Still here

The Red Squirrels started cutting the ripening filberts down. Time to step-up my game in knocking back the numbers. The orange cap is filled with peanut butter. The distance between where the trap is mounted and the top of the support seems to be an important variable. It needs to be close enough that the squirrel has his hind feet gripping the top of the support but far enough away that the squirrel is reaching a little bit to get to the bait. This one is set with 2" between the top of the support and the top wire of the #110 body-grip trap.

Burning yard-waste 

It may be counter-intuitive, but burning yard-waste is not a bad way to use hot weather. It is not very aerobic. I got rid of some of the "ugly" wood that was going to be more work turning into firewood than it was worth.

Does a bear poop in the woods? 

I am not qualified to answer that question, but I can verify that raccoons will poop in the grass. You can see the mulberry seeds speckling his/her poop.

Tomato chicanery

I may have been scammed on some "heirloom" tomato seed that I bought over the internet.

The Rose de Bern is supposed to be very round and free of cracks. Of the two that set fruit, one matches that description and the other does not.

The Federle is supposed to be a long, sausage shaped tomato. The young fruit are very round and not showing any interest in elongating.

It is too early to tell for sure, but I am beginning to have my doubts.
 

Fill-in work for when it is hot

Peak temperature beneath our shade trees today was 87F. When Mrs ERJ and I went out today it was seven degrees hotter in the sun, over pavement.

Installing the new Predator 212cc motor on the Troy-Bilt Pony

It was a good project for beneath the the shade trees on a warm day.

When I unboxed the motor I saw that it had the cast aluminum valve cover. According to the Youtube video I watched, that means it is the "hemi" variant. On the whole, if you are not going to modify the motor to soup-it-up, the hemi variant has better intake and exhaust flow and, theoretically, should have slightly cooler head temperatures. 

The trip we took was to buy new nuts, bolts, washers and a new belt. I needed to remove the current engine and pulley and belts before I knew what I would need.

The bolts were 2" long, 5/16" coarse-thread. I looked up the torque spec and for "wet" or lubed bolts and washers, it was a meager 8 ft-lbs of torque for an SAE Grade 5 bolt.

I installed the pulley as far out on the shaft as it would go and not have the end of the shaft sub-flush, but the drive and driven pulley still didn't line up. The motor has two round (aka, "net") holes and two slots. I can elongate the holes in the mounting plate beneath the round-holes in the casting and gain about 5mm, almost a 1/4. While not perfect, it will be closer and the belts should live a lot longer.

The original motor had two, counter-rotating shafts. One for forward and and one for reverse. The new motor's shaft aligned with where the old "forward" shaft was so the machine will have "Forward" but no "Reverse" gear. I will have to put it in neutral and use my muscles when I want to back it up.

I filled the motor with oil and put in about a pint of gas into the tank and lit it off. I did not engage the drive (more on that in a bit). I let it run at about 65% speed until it ran out of gas.

The forced air convection from  the cooling fan was notably strong. It pushes a lot of air past the cooling fins on the cylinder casting and the fins on the head. That is an EXCELLENT thing. The fins are not "ducted". Ducting makes the airflow more efficient by forcing it into close proximity to the fins but exposed fins are rarely clogged up by mouse nests and chaff and are generally preferred for agricultural applications.

After the run-in, I drained the oil. Then I checked to see if I could budge the plugs on the transmission case. I could!!! One plug was in a port on the top of the casting while another plug was in the side of the casting about 2" above the center-line. Typically, the side port would be the "fill-to" mark. I scrubbed the outside of the casting to remove a decade's worth of grime before cracking them open.

The inside surface of both plugs were as dry as a bone. I spread newspaper and cardboard and turned the tiller on its side and about 8 ounces of dark brown (but clear) lube with a very high viscosity came out. That was good news. At least there was something wet in the transmission.

I added fresh motor oil to the engine but did not add any gasoline. I buttoned up the safety shields and then pushed it under cover.

I ordered GL-4 gear lube, 5/16" round files and a spare belt.

And now we wait... 

Presented without comment

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Amaldus Nielsen was born in 1838 in Norway. His father was a shipmaster and merchant. Amaldus had eleven children. He died in 1932 at the age of 94.

His style of art is dubbed "naturalist style". Most notable for painting scenes of where the land meets water.

His paintings appeal to me because while the hand of man is present in them, it is not overwhelming. Norway's climate does not bend easily to the hand of man and does not tolerate fools. The same can be said of the ocean.

 

Hat tip to the tireless Lucas Machias.

Spraying weeds and bringing old equipment back on-line

Work-ticket

Today's work ticket was to spray broadleaf weeds in the Upper and Hill Orchards with 2,4-D before the heat peaked. I used the amine formulation because I dislike the smell of the ester formulations of 2,4-D.

This year, the weeds beneath the trees were mostly grasses early in the season but then flipped over to broadleaf. Species included wood-sorrel, ground-ivy, mares-tail, burdock, goldenrod and Pilea pumila. The only unifying feature of those species is that they all thrive in moist soil.

The downside of the amine formulations are that they are not as "hot" as the ester formulations and require more time to penetrate the waxy skin of the leaves and enter the plant's circulatory system. The amine formulations are also more sensitive to water quality. The upside of the amine formulations are that there is less risk of collateral damages from wind-drift and volatile deposition of 2,4-D. 

I pushed eight gallons of herbicide solution through the two-gallon, hand-pump sprayer. For the record, I used Gordon's LV 400 at 1.5 oz per gallon. The water was "soft" water treated with ammonium sulfate to scavenge tramp Ca++, Mg++ and Fe++ ions that eluded the resin bed and with one oz of 80/20 surfactant per gallon. "Wet-out" was considered more than 50% of the leaf area wetted.

Like many things, I would have been better served if I had done this two weeks ago. 2,4-D mimics plant growth hormones and is devastatingly effective when the majority of the weeds are vigorously extending their flower/seed stalks. It is not as impressive when the plants are shutting down growth due to limited soil moisture. It is the difference between tripping somebody who is sprinting versus tripping somebody who is walking at a very slow pace.

Never-the-less, killing those weeds beneath the trees in the orchard will conserve the water stored in the soil. It will also make the nutrients that the weeds would have absorbed available for the trees. I suspect that we will have more hot and dry spells this summer.

I will go back Thursday morning to check things out. I will re-apply in the areas where it is clear that I missed the target. 

The spraying went fast since I had treated the water in-bulk. I rounded out the three hours by mowing between the rows of asparagus plants and berries (blackberries and gooseberries). Then I went and staked out a line that was 100' from the road's edge in the eastern meadow.

I got that all done by noon (which is when the windchill hit 90F). Then I drove to the Harbor Freight on Lansing's west side and purchased a 212cc Predator gasoline engine to replace the flat-head B&S 5hp motor (Model Number 135292)  on Troy-Bilt Pony, rear-tine tiller that was in the pole-barn at the bottom of the Hill Orchard. The original engine might have been made to run but the cap for the gas tank was MIA and cannot be found for purchase.

The 212cc Harbor Freight engine has cast iron sleeves, 8.5:1 compression and is rated at 6.5hp. It cost me a freckle under $160 out-the-door. Honestly, it is a much better unit than the motor it will be replacing.

One minor complication in restoring an old Troy-Bilt tiller is that they used bronze for some of the gears. Bronze (or "yellow" gears) are not compatible with some of the modern Extreme Pressure additives used in gear oils. The experts on the internet all insist that you need to use GL-4 level, single viscosity lubricants in gear-boxes with "yellow" gears.

Random garden picture

Somebody needs to weed his watermelons

Presented without comment

 

A very short lesson in morality...

So there I was, being the proverbial fly-on-the-wall when a 40ish year-old man who appeared to be from the easternmost quarter of the Mediterranean basin came into the church.

He saw the priest in his vestments and bee-lined toward him.

"Father, I have a question and I need an answer" the man said.

The priest responded, "Let me hear your question, I will give it my best shot".

The man replied "I was told by another priest that if I get a tattoo then it is a sin and I won't be able to receive Communion".

The priest was clearly caught flat-footed by the question.

"Paul tells us that our body is a temple and we are not to defile it, but I am not sure that is what applies here" the priest responded, perhaps to buy time.

"Jesus tells us, in Mark Chapter 7. that we are not made unclean by what goes into us but by what comes out of us" he continued.

"So you can see, the nature of your tattoo is very important. What vibe will people get when they see your tattoo? Will they be inspired to do good things or toward evil? Your tatt is a message that you broadcast to the world" the priest said.

"Finally, the matter of free-will comes into play. If you were in prison and were threatened with rape and getting beaten if you didn't wear some gang's tatts, then it really isn't a choice that you can make freely, right? You were coerced into the act and the majority of the guilt does not rest on your shoulders." 

The priest ended with "If you decide to get the tatt, let me see what you got."

One point that he left out, perhaps because of time constraints, was that if he got a tatt that made him unemployable then he would not be able to provide for his family. Making decisions that make it impossible to provide for yourself or your family is, generally, a sin. It is similar to burning down the family business.