powerrabbit

I have quite a substantial steam train collection Paul that I am considering disposing of, was going to build a replica of our local branch line that closed in 1967 and is now a haulage company depot. Trains are all steam and mostly engines that ran on the GWR lines, Hornby, Hornby Triang, Triang, Lima and some Bachmann are the makes of engines, some of them are quite rare so I've been told. Alas, no room to continue with the project. Forgot to say, bought the Hornby 'rolling road' test bed for the engines, brilliant bit of kit, the latest one that will run both the older 2 rail and the modern digital ones.

Might be a good idea for you Jordan to place a few adds in your local papers and any free publications and if you have such a thing in your area, your local parish magazine etc offering your services. You have to 'put yourself about'. Best of luck and wishes for your new venture, hope it goes well.

Wishing everyone a happy new year from deepest wettest Dartmoor and hoping that 2013 will be drier!

Zero. Ziltch. Nought. Aught. Nort Diddely squat.

Looking through the list of all the well known personalities and famous persons that have died in 2012. A lot of those that we have lost were of an age that one may expect would be coming to the end of their life but some of the others should have had many more years left ahead of them. All will be imortalized in what they have left behind in audio and visual recordings and although now gone, will not be forgotten.

If you want the full 'set' Pete the Open University has been offering a free 7 page booklet to go with the series, it's nothing special but nice to put all the elements relating to the series together, go to the OU website and type in War Time Farm in the search box, if you have any difficulties ordering it on-line you can ring the telephone number to order it. The book, which I posted up the eBay link to, is very good and from this seller is the cheapest you'll get if he still has any copies left.

Being self-employed in esscence is having your own Company or buisness and, as said previous, carries more responsibility on you but can have an advantage over being an employee. If you earn below a certain amount per annum and work blow a certain number of hours per week you may be able to claim Working Tax Credit which in the 'early stages' would be of help and a great benefit to you. It may also be a good idea to take out an insurance policy for sickness and injury if you are unable to work and you should, especially if you intend using machinery, have Public Liability insurance. If it's a 'service' that you will be providing then you will probably need to register for VAT but this I think is voluntary for below a certain turnover but again is advantagous for you to reclaim VAT on your 'inputs' (purchases) for your buisness such as tools, clothing and a proportionate amount on your fuel costs but this reclaim will need to be ajusted against what VAT you have to charge, if your VAT on outgoings is greater than your incomings then you claim back the difference and vice versa, this can be done either monthly, quarterly or annually, there is a lot of information for the self employed on the HRMC website. As I 've said previously though, consult a good accountant and then you will be able to gague for yourself the feasability of your plans.

Self employment is a good thing if you go into it with your eyes open. Firstly you need to know your tax implications and for this you need to employ the services of a good accountant. He or she will advise you on what your tax liabilities may be based on what your earnings projection per annum would be. Calculate your out-goings and include everything that you pay out and, although you will not be able to calculate your income, no self-employed person can, work out what you are going to charge for your services per hour, not what you're offered, look up the hourly rate for the work you intend doing and charge according to the scale on the chart and take into consideration your qualifications as the higher the qualifications you have in relation to the work will command a higher charge rate, this of course you will need to negotiate with whoever you offer your services to. On the tax point you will need to keep very accurate accoiunts, income and out-goings, issue invoices for work and keep a copy for your records, you will have to pay your own National Insurance and where liable, income tax at the end of each year and for this you will need the services of an accountant. That's a basic outline but as I said, speak to a good accountant and if they are any good they will give you sound advice and inform you of your liabilities and any advantages, until you do this, like Tris says, long thoughtful concideration is needed. I have been self employed since 1970 on the family farm and have a reasonably good handle on the topic after all these years. Best of luck.

Well, put the turkey in the AGA at 8.00am and it was cooked by 1.30pm, brother next door did all the veg and we all had a good dinner, me, brother, his wife and 10 year old daughter. Surprising how much you can eat but there is still quite a bit of the 16lb turkey left. I didn't get any models but a nice lot of practicals, nice boilersuit, some socks, case of different sorts of beer, woolly hat and a nice tin of shortbread biscuits. My neice did very well this year, she had 2 x Lego City dustcart lorry kits, a nice new mobile phone and a new Wii kit and a games CD plus a nice warm winter coat and a pair of 'hello kitty' slippers and two other Lego kits, she loves Lego. We set up the Wii and have 'worked' off our dinner playing golf, ten pin bowling, tennis and boxing that's on the CD. Going back in next door now to attack the turkey again. All in all a very good day.

Looks quite a restorable tractor does the 165 Cerin and with all the parts that are available you'll have no problems in bringing it back to as new. The Nuffield looks like a 3 cylinder so would be a DM3, if it's a 4 cylinder then it would be a DM4. good luck with them. New sparkplug leads (HT leads) for Flossie will be no problem for you, you can buy the lead by the metre but when you do, make sure that you get the black type with the copper wire core. If you have trouble getting it I have a 100 metre roll of the stuff.

You have to have a bit of air flow to store spuds and to be able to keep them at a fairly constant temperature of between 5 and 8 degrees C and in the dark. As long as you don't get hard frosts theyre best left in the ground, I've been digging spuds in February and they've been perfect but you do have to make sure they're well covered with soil and fairly deep. I find that the best varieties for roast spuds are a hard solid spud such as Desiree, Maris Peer and Maris Piper and for a good roast spud you need to roast them in beef dripping, part boil them first, dry them off and then put in the pan of pre-heated dripping and if you want them to crisp up roast them on the flat side down and draw a dinner fork along the top to 'rough' them up a little. Boiled spuds need to be a 'floury' or softer fleshed type such as Pentland Dell or Pentland Crown. The old varieties are the best.

Will be drawing the turkey later getting it ready to put in the oven tomorrow morning. My 10 year old neice will be helping me, she loves doing the turkey but her mother will be in another room as it makes her urge.

Relating back to the ceramic cottage that Bill posted up a few pages back in this topic reminded me of something similar that I saw in a charity shop some weeks ago. Today, going to town to finish my Christmas shopping I looked in the shop and it was still there, so I bought it. Looking at it through the glass fronted shop counter I thought Crown Devon (Fieldings) or Carlton Ware perhaps?, looking at it closer and inspecting the factory marks, no, neither, better still. There are several variants of this butter/cheese dish but this is the early one, model number 251. The 'backstamp' of which this one bears is from 1936. Not a rare item but nice to find in perfect condition.

I have definiteley not lost any enthusiasm but with prices for models outstripping budget a line has to be drawn plus my house is now so full that if I fill it anymore I'll have to move out. A very happy Christmas and prosperous 2013 to all fellow FTFr's from deepest dampest Dartmoor.

Been out the road helping a mate plucking turkeys. Three of us doing the deed, started at 11.00am stopped 3/4 hour for dinner and stopped 5.30pm. Plucked 42 birds weighing from around 12lbs to 35lbs in weight. Have rather sore fingers now!

Just watched it. I'm not sure that it's on the DVD set, I think it is. I wonder wheather anyone would like to spend their Christmas day (and night) in a cave eating stuffed rabbit and drinking bpotato beer these days? Whilst here and on the subject of War Time Farm, a friend of mine sent me these two pictures. Although not 'period' but modern 'staged' shots, they do evoke the time.

I've gone back to the 'old version' as well as I could not find in the new version how you 'copy' the image you want to paste, if enough users of Photobucket do this perhaps it will revert to the older version, after all, why change something that works perfectly well?, if it aint busted why fix it? You can't do this on all websites but I find now that it's just as easy, no, easier, to upload images directly from the camera, those of you that do it this way will know what I'm saying, using the cammera connected to the PC in the correct mode and uploading the thumbnail through the camera/PC 'bridge' system using the 'more reply options' to the right of the 'Post' button. You will all know who attaches images in this way as the picture is displayed in the post as a thumbnail, click on the image and it enlarges in another pane and if there are several thumbnails you can open each, one at a time by clicking 'next' and to close them out to return to the normal page/pane just click outside the image. I find that attaching images this way you can add several pictures in a single post and thus, I assume, take up a lot less web space on the Forum.

There may have been a crack in the broken part already Bill from when it was cast from new, cast iron is well known for inherent casting flaws, you could have it welded properly using an arc welder with a cast rod. If you have trouble unscrewing the nuts, give them a good heat up with a blowlamp to expand them and spanner them off whilst hot.

Shopping today and looking in the second hand/ brick-a-brack shop purchased an Ertl precision Series 11 JD 8530. Never been out the box, complete with 'brochure' and 'medal' for £20. The owner of the shop has a small pile of UH tractors and machinery, he's had them for more than a year and hasn't sold any, prices too high but he's now reduced them all to £20 each, just had to have the JD at that price!

You used to be able to get Copydex in a gallon can for the purpose but I don't think you can anymore. I remember when a small child using the 'waste' Copydex to make a ball which had the same bounce as these 'wonderballs', trouble was you could never get it perfectly round and it would bounce off in any direction. Speaking of repairs, I remember a time when your wellington boots started to leak through either a split or holed by a thorn or a nail we would take them to the local garage and they would mend them with an inner tube puncture patch.

Nice lot of cards David. The one with the 'happy Christmas' is, for a literate turkey, rubbing it in a bit. Interesting one describing as 'turkey c-o-c-k and hen', we refer to male turkeys here as 'stags' and the hens as 'poults'. A turkey is for Christmas, not just for life!

I can remember my Father saying that he could remember 2cwt 1/4 bags but new bags during the War were 2cwt. Perhaps reduced in size because of the shortages of materials, I have vivid memories of sitting in the barn during cold winter days sewing up holes in bags that rats and mice had chewed in them, in later years when the latex glue 'Copydex' came out we would cut out patches from unusable bags and stick over the holes, when the bags were stored empty they would be rolled up and tied around the middle in 25's and tied up under the rafters in the barn roof to stop the mice and rats getting at them.

I won't divulge anything as yet, give others the chance of a guess.

Here's another one, found in another hedge. This one is later, better quality iron and is a 14lb weight. This one I can date more accurately from the duty test stamp on the brass stud but I'll leave you all to have a guess at the date.

I can just remember the last of our old 'West of England' 2cwt hessian sacks Bill! Speaking of weights, here's one I found several years ago out in one of my fields that fell out the hedge. It's lost a little of its stated weight, but who wouldn't after 300 years! I've tried to get it more accurately dated but the 'duty' or 'weights and measures' 'test' stamp markings on the brass stud riveted in the ring can't be identified by those in the know, they say that by the nature of the iron and the style of the 2 and 8 that it dates from the mid 1600's. I'ts made of very poor 'pig' iron, having a lot of 'bubble' holes in the iron, some which seem to have been filled with lead, there's also quite a large plug of lead in the bottom, this is normal in these type of weights as lead would have been poured into the pre-cast hole to ajust the weight to whatever weight it was supposed to be.