Good morning!!!!

[sam5570]

Good morning 45 degrees suppose to be 80 this afternoon looking forward to that. Everyone have a great day got to get things going on.

 

[Ed of all trades]

that sounds wonderful Roy. Hope the good weather continues, going to be in the eighties here the next two days.

I have a question for our organic food experts.
If I plant seeds or plants marked organic, and then fertilize with a dilute solution of Miraclegro,
does that fertilizer do any damage to the organic status? Or does it have to be organic fertilizer?
The top layer of premix garden soil is fertilized also with long release fertilizer. Wondering what the rules are here.
My guess is I've long since gone over the line.

Look at the bright side, you on't have to worry about keeping everything organic anymore. Ed

 

[Ed of all trades]

Good morning everyone, slept in this am. Almost 6 when I got up. 40 going to 81. We have a hazardous weather outlook here. Dry weather and low humidity bring a risk of new wild fires. Not much chance of wild fires in the wet part of Tx right now. You keep safe down there, prayers sent again.

Roy glad to here you out and about. I bet it feels good to do something after being laid up for a while.
Guess I'll get the massey out and shorten the grass a little. I'll likely have a yellow cloud following me around. Have a great day. Ed

 

[txdon]

Good morning
66 degrees
7.67" rain last 24 hrs
Raining

 

[farmer2009]

56 this morning and headed to 84 today.

Didn't get to mow yesterday so that will be first item on agenda for today. Need to move some trailers. The wife wants things more organized. Roll eyes. Then check fences and see about sorting some cows. Need to start spraying also. Grass is jumping here.

Guys in Texas stay to the high ground.

 

[ronjhall]

Drinking first cup of coffee. 46° with cloudy skies this morning. Heading to 58° with some sunshine. Busy day yesterday. Did some welding for my brother repairing his field string trimmer. Cut lawn for owners of the place we are staying at. Did some maintenance on my brothers Side By Side. Drove us into the mountains for a great hamburger meal. Working on projects at 5000' wears me out.
Those in way of the heavy rains. Stay safe and dry.
Drew, organic in my book would exclude fertilizer unless it was composted.
Good Morning All.

 

[daugen]

Drew, organic in my book would exclude fertilizer unless it was composted.
thanks Ron, that's pretty much what I grew up reading in the various Rodale magazines my father got but
some fertilizers are pretty natural, like bone meal. Or perhaps that is just an amendment. Amendment always seemed like an
overly fancy word for saying something else...something I'd expect on my will.
Next thing you know we'll be adding addendums to our gardens.

Been watching the temps rise, time to get moving. Lot of water hose to drag.
Just wait it out Texans and be safe. Your critters too.

 

[farmer2009]

Drew. My understanding of organic is only natural products.

Fertilizer. - animal or human waste.

Weed control - citrus oil or vinegar and salts.

Pesticides- have to be natural. I think BT qualifies if sprayed on. It's derived from fish.

Fungicide. - again natural but don't know what.

Organic food - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[rswyan]

65.9F and very sunny @ 09:00 ... predicted high here has been upgraded from 75F to 83F for the day. Should be good for drying things out.

Spent about 3 or 4 hours on the tractor grappling around yesterday and it wore me out. My right ankle that works the treadle pedal was cramping when I hit the rack last night ... but Doctor Cupcake came thru and fixed me up with some supplements and magic elixirs and I slept like a baby. Couldn't even make it through the first episode (of two) of NYPD Blue ...

Very happy with how the grapple has turned out, and how it's working so far ... should have built (or bought) one years ago. Very handy.

Was running it with just the box blade (around 500 lbs) on the back yesterday, may put the ballast block (900 lbs) on today and see how it does, although the ground is still pretty wet here in spots - including the area at the back of the property, where all of the brush will ultimately end up.

The area in the background of the image below is what I was trying to reclaim/clear/clean up. My former house guest cut down around a dozen poplars/aspens last year that need cleared out.

Have a couple of small hydraulic leaks I need to sort out, and pick up a pair of 90 degree 1/8" pipe thread grease fittings and install them so I can grease the base ends of the hydraulic cylinders.

All you Texicans take care and stay safe (if not dry)

 

[mkr7734]

Good morning,
Dropped off the tires at the tire shop in town and hope to have a set by this afternoon. This set will be Brigestone Fusions. $140 each. Wife is home and it will be in the mid 80s today with lots of sun. Maybe the southeast end will dry up enough to get in there to mow. Not a lot else.

rswyan, that grapple makes mine look like a toy, glad it is working out for you. I did some grapple work yesterday. Hauled two down trees up to Brian's burn pile. One was about 25' long and would not fit down the drive, so I grabbed it by the end and took it that way. Made the tractor feel a bit light on the rear but it made it. I should of had the ballast box on instead of the grader scraper.

You guys in Texas be careful out there.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Schools have been closed, we are at 7.5" so far.

Just 20 miles south of us in Lagrange they are at 20.03" and still raining.

 

[rswyan]

That grapple looks great, Looking for the action video. Ed

Thanks ... I might see if I can persuade The Woman to come out and shoot some video today.

Nice job on your driveway ... and very nice looking home.

We always wanted a log home but never got around to making it happen.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

This has taken just 6 hours to go from nothing to 4' over flood stage.

 

[rswyan]

... RS, that grapple looks awesome.

Thanks ...

Looks like you've already had a little fun with it in the dirt.

Yeah ... I had tested the bottom root rake portion of it before I actually had the grapple done ... seemed to work pretty well.

Your thread on building it is quite informative.

Thanks ... I was hoping some might find it helpful.

Started working on adding on to my little post and beam tractor barn. Originally built it with no experience, drawing plans "on a napkin" 27 years ago as a goat barn, for storing hay, grain, room for a milking stand, plus built a feeding trough on one wall. Later converted it to use for horses, then most recently as a place to store garden tools and park my tractor. Never thought it would last this long. It is all board and batten from green pine cut at a nearly mill. To pull my tractor in, I took the right side wall boards off.

It has a shed style roof, and I plan to do a mirror image addition on the front. I'll take the front boards off, cut and reuse most of them on the new lower wall. I'll reuse the old right side boards on the new addition left side.

I used red cedar posts cut from my woods and now one has rotted through at ground level. So cut another 12 footer and placed adjacent yesterday. I was surprised how dry the ground already is while digging the hole. Also had to take down some adjacent gates and fencing. The carpenter bees were using one of the old cedar fence posts, and were not happy when I started hammering to remove fencing nails. I figured I'd give the few nails left until this morning when the bees are too cold to come out.

Pics ...



That were some beautiful pic of your trout fishing trip up in the Shennandoah ... we almost moved to area about 10 years ago ... lovely area.

 

[rswyan]

rswyan great job on grapple lots of thought and hard work.

Thanks.

Have you weighed it yet?

I have not ...

I might stick it in the back of the van at some point and run down to the scales, just for shizz and giggles ...

Thus far I have not run into anything that I couldn't pick up with it.

I do have a pile of logs that are around 30' long that I stacked up yesterday that could present a challenge tho' ...

If I was still in steel fab business would definitely try to hire you

LOL ... thanks Bup ...

That's (IMO) probably one of the best kinds of comment a man can get

 

[rswyan]

... This has taken just 6 hours to go from nothing to 4' over flood stage.

Geez ...

Be careful.

 

[rswyan]

View attachment 465018

Hilarious ... (kinda ...) ... :thumbsup:

 

[rswyan]

... RS. Nice grapple.

Thanks ...

Action pictures?

Sure ...

Here's some The Woman took yesterday the first time I tried it:

 

[rswyan]

... RS, that grapple is flat out marvelous and kinda mean looking, all good!

Drew,

Thanks for your kind words ...

I'm thinking of naming it "The Big Bite Grapple" ... :laughing:

How did you choose which cylinders to use and what spec to use for their strength?

I had a couple of criteria I used ... wanted the ports to be ORFS (O-ring Face Seal) to minimize/eliminate the leaking often found with NPT, welded construction (not thread-on clevis), and relatively cheap (I think have around $40 per cylinder in them, Surplus Center)

I went with 2 1/2" cylinders because the design wasn't really finalized at that point, and I was considering mounting the cylinders vertically, behind the masts/towers.

Ultimately decided not to go that route, because of the inherent mechanical disadvantage of the lever ... So they are actually probably somewhat larger than they need to be.

Only shortcoming they have that I can see, is that the rods are only 1" ... hopefully I won't bend one.

Do you have a Squeak Seat yet on your tractor?

No ... The Squeak continues to run to the door everytime anyone goes in or out tho' ...

She really wants to go outside ... in spite of me repeatedly warning her there are big kitty-eating things out there ... :laughing:

 

[lostcreekranch]

Schools have been closed, we are at 7.5" so far.

Just 20 miles south of us in Lagrange they are at 20.03" and still raining.

71 was closed, at 7 am north of Ellinger, right at the Fayetteville cutoff. I had a Dr. Appointment in La Grange at 8 am so, had no idea if they would be open or not. Got a call at 7:40 that they were going to be closed. Stopped at Hruska's, in Ellinger, to drown my sorrows in a sausage, cheese, jalapeño kolache and a cinnamon roll.