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Last time I saw them available at Pike Place Market, they were going for $20 for a bundle about a third the size of a bundle of spinach from a conventional grocery store. Wild foods are funny, they're either free or incredibly expensive.

Oh man, if you could see the price they get for ramps in this neck of the woods... And worth every penny.

I built one out of 2x12s and dirt as described here. It was easy and worked for me. The advantages are that it's quiet and feels very solid, moreso than a stump which, in my experience, allows my anvil to bounce off the stand under vigorous hammering.

My current anvil stand is a box made of 2x12s cut to length and screwed together. I then filled the box with dirt for the anvil to rest on. The advantages I've found are that it's cheap, solid on uneven ground, and best of all dampens the ring of my Peter Wright. There are pictures and a bit more detail on my wife and my farm blog.

So here's the followup. I talked to the nice folks at NC Tools (Man, I love hearing regional accents!) and followed a combination of your advice and theirs. I took the forge apart and aired/scraped out the jets/orifices and put it back together. When I had the burners off I noticed they were pretty wet inside so, after I put the forge back together, I let it run for a while to evaporate the water inside. After about a half hour the water was gone but I still wasn't getting the performance I've come to expect. However, I "tuned" the burners and found it to be a much easier process than I anticipated. It would be less intimidating and more accurate to refer to tuning as "loosening the bolts and wiggling the burners back and forth until it sounds right." So I'm happily back in action thanks to this forum and NC Tool's customer service. Thanks all!

Thanks for the speedy response! That sounds like my problem. I took the jets off and tried to clean them with air but didn't get the results I wanted so it sounds like I'll need a cleaning tool. Now, because I'm unfamiliar with this sort of thing, is something like a Radnor Model AG650C Standard Tip Cleaner what I'm looking for? Thanks.

So I fired up my NC Tools Whisper Momma Propane Forge this afternoon in the hopes of getting a little forge time in. Unfortunately, there's something wrong and I'm not getting proper temperature out of the forge. Instead of the roar and orange heat to which I've become accustomed, the forge seemed to run more quietly and to sputter a bit as well as burning blue instead of orange. At best, the forge will now heat steel to a dull red just above black heat. My first thought was that my propane tank was low, so I switched to a full tank with no change in the results. Recalling that a blue flame indicates that the fuel/air mixture is too rich, I adjusted the propane pressure to various increments between 5 and 18 PSI (the forge is rated to perform between 6 and 15 PSI). I'm suspicious that there's something preventing fuel from making it to the firebox. The second burner (farthest from the fuel input) seems to have a weak to non-existent flame. There might also be something blocking air from coming in. I'm not able to inspect the burners in detail because, well, I was just running them and they're awful hot at the moment. Things that I know 1) It was working fine yesterday. 2) It's been raining like mad and water might have gotten in somehow. 3) The forge is less than a year old so I assume I'll be able to get support from NC Tool. Other than that, I'm stumped. I don't know much about propane and gas forges so I'm likely to be missing something obvious. Does anyone have any thoughts on what I should look at next? Thanks in advance.

Howdy neighbor! This is a fine place to lurk and there's lots to read.

The forum is guilt-tripping me into posting every time I log in so I thought I'd introduce myself. I started smithing last winter after I moved to a house with enough room and loose enough zoning for a forge and ended up with a bit of extra money and realized that I could finally fulfill my childhood dream of blacksmithing. So after a few months of craigslisting and diligent research, I ended up with a 120# Peter Wright, some tongs, an NC Whisper Momma, and a couple of hammers. Didn't get a lot of hammer time in over the summer but, now that the garden is slowing down, I have time to pick up the hammer again. When I set up my forge the first time, my neighbor wandered up and casually mentioned that her father is a blacksmith and that his shop is down then road. Then I went to dinner at a friend's house and found out that one of the other guests was a student of Uri Hofi. From him I learned that there's a liveaboard in the harbor who blacksmiths on his boat. So I'm pretty much surrounded by blacksmiths. It's pretty cool. In addition to local smiths, I've been reading IFI and the archives and I'd like to thank Glenn and the posters here for providing such a great resource. As for goals, I'd like to learn how to make hand tools, garden tools especially, and utilitarian items. At present, my specialty is turning smooth bits of metal into lumpy bits of metal. On the upside, since I got a quick lesson in Hofi's technique and hammer, I make lumpy metal much more efficiently. It only takes me half as much time to turn perfectly innocent bar stock into a lumpy mess!

~120# Peter Wright, $250. Condition is not great, but more than good enough. I was pleased to be able to discern the brand as I bought it as an "antique" anvil. I assumed that I'd overpaid, being in a spendy part of the country, but it looks like I was in the ballpark. As an aside, the guy I bought it from had something like ten clawfoot tubs in use as planters and 15-20 airstream trailers. Frankly, that alone would be worth a premium.