Fall has Come

Though the fall equinox came earlier this week, I always said fall starts when the sumac turns red. . .

. . . and it has!

The  leaves are starting to change.  The maples are already changing.  The maple by the barn is near peak.  I've already started to rake leaves and put them in the compost pile.  The temperatures are steadily falling.  We'll see frosts in a few week.

I finished the puffin decoy.  Overall, I am pretty happy with it.  The hardest part was the bill.  I need to give it a coat of wax or a coat of epoxy.  On to the next project!

Puffin Decoy Before

Puffin Decoy After

Rainy Day Chores

We finally got a good rain.  It started sometime after midnight and has been going steady.  I expect we will get over 1 inch.  This is good. It has been dry this month and the plants and rivers could use it.  Our creek was nearly dry (just a few puddles), but it is now flowing again.

Dry Creek

Wet Creek

We picked up our corn yesterday.  We get it from a local farm-stand.  It was picked around 8:00 in the morning, and by 3:00 we had it all shucked, wrapped, and in the freezer.  We put way 160 ears!  This will keep us in corn-on-the-cob for most of the coming year.

Our plum (roma) tomatoes have been coming in.  We peeled and froze 4 1/2 dozen this morning.  We have a few more dozen we picked yesterday, and will certainly pick many dozen more in the coming weeks.  We use frozen tomatoes in our spaghetti sauce, chili, soups, etc.  We put about 8 tomatoes into quart size freezer bags after we peel them.  Each bag is roughly equivalent to a 10 - 12 ounce can (no salt, preservatives, and better flavor).

I'll be making pesto today.  We blend our basil with grated parmesan cheese and olive oil.  We divide it into small portions and also freeze it.  We can take some pesto out any time and whip up some pasta, etc. in a snap.

I spent a few ours in the workshop catching up on a few projects.  I had picked up a few hand drills at auctions that needed some cleaning up.  Most needing some lubrication, while one needed its handle glued.  I also worked on the puffin decoy.  Most of the sanding is now done.  I've glued the bill in, and filled some of the big cracks with wood putty.  The decoy will get one more finish sanding and then I'll paint it.

Puffin Decoy

After our recent trip to Alaska, I was motivated to do some more decoy carving.  I've been traveling a lot, and the yard has also kept me busy.  However, it did cool off overnight (a little).  I was going to work in the yard tomorrow, so I decided to head back into the workshop and start on a puffin decoy.

Puffins are a type of seabird found in the Northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  I got a few decoys last Christmas from an online dealer known as Duck Trap Decoys.  One of them is an antique Atlantic puffin kt.  Duck Trap Decoys has decent started kits at good prices.  They offer both decorative decoys and working decoys.

The puffin kits is pretty simple.  It has a base, a dowel for support, the roughed-out body, and a bill.  The kit came with a scaled drawing to show sectional profiles and basic paint scheme.

I smoothed out the basic body with a drawknife on the shaving bench,and then started to smooth the edges using a sanding  cylinder on the bench press.  I did some sanding of the bill to fit it to the head.

The basic shape is now done.  This took about 45 minutes.

The workshop started to get pretty warm.  The sawdust was sticking to me as I was sweating, so I called it quits for now.  I'll probably work on more fine sanding / carving tomorrow morning before it gets too hot.

Stay tuned for further updates . . .