Johnny's Projects

After much cogitation, constructing, reconstructing, adapting and revising, Johnny has his newly motorized apple grinder operational. He tried it out today for the first time and it works very well. Except, of course, when he dumps in a whole barrel of apples at one time and jams it. But his home made pipe gizmo, applied with enough pressure, unsticks them rather quickly. I turned off the video camera before he started beating the apples to make them go down.

The still photo shows the apple washing technique (apples and water in a wheelbarrow), the motorized grinder (he bought a hand-cranked grinder and then spent endless hours figuring out how to motorize it efficiently), and the cider press the kids bought him several years ago. Notice the llamas supervising in the background. They are very curious as to what Johnny is doing with their apples. Apples, they believe, are for llamas. But they'll get the grindings after the juice has been squeezed out.

Most of the summer, Johnny has worked at organizing and filling his new machine shed (photos above). The filling was no problem; the organizing took endless hours. Notice how neat and tidy everything is. Now.

A new machine shed became necessary when the old one began falling into the pond. It wasn't originally close to the pond but the resident beavers have enlarged their swimming hole dramatically. They also thought it was pretty cool to have a shelter under which to excavate their homes. Unfortunately, the roofs to their homes (the floor of the shed) tend to collapse regularly and our shed along with them.

A neighbor plans to tear down the old shed for materials. I hope he does so soon... before it lands in the pond.

...The video below shows the grinder in action....