Corn Picking & Woodworking

The farmer showed up on Saturday to pick the corn. My front yard is actually about a half acre of grass and five acres of corn field. Next year it'll be soybeans but I prefer the seclusion and the quiet you get with the corn. Mr. Farmer is getting along in years, so I don't know how much longer he's planning on farming. The Missus was talking the other day about fencing in one side of the lane or the other and maybe getting a beef cow or two. There's definitely a market for grass fed beef. Probably wouldn't be too hard to find someone who would take a share or two of an Angus or Dexter. I have a photo taken here from close to 100 years ago showing a guy milking a cow. Pretty cool picture actually - I should probably scan it in and post it. Anyway, the cow he's milking looks to be a Kerry. I'm not real hip to old breeds of cattle but it would be cool to have the same breed again. However, I'm not about to chase Mr. Farmer off. He's a first class tenant and it's nice having him around. It would be nice to have a little livestock before I get much older, though.

I worked on my woodworking bench yesterday. I had to change the design a little to accommodate the vise but no real problem there. I still have to fasten down the top and I'm planning on some type of shelf down below or something underneath along one side to store my power tools where they'll be handy. Like the workbench, I assemble most things with screws rather than nails. I keep a 3/16" bit in a corded drill all the time to make a hole in the outer piece to be fastened together and then I use the cordless drill to run the screws in. Those, plus a palm sander and a saber saw, are probably about all I really need to keep handy. I don't want to weigh the bench down to the point I can't move it easily if I need to have access to the back side. After I get the storage thing worked out, I think the bench should serve my needs nicely. It's not a fancy Veritas but it's not fourteen hundred bucks, either. More like fifty. The top isn't hard maple but if I want to drill some holes in the top for fixturing parts, it'll be no big deal in the fifteen dollar piece of particleboard. When you think like a welder, you approach things a little differently than a woodworker. Welders tack pieces to the table all the time and then cut or grind them off when no longer needed and the table's good as new again. The fancy woodworking benches have all those holes for stops and dogs to hold things in position or a guy will have another table for assembly work. I'll just screw things down to the sacrificial particleboard and swap it out when it gets too bad.

I've still got a bunch of things I want to finish up outside before the weather gets cold. I'll keep plugging away and see how far I get. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy all of this beautiful weather.