Fat Man

Here is a  video that displays the chubby rolls of our little Jacob. According to his last Dr visit he is in the 96% in weight and 73% in height.

Shredder and Press

Well the shredder is all finished except for final assembly. You should be able to see from the picture the screws that are sticking out of the face of the grinding disk. They are what will do all the shredding. I placed them in a fan like pattern, hoping that it would help eject the apple pieces better.  I'm not sure if it will, but I doubt that I will ever make another disk that has some other type of configuration just to see which works best.  In the photo below you can see the face plate with the shoot installed.   

I often am amazed as I look online for ideas and examples of how to build things. Most of the people that have posted projects online have built several prototypes before building the final product. I don't think I have ever done something like that.  For me building one is enough.  I dream about it for a while, do a bit of sketching and then start building.  So basically if this shredder and press do not work, I will throw them in the pile of "Things that I tried, but didn't work, so I'll move on to another project". 

THE  PRESS

The press is quite simple really, a square frame with a bottle jack  hanging from the top to press down on the shredded apples.  The process is as follows, first  you place a piece of cloth down on the bottom tray and dump a bunch of shredded apples onto the the cloth and and fold the cloth over the top and then place a wooden grate (see picture below) on top of that pile of apples, and then repeat the process until you have stacked shredded apples and grates all the way up to the bottom of the jack. Then you start pressing everything down with the bottle jack. The juices come out the cloth and drop to the bottom wood trough, where they drain through a hole and into your bucket. Juice is then put through a strainer and then froze nor bottled so it will not ferment. 

The Shredder

All growing up my parents have had apple trees and most always the apples just went to the ground. We did eat some and some were made into apple sauce but that is about it.  For the past few years Jason (my brother) and I have been trying to dry slices and leather but it still leave a ton on the ground so this year I decided it was time to turn the excess into apple juice.

A professor of mine at BYU-I made an apple grinder that worked quite well so I have tried to use a similar design as his. I wish I had access to a machine shop so I could make the parts from metals but since that is not the case,  I have been making it all out of wood.  Basically I have made a round disk out of  Baltic Birch plywood, bolted it to a pully that will mount directly on a 3/4 horse motor. After mounting the disk on the pully I placed it on my wood lathe to round it up and then I drilled a bunch of holes in a fan like pattern as seen in the picture. I then placed screws from the back side of the disk and left them sticking out of the front about a quarter of an inch.  In the second picture I have all the parts laying out to dry. I put a finish on them to keep them from soaking up too much juice and distorting.  Once the disk is all assembled and placed in the grinder housing it, it is one mean machine; The apples don't stand a chance.  I will try to post some pics of the finished grinder and some pictures of the press once completed.  

The press will just consist of a solid frame with a bottle jack to do the pressing.  

The Garden

Last year I got very tired of mowing our lawn; it takes over an hour and a half if you edge and mow. I decided to dig up a big chunk of the back yard and expand our garden so I could plant more berries and install more planter boxes. Right as I was about to start the digging I got depressed at the thought of how much work  it was going to cost (all the digging would be done by hand and I would have to haul off at least one dump trailer of top soil)  at that moment I changed my plan and ended up just adding another three feet to the garden area so that I could surround the garden with Berries and flowers.  While doing the addition I took the time to add concrete curbing all around and put up trellises to support the blackberries, raspberries, and grapes.

Gardening has been a fun relaxing hobby.  It seems that during the warm months I don't even have any real desire to do wood working. I would rather spend the time in the garden.  This year we tried planting a few things that I have not tried before (radishes and turnips). I think I will plant the radishes again but not the turnips; At the moment I am contemplating tearing them all out and throwing them away.  Growing up Dad always planted a big garden, but he had a ton of room so he could leave plenty of space between the rows. Here, since my garden is small, I have to plant things close together. If I place several rows of the same plant right next to each other, it helps with weeding. They grow so closely together that it blocks out the light.  I also water everything with soaker hoses, so only the plants get watered.  By mid June there are hardly any weeds (except morning glory) to be pulled.

Right now the corn is nearly ready, we continue to go out and glean on the carrots, and Anna is trying to can the green beans.  Sammy searches for strawberries and raspberries each day. I tried to grow varieties of onions, carrots, and potatoes that will store well. I built a cellar last fall which kept last years potatoes all winter long. Most of this year's potato plants came from last year's harvest.   I do hope this year the tomatoes ripen before the first frost and that the potatoes get bigger than golf balls. I guess the biggest change this year in the garden from last year is the fact that I started to add flowers like my brother did to attract more pollinators and good bugs.

Update

A bunch of things have gone on since my last post which was done almost a year ago. Anna had our third boy in January (Jacob).  He is fat and healthy. He does a good job at sitting on his own, no crawling though.  We may have to put him on weight watchers before that will every happen.

 This past spring we did a bunch of work on the back yard.  Previously the sandbox was back against the fence and had nothing to cover it, so the boys would be in the direct sunlight while playing there.  Both Miles and Sam would become overheated easily if Anna did not make sure they ate plenty of otter pops and drank plenty of juice. To remedy the problem I thought it would be fun to build a club house over the sandbox.  This would provide another place to play and cover them in the heat of the sun.  Since the boys had carried away a bunch of sand I was going to shrink the sandbox and make the club house 6X6  That plan got shot down by Anna. It ended up being 8'X8', so I actually had to expand the sand box.  It took a few weekends to build (it still needs siding and windows but other than that it is done).  The boys spend a great deal of time out there and even eat most of their lunches out there on a little picnic table. The boys and I have also had two camp-outs in the clubhouse this summer.