Tuesday, October 9, 2012

More then my Lace Mat and a Trio of FunGuys

This will be a long post with lots of pictures so if you want to take a minute and get a cup of coffee or tea go right ahead, I'll wait.





The frame work for the hoop house, and the tarp we have been using to cover it, but it needs it's clear plastic cover and the ends need to be enclosed.  Right now, we need to take the blue tarp mostly off in the mornings once it is above 40 degrees so the tomatoes can get some sun.
 The hoop house is 15' X 36' measured over the top we needed a minimum of 21'. The plastic we bought is 20' wide, so we wanted to use 2 lengths of 25' welded together, that would give us a sheet of plastic 25' X 40'.  Enough to overlap at the ends and tuck around some 2x4s and bolted to the frame to hold it down on the sides.

But how do you weld plastic together you ask?  Duck tape will only hold so much and it needs to be a good complete seal to hold out the cold.

Well, I will tell you.  I was not able to find any info online other then to buy some fancy epoxy, but I have a neighbor who put a lot of years in working for the Navy and he told me how.




You need 2 sheets of aluminum foil and an iron.
Place 1 sheet down on the floor overlap the edges of the plastic, then place a sheet of aluminum foil over the top.  Heat the iron up to the cotton setting and apply heat.

Below is my sample.  You can see the seams, but you can not pull them apart. I used a 10 second time with pressure, then moved the iron to overlap half way and another 10 seconds with pressure,  that way the seam got a total of 20 seconds of heat and pressure. I laid this all out on the concrete floor of the quonset, open to the cool air, with no sun on it, so if it is a nice warm day and the floor that you use is warm, you might only need 10 seconds because the floor isn't draining heat from the iron.





Here you see 25' of aluminum foil flanked by 2 25' sheets of plastic
I only overlapped the edges about 1"
I unrolled the top sheet of foil as I sealed the seam so I could be sure that the edges overlapped.




You can see the seam here as I am removing the top sheet of foil.

Yeah! it fits with enough at the sides so once we get a chance we will staple the end of the plastic to 2x4s then roll them up to the base of the frame and bolt them together.  Still using the blue tarp because we haven't had the time to build the ends yet. 

you can see the seam to the left of the hoop in this picture.

And why do I want to go to all this work?
Here is why
 I just picked these this morning.  and there are lots more out there. These are Striped Heirloom tomatoes they don't get really red, in the lower left you can see alternating stripes of orange and blush.  These are sitting on a 10" dinner plate.
I had to measure the big one - nearly 5"
Wish I could eat one, but I am allergic to tomatoes, but they sure look good.

This past week, I wasn't able to do much tatting, instead of sitting  in my chair with my feet up, I was sitting in this helping farmguy harvest the corn crop.  The cart holds 900+ bushels. A Bushel of corn is about 54lbs.
for size reference, here is a pic with me in the summer, I'm 5'2"

 This past Sunday, I motored to a small town about 35miles from me named Rutland.   They were holding their 28th annual Uff-Da Day.  A celebration of all things Scandinavian, Romegrote, Lefse, Sandbakkels, Rosettes, Krumkake, and other yummy stuff to eat and see.  They also celebrate vintage and classic cars, many pioneer crafts such as Tatting, Spinning, Knitting, Crochet, home made by hand Ice Cream, buns and bread baked in a wood cook stove in the pioneer house and many other things.

I got to sit for about 6 hours Tatting and talking about Tatting in the Baptist church along with the lady who spins and knits and another who crochets and all the gorgeous quilts that fill the pews and walls of the church..  Yeah, I needed the day.

This is a picture of the beginning of the parade,
it is the Aberdeen South Dakota Fire Dept BagPipe band. They traveled about 2 hours to come play,  it was in the 50's for highs and yet they wore their kilts..... brrrr

looking down the length of Main Street, I am standing on the steps of the 1890 Baptist Church

The Old Parsonage is across the street.  It is now a store selling handwork, eclectic collectables and consignment items.  During Uff-Da Day, they were hosting a wine tasting for North Dakota wineries.  While I was unable to get there for the wine tasting, I have had some very good home brew wines from around the area.

No self respecting North Dakota parade is complete unless there are horses.

just one of the many vintage and classic cars on display.
I found this in the Old Parsonage for $5.50
This doily is 21" in diameter.  It looks vintage doesn't it? Tatted in Ecru.  The gal at checkout told me that these are done by a gal who spends a good deal of time, waiting at the end of fields for her sons so she can shuffle them and their equipment from place to place and she does this to while away the time. 



I was able to finish Round 2 of my Lace Mat
I also showed several people how to tat, sold 4 Learn Tatting with Lacet booklets, told several about Marilee Rockley's Tatting course on Craftsy and taught 2 how to do the flip.

It's about time for the FunGuys don't you think?

#1

backside of #1

#2

another view of #2

#3

my garden gloves to show the size of these guys.
I don't know what variety they are.  It has been very dry here for the past 4-5 mos.  #1 is just outside the pasture gate and #'s 2 & 3 are just inside the gate.

I have never seen anything like them.

This is long enough.  Hope you weren't bored.
Have a great tatting day tomorrow.

11 comments:

  1. All I could think was: Äll this...and she tats too??? "
    A wonderfully interesting post, I did enjoy the pictures.
    Many years ago I used to help a friend who grew tomatoes and bananas. She hated having to harvest the tomatoes because you had to pick them the very second that a small blush of red appeared - if you left them too long, they would rot before they got to the market. It meant watching those tomatoes many times during the day and night!

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  2. Love the Fun Guy pics!! They look like Puffballs to me. Trying stepping on it slightly, and a big puff of spore dusts comes out, then that's probably what it is. Granted, if you don't like them, this is probably not advisable. :o)
    Congrats on teaching folks!! :o)

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    1. I didn't step on any, but did pick one up. it was so light, they look substantial, but have to weight. There is no stem, but they didn't seem like puffballs to me.

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  3. Good thing your neighbour was able to point you in the right direction. Big job! Your day out sounds very interesting. Thanks, enjoyed your post.

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  4. no, the bananas didn't turn red! :)
    And did you notice the diaresis in my first comment? - somewhere along the line, I seem to have been sold a French keyboard, I can't use inverted commas if the first letter is a vowel. Most odd.

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    Replies
    1. no, I didn't notice, but now that you mention it, he he. I wonder if there isn't a setting for English somewhere in the control panel for the keyboard.
      How did you grow the bananas? or were you/are you in the tropics?

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  5. What a wonderful post! I love the fungi( I'm a Latin teacher, got to use Latin whenever I can). They look like brains? I see Halloween potential there.
    Lovely doily, I feel sorry for only $5.50 but wow! Your own tar-alng looks great!
    Thanks for putting you in the picture with the tractor. It's really hard to have a sense of these amazing machines unless you've been up close.
    You sure work hard for a food you can't eat! Well worth it for everyone else tough.
    I am filing away that bit about welding plastic. No current need for it but I'm sure someday....

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  6. Those heirloom tomatos look delicious! I can't believe you went through all that work and you are allergic to them!

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  7. Those are REALLY big mushrooms.
    I'm impressed at how hard you work on that farm.

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  8. I so enjoyed this post, Jeanne. Very interesting to see how you welded the plastic together. You farm people have my sincere admiration for your perseverance and hard work. Such a different life than ours here in New Jersey! By the way, the colors in the tatting in this piece in the background are gorgeous!

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