Looks like I will attempt to be a wood turner!

Well after we built the pen last week for Terri and talking to the Chief, we decided to invest in a lathe and all of the pen turning equipment involved to try and do it ourselves. Not saying I will be seeming much but at least for now I will be playing with it. The one good part about being where we are is the availability of good olive wood form the holy land to use, so I have put out a few feelers to find me some wood that I will be able maybe use next year (need to give it time to age and dry).

I really love the look of olive wood, and with the closeness of the Holy Land most of the pen kits I bought to build have a religious theme such as Celtic crosses and the such. I am hoping to be able to work on goblets and beer tankards eventually, Chief says it is not to hard but I have only turned one pen so far and had alot of help with that!!! Spent a good part of my holiday weekend watching you tube videos of all kinds of turning and the more I see it the more I think I can do it. I know I need some kind of hobby to get through the long Minnesota winters and this should do it!

According to the kids the members of the Mn family they have talked to think it is a good idea, with the amount of woodland out there on the farm I should also be able to find some good things to turn without having to spend a lot of money on ready made blanks when we do retire to the farm. Well that is a little for now, will post pics when things start to arrive and start to try it out!

Hope every one is doing well and if anyone has any experience with this please let me know!!!

Comments

Long over due update! We added livestock (and poultry)!

Non-gas operated lawn mowers! It is hard to believe I am so far behind on my blog posts. Spring is a busy time on the homestead, especially a first spring! Two and a half inches of rain last night in about a two hour period has given me some time this morning to write as it is too wet to get much done! So much has happened in the last two months, I will probably on touch on most of it in an attempt keep this post readable! First, we lost our bee hive from last year, the bees ate the stores in the middle of the hive, all the way to the top, but did not eat the outermost combs. From the looks of it they ended up starving themselves out because they moved too far from the edges for them to reach them with the cold weather. We were able to salvage about 15 lbs of honey and a pound or so of wax out of the dead hive. We also managed to harvest a couple containers of virgin honey comb. This years honey harvest In this picture you can re...

April is Gonna Suck, Embrace the Suck!!

Well this week’s blog is more a personal update then the last few have been. It is about 7 weeks until I start my terminal leave from the Army, I will leave the Army for home for the last time on Good Friday and get home right before Easter. The timing is not lost on me that my next chapter will start in full on Easter. We started doing our taxes today and part of that was figuring out how much we have already put into the farm, not including property or the truck we are over $35K in and that does not even count most of the livestock which we will not have or purchase until this year. That is buying mostly second-hand equipment folks and I still have some major pieces to buy, farming ain’t cheap. That being said, I am still confident this was the right move. I ran into one of my former NCOs from when I was a detachment Sgt in Korea for lunch this week, he was one of three buck Sergeants I had, who basically made my job easy there (except they cou...

Applying for a Grant, Kinders, a Web Page and Bee Poop

It is hard to believe that I am now less than 3 weeks away from signing out of a military installation for the last time and going to the farm live full time. Things have been pretty busy since the last post, I did make it home for a weekend, but the weather was still to bad to do much outside with too much snow on the ground. On a good note I did got a lot of my woodworking and pen supplies organized and set up while I was home and we got the Saltwater Aquarium stocked with some fish and invertebrates, still 6 months to a year out from coral however but after it being in storage for over 6 years it was nice to have it running again. Most of the work on the farm lately has been behind the screens, working on a business plan and financials in order to apply for a grant from the Farmers Veteran Coalition (https://www.farmvetco.org/). We are applying for the grant to help pay for running electricity to the farm property, the cost of which will be about $4200. We ...

TheBar1 Homestead- From a sword to a plowshare

Search This Blog