Black Friday

It's 9:00 AM on Black Friday. You're late. Time to pull on those Ugg boots, stop by Starbucks, and head out to a big box store to score deals on items the recipient of won't be using 12 months from now.

Full disclosure: I went out at 5:00 am once to buy a console TV at Best Buy. It was fun. One other time, I went toy shopping for my kids, then bailed out and had a Cracker Barrel breakfast with my sister. Also not too shabby.

But, twice in the last 10 years, I've gone "oxen shopping" on Black Friday.  

In 2012, I took the trailer over to Tillers, then helped John Sarge and Dulcy try to herd a pair of unhandled, 6-month-old Shorthorn calves into the barn so we could load them. Sight unseen. I had asked her to pick me out a pair that she thought would work for me. 10 years later, Brutus and Cassius are still a nice choice, although we didn't get them loaded until the next day. The wind on that Black Friday had everybody agitated, so we waited until Small Business Saturday to bring them home.

Last year, after stopping at an outdoor pottery show in town to pick up a "Well behaved women rarely
make history" flask for my daughter, I drove to look at a pair of Brown Swiss calves. The following week, Hamilton and Burr came home with me and started their training. Now they are at Tillers as a "staff team."

No lines, no fuss, no fistfights over Cabbage Patch dolls. Go shop for your next team today.  

The Plane(r) Truth

The new 11', laminated yellow pine yoke is coming along.  Current totals on time for each step:

Layout and cutting 3 center laminations: 1.5 hours 

Handplaning, sanding and glue up of center 3 laminations: 1.5 hours

Drilling bow holes on drill press: 1 hour (probably less, but I started them on the drill press and finished them using a corded hand drill and a forstner bit with an extension. It actually worked pretty well.

Layout and cutting of the outer 2 laminations: .5 hours.

Planing and glue up of outer laminations: 1 hour.

Flattening and smoothing the yellow pine 2 by 12's is by far the hardest part of the job.  Using a jack plane on each works, but I wasn't as happy with my glue lines as I'd like. I'm sure they are plenty strong, just not as nice as I would like, so I pondered other options.

I decided to run the outer 2 by's through my 13' thickness planer, taking 3-4 skim cuts off of the "glue" side. That worked quite well, as I'd just changed the blades. Spurred by that success, I decided to run the beam itself through the planer to flatten and smooth it as well. How did it work? Surprisingly well.

I have a shop-made outfeed table on the planer, so the beam was supported as it came out and it caused a little snipe (uneven cutting) on the end, but overall it worked well with about three light passes per side.  

Hindsight being 20/20, I should have started by running each 2 by 12 through the planer, but that will have to wait for next time.  

Now on to the fun work: shaping and carving.  

Or it didn't happen

 

The standard disclaimer I make to people is: "pictures or it didn't happen." If you spot the alien landing craft, you better have a photo.  So, let's just assume this is a work of fiction. That, or at least it all happened so fast that getting a camera out would have been a level or two above "foolhardy."

Zeus and Cassius were working - and not all that well- yesterday. They just aren't as crisp on turns and sidestepping as Cassius is with Brutus. But, working a span is preferable to a single for me and I like to keep Zeus doing a little something so. . .

I walked them up facing the stoneboat and dropped the chain off the front of the yoke, hooking it to the front of the stoneboat.  This had us facing the stoneboat.  A quick pivot where Cassius steps over the chain (he's the off ox) would have us moving forward. Except the memo didn't make it to Zeus, as he sidestepped out rather than stepping in and back.  

The result was that, while Cassius got three feet over the chain, he had one that didn't make it. His left front foot was up pretty high with the chain between his toes. Zeus, remember Zeus? Zeus who doesn't sidestep well? He was staying put, but coming no closer. 

Cassius started shaking his foot, but it was clear that he wasn't able to move it, step in, or take the tension off the chain. 

Pop quiz time: What do you do?

A. Unhook the chain from the yoke (nope, the aforementioned tension.)

B. Unhook the chain from the stoneboat. (Maybe. I didn't think of that, but it requires moving to the back, unhooking a tensioned chain, then hoping the slack allows him to get his toes off of it)

C. Drop somebody's bow.

Smart money's on "C." I was already in front of them, so I pulled Cassius's bow pin and he was suddenly free. Zeus stayed put when the yoke dropped, which was mighty nice of him.

Cassius backed up to stoneboat and tried to get a nibble of grass next to it. In spite of what just happened, he allowed me to pick up his end of the yoke and drive him under it. Cassius got a lot of praise and brushing when we were all back together.  

Of course, without photo or video documentation, this could all be made up.

Quidditch

“Bad news, Harry. I've just been to see Professor McGonagall about the Firebolt. She – er, got a bit shirty with me. Told me I'd got my priorities wrong. Seemed to think I cared more about winning the Cup than I do about staying alive. Just because I told her I didn't care if it threw you off, as long as you caught the Snitch first.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Quidditch, the most popular sport in the world of Harry Potter has as its most distinctive feature that it’s played on broomsticks.

Not being a wizard, I’ve never played quidditch, but I do like to keep a broomstick handy when working with a cart. 

When hauling manure in the cart and I’m done for the day, or when switching between compost and hay,  a couple of minutes with the broom tidies things up. No sense in sending for a Quality Quidditch Supplies catalog, any old stiff-bristled push broom will work as well as a Comet 260 or a Firebolt for cleaning a cart.

And if you’re able to fly around the pitch, score a goal, or catch the snitch, so much the better.

Bracket the Problem

 

Tom "being nice" to Blue.

Tom Nehil helps with the oxen classes at Tillers and we've worked together for a few years now in that capacity. While adjusting an Oliver 99 plow (How fine a "99" is as a walking plow will surely be the subject of another tale), Tom mentioned that - as a structural engineer- he recommended that we "bracket the problem:" adjust it too far one way, then the other. Once we had the limits, we could fine tune the middle. The simplicity of the idea struck me and I started employing it in other places.

At school, I teach kids to use 'bracketing' when problem solving or estimating. Kids who have me for multiple classes probably grow weary of the story, but I don't. Lucky them, eh?

Recently, we trained chickens in our psychology class. Amazingly, with nothing but positive reinforcement, the chickens learn- in one class period- to peck a green 'X,' while ignoring a green circle. That got me thinking about the limits of positive reinforcement.

I'm not describing it fully here, but reinforcements make behaviors continue or increase. Punishments make behaviors decrease or stop.  

I'm still not describing it fully here, but please stop calling punishments 'negative reinforcements.' They are NOT synonyms. (Also another tale for another day.)

I often tell students- both high school psych students and adult oxen driving students- that you should aim for 90% positive reinforcements and 10% punishments, although, like Mike Mulligan, I "had never been quite sure that this was true."

Monday, I yoked up Brutus and Cassius to move a little compost. I decided to emphasize the reinforcements and count them, while minimizing- and counting- the punishments. I hoped to hit the 90% mark.

I lost count.  

All was not lost, though, as I was also keeping track of how many times I touched the animals with the stick in order to direct them. 

Taps to start walking? Count them. Taps to stop? Count them. Taps for Gee and Haw? Count them. You get the idea.

Brushes for positive reinforcement? They don't count. They are reinforcements, designed to increase desirable behaviors. They aren't directions or punishments. Instead, they are reinforcements if they happen directly after, or during, a desired behavior. If they aren't related to a behavior, they are just called "being nice."  

Two trips around the yard with the cart, stopping multiple times, pivoting 180 degrees twice, standing to load and unload, sidestepping, yoking, unyoking. About 45 minutes total. The total number of taps? 

Zero.  

Lots of brushing. Lots of praise. But zero physical punishment or tactile direction. I did punish them four times. I barked a command to "head up!" when they were dropping their heads while standing. Since the behavior stopped, it's called a punishment. A mild one to be sure, but I still noted it. . . like a psych teacher would.

I'll keep trying to push the limits toward reinforcements. And, come to think of it, I think I'll avoid the other end of the 'bracket' altogether. I'd suggest you do the same. See how many flies you can catch with honey. . .

Flutterbys: The Return

Funny things happen when you let furniture makers build yokes. . .

One of my favorite inclusions in a table top or a large panel is a "butterfly key." Intended to stop or prevent a split, they are usually about a half an inch thick and oriented across the grain of the panel.  Scribe the outline of the butterfly, chisel out the waste, then press or pound in the butterfly with glue or epoxy. That’s the basic gist of it, although there are a couple of tricks: drilling a small area at the bottom of the hole for excess glue to pool and beveling the edges so the butterfly fits more like a cork in a bottle are just two.

I got the idea to use butterflys on a yoke when I brought the mostly-finished, big elm yoke in to the basement woodshop and the super-dry air encouraged a large check. The butterflys looked pretty, but I wasn’t sure how long they would last.

After nearly 2 years and a lot working hours, I can absolutely report that

butterflys work in a yoke. In particularly dry weather you can see the check enlarge around the butterflies, while in the summer months the check nearly disappears. I can't imagine the yoke surviving this long without the keys.

I don’t know if there’s a perfect wood species for making butterflies. The cherry ones are a nice contrast with the elm and the hickory one looks like a bit of a mismatch. Let aesthetics be your guide if you like, but "pretty is as pretty does" in this case. 

A Pandemic Story

 “Never let a good crisis go to waste”- Winston Churchill

I'm up early and getting around to teach Oxen Driving at Tillers. It's one of my favorite, annual signs of spring.  One year ago, it was the last thing I did before the pandemic shut most everything down.  

It was hard. All of it. I'll spare you those details. You've got your own.

But, a year on from that weekend, my oxen are in much better shape than they were last march. As a driver, so am I. Not a little better in either case. Twice as good. Enough so that I am a little embarrassed about how bad we were then- and I would have said we were pretty good at that time.

What made the difference? Time for sure.  Tom Jenkins told me, "There's not too many problems that can't be fixed with more time in the yoke." The other x-factor is commitment to getting better. What Angela Duckworth calls "grit." Not some magical quality of internal drive, but more like dripping water that eventually wears away stone. The recognition that, with time and incremental progress, we'll get better- because it's important.

We still have our bad days, but dragging the pasture last night with Brutus back from a foot injury, they were good enough that it felt like cheating. I wasn't driving them, just working alongside them. In the state that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow."

Churchill may have been on to something. What's your story?