Farm and Garden

[Curious Hound]

There is only one thing to do when you check the garden and find this... make pickles.

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Yes... that is one big cucumber...

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You'll poke your eye out with that thing!

 

[Roert42]

Tomato plant is doing real good. ( last year it died because I never watered it).

Got a poblano plant and a Jalapeño plant, in buckets. Not very impressed with these guys.


Been giving everything some kind of liquid fertilizer my father gave me, it’s blue. Says it’s designed for hydroponic growing. ‍♂

Lotsa spaghetti.

 

[Uncle Gump]

We have bread and butter refrigerator pickles...

 

[Uncle Gump]

My cukes are booming...

6 quarts of dill spears/chips.

My mother even bought me an early birthday present... a Food Saver. She said all I have to do is vacuum seal her some good sweet corn to take back to Michigan with her.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

You remember that Twisted Sisters restaurant you couldn't find?

Not sure why but when I stepped into it I smelled dill. It was kinda neat, smelled like stepping into my grandmother's house. I hadn't smelled it since she was in her prime 15-20 years ago. She was a huge pickle connoisseur. Dill, bread and butter, sweet she did them all.

 

[Uncle Gump]

Still smells like dill pickles in the kitchen.

I usually pickle a batch of jalapeños and also sweet banana peppers too.

Canning is a bunch if work honestly... so is growing a productive garden. But there is something about it...

 

[Jim Oaks]

We have bread and butter refrigerator pickles...

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I love bread and butter pickles!

 

[Uncle Gump]

I love bread and butter pickles!

You may be in luck... I have a bunch more cucumbers on the vine. May I will do another batch and bring you a jar to the trail ride.

 

[Jazzer]

I have 400' of woods adjoining my property, so it's a constant matter of trimming back the jungle. For years I've lopped, dried and burned, but that's been getting old.
I checked CL often for a chipper, and found this one;

An MTD from the 90's, I gotta admit the all steel construction gave me a bit of a chubby.

Looking it over, I realized that "Starts easy, runs great!" in the ad is Craigspeak for:

No start- no gas.
With gas, leak from rotted fuel line.
Line repaired, no spark, dead spark plug.
Plug replaced, spark but no start.
Gas at fuel line but not in carb throat or on plug.

I had the gentleman reduce the price. Took it home and replaced the fuel line and sharpened the chipper blades and debris blade, put a good carb on it. The one on it was full of ethanol jelly and rust. The oil was clean but not suspiciously so.

It started on the second pull, and I have run it a couple of hours. It's got a Tecumseh HM80 8hp engine, the one with a cast iron cylinder sleeve. These old workhorses are great.

-Jazzer

 

[sgtsandman]

I'm finally getting to getting a garden dug out. It's in a section of the yard that tends to stay wet and gets a lot of sun during the growing season. Here are the first couple of pictures on the project. I have to dig out the hill side so I can install a retaining wall like what is in the pictures to hold the dirt up hill in place. It will be backed with 2B gravel, 1/8" screen, and weed cloth for covering gardens to prevent dirt from washing through the gaps in the block. A similar sized retaining wall will be installed on the down hill side to retain dirt there as well as a wall to run perpendicular to the slope. That will enable me to level out the ground and leave room for dirt build up via compost from leaves off the trees, straw, yard waste, and whatever is compost-able from the kitchen.

 

[racsan]

yea! finally after 3 months and change, I found a egg in the nest box when I got home from work, its on the small side and im not sure which bird it was. One might say its quite a pricey egg! Im not even sure where my total is at, Heard a lot of cackling yesterday but nothing when I checked then. I dont look in the morning before I leave, probably too early (5 am).

 

[racsan]

Another day, another egg. Maybe not as small as I give them credit for, here they are in a carton with some store eggs that are labeled “extra large”. Put one of each side by side too. And of course, the chickens.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Came home to this last night:

No idea what the meeting is about but it looks serious...

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Mostly got ours planted too.

My wife was wanting me to put rows in the garden. The WD-45 is still on the disk, WD is on the springtooth, B is has a cultivator so it steers hard and the Oliver is still a lawn ornament. So I hops on the C and latch it onto my old lister. I set it shallow so it wouldn't dipe in too deep and get to work. I knew I should probably grease it but for a pass or two in a little garden it should be fine. A lister is kind of a weird plow/planter combo, mine is rope trip that uses the ground wheels to raise itself out of the ground.



So drops it in and the lever for the trip rope stuck so it would come up and retrip, drop and come up. It did that twice and then stayed down. Ok whatever she should be able to get the gist of lines out of it. I get to the end and trip it to come up as I am slowing down and turning uphill to avoid the trees in my windbreak. And the stupid thing drops again in the sod of my yard. The jolt of the lister biting into sod catches me just off idle it doesn't have enough umpf to keep going and stalls hard.

Well that is awesome, Clutch it and go to restart it wondering what I am going to do with a lister sunk in my lawn as I am not sure the little C is going to be able to get it out. Tractor just spins and spins, I let off the starter and it does a loud backfire which is extremely uncharacteristic. Usually it starts very easy.. Try it again and it does the same thing, and again... we is dead in the water.

There are fiber gears in the magneto, I think one either broke or jumped time.

So I call dad. We waddle the WD over with a chain and it drags the C out of the tree row with a big storm coming tonight. I take the springtooth and three point off the WD and put the drawbar on. Thanks to the wet clutch it didn't flinch at the lister's antics and pulled it out of the way too. I shoulda just used the WD to start with.

The search for a distributor begins now, I am tired of this stupid mag. Its the third time it has screwed me up and when it lays down it totally bricks the tractor.

Took me all summer but the C lives!

The magneto lost a snap ring and jumped time...

 

[racsan]

I was bummed at first when I got my C and discovered it had battery ignition instead of a mag. (grew up with a magneto ign ‘49 jd A) but now I think a conventional distributor is better in a allis C. starts every time unless its really bitter cold out, even then Ive used the hand crank and saved the battery amps for the ignition. Mines got quite a oil leak lately, think its the pan gasket. Always have to lay cardboard under the engine when I park it.