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.
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.
With the wire frame tunnel in place it was time to frame out the ends. It was not as easy as I had hoped given that the perfect semi-circular arc was not, well, perfect. Nor was it even symmetrical for both ends. Mostly a semi-circular arch, but not perfect. That meant that every stick had to be custom cut and fit before assembling with deck screws. plus, the pile driver/local rocky dirt combination meant that the posts themselves were out of perfect by about an eighth of an inch. All of that compounded to make sure the assembling of the end framing was a tedious process.
I did have the advantage(?) of lots of recycled windows and doors. When you have replaced all the windows in two houses, you’ve got plenty of inventory. There are two doors at each end, one screened and the other glass. All of the windows will be openable as screened awning windows once the weather is right in the early summer (our “frost free” date is May 30).
Notwithstanding the fact that the arch at the east end of the space was 2″ off-axis due to whatever factor — lunar forces, prevailing trade winds, inherent torque in the raw material — it was an easy enough problem to rectify once I recognized it.
Compounding all of the tedium was that we were at the time of year when I lose usable working light by about 4PM, at least “usable” for these tired old dysfunctional eyes. But after about four days of effort the ends were framed and mostly glazed. I say “mostly” because we are awaiting the arrival of the solar ventilation fan to get installed before everything gets buttoned up.
With beautiful autumn weather in the air and the hillside bush hogging (mostly) completed, for a couple days I turned my attention to the last remains of the shack that was once someone’s home a hundred years ago. My brother, nephew and I dismantled and salvaged a great deal of the lumber from the building nine (!) years ago before I was so rudely accosted by a wheelbarrow and the whole project was interrupted. By the time I had recovered fully from my broken hip it was late winter and the inspiration to finish the task had passed.
Flash forward to now.
As I was wrestling the bush hog around the site recently, I thought the time had come to finally clean up the mess. I had hoped that there might be some last vestiges to salvage, even if for nothing other than firewood, but that was not the case for 99% of the detritus. It just all needed to be piled in the truck and hauled to the burn pit at the dump.
Three heaping truckloads later all that was left were two large timbers. These were the only elements worth salvaging, and even then it was just for firewood. It’s a real shame, as they were still bearing the axe marks of the men who made this home probably around 1900 or so.
While working on the greenhouse I brought down my favorite sawhorses but found the ground to be too uneven to use them. Perhaps I should have chosen my Butterfly Sawhorse instead. In a moment of inspiration I realized I could create a stable workstation by simply screwing the two horses together at a right angle to create a rough triangle configuration.
As I assembled the “tunnel” of the greenhouse from the cattle panel fencing I noted a lot of wiggle in the structure, even after tying all the sections together with zip ties at their edges. Yeah, yootoobers swear it can withstand fierce winter weather but my friend Floyd over on the east side of the county, and whose greenhouse was absolutely the inspiration for this one, indicated that our occasional heavy snow (~18″) caused him some problems. Being the over-builder that I am, I decided to add curved ribs inside the tunnel to beef it up.
My first step was to configure to tunnel to be symmetrical which required aligning the center of the arched panels with the center line of the overall structure. Using a simple plumb bob I pushed and pulled the sections to be at least along the same center line. I’d hoped that this combined with the rib-building process would make all the arch curves identical.
With string lashing to keep the arches aligned with the center line, along with diagonal wooden braces, I set about the task.
Using my little table saw more than I have in a long time I sliced off a pile of 3/16″ strips to build the laminations. For the most part simply clamping the strips to the underside of the arches imposed a semi-circular arc, and this was enhanced by the continued build-up of the laminations.
A combination of spring clamps by the bushel, T3 glue and a multitude of crown staples the ribs began to take shape. The enhanced structural robustness became increasingly clear as the glue dried, which took about three days given the moisture content of the PT SYP lumber strips and the weather itself.
All in all it took me almost three days to get the 10-layer ribs finished, but they are now in place for the next step, framing in the ends of the tunnels and adding doors and windows.
Seriously, the structure is now strong enough that I could crawl all the way to the top to staple the fence grid to the ribs.
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