Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

Sourdough Fail, it Happens

I am trying to get better about posting my blog every week, it does get difficult at times as I am still in DC for the next 9 weeks or so before returning for good to the homestead.   Some of you have noticed there is more posts lately about things like baking, particularly sour dough bread baking rather than farming/planting/livestock stuff.  That is because that is something I can work on in DC while I wait, and it is skills that will transfer.  I have been working on sourdough bread lately as it is a cultured food, similar to cheese’s and yogurts (which I want to also work on) so it allows me get some of the basics down to dealing with live cultures and further reduces the need for commercial yeasts. The plan for this weekend was to make a loaf of sourdough sandwich bread as well as a sour dough king cake.  I even bragged about doing it on Facebook before the fact.  Admittedly after last week’s success on the artesian sour dough bread I was probably...

We Have Kinders!!

We have Kinders! A little more than two weeks ago I took off my Army uniform for the last time, loaded into a car and headed back to Mn for the last trip of my military career.    The ride home was an adventure in itself to say the least.   First, we stopped at the Double B Café in Beloit, Wisconsin, this is a small farm café, that is owned by Ms Barbara Beeler, whom we will be purchasing a cow/calf pair of belted Galloway from.   Since it was a Friday during lent Terri had an omelet and I had blue berry pancakes for a late lunch.   They were delicious!   We also tried their “duck butt” blue berry muffins, it is basically a blue berry muffin made with duck eggs.   I am starting to see what the big deal is about duck eggs in baking, they were delicious and very moist!   We also got to see Candy and Evie, our cow/calf pair.   Evie is a little fire ball! I cannot wait for them to get here!   After that, we headed about an hour and a...

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 ...