Ron Kulas

We love our wood furnace. We stay nice and warm.

Edward Lye wrote:

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: Ceramic works, but any sharpener using ceramics will load up with metal over time and stop cutting.  

Agreed. I have a Kyocera ceramic plate about 4 inches by 3 inches.
They don't make/sell this anymore . . . like Tullen Snips. One of
my treasures.

As soon as you rub any metal across the surface, it darkens which shows
how effective it is. Diamond doesn't show that. I mostly use it to sharpen
penknives and sewing needles.

OK, here is my trick. I use a pencil rubber to clean it. It whitens up showing
that it is effective.

I collected defective computer chips before I retired. But these were stamp sized.
White, thin and fragile. I gave them away to my sisters-in-laws to sharpen
their sewing needles.

I use AJAX or Comet or barkeepers friend. All do a great job of unloading my ceramics.

I teach knife sharpening so I made this video.

I grew up on a potato farm. I still grow a lot of spuds. 5:1 yield is poor. 10:1 is very good. Lots of folks struggle growing spuds in a bad because they were misled. I made this video to help those folks.

Over the weekend I bought the lowest priced hatchet Ive seen in a long time. But boy was it dull. So I sharpened it and made a sheath.

Im attaching a video a video of the before and after sharpness.

















This is how the sharpening improved the edge. (Click link below)

sharness video

Then I made a leather sheath.









I dont know how well it will hold an edge but for now its at least sharper than when I started.

Today was garlic planting day. 51 Duganski cloves went in the ground.

This IS NOT elephant garlic.

Its just big because we have been selecting only the largest for 4 years straight.

Each year, we save the largest cloves to plant because the larger the clove, the larger the next crop will be.

Each year they keep getting bigger and bigger. I think this is about as large as a clove can get (the size of an egg)
This variety stores very well.

3 years ago, I met the home inspector as we prepared to close on our new place.

I took a drone photo that day.

Today, (3 years to the day) I retook that drone photo. Lots has changed. The house and garage used to sit in the shadows. Its been non stop projects since then.

We did logging land clearing

Remodeled the inside of the house

Added the Garden of Eat'n

added the chicken coop and run

Added a couple out buildings

Added a maple sap cooking shack

Built the headquarters for our home business

Built an entrance/security gate

Planted apple and nut trees

Added a Generac whole home backup generator

Replaced the roof on the house with a steel roof

Replaced the 500 gal, LP tank with a 1000 gal.

Moved the 500 gal LP tank to heat the new headquarters building

Bought a tractor/backhoe to make the projects possible

There will be ongoing projects but the best part is, Its all paid off.

After making tomato juice we switched gears a little and today made spaghetti (marinara) sauce with our garden abundance. We grew over 125 pounds of tomatoes and are putting them into storage in canning jars. Yesterday we picked up a used (Stackable) water bath canning kettle to speed up our canning.

The only thing we have left in the Garden of Eat'n are brussle sprouts and parsnips. All the rest of the beds have been stripped and a cover crop planted.