remove a large shallow wedge from the direction you want the tree to fall.

 Next is a plunge cut that leaves a hinge right behind the wedge:

The side view shows (starting at the left) the shallow wedge, hinge, plunge cut that goes all of the way through and a ligament that holds the tree steady.  The problem with the traditional wedge/backcut is that the tree becomes increasingly unstable until it falls.  The beauty of this method is that you can get to this point and have a safe tree condition.  Then you make one quick cut through the ligament and the tree comes down right where you expect it to.

At least that's the way it should work.  Today I tensioned the rope, made the last cut and the tree didn't move.  I went and pulled some more on the rope and the tree didn't move, but my rope and anchor branch did; they came right out of the crotch and fell into a pile on the ground where they were doing absolutely nothing about helping to bring my tree down.  I spent 20 minutes trying to throw my rope through again, broke a rope with a come-along (10 minutes), threw a smaller piece of rope with a weight on it through the crotch (10 minutes), pulled a larger rope up, secured it to the tree with a running bowline, and pulled the tree over with the help of a very entertained neighbor (thanks Tim).

Another hour of cutting (while Patty gave the splitter another workout) and the tree was reduced to nicely burnable chunks.  A few loads were brought up and stacked in the woodshed today, and tomorrow we'll bring in the rest and be ready for another cold Pittsburgh winter.

"Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice."   Indeed.

Wood extravaganza

Bringing in the wood for the year is always an adventure, especially when it starts late, begins with an injury (bruised ribs), doesn't move along well because of weather and includes a lost day because of a Jeep stuck on the back hill.  We finally had a nice, sunny day to take care of the trees we had cut down - three elms, one a massive beast with an 18 inch trunk rising straight up for 20 feet.

Pieces were already bucked to length and stacked/strewn carefully.  I borrowed my friend Tom's hydraulic splitter and we were off to the races.  Normally we have the system pretty well coordinated - I muscle the logs into place and Patty works the valve to cycle the cylinder.  We had already split the truly huge pieces, but there were still a bunch that needed to be split before they would fit into the firebox.

Moving the wood to the woodshed is excellent exercise - especially for Patty.  She often ends up walking from the back of the lot to the woodshed and back - a lot of times (it's uphill and about 200 yards) - otherwise she stands and waits 10 minutes while I drive the round trip on the tractor.  But yesterday we found another way to keep her busy while I was moving the wood.

She was able to wrangle the logs into place, split 'em and stack the splits while I hauled it away.  I had a hard time transporting as fast as she was splitting, and we ended up getting everything that was down put away for winter use. 

I'm always amazed at how adaptable that woman is.  She not only hauled and split at least a half cord of wood by herself, she also learned how to start the log splitter, and was analyzing the wood grain to get the easiest split and figuring out how small to split the pieces based on how wet the wood was and how long the piece was. 

Is it any wonder I love her?

The only good hornworm...

Is one that's completely covered in wasp eggs.  When these hatch they'll devour the hornworm then grow up to hunt for more of the voracious pests.  Almost makes me feel sorry for the hornworm.  OK, I'm over it.

August 10 Harvest

There's nothing like a harvest to pretty up a kitchen counter.  Tomatoes, peppers, white cucumbers and mexican sour gherkins (aka mouse melons).

But all is not beautiful in the garden.  Something got in and has been defoliating the soybeans - leaving bare stems and sad little underdeveloped pods.  I'm suspecting rabbits because the tomatoes aren't being decimated like they would if a groundhog were at work.  I sprayed with a mix made with egg whites, garlic and capcacin - I'm hoping that will do it, but I'm also making rounds with the pellet gun hoping to perforate the little fiend that has nearly destroyed my hopes of edamame this year.  The Long War continues.