For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God.You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
And they said, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary?”
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
I pray for you to have a blessed Christmas with loved ones and that you are celebrating the Incarnation, through whom we can be reconciled with The Creator.
As I approach the end of the year I am reflecting/projecting on the projects ahead of me. In addition to diving deeper into writing I’ve got a large number of things on my plate, including the mini-Gragg for Li’l T’s March birthday (coincidentally the month for the arrival of grandson #3, all of them March boys), outfitting my 18thC tool chest collection for on-site interpreting and re-enacting, doing some casting and patternwork, some possible private tutorials at the barn, several new workbench builds, blah, blah, blah.
High on my list will be resuming work on my ultimate tool cabinet, the one that will take me along until my ashes are scattered on the mountain. Since the presentation surface of the cabinet will be parquetry in the fashion of the Roentgens, and made from scraps left over from the French Oak Roubo Project, I still have a lot of veneer to saw to complete that. I’ve written about that some, but it has been so long I will probably start the account all over again.
To enhance my veneer sawing I am thinking seriously about another upgrade to my bandsaw using the roller guide set from Carter.
Have any of you tried this product? If so, please let me know. It is not cheap, around $200, but if it works as well as they say I will plunk down the money without hesitation. Given the fact that I originally bought the saw for $100 at a yard sale, I can afford to tart it up a bit.
Thanks to the generosity and tech savviness of a blog reader and dear friend, I’ve had my favorite version of G.F. Handel’s Messiah playing on my pocket mp3 for some time now. BTW, I have my favorite mp3 player model Mrs. Barn bought as a gift more two decades ago, and I especially like the feature of external battery power (one AA lasts a week or more) and external memory (a single 2G SD card, the maximum this ancient model can support, holds about 40 hours of audio). IIRC it was so long ago she bought it at a KMart! Since that model is no longer available, of course(!), I keep browsing ebay to get replacements when they get worn out (or too banged up). I rue the day this model is no longer available. Sometimes I score a NOS unit in the original unopened package but used ones are more likely.
This Messiah is most sublime in its medieval setting using period instruments. All the musicians and vocalists are superb, but alto Delphine Galou is simply hypnotically radiant.
As I ease back into work in the shop, mostly cleaning and organizing which I find to be the best way to get into it, I have this music running through my ear buds more minutes than not. It puts a sensory smile on my face to accompany the transcendent smile in my heart as I reflect on the incomprehensible grace of The Incarnation.
Over the past year I have been working on getting my inventory of the Historic Woodfinishing DVD replenished as I was quickly running out of inventory, which I finally did several months ago. But still the orders came in.
The first step was corresponding with the good folks at Popular Woodworking, who produced the original videos, to inquire about their warehouse inventory. They had none, but did release the rights to the contents to me. A very generous and classy gesture on their part.
Then I spent a lot of time contemplating the revisions of the cover art and text. I wanted to simultaneously accomplish three things:
Revise the descriptions of the video content
Promote The Barn as the new distributor of the DVD
Recognize F&W Media as the original producers of the video and retain the general visual presentation of the product
This process took me a surprising amount of time, mostly because I do not have a state-of-the-art graphics and layout package on my compewder. Once that was done Tim and I sought a fulfillment company to accomplish the task.
Here’s the strong bidnez advice: do not select a fulfillment vendor who is located in the path of both hurricanes plowing through Florida. The business we were working with just disappeared.
Still, Webmeister Tim worked his magic and got things moving again, and this week I received the first box of new DVDs. A second box is due after the holidays.
So at long last I was able to finally get all the back orders sent out. All should arrive at the customer’s mailbox on Dec 19, just in time for Christmas. In fact, all the orders for all products have been sent, unless something came in over night I am all caught up!
My recent post about apple butter making was an account of a “public” event at our friends Pat and Valerie’s place a month ago. A couple weeks ago we learned that there was going to be a second episode of apple butter making, this time pretty much restricted to a close circle of friends. We are, fortunately, part of that circle.
The appointed day for the apple butter rendering was a brutal cold, raw, windy and rainy day. In response Pat and Valerie set up the cauldron inside their boiling hearth, normally holding the sugar water boiling pan for making maple syrup. Being a creative guy, Pat removed the pan and rigged up his cauldron with a propane burner to cook the apple chips. Or maybe it was Valerie’s idea, I don’t rightly remember.
This made the entire event even more charming and cozy.
So there we were in this homey setting, stirring and adding apple chips to the bubbling cauldron until after several hours it was time to add the spices. Normally sugar would also be added but this batch of apples was so sweet naturally none was needed.
The spices were stirred in for another half hour.
At the proper time the canning began with a well-honed assembly line. Once again my task was to take away the full cases loaded with the still-hot apple butter.
Out came the fresh biscuits, made with loving excellence by Pat’s sister. The scrumptious biscuits were used to clean out the cauldron. Yummmmm.
The time was fast approaching when I could button up the wire frame tunnel, wrapping it with the 6mil greenhouse plastic.
First, concurring with reader EarlM, I secured al the wireframe panel edges with hog rings along the joints. Yes, zip ties are not what was ultimately needed but sufficed for the initial assembly, but the metal hog rings were necessary for the long haul. Addressing the issue of stable edge joints was paramount as the ongoing vibrations of wind against the wire/plastic would eventually breach the film membrane. Not good. However should that ever occur I can repair it with special tape made for that purpose.
And speaking of tape, I decided to cover the edges and hog rings with Ace Hardware store brand heavyweight packing tape. It is not very good for packing cardboard boxes but really excelled at this application. Two layers of the thick transparent tape had me ready for the final step of this episode — draping the whole thing with the plastic film and affixing said film to the edges of the wooden structure.
I’d arranged for my friend Boyd to come over to help, and he was a great help with excellent ideas on how to actually do the task.
I spent the next few hours tacking down the edges to secure the lid. Not all of it was aesthetically exquisite, but it has been holding fast through some pretty fierce winds already.
It’s beginning to look a lot like greenhouse, just in time for Christmas.
Since we have had a six-week stretch of amazingly beautiful weather, although to be truthful a day or two of rain would also be nice, I’ve taken some time to go strolling through the woods, trolling for firewood. Here’s the standing inventory of firewood just awaiting harvest within about a hundred yards of the cabin or barn. Expend the perimeter farther and the inventory grows proportionally.
Just above the site of the old shack, recently cleaned up and ready for bush hogging itself, is this cluster of trees from a storm last winter. All tolled I think there are eight long trunks, each around a foot in diameter. Definitely a couple little truck loads. I think these were birches but will confirm with my chainsaw.
Along the same ridge line, about fifty yards above the cabin is this magnificent pair of locust trunks. The tops were snapped off in a windstorm maybe three winters ago. You can just barely make them out in the picture. The trunk on the right is massive, perhaps a dozen feet or more in girth. The one on the left is about eight feet in in girth. Both will require the manly chainsaw of my pal Bob, who will come and fell them some time this winter. If the wood is sound I might try to split them into fence rails. If they are not good for that they will become most excellent firewood, probably two winters’ worth.
The tops of those two trees are laying scattered on the ground and I will harvest them in the coming weeks. Since they are locust they could be downed for many years and still be good firewood. This hunk is almost two feet in diameter.
Working west along the same ridge line about 100 yards from the cabin is this pair of mighty big trees, brought down in the same storm as the first cluster in this post. All of the major trunks are 16″-18″ in diameter. One is cherry, I cannot recall what the other one is. Either way that is one honkin’ big pile of firewood.
Moving around to the hill up behind and within sight of the barn is another cornucopia of BTUs. The first picture is of a maple, the second a cherry, and the trunks strewn about in the third picture are all locust.
I can hardly wait to turn my little chain saw loose on cutting all this up and stacking it in the staging area. But it has to wait until I get all done with the greenhouse.
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