Coming Event:

The Bard's 250th birthday is coming up on Sunday, so practice up on your poetic recitations, buy a supply of really old Scotch, and gather your ingredients for a haggis.

Over The Fence

Deer hunting is all over until next fall, and this morning we had a dozen antlerless deer walking around in the yard. A couple of them walked right up to the fence to visit with Jack, our Mal-a-Mutt. Note the frost on the backs. One of the deer, totally unaware of global warming, was walking around on the pond.

New Fangled Threshing Engine

I began attending steam shows at an early age, and one of my first memories is of a steam traction engine lumbering toward me. They look VERY big to a toddler. I 'discovered' old tractors and gas engines later on, and early machines like this Avery are as enjoyable to watch as a steamer. The technology is not too far removed from the steam traction engines these heavy duty monsters replaced. Note the tall steel wheels, the governor, the exhaust-induced draft, exposed gears, and of course, the heavy construction. They sound pretty neat, too.

Not My Victrola

RReady555 has posted a very clear recording from 1920 of tenor John Steel performing "Love Nest." This song is guaranteed to put you in a good mood for Monday morning.

Here Comes Monday!

This interesting video is a water powered flour mill in Normandy.

Back To The Old Grind!

Weekend Steam: Buckle In!

This video from YouTube starts out a bit slow, but the ride is worth it. I hope a passenger was doing the filming; and I wonder what he's burning in the old A Model.

UPDATE!!!!



This video was shot from the van ahead of the Model A in the top video. You will note that the Model A has only the driver inside. How does he stay in the road while filming out the window?

Not My Victrola

SilentBacchus posted this nice fox-trot recently, and it is a good one for practicing your steps. Since it is too cold to be out and about at night, just stay in and dance. Al Jolson made a hit out of this song, and the lyrics are very amusing. It starts out: 'Passing by the jail this morn', I heard a hard luck brother moan, I'm in here, right here, where I don't belong, I never done no wrong.'
I will do a search this weekend and see if I can find it posted so I can share it with you.

Crankin' It Up

Here is an obscure song from the drawer in the old Edison. I don't think there are many artists brave enough to record a song like this one these days. It may not be safe in your workplace, depending on your office climate.

Cold Nights

We had zero this morning in Southern Illinois, and Mom had twenty below up in Iowa. Tonight is forecast to go to thirty below. My memories of below zero temperatures always go back to crawling under my '51 Hudson to remove the starter, cleaning up the brushes, and bolting it up again in hopes of firing up the old girl. At twenty below you could count the cylinders firing when it started.

One cold January night thirty five years ago I went for a walk under a full moon to try my hand at time exposures. I think it was only around zero that night, and the thing that I noticed at the time was how I could spot rabbits in the moonlight. They would have been easy pickings with a .22. After I had crossed this trestle I heard a train coming from the east and quickly set up my tripod. I think I set the aperture on f22 and clicked the shutter open. After the engine passed I clicked it shut. When I copied this slide I noticed a good looking old manure spreader that I had not noticed in my younger days. It is probably long gone, but I will take a look the next time I go to Iowa.

I stay in on cold nights now, and I sure do like cars with a good twelve volt starting system. Make sure your outdoor animals have water and a place to get out of the weather.

Frozen Flivver Follies

Model T's came from the factory with only rear wheel drive, but if you look through old literature you will see that aftermarket accessories could be added to improve the versatility of the Tin Lizzie. The first video shows a 1917 Model T with a four wheel drive attachment added on, and it does pretty well in the snow. Most T owners kept a set of chains available to deal with mud and snow, and since the car only weighed about 1200 pounds, and had lots of clearance around the tires, it was a great mudder with chains on the drive wheels.

The second video shows off snowmobile attachments made for Fords that operated in the frozen north. Below are three more pages from Dyke's Ford Supplement. I have peeked ahead, and by the time we get through these pages you will know how to turn you Model T into a hot rod. Click to enlarge, and save them to your hard drive for future reference. Click on the T's label at the end to see all the pages thus far.

Mrs. TBS and I got caught up in the Ford Fever and bought a new-to-us Flivver. We looked at rental cars, and were able to find obvious signs of abuse, and so we switched to looking at leased cars, and found a very nice 2008 with 20,000 miles on it.

Hmmmm...

Last week I helped a landowner find old fence fragments around his timber so he could mark his nearly vanished boundaries. We spent most of the day navigating with a compass, and we double checked our location once in a while with pocket GPS unit. The fence fragment above was inside of the stump of a collapsed tree, and the wire would have been nailed up about 100 years ago.

I was checking pockets in my coat on the drive home and stopped to take inventory when I realized my GPS was missing. I had to think a few minutes, and realized that the last time I used it I had probably missed the inside coat pocket I used, and had dropped it in the woods soon after. I turned around, went back to the timber, and quickly navigated to the spot where I had last taken a GPS reading. I found the unit about forty feet out on the track I had made through the leaves. I told EJ about this close call when we talked that night, and his question was, "If you could navigate right back to it, why do you even bother carrying it?" I'm still trying to come up with an intelligent answer.

Thinning

Trees have a reputation for slow growth, and that is not always deserved. Overstocked stands of trees do grow slowly, but with proper thinning, they will turn on and produce wood in a hurry. This bottomland site will easily grow trees with rings 1/2 inch or wider, but the tight spacing has them producing mostly height and not diameter. A quick count on the stump below shows that the trees are about twenty-five years old, and that they are slowing down from overcrowding. The largest trees are about eight inches in diameter, so they have averaged about six growth rings per inch.

The basic method in an overstocked stand like this one is to select a tree with good potential for a crop tree, and release it from competition by cutting the trees around it on three or four sides. The extra space allows the crown and roots to expand, and the tree will increase in diameter quickly. Landowners can expect forty to fifty good trees per acre to make it to rotation on land like this, so helping a crop tree approximately every thirty-three feet is common advice for large sapling and small pole stands. (Thirty-three X Thirty-three =Forty per Acre)

Thinning early in the life of a stand allows a landowner to select the more valuable species and the best quality stems to dominate, and to dramatically decrease the number of years needed to produce a crop of timber.