In no particular order here are a few updates that may be of interest to you.
During one of their interminable Updates to “improve” their platform WordPress changed the protocols for both the Contact and Comment functions. Webmeister Tim tracked down those changes (they were not self-evident), and I know at least now the Contact function works. I am less certain about the Comments utility.
I’ve been told that the first shipment of the back ordered Woodfinishing DVD is being shipped this week. Cross your fingers. Oh, the travails of using fulfillment service providers in Florida, a/k/a Hurricane Alley. Whenever the DVDs arrive I will immediately package and ship them to those three dozen of you who have waited so patiently and graciously for your order.
I’m keeping an eye on a batch of Mel’s Wax I made and packaged several months ago and will open the jars next month. If they are okay it will probably be back in the Don’s Barn Store around Christmas. The formulation is purposefully designed for archival properties rather than shelf life, so it’s always a knife’s-edge proposition. I could add stabilizers and preservatives and such, but then it would not be Mel’s Wax.
Finally, Webmeister Tim and I are in the planning and implementation stages for a YooToob channel featuring less formal “at the bench” type short videos (3-5 minutes) about projects and techniques. Right now, we need to settle on a cheap (free?) meat-and-potatoes editing application that is simple and easy enough for me to use but can still integrate two video feeds with the sound feed. At one time I had a long menu of formal videos I wanted to make, but since I cannot even finish editing the Gragg Chair video I am exploring this new path.
Stay tuned. For at least another week the weather is expected to be beautiful in Shangri-la so the outside/homestead work will take precedence over the in-shop time. Today I hope to finish up removing the detritus from the shack up on the hill, a project that was so rudely interrupted several years ago when the wheelbarrow broke my hip.
My latest and longest (almost 45 min.) interview with Brian Wilson for his Now For Something Completely Different podcast is now on line at his web site and Substack. Yes, he is “retired” after five decades of broadcasting but he can’t kick the habit.
Because of our brutal drought this gardening season (no meaningful rain from April until September) Mrs. Barn spent untold hours delivering water to her thirsty garden, generally twice a day. Some of the plants still suffered but still she managed to grow and gather quite a bounty.
Here is a wagonload of spaghetti squash, one of our favorites. Maybe enough for all winter.
The winter’s inventory of squash resides under the vintage encyclopedias in the dining room
And a portion of the canned veggies and salsa.
We are very much looking forward to next gardening season with the new greenhouse fully in service. Real construction begins tomorrow!
Last Saturday was an exciting eventful day at the homestead as a long-delayed project got off the ground (well, in the ground).
A few weeks ago I was chatting with my friend KC about our way-behind-schedule plans for building a greenhouse on the terrace we had cut into the hillside two years ago. From my perspective one of the big hurdles was building up the enthusiasm and energy to dig 14 three-foot-deep holes for the 6-inch fence posts I was planning on using for the foundation to the knee-walls.
“No problem,” sez KC, “I’ll just bring over my post driver and we will get it done in a snap.” As a farmer/rancher with probably miles of fencing, KC owned a portable pile driver. It probably should not have surprised me, but I actually did not know such a machine ever existed.
Last week I laid out the greenhouse footprint and cut points into one end of the posts. This made it much easier to get them into the ground straight, provided we didn’t encounter a large subterranean rock during the driving. Ironically the first post was the only one that drifted crooked during the whole process.
He showed up at 9AM as promised and left around 90 minutes later. I suspect it would have taken me a month or two to accomplish the same work by hand.
We placed the posts where I had marked the ground, set up the machine to capture the top, used a level for both the X and X’ axes, he threw the switch, and the ground started shaking. BAM, BAM, BAM with the speed of a jackhammer.
Like I said he was done and out the driveway about 90 minutes later.
The project will resume as soon as I can get a truckload of pressure treated SYP delivered to build the knee walls.
Given my forays into the woods for cutting firewood I must necessarily haul all the tool requisite for the task. For a full day or two or three of cutting this includes stuff like cant hooks (the tools for rolling over logs), ropes and blocks for yanking on large logs, lotsa fuel and bar oil, and sometimes sledge and wedge and occasionally even a digging bar to get a big rock out of the way. And there are lots of rocks as they are this region’s dominant agricultural product (just kidding, it’s cattle).
But there are other times when all I’m doing is a couple hours of clearing the understory or clearing a path to a larger trove. This is especially the purpose of my new box.
A fitted plastic case for my chainsaw is useless for anything other than protecting the chainsaw. I wanted to chainsaw container to do a lot more. At the same time the molded plastic case has the advantage of being lightweight and I like that feature a lot. To accomplish this I made the box out of 3/8″ plywood, not as light as the molded plastic but light enough. Combined with glue, glueblocks, and lots of triangulation it is a tough, stiff, “lightweight” carrying container for everything I need for a brief chainsaw session.
The box holds my chainsaw with a quarter inch to spare in length, four replacement chains, two quarts of lubricant oil, two quarts of fuel, my gloves, some sharpening tools, a roofing hatchet, ear muffs, Kevlar chaps, and probably a couple more things that do not come to mind right now.
BTW, the box is painted orange not out of Stihl brand loyalty, but rather I paint everything that goes into the woods with orange paint so I can find it quickly when I mislay it. Which happens a lot.
About once a month I walk up in the woods, almost always incorporating a survey of the microhydroelectric waterline. About three weeks ago we had a frog-choker of a rainstorm, probably the residue of one of the tropical storms. Since it had been very, very dry this summer I was looking forward to by hydro turbine picking up the pace, but instead it stopped altogether. I knew what that meant and so last week I trudged the quarter mile to the top of the systems to find the problem. Every time I service or repair the system it requires about four trips up and down a quarter mile of uneven terrain with a 10% incline. Quite a workout.
I’d hoped it was just leaf cloggage, but there was nothing wrong at that end.
So down into the ravine I went to gingerly navigate my way to the bottom and find the problem.
Here it is. During the rainstorm a tree came down and cracked the PVC penstock. PVC is comparatively cheap and easy to work with compared to polypropylene, but it is also comparatively brittle and I encounter some sort of break a couple times a year.
So I grabbed my penstock repair bag and returned to the scene of the crime, after first walking to the top again to turn the entire system off. I cut out the damaged area and grafted in new pipe with couplings and PVC cement, and in a jiffy it was as good as gold.
You might ask why I have my pipeline sitting above ground rather than buried. Well, given the nature of the terrain I can give twenty five thousand reasons, all of them named “Dollar.”
This year I am thinking about a deep dive into configuring the water line system to enable it to work all winter long. Gotta get the incline perfect, though.
Not a day goes by that I don’t spend a little time noodling around my favorites on youtube to see if there is something interesting and educational for me to watch. Here’s a list of those pages, in no particular order.
During his recent visit my brother and I were chatting about my 3,000+ record album collection, in storage and un-listened-to for more than three decades. I mentioned that my old turntable had frozen hydraulics to render its audiophile cartridge useless, and I was going to order a new one. That’ll definitely motivate me to get them out and listen to them all over again. At one time I had my entire collection memorized but now I can hardly remember more than a few dozen of them. He said, “It’s gonna be just like Christmas when you open the boxes.”
That conversation got me to thinking about something all my music aficionado circle argued about all those decades ago; “If you were stuck on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe, what would be your dozen albums?”
So here’s my list, in alphabetical order by artist. NB: these are all vinyl albums in my collection, most have been replicated for my CD collection which is itself substantial.
Frederic Chopin – Nocturnes (1827-1846) and yes I know, it is technically a five-record collection IIRC, but I get to make my own rules for my own fantasy.
As a kid my folks were part of the Columbia Record Club and the first time I heard Chopin’s Nocturns, I was probably 8 or 10 at the time, I was hooked. Since I’ve been listening to them regularly for the past six decades I guess they would be good to have if I was stuck somewhere desolate, like a desert island or New York City or some other forsaken place.
PS; if you’ve ever wondered whether or not great music of the past could flourish in another time and place, check out this performance of Chopin’s Prelude No. 4 in E Minor from maybe 55 years ago by Led Zeppelin’s guitarist!
Or this:
Dire Straits – Dire Straits(1978)
I was blown away the first time I heard this album when it first came out and remain as besotted as ever.
Edvard Grieg – Peer Gynt Suites (1876)
No little boy listening to “Hall of the Mountain King” could resist marching around and stamping his feet. Heck, I can barely resist doing so in my 70th year.
Again, listen to this, uh, fascinating version by ELO.
Johnny Hartman – John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (1963)
Hartman ranks #1 on my list of male singers and his collaboration with jazz giant John Coltrane remains perhaps the greatest capturing of jazz/ballad vocals ever. Anyone who has ever spent any time with me in the barn gets introduced to Johnn Hartman. Think Frank Sinatra but with real talent.
BTW it was when my Baptist preacher parents came into my room when I was listening to John Coltrane that they knew I was , … different.
Keith Jarrett – Koln Concert (1975)
The story itself of this album is a fascinating one. Jarrett was sick, injured, exhausted, hungry, and playing on a craptastic piano for a middle-of-the-night concert, and wanted to just go back to the hotel to get some sleep. Instead the recording equipment was turned on, resulting in not only the best-selling live jazz album of all time but the best-selling piano music album of all time!
Gordon Lightfoot – Sit Down Young Stranger (1970)
Though very, very early in his spectacular career I find this album to be unsurpassed. Not a bad song on the album, well, perhaps a needless comment about any Lightfoot album. Your Loves Return (A Song for Stephen Foster) still gets me 50+ years after hearing it for the first time.
Little Feat – Waiting for Columbus (1978)
Probably the best live album of its era (perhaps equaled by the Talking Heads 1984 Stop Making Sense), by America’s best rock band. “Nuff said.
The first time I heard this album, to be honest I didn’t get it. Second time, sorta got it. Third time it entered my rotation for the past 53 years. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, barbarians are repulsed by it (just kidding). Mrs Barn will not allow the music to be played in her presence as the finds it to be discordant and nerve wracking. I often play it in my earbuds while working on my laptop.
Pat Metheny – Offramp (1981)
I went back and forth on this album, debating it or Metheny’s As Fall Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, but since one of the pieces from this album (“Are You Going With Me?”) is one of two secular selections on my funeral playlist. No I am not planning any time soon, just being prepared. I even have the homily titled and outlined.
Stevie Ray Vaughan – Texas Flood (1983)
A promotional copy of this album arrived at the college radio station when I was doing a late night jazz show. Sometimes either during the show or afterwards I would sample new albums and I wound up listening to this one repeatedly until the wee hours of the morning. SRV was only one of two musicians whose deaths I mourned (Colin Walcott of the jazz ensemble Oregon was the other). This CD has been in the player of my little truck since forever.
Jennifer Warnes – Famous Blue Raincoat (1986)
Jennifer Warnes has the voice of an angel, trained as an opera singer and producing (way too few!) albums for more than fifty years. I’ve got them all. She was offered her first recording contract at the age of seven. Really. This CD has been playing in my “new” pickup since I bought it 3-1/2 years ago and I never tire of it. Her long-time collaboration with Leonard Cohen resulted in this magical presentation of his songs. Even if you never heard of her you will recognize her voice from movie songs. I actually know very little about her personally, but often regard her music the same way Benjamin Franklin referred to beer.
Eberhard Weber – Fluid Rustle (1979)
More evenings than not I fall asleep listening to some of this album. And like Metheny’s Offramp this album has a piece to be included in my funeral, “Quiet Departures.” Tragically like Keith Jarrett, Weber’s music performances have been silenced by a crippling stroke.
Bonus pick for those truly adventurous, Univers Zero – Univers Zero, a/k/a 1313 (1977)
This avant garde Belgian acoustic chamber ensemble produces music that is impossible for me to characterize. Discordant is hardly a strong enough word to describe them, but I like it. Long stretches could best be called “chaotic noise,” but there is just enough creative genius to make it worth my while. I think it might have been this album here my mom asked, “Are they all playing the same song?” As a church hymn traditionalist she never really caught on to my musical tastes.
Autumn is usually pretty busy at Shangri-la and this year is no exception. Mrs. Barn is cleaning out her gardens, canning and dehydrating up a storm, we are doing lots of end-of-summer yard work including bush hogging a large section of hillside, and getting the firewood situation in-hand.
I’ve been spending much of the last fortnight splitting and stacking all the tons of wood my brother and I harvested a month ago. I got all that done (about 80% of what we’ll need for winter 2025/2026) and will go hunting and gathering more fallen trees in the forest to be turned into BTUs. I’ve already identified about three winters’ worth of trees that are literally a windfall. Now all I have to do is clear a path for my little 4WD pickup with the knobby tires to get to them.
One of the great helps in all of this is having a very large staging area to do all the collecting, splitting, and stacking. Many years ago I had a large parking area constructed next to the barn in anticipation of workshops and student parking. Since that endeavor has drawn to a close, it is free and available for me and my firewood operation.
The original packaging art, now reworked just a bit.
I am delighted to report that finally the video and packaging files have been sent to the reproduction/fulfillment company and I am now looking forward to receiving a box of product ready to send to those two dozen of you awaiting them. It’s been a long and winding road punctuated with corrupted files and dying compewders, but finally we are back on track.
I cannot announce this without once again making note of the fact that the publishers of Popular Woodworking and the F&W Media folks with whom I created this video (and others) have released the video intellectual property to me without compensation so that I can get this out to anyone interested. Well done.
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