All posts by warren

Making sorghum – Part 2

Awesome, Family, Fun, Garden, History, Nature, Tinkering, , ,

The Story of Two Mules – by Emily

Once upon a time there was a mule called “Brother”.  Brother was drafted into turning a cane mill for what seemed like hours on end.  After becoming dirty and dizzy, he began to bray for help.  Another mule called “Wife” heard his braying and decided to help.  With Brother on one end and Wife on the other, the cane mill turned and turned under the hot sun.  Then Wife became tired and brayed, “Why can’t I have a rope to pull this load, why do I have to push?”  The farmer hooked up a rope to the cane mill.  Brother pushed and Wife pulled the cane mill under the hot sun.  Round and round the cane mill went while Brother and Wife became dizzy and tired.  Finally, both Brother and Wife started braying so loudly that farmer had pity on them and hooked the rope to a tractor.   Brother sat upon the tractor and the tractor turned the cane mill round and round under the hot sun.  Wife went back and forth, carrying more cane to the farmer who sat upon the ground.  The two mules said nothing to the farmer about not thinking of the tractor earlier.  However, every time the farmer got hit in the head by the  board attached to the mill’s roller, the sounds of  “hee haw!  hee haw!” were heard throughout the land.

I think her story is hilarious and pretty well summarizes how our day went…

The plan was to process the cane I described yesterday into sorghum syrup.  Basically, the canes are full of liquid with natural sugars and other magical things that give it a distinct flavor.  To extract the liquid, farmer Warren has to crush the cane using a cane mill.  Farmers in the old days used to hitch up horses or mules to a long pole attached to the center roller in the mill.   As the animals walked in circles, the rollers turned crushing cane fed into the mill a few pieces at a time.

Ky cane mill ready to press sorghum
Ky cane mill ready to press sorghum

We reassembled the mill and lagged it to a few sections of old railroad ties.  Old timers used to attach the mill to a tree stump that was quite solid in the ground.  You see, when the rollers are turned in the mill, a tremendous amount of torque can be generated.  If the mill isn’t attached to something solid, it will be spun around…not something I wanted to deal with as a 600 pound block of iron in motion is slightly more than I can handle.

Ky cane mill ready to press sorghum
The board that hit the farmer in the head repeatedly…

So, we got it assembled and rigged a board to the center shaft.  I was the first draft animal to take a turn at the mill.  It was slightly easier than I expected to turn the mill.  It was frozen solid when I got it so nothing moved.  I guess I had an idea that it would be only slightly easier to turn once it was cleaned up.  I had not assembled it even once since restoring it so I had no idea!  Luckily, it turned well so we decided to start crushing cane.  We tried to run a single pieces of cane through it but it didn’t really work.

Ky cane mill ready to press sorghum
Note the fancy pine cones to hold the rollers in place

The rollers are supposed to be spaced at around 1/16th of an inch.  On each end of each roller, there used to be bolts that could be used to adjust the spacing of the rollers.  On my old mill, I was able to free the top bolts but I couldn’t replace them (not for this year anyhow).  The bottom bolts remain frozen in place so I had some ability to adjust the tops of the rollers but the bottoms were set in iron…literally.  We set up the mill under a spruce tree so I grabbed a few pine cones and jammed them into the top of the mill to force the rollers closer together.  Surprisingly, it worked amazingly well!  The spacing at the bottom of the rollers was a little too wide so I had to be careful feeding the cane so that it went mostly towards the top of the joint between the rollers.  That worked just fine but was less than ideal.

Crushing sorghum cane in the cane mill
Crushing sorghum cane in the cane mill
Crushing sorghum cane in the cane mill
Before I got too dizzy
Crushing sorghum cane in the cane mill
That mechanical horse saved lives!
Crushing sorghum cane in the cane mill
But hurt my head…a lot!

So, as I said, I was the original draft animal but I had the vision on how to feed the cane too so my brother, who has a mind well suited for being a draft animal, took over turning the rollers (just kidding…he has a PhD in chemistry).  Really, neither job was too glamorous.  After a few turns, we were both dizzy (and I swear it had nothing to do with the liquid wheat we had nearby) and decided to hook it to the motorized draft animal.  I remained on the ground to feed stalk while Isaac and my brother took turns riding the tractor.  I suppose we ran cane through the cane mill for 3-4 hours slowly learning tricks and getting better at the process.  We had to fight the mill a few times as I got impatient and fed too much cane.  The torque increased and we spun the mill in circles…luckily we kept the mill low to the ground for safety.  Next year, I will mount it higher and more substantially to make it easier to feed cane and to minimize rotation.

Click here for a short video of the sorghum press in action

Sorghum juice flowing from the cane mill
Sorghum juice flowing from the cane mill
Some of the crushed sorghum canes
Some of the crushed sorghum canes

When sorghum juice flows, it is pea green.  Truly, it doesn’t look appetizing and I think it smells like the guts of a pumpkin around Halloween.  Still, we got juice flowing and I was so excited.  The process was working!  We pressed a bunch of cane and had a nice bunch of juice to cook down.  You’ll have to wait until the next post to hear about that adventure (yeah, I lied yesterday…I have to write more than 2 parts)!

My cane mill/sorghum stuff

Making sorghum – Part 1

Food, Garden, Land, ,

I am far too excited to write only one post about how the sorghum harvest went this year so please humor me and allow me to write two posts.  You may recall that on a wild hair (or two hairs actually), I ended up buying two cane mills and planting sorghum this spring.  The sorghum grew and I finally got around to fixing up one of the two mills.  My brother and I finally harvested it last weekend.

Cutting sorghum cane
A start on cutting the sorghum cane
Cutting sorghum cane
Stripping sorghum leaves

But let me back up.  The sorghum grew pretty well once it started growing.  I planted a patch around 50’x50′ and it produced a lot of nice canes and beautiful red seed heads.  But, of course, time got in the way and it did what sorghum does when you ignore it and don’t harvest when it needs to be harvested.  It fell over (which is called lodging).  I have read where it might be caused by a number of things but in the end, it adds difficulty to harvesting mechanically and may ruin the canes even if they can be harvested.

Cutting sorghum cane
Sorghum makes everything sticky
Harvesting sorghum cane
We both enjoyed drinking sweet juice from the canes

Luckily, we got into the field pretty quickly after it started so all of the canes were in good shape although we lost all of the seeds that I otherwise had planned to save and grind into sorghum flour.  So, next year I will try to beat the lodging and save the seeds.

Harvesting sorghum cane
The first few sorghum canes

So, my brother and I took turns swinging the machete to cut the stalks at the ground while the other stripped leaves from the cane.  The leaves aren’t harmful to the sorghum exactly but apparently they add a bitter taste to the finished sorghum syrup.  I suppose we spent an hour or two harvesting the patch.  It seemed like a small job but it turned out to be a lot more work than we expected.  It’s also sticky and dirty work as the sugar content of sorghum cane is pretty high.

Harvesting sorghum cane
More cane…still early on but I think it looked really nice

We tied the canes into my brother’s trailer and hit the road to my parents’ house around 4pm…their place is around 6 hours away so we rode sticky and sweaty and dirty and had a long day.  The plan had always been to harvest and process the cane at our place so we could have an old fashioned neighborhood pressing party like they used to do a hundred years ago.  We ran out of time though so decided to have a pressing party at my childhood home where we were planning to visit anyhow.  Still, I was on the edge of giddy as I had my first crop of sorghum cane harvested!

I’ll write more in my next post about pressing and cooking the syrup that was in the cane.  Harvesting, it turns out, was the easy part!

My cane mill/sorghum stuff

No squeamish daughter here!

Adventure, Family, Nature, ,

When I was a kid growing up in the country, we pretty much stayed dirty all the time.  We picked up worms and snakes and drank from the hose and ran barefoot.  We ate wild teaberries and jungled around on grape vines…stuff a kid ought to do, you know?  We currently live in the city so it’s not quite as easy for the kids to explore the woods but I am so pleased when we get out to the cabin.

A girl and her toad!
A girl and her toad!
A girl and her toad!
She’s such an encourager! “You’re a good toad…”

Abigail has a couple of really great girlfriends that live nearby out there who all like to explore and enjoy all that the woods has to offer.  She ventures over to their place as soon as we get to the cabin and we don’t see her until we ring the dinner bell.  When she finally does come back home, she is filthy and exhausted and absolutely full of joy!

A girl and her toad! A girl and her toad!

Last weekend, our neighbors were working on some old fence.  They moved some slabs of wood and found four toads and a turtle….the toads were the biggest I think I have ever seen!  In typical fashion, those three girls saved the toads and turtle and made a regular home for the critters.  Each one had a name and, by the time I came around, a label on their personality…

A girl and her toad!

I am so glad that Abigail is not a girly girl, squeamish around such lovely creatures.  I am thrilled that she climbs trees and enjoys the mud between her toes while she catches salamanders near the pond.  I am delighted that she has some fellow girl-explorers who love to spend time in the beautiful creation all around them!

Cane mill progress

Garden, History, Tinkering, ,

Earlier in the spring I bought a cane mill to press sorghum stalks into sorghum syrup.  After that one, I bought another (click for “before” pics).  When it was time, I planted sorghum seeds and proceeded to do nothing at all related to the cane mill until the last 2 weeks when I have been working furiously to break down the second cane mill (it’s smaller) and fix it up so it will actually be capable to pressing sorghum cane!  I decided on John Deere green and yellow since this is ultimately a Deere-made mill…clever, eh?  I also decided to paint the inside of the mill as well as the rollers.  Some folks don’t do that but mine were already painted before I got it and modern paint, when dry, is inert so shouldn’t be a food hazard.  I will probably do more research and, if necessary, sand blast the paint if I decide it is a problem.

Kentucky No 0 Cane Mill - by Deere Mansur
Kentucky No 0 Cane Mill – by Deere Mansur
Kentucky No 0 Cane Mill
Kentucky No 0 Cane Mill

Anyhow, you see, like everything, time flies and the sorghum was just doing what sorghum does…grow!  It grew and grew and it seemed like I had plenty of time to get the mill ready.  Here it is almost October and I am not yet ready!  Sorghum is apparently ruined if the stalks are frozen so I have a fairly short window of time left to harvest.  Fortunately, the mill is apart and I was able to run a grinder over a bunch on it to remove rust, dirt, etc.

Gear from Cane Mill
Gear from Cane Mill
Roller from Cane Mill
I decided to paint the rollers…I may undo that later

All in all, I think it is shaping up very nicely.  These pieces each weigh quite a bit (the entire piece weighing somewhere between 400 and 600 pounds…I don’t have a scale that big and there is little info on this model.  I guess I could weight the individual pieces but it doesn’t really matter) so it takes a good bit of work to manipulate them and hold them just right while I run the grinder.  Still, I think the pieces are turning out beautifully.  Of course, I have inhaled a lot of the rust and grime.  I was so excited to just get time to work on them that I forgot to wear a dust mask.  I did wear ear and eye protection though!

Kentucky Cane Mill by Deere Mansur
The bottom of the cane mill..looks like a face to me
Top of a cane mill
Top of a cane mill – also looks like a face to me

So, I may try to harvest the sorghum this weekend or the next but the mill shouldn’t be the hold up.  I’ll show some more pics when we get it back together and when we actually do harvest!

My cane mill/sorghum stuff

Cabin progress – Fall edition

Cabin, Land, Tinkering, ,

It seems like we have been caught up in stuff lately and we haven’t been able to make a lot of progress on the deluxe shed.  Last weekend we spent all day Saturday doing stuff so I thought I would share an update.

Electrical meter on post
Electrical meter on post…so the wire is all underground

The electrical installation passed inspection.  It’s around a 3 week wait for the electric company to run the line from the pole to my meter but I am on the list now!  That will make many things different and easier as we work on the place.  Eventually we will add more solar and make a run at being off-grid or rather, grid tied but a net producer, but that will have to wait.

The back deck...installed!
The back deck…installed!

Now that the decks are mostly up (but there is still a lot to do…like hook them together and add a railing), we can finish a lot of the outside work we have been putting off.  In particular, at the rear of the building, the floor is 9 feet off of the ground.  Without a deck, installing the door and siding was going to be a real drag.  I mean, I added the sheathing and built the walls, etc  clear up to the peak (around 30 feet in the air) without a deck, but I decided I would not be doing that any more work on the back without a deck.

Siding on the cabin
Windows and doors and siding, oh my!

So, with the deck in place, we installed the back door and are about to finish the siding.  It’s amazing how much nicer the siding makes the back of the place look.  It was pretty well protected from the weather by the house wrap but its lifespan has officially passed even though it looks in good shape.  A few more hours and we will finish the siding as well as the soffit and fascia.

Siding on the cabin
Almost done!

You can notice from the pics that I still have to enclose the area under the house.  That has to happen before winter as I now have pipes in place that will freeze without protection.  Enclosing that space, adding a door into the “basement” and getting a heat source wired in place are the remaining things that must happen before snow flies.  My brother is coming in a few weeks and I plan to take a few days off of work to see how much we can accomplish.  I’d really like to get this place to a point that we could actually enjoy it some this winter even if it gets cold!  We have the best sled riding hills around!

Broken…again

Adventure, Family, ,

Poor Abigail.  She has some bones she hasn’t yet broken.  That number is shrinking though.  You may remember a while back she broke her wrist while riding her scooter.  I finally found the x-rays.  I have a real thing for x-rays I guess.  I really like to see what’s happening inside.  It’s just fascinating that we can see inside a body without being Superman and without doing surgery.

Broken wrist x-ray
Can you see the break?

Anyhow, if you check out Abigail’s big arm bone towards the head of the bone, you can see the break.  Not bad (aside from the fact that broken bones are always bad) and she is completely healed by now.

Broken wrist x-ray
I think it is easier to see here

Of course, she couldn’t be completely in one piece.  Last weekend, somehow, she broke her toe.  She didn’t complain much and I don’t remember when it even happened but she started hobbling a little bit.  I looked at her toe and it was bruised badly…like black and blue and red and ugly.  It was her little toe so I figured it was no great loss but Emily wanted to get an x-ray to make sure it was ok.  They headed to the doctor and he confirmed it (but we didn’t get copies of the x-rays).  She has her toes taped together for a few weeks and should be fine.  Still, it’s another broken bone…

X-ray of a healthy wrist
Her other non-broken wrist

I wish I could say this will be our last broken bone report but I know better.  Abigail is growing into her body so I figure there will be more “moments”.  That’s ok and if I had my druthers, I would prefer broken fingers and toes to bigger bones!

A little of this and a little of that

Uncategorized,

I was fooling around  a little more at the cabin and as I turned over a patch of sod I dug a few days prior, I discovered another spider friend!  This is also a wolf spider I believe but he is much more gray than the last one I encountered…although just as big!  I love finding these critters out there!

Huge wolf spider Huge wolf spider

In other news, I switched mobile phones.  I ditched my iPhone and got a Samsung Galaxy S4.  It’s cool and mostly I really like it.  I know iPhone has similar things that you can get but I took a few pics and manipulated them with built-in editing software…I think it is very cool!

Pansies Pansies

Pansies Pansies

I was getting ready for work the other day while Abigail was fixing herself some frozen waffles.  I heard a crash and then silence.  That never bodes well so I walked into the kitchen where I discovered Abigail staring at a mess on the floor,her mouth fully agape.  She couldn’t believe that a maple syrup bottle could break.  It was plastic after all!  Friends, if you have never had to clean up a bunch of sticky syrup, you are fortunate!  It just smears!

Spilled maple syrup

It’s been pretty weird around our place lately.  From flowers and phones and spiders to spilled maple syrup, I guess it’s been a little of this and a little of that and absolutely nothing in particular!

 

Swimmingly

Family, WV, ,

My folks were in town last weekend to watch Abigail play soccer and Isaac’s middle school band play at the high school football game with the high school band.  They came in Friday night in time for the football “game”.  We had to be to the field an hour early but that meant we got good seats.  Unfortunately, we later discovered that those seats were right next to the student section.  Perhaps it’s all student sections, and I hate to speak badly of my neighbors, but those kids were real knuckleheads.

Middle School band

Anyhow, Isaac’s middle school band played the Star Spangled Banner and the high school’s fight song (is there only one fight song?  It sounded like all fight songs sound) and really sounded pretty good.  The middle school band is pretty large and doubled the HS band.  They played great together although the student section’s highest ranking idiot corps made it somewhat hard to hear.  I called the game a “game” above because it wasn’t really a game.  The football team beat the opponent 69 – 9.  It wasn’t much fun to watch but then, we came for the band anyhow.

Middle and High School band

As I said, my parents were here for the weekend.  Since our house is in a constant state of construction, they stayed in a nearby hotel…a hotel with a pool.  I think the highlight of the visit was the opportunity to swim in a cement pond!  The kids and my Mom and I had a great time two nights.  We swam and just had a lot of fun.  Isaac tried unsuccessfully to dunk me.  I threw both kids around the pool and we all got chlorine eyes!  That’s swimming pool success!

Swimming lessons Swimming lessons

Both my Mom and I worked as lifeguards in our younger years so we are capable swimmers and we try to teach the kids to swim whenever we can.  My mom in particular has taught my kids very well and she helped them refine their strokes this weekend too.  Both Isaac and Abigail are becoming much better swimmers and seem to enjoy it.  My mom and I both learned in the same water source, 30 years apart.  In my hometown, we swim in the outflow from the local Corps of Engineers’ dam.

Tionesta Beach
Tionesta Beach – photo from RH
Tionesta Beach
Tionesta Beach – photo from RH

It’s cold, fast moving, dark water where one learns quickly to sink or swim.  I stole a pic of my mom when she was a kid at “the beach” so you can get an idea.  My kids are learning in a pool and I am sure it is safer but there is something inspiring about learning to swim in apparently bottomless water.  Still, their lessons are going swimmingly and I am so glad that they have learned to swim as well as they have!

Ditching it all for power

Cabin, Tinkering, , ,

The big project we were working on last weekend when we met our anonymous friends was a ditch digging exercise to remind me why I am so thankful that I do manual labor as an option, not an occupation.  A buddy of mine brought his excavator over to help dig a trench in which we buried conduit to get electrical service installed!

Trenching for underground power line installation
Trenching for underground power line installation

As you might guess, working without electric all this time has made our progress slow and difficult.  I mean, we have a generator but it’s not quite the same as having a socket on every wall we can use.  Having a way to cool drinks and pump water and turn fans would be really nice.  So, this project is a huge step forward and one that I will be glad to finish.

3 inch conduit buried a little over 3 feet deep
3 inch conduit buried a little over 3 feet deep

An excavator definitely makes ditch digging easier but there is still a good bit of manual labor that goes into getting a proper ditch dug and conduit and wire installed.  I guess I am sort of built for manual labor.  I mean, I am well enough and strong enough to do it but golly am I glad it’s only now and then.  Anyhow, we got the conduit in place and I installed the meter base, an outside disconnect and the panel inside the house.

Electrical conduit re-buried
Electrical conduit re-buried

Part of the requirements that the inspector will verify is that there is a proper pull-rope inside the conduit.  The conduit is buried a little more than 3 feet deep so do-overs aren’t really an option.  They require a poly rope be installed so they can yank the supply wire from the pole to the meter.  In my case, that distance is around 50 feet and there are 3 ninety degree turns.  You may be wondering, dear friends, how I got the pull-rope into the buried conduit…with a shop-vac of course!

New meter base and disconnect with underground service
New meter base and disconnect with underground service

I stood at one end and created a seal of sorts with my hands around the vacuum and the conduit pipe.  On the other end, Emily fed in a thin string which was pulled by the suction.  We flipped it all on and waited.  Pretty quickly, the thin string popped out the other end.  I attached my pull-cord to the thin string and pulled it back through…voilà!  A pull-cord installed!

Pull-cord sucked through conduit
Pull-cord sucked through conduit

This coming weekend, the inspector will come review our work and give the go-ahead for the power company to make the hot connection…I can’t wait to get power in the place!  I am not sure we will be ready for Christmas in the cabin but we should definitely be ready for the 4th of July!

See all of the progress on the cabin

Anonymous friends

Adventure, Thoughts, WV, ,

We were up at the cabin this weekend working on some fairly large projects.  We were pretty busy running around doing things and trying to get stuff situated.  Nearing the end of the afternoon on Sunday, something came up that was a bit of a family emergency.  It wasn’t huge but it wasn’t insignificant either.  No one was hurt and everyone is ok, but we just had a bit of a freak-out.

Anyhow, we had to do some exploring about the ridge to handle the problem and we were in uncharted territory.  Typically, when we are on the ridge, we go straight to our place.  We don’t have time to explore and honestly, I have been on similar back roads…if you don’t know where you are going you better have all day and a full tank of gas.  Still, we had to venture out and we saw a good bit of the area  in the process.

A WV farm we discovered
A WV farm we discovered on our tour of the ridge

But that’s not the point of the story…we weren’t lost but we needed help and as we drove about, we happened upon some folks on 4-wheelers.  I explained the situation to them and asked for advice on how to take care of the issue.  Really, I just figured they would give me a quick answer and we’d be done.  Instead, they asked if we wanted them to help out and I said, “only if you have nothing else to do all day.”  They said they would help in spite of my attempt at a warning.  They drove all over the ridge to help us out.  I suppose they each burned at least 45 minutes of gas and didn’t give up until we finally got back together at the cabin to report that the issue was handled.

Anyone who says there aren’t good people around is wrong.  I offered to fill them up with gas or give them a drink…they wanted nothing and simply laughed and smiled and moved on.  I didn’t even get their names but I hope they will stop back by the place sometime when we are up there.  I hope I can be such a neighbor and be equally willing to help someone in need.  I know they won’t see this, but thanks to my new anonymous friends and to all folks willing to help a stranger!