A friend called about a mushroom. From the description it sounded like a giant puffball, and it was. She wanted nothing to do with a mushroom new-to-her, and gave it to Susan. It's the biggest one we have seen. Susan went to work right away and cooked each slice lightly on both sides, separated them with parchment paper, and put them in the freezer.
Winter is coming, don't be like the grasshopper. Back To The Old Grind!
This video is worth wading through just to see what may be a Stanley Steamer engine, but my gosh, you may need a Dramamine. You gotta wonder why they are not warming the engine up properly by blowing out the steam chests and cylinders without locking hydraulically. Anyone wanting to get into steam engines should read Prof. P.S. Rose's Steam Engine Guide, find an old man who has run engines, and nowadays you can also find steam schools associated with many of the shows around the country. Thanks for spotting, Merle!
The brief writeup on the video says this is an an 1874 engine, and I think it is that old. Fowler built these for plowing, and he was developing his engines in the 1860s. Over on the American side of the ocean, early traction engines didn't grow to large sizes until the wind stacker was invented for threshing machines. The older machines with web stackers required less horsepower, and the wind stackers were a dividing line in American traction engines. Anyhow, this Fowler engine has obviously been overhauled and maintained, and it can really talk. I wish the numbers were published so we could see the horsepower this engine is producing. Thanks, Merle, for spotting!
I visited the remains of an old friend in the woods today and found that a nice young tree is growing from the stump. That Is A Joy! Time flies! Susan and I watched this red oak for years, visiting it every time we were up in the north end. We should have named it sooner! Anyway, I am thinking that it was a stump sprout, so it would have been 70-plus years when it was cut in 1940, and now it is growing again. How many cycles of stump sprouting has this tree had? No way to know, but if it survives wind and weather, the next time Ralph is harvested it will be from roots well over 200 years old.
Susan and I have plenty to do in our timber. We have CRP tree plantings due for thinning, an old shortleaf pine plantation that needs prepped and burned, plus thinning in the timber stand you see in this video. Oh, autumn olive and bush honeysuckle need to be killed...
This shingle oak is dry and brittle! Watch the spears fall out of the top when this baby goes over. We will be making wood tomorrow and stacking this one at the house. I watched the seconds tick by, and from the time I turned to escape until the first spear dropped in was four seconds. A small limb dropped in at six and a half seconds, and a really hot spear comes in at seven seconds. Don't stand around watching the tree fall, because part it may be falling on you!
Rollag is a great place, Merle. Thanks for grabbing this one!
Occasionally, but often enough I think about it, I would get a whiff of freshly cracked hickory nut while out in timber. I could never figure out why I would catch that smell, and it has bugged me for many years. It was usually fleeting, but unmistakable. I finally found the solution. This year we have a bumper crop of hickory nuts in the yard, and that means lots of hickory hulls on the ground. We have been raking them up so we can scoop them up and get them on the burn pile. We found that when they are damp after a rain and the humidity is up, you get that smell off of a pile of hulls. Fleeting, but definitely there. What will we figure out next? Back To The Old Grind!
