Farm and Garden

[lil_Blue_Ford]

View attachment 100825

New toy?

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Those cases are neat, if you noticed the bolt holes for the rear axles are slotted. That is so you can adjust slack of of the drivechains between the rear differential and the rear axle. And of course access ports in the sides to shim the rod bearings with ease...

 

[bilbo]

One of our banana trees has flowered!

Each “petal” will yield a hand of bananas assuming everything goes well. A couple hands are exposed already. These weren’t opened up much and were kind of hard to see yesterday.

The flower could produce 50+ lbs. of fruit, then the “tree” it was a part of will die and one of its smaller brethren will grow up. Excited for some fresh home grown nanners!

 

[racsan]

Its a nice day for november in ohio so I let the chickens out to roam before nightfall. Some ended up where the kennel used to be, I dont know if they realized they went “home” or not.

 

[racsan]

Had to pull the plug on my roadside egg sales. It’s getting too cold to keep eggs out at the ranger trailer in that mini fridge, the temperature has been below freezing in the fridge the past few days & I found a cracked egg that was fine yesterday. Egg production had dropped due to the cold weather and shorter days anyways, Its ironic how this time of year (holiday baking) my daily egg count is about half. Last weekend I had someone ask for 11 dozen. yes eleven. Only had 2. sold both of those 30 min later.

 

[Roert42]

My ducks would lay pretty regularly in the winter.

I think a fox got at them a few days ago. I went out to put them to bed and the one duck was dead and the other one was really beat up. She had a hole in her chest and a chunk of her wing missing. Could barely stand by the time I found her, but I assume she scared off whatever it was that killed the other one.

 

[ericbphoto]

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Anyway an update from to the Oliver project of last year:

Farm and Garden

Nice evening, let the big chickens out to play. They are loving the new grass coming in. One caught a mouse somehow, never seen that before. eww.

www.therangerstation.com

Its been soaking for almost a year, first with penetrating oil and then penetrating oil with ATF. Head has been cleaned, valves ground and seats cleaned up as good as they can be. It needs a valve job... valves, seats and the whole bit. But I want to know if I have a worthy shortblock before I go that deep into it.

Sooo, old gasket is cleaned up and away we go...





Almost looks like a tractor engine again...



Goal is to at least get the engine broke loose with hydraulic pressure. Usually if that doesn't work you blow the headgasket which I why I am reusing the old one.

Now if I get it broke loose with the headgasket intact... I just might throw the valvetrain and manifold/carb on it and see how it runs.

 

[Josh B]

That looked a lot like my old Ford 300

 

[racsan]

Was nice enough out this evening to let the chickens roam around the backyard.

 

[Roert42]

I was down to two chickens and two ducks in the fall. Something attached the duck, one was dead and the other lost a lot of blood ( may have been able to survive but I was affraid of rabies so I put it down.).

I came home one day and watched a big orange cat walking up the hill with one of my chickens.

I had the lone survivor for New Years dinner. Felt a bit bad since she didn't do anything wrong, but also felt bad leaving her out there all winter by herself.


Probably will not be getting more chickens for a while. Had lots of issues with Hawks and Eagles, and did not want to build a fully enclosed pen for them.

 

[sgtsandman]

I was down to two chickens and two ducks in the fall. Something attached the duck, one was dead and the other lost a lot of blood ( may have been able to survive but I was affraid of rabies so I put it down.).

I came home one day and watched a big orange cat walking up the hill with one of my chickens.

I had the lone survivor for New Years dinner. Felt a bit bad since she didn't do anything wrong, but also felt bad leaving her out there all winter by herself.


Probably will not be getting more chickens for a while. Had lots of issues with Hawks and Eagles, and did not want to build a fully enclosed pen for them.

If you decide to build an enclosure later, make sure you use hardware cloth on the sides and bury it down into the ground to keep predators from digging under. The hardware cloth doesn't have to cover the entire side, just maybe 3-4 feet up from the bottom. Chicken wire is good for chickens but not for raccoons and some other bigger predators. They can bust right through the chicken wire.

 

[Uncle Gump]

Last Years scallion bucket is full of some pretty nice spring time onions. These are going in some Korean chicken wing marinade...

 

[Jazzer]

First asparagus of the season.

 

[Uncle Gump]

First asparagus of the season.View attachment 109167

Is that the wild asparagus?

It grows around here in the ditches and the like. I'll have to keep a lookout.