Treasure boxes

Gluing up treasure boxes. Next - lids.

Salvage

Took apart an old flannel shirt and got a stack of rags, several buttons and some really nice plant ties.

Repairs

Had a loose spring - now fixed.

One bay of three

Was full. Now almost empty.

Wicked!

Saw the musical in Indy. Awesome!

Deck progress

As of last evening when we had to stop to get ready to go get our pictures taken for the church directory.

School bus wins

Jo was rear ended by a school bus today. No one was hurt, but my car is definitely going to need some work. 

One post notched

I am having to finish the notches in the posts using a hand saw because Jo doesn't trust my accuracy with a chainsaw. 

Pics of siding

South side featuring a carpet of red maple leaves. 

North side (still a mess) which shows the new deck support posts. The taller posts are left from the old deck. 

Siding is done

No pictures yet, but the siding is finished except for a little caulking that has to be redone due to heavy rain last Thursday which washed out some of the fresh caulk. 

With Ben's help we dug post holes for the deck support posts. 

Of course, the weather is forcing us to postpone painting until spring. So the house sort of looks like it has measles with all the white primer and caulk spots. 

Pictures will be forthcoming. 

Fall garden cleanup

Cutting down weeds in the unused part of the garden. We didn't have time to plant the corn that was supposed to go here. 

This stuff will be raked up and burned. The, if there's time, we will till and plant a cover crop. 

Siding almost done

Paint storage and disposal

Who knew you could store paint in a cottage cheese carton?

Turns out you can't. 

We are slowly disposing of a decade long collection of old paint. Latex can be dried out and thrown in the trash. Alkyd and other oil based paint has to be taken to hazardous waste disposal. 

Note: don't touch the paint while trying to blog with your phone. Lesson learned. 

At last, siding is going up

Turning compost

When you use a maddock to chop through the compost pile it might shoot an apple right out at you. 

More on siding and the ledger board

Back to the ledger board ... we had to get it up and flashed before the siding crew could progress on the north side of the house (which of course they didn't need to do until they had done all they could on the rest of the house). In the picture below you can't really see much but know that the strip of black with white letters on it is the rubberized membrane flashing over the 2x8 ledger board. We are ready to go.

Flashed ledger board

Make your own Apple Pole Picker

Found this with Google (of course). Almost all of our remaining apples are above what I can reach on a ladder. Plus having to get up and down a ladder all the time is a pain. So, I need about a 20' long pole and a liter or half-gallon bottle and I'll be in business.

Click this  video link.

Prepping for new ledger board

This looks nasty, but it's just a little rot that I'm filling with epoxy wood filler. It takes time, though, since you have to put it on in small amounts. 

It's right under the back door. I think we didn't put the old deck in right and that is what caused this rot. We won't make that mistake again. 

Back porch is gone

We took a break from preparing for the siding to do some applesauce. Remember the apple trees with loads of apples? I picked about a bushel, and together we made about 11 quarts of sauce. We only used about 2/3 of the apples I picked (ran out of time), but some of the other apples have gone for eating and for some apple bread that Jo made.

I washed the apples ...

Jo cut them up (she got to be outside) ...

And then we cooked, strained and canned them.

The resulting sauce is delicious, but it seemed like a lot of work for 11 qts. It has been a long time since the last time we made sauce and I think we could do a better (that is more efficient) job of it if we do it again. There are LOTS more apples on the trees - if I only had time to pick them.

One or two dominoes fall

After clearing out and painting the front entry 'hall' (it is really a very small room), we got the mirror hung. The primary purpose of this addition is to provide the coat hooks. Thanks to Jo for the paint job, for the finish on the mirror frame, and for help hanging the mirror even with a sprained foot!

It's hard to take a picture of a mirror in a small space without being in the picture!

Domino #1 almost knocked down

Siding delivered

The semi is a real transformer. 

It turns into a forklift!

Unfortunately, there is damage. 

Not caused by the driver, but by the banding process. The seller will be getting a call. 

First chill

Finally cool enough for a bonfire. 

Tree of Knowledge and a very good question

We have been reading a children's Bible (the Jesus Storybook Bible) to Elliot who is 5. In fact, we finished reading it to him and he just wanted us to read it again. We usually read 2 or 3 chapters a night.

A few days ago I was reading the chapter titled "The terrible lie" based on Genesis 3. This is the story of the Tree of Knowledge.

Now, God had given Adam and Eve only one rule: "Don't eat the fruit on that tree," God told them. "Because if you do, you'll think you know everything. You'll stop trusting me. And then death and sadness and tears will come."[from the Jesus Storybook Bible]

Elliot knew that God had created everything, including the plants in the garden. The story goes on to describe what happened when God finds out that Adam and Eve disobeyed Him and ate that fruit.

Elliot asked, "Why did God put that tree in the garden?"

My answer? "That's a VERY GOOD question! I don't know!"

More on the mirror frame

I have all the joints done. They don't fit quite as well as I would like but I'm not sure how much time I should invest in making them 'water tight'. 

I also just discovered that none of my clamps are long enough. I'll have to get creative to clamp the frame together.  The overall length of the frame is 52 inches. 

Mirror frame

I'm remembering why I don't do mortise and tenon joints very often. Maybe with practice I could do better, but these are taking a very long time. 

Where are those millennials

Interesting, if short, article about ministering to the millennial generation. Not surprising. No real solutions. But at least raising the issues. 

m.ministrymatters.com/all/article/entry/4220/gone-baby-gone?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferf8c65&utm_medium=twitter

It's a Beautiful Day

Such a nice day. Not too hot for a change. I can't really stay inside even to do woodworking (let alone clean house :-). So a little work in the orchard cleaning up more dropped apples. I'm hoping we will soon be able to harvest the apples and make applesauce, pies, etc. Then I won't have so many apples to clean up from the ground and put into the compost.

The silver lining is that we are going to have lots of compost for the garden!

Have a blessed day.
Steve

Project dominos

We are in the final stages of planning to have the house resided, meaning we are getting bids from contractors. We would like to get it done this fall. 

One thing that I will have to do in preparation for the siding is to remove the small deck at our back door. The back door is the entry that is used 99.9% of the time. Consequently, the front entryway is used primarily as a storage closet. It can be used as an entry/exit, but not conveniently. 

So, before I can remove the back deck the front entry has to be cleaned out. Most of the stuff there is boxed up, but there is one of those cheap door mirrors leaning up against the wall. For some reason Jo decided that the first thing to do to make the front entry usable is for me to make a nice frame for that mirror with coat hooks on it so it could be hung up on the wall sideways (as opposed to the vertical orientation it would normally have). 

So that is what I've been working on mostly. I found some maple left over from a previous project. I don't have enough to make the frame and add nice molding on the top and bottom edges as I would prefer, but it will work anyway. 

I have the basic pieces cut and mortises cut in the stiles. I have started to cut the tenons on the rails. I don't do mortise and tenon joints very often, so I wanted to use them on this project to keep a basic level of that skill. One thing I know I'm going to have to deal with is that the mortises are not precisely centered on the thickness of the stiles. So I will get to practice adjusting the tenons to not only fit, but be offset a hair so the faces of the mating pieces are as close to flush as possible. That way I will avoid a lot of sanding just to make things come out flush and smooth. 

Homemade jelly from our own grapes

Otis Spunkmeyer cookies

Last year Ben bought two tubs of Otis Spunkmeyer cookies from the school's fundraiser. They are frozen pre made "Butter Sugar" cookies that you just put on a cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Very convenient. 

However, we've made two batches, most recent last Wednesday for a church choir meeting. Both times our reaction has been "these are not very good". 

We just threw out the rest. 

This year we will just make a donation. 

Drywall repair

So, our dog, Cocoa, was being kept in the laundry room all day last winter while everyone else was away at work or school. She was bored and unhappy. Consequently, she scratched at the door between the laundry room and the kitchen eventually tearing off the trim on one side and ripping the paper covering the drywall in several places. 

Over the past week or so I've repaired the drywall and today I primed the patches and nailed the trim back on. In the process I fixed a problem with the way the trim was fitting and attached it much more securely than it was before. 

One more task checked off of my project list!

Van washed

I finally got the van washed. This is the first day in a while that it hasn't been so hot and sunny that washing a car would be difficult. In fact, just as I finished up washing it started drizzling rain. Perfect!

Apple tree

The orchard

I just finished, after several hours, and lots of sweat, cleaning up all of the drops from the 8 apple trees we have. I lost count after 10 of the number of 5-gallon buckets of apples that I dumped into the compost pile. I suspect it was over 20.

When I went out to the orchard this morning to try to finish up I noticed that one of the larger branches on one of the trees was snapped in two (not completely, but enough) from the weight of the apples on it. What a heartbreak.

I have to say that this is not a big surprise.  I have not been able to properly prune the trees for several years. In fact the orchard has been neglected for most of the 20 years it has been there. In addition it has been at least 2 years since there has been much in the way of fruit production due to late frosts. This year the trees are making up for 2 years of not being able to produce seed and they are being prodigious.  The poor trees are weighed down with way too many apples and the branches are too spindly to hold them. I can't prune them now (although if more branches break I might as well) because it is too early in the year. Plus there's all that fruit.

The heartbreak is that I'm just starting to work on the orchard again like I wanted to for the last 20 years but never seemed to have the time, and I had to saw off a major limb because of my neglect.

There is a lesson here. Don't neglect your orchard or you will regret it. Whether your orchard is one with apple trees or one with children, friends, parishioners, or whatever, things can happen within your orchard that will be heartbreaking, disappointing, and will take a lot of time and sweat, and maybe tears, to remedy or recover. With care you can enjoy the fruit of your orchard without the trauma.

Steve

Introduction

I once had a blog hosted at my place of work. That was Purdue University. It was a Wordpress blog. In it my wife and I wrote mostly about our travel experiences.

Now that I'm retired I no longer have access to that blog. I did back it up and transfer the data to my home system, but I have not yet worked on putting it up in any form that could be useful. Therefore, I have just recently decided to create this blog which will, hopefully, chronicle my activities (at least) here on the HoLmestead and other activities as I learn to make the most of my new role as a retiree.

So far I have been pretty busy, but I'm not going to try to put everything I've done since the first of June here. Let's just start with today. If I have an occasion to reminisce about things that have happened before now rest assured that I will avail myself of that opportunity.

Welcome aboard.
Steve