DIY Potato Lifting Plough

It's just turned wet here again, but I'm feeling smug. Last week the potatoes were going down with blight, what's so good about that you may ask. This is the first year that we've grown a field scale patch. That sounds like large scale, but really it was tiny by commercial standards, just too big for me to dig by hand. Of course, you've guessed it, I hadn't bought or made the device with which to lift them. So after a couple long days with a pile of scrap metal, a welder and a sore back, I finally produced the 'Glangwili Potato Plough'. Basically it's a two furrow (un)ridging plough with metal bars instead of mouldboards. It works by the point running under the root, breaking the ridge open then lifting the potatoes to the surface. It worked well and the spuds were up and in the barn the day before the rain set in. That's why I'm feeling smug, isn't it great when it works out like that. However, I'm going to make the most of it, it doesn't happen often.

DIY Apple Drier

So apple time is here again and having had success with the mark one DIY apple drier I decided to see if I could make it a bit more robust. It was, after all, only a cardboard box, some knitting needles, kebab skewers and a dehumidifier. BUT it worked.
The mark two is a little more sophisticated, it's a cardboard box, a wooden frame, kebab skewers and a dehumidifier. As you can see a lot of development work has gone into this new design.
The idea is to use the dehumidifier to blow a stream of warm dry air over the apple rings, which are suspended on the wooden skewers. The box I used is a flower box which florists throw out by the dozen. The wooden frame makes it all a bit more robust than just sticking knitting needles through the cardboard, as I did in the Mk 1. Some skewers are stapled to the frame to support the ones on which the apple rings are threaded. A door is cut in the box to make it easy to load the apple.
A hole also needs to be cut for the dehumidifier to blow into. Of course there has to be a hole in the top allowing the air to leave, in this box the hand holes were big enough.
The apples need to be cut quite thinly, no more than 1/4" or 6mm. The mark one dried them in about a day, we'll see how the Mark 2 performs.