walnut hulling

walnuts are messy business. we collected 10 or so feed bags worth of walnuts and they have been sitting around waiting for us to hull them. mike (tabitha's father) has an old hand crank corn husker that he claims works great to husk walnuts. yeah, maybe fresh green ones. cranking this thing seemed easy at first but as things got bunged up inside it ground to a halt. after a break and assessing if this was really a good idea we applied water to the hopper. this seemed to loosen things but the goo coming out of this thing looked suspiciously like shite. i cranked and cranked and cranked on this thing. scooping the sludge by hand with rubber gloves on wasn't pleasant. we (mike fed & i cranked & preformed proctological tasks on the unit) filled two large tubs a wheel barrow and a five gallon bucket. the black sludge somehow got inside my glove and my hand is permanently stained. this is like a henna tattoo.

what a fiasco. we still have to pour them out on the driveway and let them dry. next we'll pick out the surviving dried ran-over nuts. i'm sure that there is got to be a better way. whatever this better way is i think it probably won't involve me next time--making it the best way.

rotting, molding, maggot infested sludge. mikes chickens seemed to like the maggots and were hovering around waiting for their next opportunity to dig in.

never a dull moment here on the farm.

on a better note i cut and split some more wood yester morn. the tree that i'm working on is now larger than the length of my 18" chainsaw bar. i've been coming in from both sides to make the cuts. this is a hickory tree and splitting it is pretty easy when there isn't any branch intersections--sadly that hardly ever occurs. i like working up wood it reminds me of when i was young and cutting wood all the time. i've been getting about 20 pieces of wood from each of these large slices off the tree. admitedly i have been splitting then fairly small but this wood stove cooks out of the house if we put large logs in it and this will make it easier to adjust the temperature having a selection of large and small wood.

fencing has got to happen today. i don't relish the idea of digging out that old rotten corner post but that is next.....

it rained last night and the wood under the porch got a little wet it really isn't starting to burn that well.

i checked our propane tank yesterday it said 32% full. 500 gallons X .32 = 160. we only filled our tank with 200 gallons to start with so we have used 40 gallons since hooking up our drier & stove. that seems about right. the drier runs almost constantly some days and i make plenty of coffee. we filled it around august 20th. that is 20 gallons a month. yikes that does seem like alot.

kassi just woke up and we need some daddy & baby girl time. tristan & mama are still asleep. she claims that she needs to poo we tried to sit on the potty but that got boring. she just climbed the back of my chair and is now hanging on my neck demanding my attention.