We've been on our small acreage in Yarrow for a little more than fourteen years. When we bought the property my dream was to have a large rolling lawn. Becke's passion for miniature horses (with Janis backing her up) meant the lawn was much smaller than I dreamed of for most of those years. With the horses now gone and the arrival of Becke's modular home it was time to redraw the boundaries of the lawn at last. We hauled in an incredible amount of fill to bring the new home foundation up to the specs which the municipality insisted on. Over the last weeks I have spent many hours on the tractor, and with a rake, shaping and smoothing the soil to blend the ground into the existing lawn we planted three years ago. Yesterday I measured up the bare space and ordered 6,000 square feet of turf. It arrived this morning. With the help of our hard working crew we got it down before noon. My directions were simple. GREEN SIDE UP! The 10,000 plus square feet of rolling lawn looks awesome! I can hardly wait to mow it!
Back in production
Every once in a while a smaller project languishes in a corner of the shop while large projects are on the go. This past year has been especially busy with a variety of projects plus two large projects on the home front. But in the last week we are starting to see the light once again. Becke dusted off the Spring Horse Farm sign I sculpted late last year and painted on the primer and base coats. More colours will follow with glazes soon after that. This sign will soon be ready for delivery at last.
The second link...
The 'MARVELOUS MACHINE' which I am imagining and building needs a purpose. The big question is 'What does it do?' As often is the case there is no simple answer. It will take a little study. The machine is obviously a steam engine of the vertical variety. It has a single cylinder which powers a crankshaft and flywheel. That shaft turns a variety of gears. One of those gears will power an electric dynamo. The electric current produced will in turn be transmitted via some wires to another device which shall for the time being remain secret.
Today it was time to design the electric dynamo. I searched the web for pictures of authentic historical devices (of which there were a great variety). I picked my favourite and then used that old photograph as reference (with a fair amount of artistic licence) to create the concept design for the equipment. I did the drawing on my iPad. With the drawing in hand I can begin designing the cut files for the pieces.
