March 2012 has decided to take a turn for the warm, almost sweltering this past week.\u00a0 This is the first time I’ve ever been able to start seedlings directly in the greenhouse (unheated).\u00a0 Right now we have plants breaking ground daily.\u00a0 No fewer than 10 varieties of tomato, ranging from heirloom varieties to good disease and crack resistant hybrids and of course your delicious orange cherry tomatoes everyone seems to crave.<\/p>\n
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In a couple of weeks I will be starting cucurbits such as zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumber and squash.\u00a0 We are going to quickly run out of room.\u00a0 Also for the second year in a row we are growing tobacco seedlings.\u00a0 Two varieties only this year.\u00a0 A Burley (KY16) and Virginia Bright Leaf.\u00a0 They have yet to sprout as they require a lot of heat and humidity (which has not been an issue this past week).<\/p>\n
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Last night I finally installed a sprinkler irrigation system with a timer inside of the greenhouse.\u00a0 I’ve gone with 6 cycles of 5 minutes @ 2 hour intervals and hopefully that doesn’t drown things.\u00a0 I guess we shall see tonight when I check on the little guys.\u00a0 Everything I purchased came from irrigation direct out of California.\u00a0 These are the same folks I purchased my drip irrigation from last year and I have been pleased with their products, shipping and customer service.\u00a0 Plus if you spend $100 shipping is free and it surely doesn’t take long to reach that $100 mark.<\/p>\n
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With this warm weather the ground has dried out quite well, probably too well.\u00a0 This allowed me to get the drip tape and plastic lifted from last year and I plowed everything under last week.\u00a0 The ground worked very nicely.\u00a0 Which has now added another “project” to my shop.\u00a0 I had an old IH #70 4-14 plow frame that my father robbed most of the parts from.\u00a0 I loaded it up and brought it home the other night.\u00a0 I am going to disassemble it to make it a 3 bottom and with new bottom parts that were originally purchased for the 412 I will put this #70 back together and probably scrap the 412.\u00a0 The pull type is more versatile for my needs as I can pull it with either the M (for recreational plow days) or the 560.\u00a0 With the 412 I am forced to use the 560 and since I have unloaded tires and no weights on it I’d need to cut it down to a 3 bottom.\u00a0 HP is never the issue, always traction.\u00a0 I will most likely steal the points, cylinder, coulters and frogs off of the 412 before it heads to be made into Chinese rebar.\u00a0 The frogs can always be used to convert an older pull type plow to Super Chief (servicable) bottoms.<\/p>\n
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Since the last entry in this blog I also reassembled the John Deere B that I have often cussed so much.\u00a0 No leaks were evident after refilling with 90 wt either.\u00a0 I finally got it started and\u00a0 it went home to Ida to await the June 16th auction.\u00a0 This freed up space to bring more work into the shop.\u00a0 After selling some wood working tools that collect dust I bought a good used 9 x 42 Bridgeport Chinese knock-off mill and have it in place, except for wiring it.\u00a0 This should diversify my shop capabilities and allow me to turn out more obsolete IH parts as I’ve slowly been doing.\u00a0 Mainly Farmall Super A \/ Super AV plow draft links, Farmall M & H fender spacers and\u00a0 Super A \/ 100 \/ 130 \/ 140 (and other) PTO block off plates for PTO delete tractors.<\/p>\n
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With this increased work we started a new business in January.\u00a0 JPR Design Services LLC is our new company and will be the marketing avenue for our products and some gardener \/ small farmer products and plans as well as design work, reverse engineering, 2D to 3D and possibly prototyping services for area businesses.<\/p>\n
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Finally, last night I was also able to adequately clean the paint and primer from the decal on the GM powered Farmall M.\u00a0 Enough so that I could read all lines.\u00a0 This is rather exciting because I believe, from initial research, that this company most likely did the installation of the 2-71 Detroit into this tractor.\u00a0 My next blog entry will be about this discovery and will include photographs.\u00a0 Hopefully someone out there will be able to assist me in piecing together the company history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
March 2012 has decided to take a turn for the warm, almost sweltering this past week.\u00a0 This is the first time I’ve ever been able to start seedlings directly in the greenhouse (unheated).\u00a0 Right now we have plants breaking ground daily.\u00a0 No fewer than 10 varieties of tomato, ranging from heirloom varieties to good disease […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-farmlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jarootfarms.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}