Farm

Another sad death

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Snow is upon us and winter is soon here. We had our first solid freeze this week. I have all our hay on the farm but wanted to get as much as possible under cover. Well the old tractor has been misbehaving and did not do it when my consultant was here last saturday. So it has just been stalled in front of the machine shop.

I got a call out of the blue this week from my consultant, I know I need a name for him but I am still working on it. He has been perusing old tractor forums and thinks my problem is a coil issue. He had read several people had the same problem and replacing the coil fixed it. I thanked him and since he is out of town till late next week I decided to replace said coil. I had to look up on the internet what a coil was and then I had to find it on the tractor. It was in plain sight and not too hard to get off. It had his ceramic piece on top with a wire at each end. I am not sure what that was as I removed the coil. I took Gizmo with me and we went to the auto parts store. My consultant told me it was a $20 part, it cost $30, a steal if it fixes the problem. I made an assumption that the ceramic thing was an external resistor. I had to choose a resistor or no resistor type of coil.

Gizmo has to stay in the pickup, I don’t drag him around in my arms, I am just trying to get him used to traveling so he is not afraid. He is starting to settle down. I don’t think he likes my driving as he usually lays down in the back seat right in the middle. The single safest spot in the vehicle in case of an accident.

The part did not go in as easy as it came out. I had to cuss and beat on it and loosen up some more stuff to get it to fit inside the metal ring. I tried to start the tractor. Nope, I forgot to put the negative battery cable on the terminal. I tried a second time and could get no spark the engine would not take off. I investigated my newly finished work and realized I had put the coil nuts on loosely and never tightened them with a wrench. So I did that and after much effort and playing with the choke I got it to run!! So I started the warm up game and kept increasing the rpm slowly. I noticed a few water drops coming out of the exhaust pipe on top of the tractor. Its cold and we just had a severe rain, no biggie. I get the rpms up to pto speed, 18K, and all of a sudden I start seeing this spurting in my peripheral vision. I look to my left and oil and fluid is spurting out the engine. I quickly shut the tractor down. I blew a gasket. I am no mechanic but I believe that when you get fluid and oil its usually a head gasket which means tearing down the engine. This sucks. So we may be selling a parts tractor soon. We have yet to decide what to do but I don’t have the time to tear apart an engine. We are going to start doing our own hay in a year and we will be using a small hay baler that only makes 50# bales so a large tractor is really unnecessary. Unfortunately, I wanted the reach the old tractor provided to do some barn window work. Now I will just have to plan better.

Next year we will be buying way more small bales so I can keep them under cover.

My new toy!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Our last big hurdle for moving bales has been solved. Our favorite, only, housekeeper told me about it. She saw it on Craigslist and I happened to see her message quickly. I sent pm immediately requesting it. Only $80 for a used hay lift!!! I had to drive 75 miles for it leaving directly from work. Now this meant hooking the trailer up in the dark. Not something I have done before. Not easy to do as I had not dropped the trailer off in a nice flat open area with a straight approach. I bumped the trailer off its hitch stand, block of wood and could not raise the tongue above the ball on my pickup stinger. So I ended up wrapping the trailer chains around the hitch onto themselves and lowering tongue until the elevator Post was retracted fully and I could skip the three inch piece of wood under and raise tongue back up. I only needed 1/2” of course but without that I could not physically lift trailer tongue and my handyman jack was not in the trailer box where it should of been. I need to find it.

The elevator is 20’ long and is electric. The motor got put in the cab of the pickup to keep it dry. I need to put some tape and red rags in my trailer box also. It kinda hung over the end but it was pitch dark by then so I figured I would just go with it.

We have been looking at these used and they go for around $700-900. We looked at brand new and it’s $1700. We were going to go with the new one just to ensure it functioned perfectly, but for $80 we have personality!!

A new motor is only $215 so either way we come out way ahead. I need to get it unloaded off the trailer and into the barn and get the motor all attached. I need to see how it works then I need to duct tape a bunch of loose wires to the rails and neaten it up with a lot of duct tape. I also want to stiffen a few spots with some hose clamps. Like I said, it’s going to have a lot of personality!

This is why we do it.

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I came home to this view after work today. Honestly, there is a reason we live out in the country and truly this is it. It was just barely above 50 F and I had to wear a light coat to work outside. I mowed the lawn and never broke out into a sweat. Its the perfect temperature. I simply cannot fathom living in a city any more. People ask me all the time why I like living on a farm when it seems like I am always working. Its not really working when you like it. There are times I don’t like it but that is not very often. I get an incredible sense of satisfaction and joy from saving something and improving it and knowing it will still be there in 50 years.

It will be something my grandkids and family point out to visitors and say my great grandfather did that. Plus, since I am keeping records with photos and stories the information is staying in the family. Annmarie turns the blog into a book every year and we order one copy for our library every year. I think she is a couple of years behind.

My day started today at 0400, when Annmarie woke me up in bed and asked me what that noise was? I managed to croak out a bird. It was a very weird sounding bird but it did sound like a bird. I then tried to go back to sleep. Nope, it had been bugging her so she got up and got dressed with the light on then headed outside to check on said noise. I told her to take a gun and she wanted to know if I had my phone on so she could text me if my presence was needed. I checked the phone, the volume was on. I tried to go to sleep but I could not and then when Annmarie came inside she opted to do her yoga at 0430 and never came and told me what that sound was! The noise was gone so I figured she knew. I had to wait until after yoga and her shower to learn that it was a screech owl. It was a very weird sound.

After my errands this afternoon I came home to attempt to mow the lawn but I was out of fuel in my spare cans. All the fuel got used in the old tractor because it uses gas not diesel. I opted to mow any ways. It was getting dark and I figured I would have to stop before the fuel ran out. I was right.

The dogs and I had to go out and feed the barn lot cows and the sheep. The puppy and Zeke got to go in the barn with the sheep. Mouse had a hard time staying put, he thought every time I called his name I wanted him to rush the sheep. I kept calling his name to tell him to stay just to throw him off. He calmed down eventually. The dogs and I are chilling until Annmarie comes home from judging a robotics competition. Now if only the little puppy would quit farting while laying next to me.

Major fence finale!

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Today was the do or die day. I needed to get that hillside fence completed as it is supposed to snow three days this week. Once the snow starts flying I will not be able to dig into the ground to make a flat spot to install the gate. I ate a good breakfast, three pieces of french toast with fresh fruit and syrup. I have been skipping lunch which makes me very hungry by 1600 but it saves me an hour extra working time.

I tried dragging the boxblade across the area but needed to try and dig into the hillside with the bucket. I also had to lower the claws on the box blade to start loosening all the rocks. It took me almost three hours to prep the area. I kept jumping off the tractor to fill the bucket with large rocks and make a pile next to where the rock crib should belong .

I found an old gate up on the hill that I used. I had taken all the stuff up there to do multiple rock cribs and install a gate and never used them. This was for when I expanded the hillside to be even with the prime squared field. This keeps getting put off. I would like to drive T posts for it in the spring if nothing else. I had the bottom side crib perfectly formed and then started dumping rocks into it. Then the rocks got so big I had to use the tractor bucket to lift them. This did not make for keeping my nice neat rock crib in line. I now have a crooked wooden post. I had to add onto the rock on the other side as my gate is only 12 feet instead of sixteen. This worked out as that side will now be the gate hinge side. I don’t have the stuff to mount the gate. I need two 1” thick 6” long eyebolts and I need two 3/4” inch 4” long pins with locking pins. The opening side needs several 2×6 boards overlapped to cover the other side. This is a spring time job so I just wired the gate in place. I pulled the entire hillside wire tight and then walked the hill tightening the T post clips and replacing staples and clips that had been torn off by the animals over the last few years.

This picture shows the pasture above the upper prime. This is the one I need to burn then replant with round up ready alfalfa. The pasture will be too wet in places for it but I need to be able to spray to get a handle on the weeds. If the weather really does change and snow this week I want to burn this weed patch.

I dumped a large bale of hay down below for those cows so that cut the evening chores by a third.

Hay no more

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Today I picked up the last of the hay, 8 more tons. Bring on the Winter! Our animals should be good to go. I had to get all large bales, 1300#. Since the big tractor is on hiatus until I can figure out what is wrong with it. So I used my little tractor to push the bales off of the flat bed. So now I have 12 bales in a fairly wide area just hanging out waiting for me to push them to their respective drop off/eating point.

Someone came over to look at the old tractor but the problem never appeared. I drove the tractor out and picked up a bale with no issues. We did give the tractor about 2.5 gallons of hydraulic fluid and found most of the leaks. Two of the leaks look like fairly straight corrective issues. I just need to put some teflon tape on the joints and retighten. I do need to go through and grease all the zirks to ensure everything is loose and slippery.

So after my assistant left I attempted to get the bales into the machine shop. Just as I was getting the first bale into the machine shed the tractor started to do that whole starved for fuel thing. I need to get some carburetor gum out spray. Maybe that will fix the problem.

I spent Friday building on my rock wall on the back hillside. I was supposed to go help someone trim llama hooves so I did not want to get the hillside fence laid down and have to leave. I used the tractor mistress to scrape dirt and build up the wall. The gate I had installed was pulling the post over. As Annmarie puts it she “told me so” and I should not have swung that gate out over air. I could not dig the post down as far as I wanted due to all the rocks. So I leveled off the gate area and cut into the back hill side so the gate could swing the other way. I will also install a wheel on the end of the gate so there won’t be any pressure on the end of the gate causing the post to move. I tried to tamp gravel down around the loose post but it just did not stiffen the post enough. I removed the gate and will put it on the other side of the opening as those posts are nice and stiff.

Bob the cat got out of his enclosure today. He is 2-3 years old and unwanted. He is also fixed! So we made a pen and kept him in the machine shed for 8 days. Today, I let him out and he disappeared into the machine shed. We will provide food for him out there and he can live out his life eating mice and cat food.

Out kitty in the barn is doing well. He loves to get petted on more than eating cat food. I usually only see him once a day inside the barn. He lives in the barn with the old tomcat. We need a couple more cats to live out in the barn. We feed the cats on our back porch, the barn and the machine shop now.