I have flowers, nuts next

Back in 2011 I bought two walnut trees. I planted one in my garden and one at my cabin in the forest. So every spring since I have been looking for flowers, hoping to get nuts. Earlier this spring I decided that I was disappointed once again - no flowers in sight.

But last Friday, I just accidentally passed by the tree in the garden. Hey - what is that?

As you can see I have flowers. And under each there is a small hairy ball, I think those are the nuts I have been waiting for.

Exciting, isn't it? I guess there are less than 10 in total. Will they all develop? Are there any competitors out there that understand what they are?

And what about the tree at the cabin? I haven't been there for a while. I had to move the tree last year because it didn't like its neighborhood. It is smaller than the garden variety. Does it have flowers as well? Stay tuned and learn more about Captain Cowberry's Walnut plantations!

The Drywood picture

Last year we changed the color of our house. Originally it was painted red with yellow frames around windows etc. But last year we concluded that we were ready for a change.

Part of the story has been covered already, but there is more! Because the Norwegian representative for the Dutch Drywood paint arranged a photo competition. They asked their customers to submit pictures of their use of Drywood paint, and the winner would receive a stay at a spa resort for two.

I felt that we deserved to win so I submitted the picture on the right. It shows my wife standing on stacks of empty paint cans while pretending to paint. Compared with the other entries I saw I felt pretty confident, but in a show of strength I added a Limerick:

Byggfruen vil gjerne på spa
Hun sier til utførende da
Du får stable opp spann
Så jeg male litt kan
Slik at jeg æren kan ta

Google Translate fails at making a good translation. Norwegian words like "byggfruen" and "utførende" combined with rhyme is not trivial.

Of course we won, and she invited her sister along. This was during the schools' autumn break, so I won quality time with the kids.

House of MOS Technology

Around Easter I started the process of changing the color of my house. We renovated and extended the house around the turn of the millenium. It used to be covered with Eternit, but we replaced that with wood paneling in red and details in yellow. But making sure the house looked OK when the coloring was an oil based wood stain proved challenging. As a consequence we decided to change to paint instead.

Well, the wife suggested that we use the same colors as we used on a new garage we built in 2012, but I was skeptic because I thought the result would be too dark. But when I noticed the NCS codes for the colors I changed my mind!
In the picture I have indicated how the new colors 6502 and 8502 are used. You can also see the original colors (after wire brushing and washing). I had to remove the rain gutter to get the scaffolding in place. That is why the edge of the roof does not look right.

So why did the codes of the colors mean so much to me? Well, when I was a kid in the seventies the microprocessor revolution was happening. I never had a Apple II but its processor, the 6502, was one of the technological wonders of that time, and I read everything I could find about such things. And the 8502 was based on the 6502 with special functionality for the Commodore 128.

Both of these processors were made by MOS Technology, and I fear that having these colors on my house will be as close as I will ever get to this technology.

Call me a nerd, but it is my House of MOS Technology.

I am the walnuts, goo goo g'joob

I have bought two walnut trees. I didn't think they were available in cold Norway, but I stumbled across an enthusiast that had some to spare. So I planted one at home and one in the forest at my cabin.

The one in this picture is the one in my garden. There I already have hazelnuts, so if the trees start producing walnuts I can dream of supplying the household with varieties of nuts.

Last winter we had long periods as low as -20 celsius. The producer of these trees claim that his trees can stand this type of temperature, and colder. He lives not far from where my cabin is, and the climate there is colder than at my house. So I hope that the one in the forest will thrive. I planted it near a small pond that will keep it with water.

I will have to wait some years before they start carrying fruit, but to be on the safe side I will contribute to global warming in the meantime to help the trees' survival!

Vipukirves, the magic axe

For my birthday I got a Vipukirves axe, which is specially designed for chopping firewood. In my role as gentleman farmer I try to keep my household with firewood. Sometimes chopping is required, and an axe is an obvious tool.

However, the Vipukirves changes the process of chopping wood entirely, especially for wide segments of logs.

Consider the first picture - it shows the unique profile of this axe, and a promising firewod candidate. Also shown is a "belt" around the candidate. I used the inner tube from a bicycle tire, but I suspect that a car tire would have been better. At least, that is what is often used in instructional films on Youtube.
Anyway, the purpose of the "belt" is to keep pieces from escaping and keep the workpiece on the base during chopping. Even with a regular axe, the chopping process has a tendency to eject the log pieces in different directions so that they fall off the base. With the Vipukirves the smaller piece can be thrown away quite violently. Therefore the belt, so that the workpiece remains on the base and you do not have to traverse the entire yard to gather the chopped firewood.

So what about the result? Well, this next picture shows the same log segment after being chopped. As you can see the pieces are more rectangular than the usual circle segments an ordinary axe would produce. The belt has kept the pieces in place so that they can easily be moved to a stack for drying.

This was my first experience with the Vipukirves, and I am not fully trained yet. I still had to use my hydraulic splitter for log segments with many branches. But the new axe is definitely a useful tool. I must be on the lookout for a used car tire though. The "belt" I used did not work as well as a wider tire would.

Firewood secured!

Last winter was cold, and our consumption of firewood was greater than usual. So we made repeated trips to our forest to get more firewood. Collecting firewood is a kind of slave work for a office worker like myself. It is nice for a change, but I am happy I don't have to do it all year round. On the other hand, if I did it on a more reguar basis I probably wouldn't be so totally exhausted afterwards.


Anyway, last Saturday I was off again to convert logs to suitable sized firewood. To contain the firewood while it dries I made a cylinder from a mesh for concrete reinforcement - "armeringsnett" as it is called in Norwegian. I fear that this is not enough to keep us through the next winter. Luckily, we haven't exhausted our older supplies yet, and we have large resources of live trees.

To split the wood I wanted to get me a new block ("huggestabbe" as it is called in Norwegian), and a big pine that was felled just before Christmas had already been split into suitable pieces.

So when I went down to get it I found this timberman. The antennas were at least 7cm long! Being where a pine was lying on the ground it probably was busy seeking out the females!

To add to my hard labour I had to move the hoggestabbe back to our cabin. The wheelbarrow proved to be too unstable with me at the handles. So I had to roll the thing around 100 meters uphill. For the first time I have a hoggestabbe that matches my height - lucky me!