#stewartcreeksomethings

Almost done with tractor counterweight

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The weight box project continues to be painful. I have flopped between the wire welder and the stick welder. The wire is great for the light duty sheet metal welding and the stick is great when doing heavy pieces of metal. I am just pulling scrap out of the machine shop that I have accumulated over the years at various auctions or yard sales. Plus I keep digging around in the scrap pile for various other pieces. Honestly, it doesn’t matter what the thing looks like when I am done it just needs to not fall apart from getting bounced around on the back of the tractor. The corner pieces are made out of 3/8” thick angle iron and the two cross pieces that need holes drilled in them for the 3 point attachments are 1/2” thick and 4” wide. I do not believe that those will be bending from a little bouncing around. The rest of it is just assorted pieces of scrap that I found laying around on the ground in my work area.

I do plan on hitting it with a wire wheel when I am all done so that I can spray some paint over the entire project. I had to switch out tractors to hold the weight up in the air while I am working on it. At one point the little tractor started to tip over onto its side! I had to grab a hold of the tractor side and hurry to the controls to let the front end down. If I had a counterweight on it there would have been no issues! So I switched over the forks to the bigger tractor and I can now lift this weight up to waist height without worrying that it will tip the tractor over on its side.

I am not sure that I have a metal drill bit that will go up to size 1”. I am going to have to dig around in the tools and see if there is something like that out there. I honestly don’t know between donated tools and auction tools I may have one.

I dug around today and fount 1/4” bit and was able to drill both sides of the counterweight. Then I went up to 1/2” bit and was only able to drill out one side and got about 2/3 through the other one. I had a 1” bit but it would not go through. I ordered some hardened bits in graduated sizes so I could get to the 7/8” hole I need for the three point lower pins. I had some brand new pins so I don’t have to reuse the abused and bent ones. Now I will just need to wait for them to arrive this next week.

I did work on my rifle holder supports for the tractor. I need something that can take the abuse of constantly getting beat around and vibrating all of the time. Commercial gun holders are just not built that way. I cut and bent some angle iron and then worked on trying to fill weld the parts were I bent the U shape into the angle iron.

The U shaped pieces would not just fill in with the stick welder. I was only able to get about 50% of the metal back together. But I tried to spread these U-shapes apart after I did get them welded and I was unable to do it. They are solid. I need to get some pipe insulation now to go over these supports and then I just have to mark and drill a hole and I can bolt them back onto the support bar I already have installed on the tractor. I do not believe these will break and I made the high so there is no cross piece necessary. I do not believe the gun will bounce out of the arms now because they are so deep.

Predators 40/ Farm 5

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This is an incredibly stupid problem. I am losing more chickens. I still don’t have the automatic chicken door repaired so after counting chickens this week, there were less than a dozen, I decided that a new automatic chicken door was a must. The new door was supposed to be here on Friday and I even went down near closing to the post office in hope that Amazon was correct. They were not, we got notice in the mail on Saturday that there was a package to pickup at the post office. Too bad our post office is closed on weekends. I wish Amazon would use UPS or FedEx so the package just came directly to our house.

I have been checking the camera system regularly at night after feeding the back door cats and I have not seen any predators since the last killing round. Our 20 year old cat has not been seen in over a week and I think she finally snuck off to die. She usually hung pretty tough to the back door area and used the cat igloo we had next to the old house. I did look inside and make sure she did not crawl in the igloo and die like our other old cat did last year and no she was not in there.

Well Friday night I spotted the two raccoons that had gotten away last time from me. They were out back eating the cat food. I ran out with only one spare clip as I keep losing them. They are dropping out onto the ground when I am out blasting away in the dark. I have yet to find one and have already lost two of them. This does put a serious dent in my ability to fling lead as I simply don’t have enough ammunition. I managed to put one down hard fast right outside the door and then had to chase the other one down as it ran alongside the building then coop then ran towards the barn. I ran out of ammunition. I lost my empty clip and I had the gun jam twice during this operation. I have no choice but to tear apart the pistol Sunday night and give it a thorough cleaning, polishing and dainty lube job so it is back to perfection. I do have to say that I have the whole clearing and back on target in the dark thing down to a fairly automatic routine now. It’s time to get the pistol back to its factory functionality.

I also had no idea of the cost of spare magazines, they are running around $25/each. It’s a good thing I am not paying for chicken food. I am putting all my money into predator control. On top of that the coyotes are starting to move down near the house. I almost had to go out and pop some shotgun rounds off onto the back hillside the other night the coyotes were so close. I need a new rifle with a picatinny rail to mount the thermal scope on for the coyotes but that is going to take some time.

There is still at least one skunk left to eliminate then I will have cleared out all of the known predators. I will keep watching the camera though because I am sure we have a few more raccoons in the area. I am down to getting 1-2 eggs/day only now. This is a stupid problem. At one point this summer I had over 45 chickens! I counted less than a dozen on Friday. I will count them again once the new chicken door is installed and they are stuck in the coop at night.

Trying to winterize

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Wednesday Mr Golfpro came out to help me with the garden. It needs to be winterized. I had planted some black raspberries from a friend at work and they did really well but they were all over the ground. I had never bothered to put a wire for them to grow upright. So we installed two new rows of raspberries. One is the new large great thorned berries and the other are transplanted cuttings from our thornless berries. The screwy part was we still had berries on the bushes! I could not believe it when we got inside the plants and found raspberries. I at the ones we found, they were good! We used the small wooden pecker poles and were able to just drive them in the ground with a post hole driver and not dig a hole. This does require quite a bit of effort but between the two of us we got it done. I did end up with a large blister on each hand that tore open before we were done. I know have bandaids on both hands to cover up the open blisters.

There were about 12’ of Sunchokes that we pulled up and tossed over the fence. The ground is pretty dry so we did not dig any up yet. It is supposed to rain on Thursday and Friday so I will dig them up after that. We disturbed enough of them from pulling up the stalks to fill four large paper bags. I expect to dig up at least six more boxes and this is from a pretty small area. These things are amazing at just growing! We were not able to get all of the garden finished but we did get the netting off of the berries and that is a huge issue so it should be a lot easier now to finish up the trimming and getting every thing tied to the wire. On the raspberries we cut out all of the canes that got trimmed and tied last year and then tie up all of the new growth and cut it to height so it will bear fruit next year. The two new rows we cut at six feet high. I was taught to cut them off at four feet. We will see if there is a difference next year.

Before we could get started on the garden we needed to play Jengo in the machine shed. I needed to park the hay laden trailer under cover so it did not get rained on and the machine shed has a cultivator torn apart in one bay, one bay is tools and welding, one has grain and wood and the other two have equipment and spray. So we put all of the hay equipment in the machine shed near the back. I was able to get the new mini excavator into the first bay so I can work on it. The second bay now has the hay trailer and we moved the cultivator over to the bay with wood and grain so I can finish repairing it. There is also space for both tractors now so they can spend the winter under cover. We had to move the old pickup and I need to see about getting it to the junkyard. We filled up the trash can and moved everything to the appropriate bay. I really need to spend about4-6 hours putting all of the tools away in their appropriate spots so there is some open counter space. I will get to that eventually! It was a good day. We even got all of the tools from the greenhouse assembly put away.

I ordered a new chicken door for the chicken coop. I found another dead chicken and am only getting two eggs per day again. I only counted 10 chickens but it was daytime and they tend to spread out. The door should be here on Friday and it has to be installed so that we at least get enough eggs to feed us through the winter. At the rate the predators are killing them I will not have any chickens.

Haying season finally over, still winterizing

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Well I finally managed to get it done yesterday. I have turned the hay four times and cut it seven days ago. I would really have preferred to have turned it for two more days and then baled it but it is supposed to rain all day on Thursday and that could take me an extra week and up to an extra five turns in this weather to get it dried after a day of rain. The temperature has only been getting up into low 60’s. I turned it, drove that tractor home and hooked up the baler on the other tractor and drove over and baled both the upper and bottom fields. I got 33 bales from the upper field and 55 from the bottom field. There are 50 bales to a ton. I drove the tractor home again and then had to switch out the baler for a three point trailer hitch. I stashed the baler in the machine shop for the winter.

I had to hook the tractor up to the trailer but the trailer still had the mini excavator on it. So I found 400# of tractor weights to put in the bucket to add weight so I could pull the loaded trailer up the new dirt road out of the Naked Gardener’s lower field. I hooked the tractor up and then had to research the internet to get the mini excavator started again. Once was not enough to hardwire the process. I had to drive off backwards and I did not think to swing the boom so it would be able to be extended and act as a third distal support. I learned this when I was backing off the trailer and just as all of the weight left the back of the trailer and was on the ramps the rear of the trailer lifted a good ten inches causing the excavator to tip backwards. Luckily, it did not tip over and I now know to always use the bucket to stabilize and to always come off trailer front first.

I drove over and was able to barely get the trailer to fit down past his barn onto the newly improved road down to the lower field. It was getting dark so I had to use the lights on the tractor to pick up all of the bales. I got 55 on the trailer, put the tractor in 4wd and low and cracked up the RPM and crept up the hillside. I am not sure the tractor would be able to do it with 90 bales on the trailer. Once I got up to the top field I drove around and picked up the last of the bales. I had to make a fourth row in the middle to get them all on the trailer in one load. I told the Naked Gardener to call me if he needed anything otherwise I would not be back till late spring. He has plans to fertilize the fields in the spring and he will need to fix the two lower sprinklers I cut with the sickle bar mower. I need to pick up 25 used car tires to go around the lower sprinklers so I don’t cut them. I am always trying to get too close to them. I kept checking the moisture on the bales and I would say at least 80% of them are under 20% moisture. There are about 10-15 that are higher but supposedly someone wants some hay according to the progeny and I will just have them moisture check each bale they take. Turning it every day helped dramatically with drying it out. I was back at the house by 1930 and haying season is officially over.

Haying and yes it’s October

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Well I finally took another staycation and my list that I put together is probably about three weeks worth of work and I only have one week. On top of that I am still haying! It is a little late to be haying in our area but it was raining last month and I was busy. I have had to turn it twice already and I think I will need to turn it two more times for it to get dry. When the temperature is only getting up to 65F it takes a lot longer to dry out.

I am cutting the Naked Gardener’s fields and I had to take a couple of hours today and work on the access point to the lower field. There is a rock bluff that kept getting more exposed and I just about could not get down with the tractor. I took the land plane over and spent a couple of hours adding a bunch of dirt in the hopes to even out the area. It turned out pretty good. I need it to not wash out now due to rain. Since we don’t get much rain in this area anyways my chances are pretty good. It is even enough now I think I will be able to pull a trailer down to load up hay. I just need it to not rain until Thursday. I will be done haying on Tuesday but Mr Golfpro is coming out on Wednesday so we can work on the garden and get the berries cut and the sunchokes harvested.

I wanted to get a picture of the weight box before I started to do anything with it. It needs a new frame welded to it so the 3-point hitch parts quit bending and tearing away. I noticed that the sheet metal was only tack welded in places so I use the wire feed welder to weld all of the sheet metal joints first. Once that was done I cut my four corners and tried to weld one corner on with the wire welder. I need more rod and need to use the rod welder for this step. I had to ask the son-in-law, Gingerman, for some help and I am glad I did. I thought I was going to have to remove the wire welder hook up, nope, turns out you just have to plug in the rod welder and ground into the appropriate spots and the wire feeder welder portion can stay attached! I would have spent 30 minutes swearing and removing the wire feed portion. The Gingerman was looking at me sideways when I asked for help converting it. I don’t think he realized I had never done it before and prior to taking the welding class at the local college a few years ago I had never welded. I can do a lot of things but that is a fairly new endeavor. I don’t really want to say skill as I am not very skillful but stuff does stick together when I weld it!

I made my death pepper this weekend. I ground up the hot peppers that have been drying on the breeze porch for the last year and grind them into a dust. This is always painful. This year I did take a damp tea towel and place it over the grinder. This worked great until I had to check on the spicy concoction. It had two or three types of hot peppers and I managed to not puke. It was so hot I had a couple of nasty coughing jags from inhaling it. Annmarie left early for her trip after coming into the kitchen. She did not want to be in the house. Every time I do this she reminds me I should actually wear a protective mask. I think about it, but my sinuses were really clear after I was done!