Logging with the Farmi

With cold, but dry weather over the weekend it made for ideal conditions to do some tree clearing for the homesite.  This will take a number of weekends to complete and we are hoping to have this done before the trees bud.  Fortunately we have some labor saving machinery to help make this adventure more productive and quite a bit safer than when we cleared the driveway.  Any trees that get hung up in a fall we can put the winch on it and pull it down with relative ease from a distance.  When we did the driveway we had to hook up a come-along winch (hand powered) with a rope.  The tractor powered winch will easily pull 3-4 logs at a time from the forest up to the skid plate of the winch where I can then latch them and drag them up to the wood shed area where we limb, buck and split them into firewood.

Chainsaw Accident Near Miss!

We started in on the homesite clearing this weekend.  Temperature was a comfortable 30 degree fahrenheit, sunny with variable wind conditions.  A decent day for sawyering. However since it's been almost a year since I was last felling trees I was a little out of practice but still full of confidence - a recipe for mistakes and potential injury!  Chainsaws are very dangerous machines that require full concentration and attention to proper protocols.  I had just finished notching an 8" diameter ash, completed the back cut to drop the tree and moved a safe distance away for the fall.  At that point I brought the saw across my thigh to rest it there and accidentally snagged the first inch or two of the chain bar on my thigh...thank goodness for my safety chaps!!  The chain cut the outer fabric of the chaps and caught the microfiber mat causing it to bind and slow the chain speed almost to a stop.  This little mishap was a bold reminder of how important it is to ALWAYS wear your PPE!!

Tiny Cabin Roof Job with Generator Woes

So where do things stand with the tiny cabin project?

i) Over the Christmas break we more or less got the roof rafters in place and ready to put the sheathing on
ii) We installed the deck posts around the cabin and purchased the materials for it.
iii) We received our doors and windows from Home Depot and they are in storage ready to be installed after the dry-in
iv) the portable generator broke down and we had to order a new part which took a couple of weeks
v) we installed one side of the overall roof sheathing and metal on Jan. 16

 It is important to get a roof on the building as soon as practical to keep the framing members dry to prevent the onset of rot and wood warpage.  For us we had a lot of inclement weather in late December which prevented us from getting up there to start that phase of the project.  To prevent as much water ingression as possible we placed a tarp on top of the rafters to prevent direct rainfall soaking the plywood floor and wall frame.

I persuaded my neighbor (the fellow who built our pole barn/shop) to assist with the roofing and he graciously came out on Jan. 2 only to have our generator promptly breakdown when we tried firing up the air compressor for the nailer. One realizes how important electricity is to the continuity of any project only when it isn't there and when you bring in a professional framer on his day off to help! He packed up and said he'd be back when the generator was back working.   I returned home that night and researched what might have caused the generator to quit.  The main symptom I observed was that the motor would turn over and run normally but it would not generate power sufficiently to operate any tools.  I gleaned from my internet research was that it was most likely a voltage regulator issue that I had.  My generator is a 3.65 kW Homelite with the capability to handle surges up to 4.55 kW.  I looked up the part number from the generator manual and found that this machine uses a run capacitor which looks like this.  The nice thing was that it is a simple matter of undoing four bolts that hold the housing on and the capacitor sits inside it with two wires attached that just slip off.  When I removed the part I could see immediately this was the part that got damaged because it was slightly bulging on all six sides from overheating.  In retrospect it probably burned up when I had negligently left the well pump plugged in during a cold start-up the week before.  Generators like to be on and running steady-state before a load is applied - especially big ones.  The well pump is 3/4 HP,  240VAC sitting at 350' below the ground and even when the genny is running warm and steady it bogs down when the well pump kicks on.  Nevertheless we got the part (and a spare!) re-installed with little effort and we commenced with the roofing.

David and Scott intalling roof sheathing

David convinced me to invest in a pneumatic framing nailer to speed up the project.  Since he was offering his free time to build my roof I figured it was worth the cost and would likely use it on other projects to come.  The truth is it is a dream to use and productivity goes up about three-fold over screw fasteners.  The downside is that mistakes may take much longer to fix if disassembly is required.

30# felt (tar paper over the OSB sheeting)

Half the metal on

David and Scott finishing up metal roof installation

The metal we chose to install is called 5V crimp.  We used 26 gauge, 2 foot wide panels.  It is easy to work with and relatively inexpensive.  It comes in 8, 10 or 12' lengths fastened with special screws to seal out water.

So with concurrent projects going on we are very busy and never for want of something to do while we're up there.  The deck surrounding the cabin will be worked on again in earnest after the roof goes on and we'll sheet the walls and tack on the membrane in coming weeks.

Deck posts set during Christmas break

Tiny House Construction Progress

Thanksgiving Week Tiny Cabin Build - cont'd

All four walls got erected on our tiny cabin on Tuesday.  Elizabeth deserves most of the credit as she painstakingly laid out and measured everything 3X before I made cuts to ensure square and level joinery of the wall studs.  We chose to use purchased dimensional lumber for this project instead of milling our own from the trees on the property due to the time constraints we are faced with.  As we learned from constructing a woodshed working with logs is tedious and requires a lot of time to prep the logs which involves peeling the bark, notching the joints plus you need extra labor to lift and place for fastening.  With "2-by" lumber it is basically precision build ready with little effort required to keep things straight and level.  Next step is to install rafters and metal roof.  We ordered the doors and windows which will arrive in late December.  We'll start cutting down the trees this winter where the house will be situated but right now the wall tent is in the way.  After the cabin is done we'll take it down and move into the cabin for weekend stays.

Small Cabin Progress

Back in August we installed the four piers for the foundation of our tiny cabin (10x10).  On one side will be a 2' walkway which joins a porch/deck on the front and wraps around the other side.

Blaze orange for safety

Lots of helpers

Autumn Harvest

From roughly late August through October some of our trees produce copious quantities of fruit and nuts.  We were lucky this year to have found some ripe pawpaw fruit in a few locations around the property.  The American pawpaw is a native tree that bears a fruit which, to me, has a taste somewhere between banana and mango.  For it to be fully enjoyed it must be eaten after it has fallen off the tree naturally.  Whenever we picked them from the tree they tended to be a bit hard and not as succulent.  The turnoff for some might be the rather ugly appearance they have after becoming ripe.  They are mottled grayish-black.  But don't be deterred by their looks as they are a delicious fruit that is rich in nutrients.   There are hundreds of these slender trees growing naturally along the creek banks, floodplain and slopes of our land.

Coming a little later are the hickory nuts.  We have several mature hickory trees probably about 30-50 years old that produce vast numbers of nuts.  Elizabeth collected probably close to 30 lbs.  While they contain quite tasty meat they are a lot of work to crack.  We tried using a hammer and a vise and both ways work but the best device is one we recently purchased exclusively for breaking them open.  It works great.

Besides the bountiful forest harvest this year we also managed to get some fruit and vegetables from the hugelkultur beds we started in the spring next to the barn.  We planted a bit late so the watermelon crop yield was low.  One of our main goals was to see how well the swaled beds would be able to capture and retain moisture on the slope as we had made them on contour, filled them with trees, wood chips and soil.  We had about normal amounts of rain and the temps were in the upper 90's frequently in July and August and yet in spite of our only being there about every 7-8 days very little additional water was needed to keep them going.