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This post and the posts following it have been moved from public view for legal (and CoC) reasons. This was done with the agreement of Bob Gibson, Brent Dowell, Cynthia White, Don Baer, Stephen Bellinger, Steve Southwood, Jeff Bower, and Ken Werner. The Forum Staff does not take such actions...

I thought people might enjoy this.... Wooden Curls Two little girls came to my shop, Each one my own Granddaughter. They came by to see if Gramp would like A good cold drink of water. I thanked them as they turned to go- They tarried by the door, To watch the long pine shavings curl As they...

I know a lot of people on here seem to enjoy my sheep so I thought you might like a picture of them I snapped the other night. My sheep free range (no fences) during the day, and every night I usher them back into a night paddock to protect them from coyotes. As I did this the other day, I took...

It was one of those days that is supposed to be rather benign and boring, simply move two rams from out of the upper pasture, to a separate lower pasture since the days are getting shorter and colder, and the the ewes are entering breeding season. I don't want lambs on the ground again in...

I have been so busy lately, between working overtime at the steel mill cranking out snowplows, dealing with my pending divorce, finding time for my daughters visitation, sheep farming and running to New Hampshire every other weekend...something had to give. Every time I turn around there are...

What is a hand slitter? It is essentially a razor blade, held in a saw handle like apparatus with an adjustable fence that is used to help cut parallel material like cloth, felt or leather. In its day, it was used commonly. On my slitter I have tweaked the design to make it more user friendly...

I have never seen this before...I was cutting firewood for my cousin in a spot pretty isolated from the rest of the farm. 25 years ago my father and I had cut some wood out of there but we have not been back since. Well I looked at this big cherry tree and could not believe what I saw. My Dad...

Awhile ago I said that you can watch the economy by watching two principal indicators, the price of milk and the price of sawlogs at the local sawmills. The milk prices are a great indicator because as more consumers buy ice cream, fancy cheeses, eat pizza more and go out to eat where cheese is...

I kind of feel for my neighbor Dean. He's one of those neighbors you dream of, never questions anything I do even though I own land all the way around him and am constantly logging and digging gravel from the gravel pit that surrounds his house. Anyway when my dad's house burned down we hauled...

It was a busy weekend with 90% of my weekend enduring sheep related stuff, but I did find a few hours of free time Saturday to improve my woodworking shop. Over that past few weeks I have managed to get a permanent ceiling in it, and get one wall sided in, but some of my go-too woodworking...

I've been fiddling with an old Craftsman block plane I have and so far I am pretty happy with the improvements, but I have a question about sharpness. I scary sharped the blade up to 2500 grit and then leather stropped the blade, but when I tested the plane on oak end grain, it did not produce a...

I got a Ram a few weeks ago that was humongous in size...275-300 pounds and he was nasty, and the reason why he was free in cost. Over the last few days he has been getting nastier and nastier, and the entire sheep shed would rattle as he pounded against the wood. Yesterday he breached security...

I know everyone is supposed to hate hand sanding, and I know there are 4 million inventions to eliminate it, but to be honest with you, my woodworking has never improved so fast, so quick as when I realized there is just no replacement for it. Lately I have taken up hand sanding in a pretty big...

I have an archway between my kitchen and living room that is kind of lack luster. I would like to rebuild it into something better and really spend some time doing it. My house is rather unique though in that its non-traditional inside...a lot of highly detailed stuff. So I was thinking what if...

They are headed your way. Last week I saw my first flock of geese headed south, and this is the third straight day in a row we had frost. The women folk are trying to get me to turn on the heat but there is no way I am turning on the darn heat until October. No way, no how even if the temps in...

Its been said that there is a time to sow, and a time to reap, and as a farmer you better know when to do either. Well this week I had a chance to drive Big Blue around some of my fields as the boys did a little crop rotation, that is turning a corn field into a hayfield. They do this every 5-10...

I have had some time lately and so I have been diligently working in my shop. That is indeed rare, but I have been making progress. I started a slitter awhile back, but put it down when things went south and just recently took up the challenge. I am proud to say I got everything fabricated...

I have got welding flash before, BUT NEVER LIKE THIS. I got arc struck on Friday welding up a critical tug part. Normally my eyes just water, burn and hurt for a night or so and then get better. Not this time. I fried my left eye good! I even went to the ER and was never so thankful in my life...

As everyone knows I have been laid off for the last 215 days but that came to an end on Friday. This is a god-send because I can finally get some sleep and really rest up! (LOL). All kidding aside, farming full-time has been great and I have really been pounding out 18 hour days for most of this...

Every few years I get a Forester in and we walk the woodlot. I didn't have time to walk a lot of it yesterday with one, but we covered about 300 acres and overall he gave it a clean bill of health. This was surprising because a forest pathologist had written off some of my Hackmatack Tree...