Gingerman

Haying by moonlight

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Rainman came out this week on Tuesday and turned the cut grass from field one so I could have the pleasure of baling it all. I had a neighbor call me and ask about cutting their field. I ended up just going over and cutting it and then raked it after work and then baled it after work. It is beautiful grass hay. I was able to get about 1.6 tons off of their 3 acres. I had to work fast to get it all done before the sun went down as the external lights on my John Deere are dead. It also gets cold once the sun goes down. I was at the neighbors finishing up and it started to get cold and I realized my vest was no longer on the back of my seat. I happened to look over and spotted by vest inside a bale of hay! I had to cut the bale open and unroll it to get my vest out. Surprisingly, the jacket was just dirtier than normal, it did not have any tears in it.

I then ended up staying up till midnight on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night trying to get all of the hay baled from field one that we had cut. I was supposed to only cut half the field but I think I cut about 70% of the field instead!

On Friday I had puppy duty so we went to town early to get dog food and chicken food then he had to stay on the breeze porch for three hours while I baled hay. I came back around 1400 and we went to town for tractor parts. I knew I needed to drive the pickup in the am but could not remember why so I took the car, I remembered when I got to town that I needed to pickup tractor parts. The puppy thought he was dying by having to spend three hours on the porch. He cannot run around outside because the man lift is in use and there is no way you could not run over him if he was outside. He has no fear of the equipment.

At 1600 I went back out and baled. The baler was causing me problems and not rolling bales well. I opened up the side and realized the main gear chain was loose and I could no longer adjust the tightness any more, my adjuster was adjusted to the maximum. I drove back to the house as it was getting dark and worked on shortening the chain. Mr Gingerman came out to help me and the progeny held the light. I still have not gotten the machine shed lights wired up yet. I am closer but I need to get it finished. We ended up taking out three links. Should have done 4-5. While we were fixing the chain, of course it had to be totally removed, it was discovered that I had better order a full set of gears as the teeth on some are pretty worn. That is going to be expensive. I have two gears already I believe, so I will need to generate a parts list first before calling for replacements. If they have to come from Italy it will take 30-45 days unless I air mail them and I don’t need them that bad.

Gingerman worked on the 1957 brakes and got them working well enough to safely drive the beast to a shop and have the brakes fully worked over. So I will be adding that to the list next week. He did say there is a radiator leak also. Who would have guessed after sitting idle for 25+ years? So that will need to be added to the list. I have still not figured out how to install new side window felt to keep the windows from rattling around and braking. You Tube is not helping me there. I need to get those repaired before I can start using the truck, I am afraid I will just beat/brake the windows from driving around on the rough ground unless it is repaired.

I went back out to bale some more and it worked much better but the grass is getting too dry, 8% moisture and its just so slick that it does not want to roll up well. I need to put a few more gripper strips on the rollers to get it to form better bales. At midnight I just gave up, there was about another three hours of baling left, if everything worked normal which it was not. I was dumping more bales than I could get formed and wrapped. Besides after three nights working 19-20 hour days I was was wearing down.

Baa Baa, the sheep

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Friends of ours are trying to sell their farm and wanted us to take “Baa Baa” back. The wife had tamed down one of our sheep and it was a pet. I had the stock rack on the back of the pickup and Mr Rainman and I drove over. The wife got Baa Baa back into an old kennel pen. I went in to grab her. Holy Smokes!! Our rams are about 150#, this ewe is so fat that she has teats and has never been bred. I put her at a solid 225#. Mr Rainman and I had to get on each side of her and drag her by her collar to the pickup. It took three grown men to get her up onto the tailgate and into the pen. I was trying to pull down the gate and it got stuck then loose suddenly and hit Mr Rainman’s right hand. This resulted in a lot of pain and swelling and a small amount of blood. (It’s not broken, he had an X-ray). When we came back to the farm we just backed into the field and let Baa Baa jump out of it on her own. Surprisingly, she did not have any trouble jumping down.

Mr Rainman worked on mowing cheat grass in the fields while I tore apart the baler and fixed it. I needed to replace seven pickup teeth and one of the spacer tubes. I stripped about half the screws on top and had to grind them off, so painful. Luckily, I had lots of spare screws. It took me a few hours but I got it all torn down and put back together. I hate doing machine repairs. I know how but I never learned to embrace my grease monkey side.

Once I had the baler back together and the baling tool bag full of needed tools, only the ones needed, I went back to digging the trench for the French drain under the hay room. This project is going to take a while as I am down to using a Polanski to dig out the last eight inches. There are a lot of palm sized rocks that are impeding any rapid progress. The trench is too deep to use the irrigation trencher. I used that to get the first twelve inches. My goal is to get this project completed this weekend.

The Gingerman came out with a spiffy painted beautiful rebuilt orange master cylinder for Little Dumper (1957 Chevy 1 ton). He managed to get it installed and got a slight amount of pressure in the system but now wants to get an easy bleed connector so he can get the brake lines vented. He said he will be back some other time this weekend. It’s the only clean part, other than hoses, in the entire engine compartment. I still have not figured out how to change the side door channel glass holders. I will have to do more you tube searching to find a step by step plan.

I finally made it back inside and as Annmarie is feeding the dogs their evening meals I suddenly start hearing her screaming “mouse, mouse” and running out of the laundry room. This was very confusing for our older Border Collie dog who is named Mouse. He just wanted food and Annmarie just wanted away as she had scooped up some dog food and a dead desiccated mouse. We knew we had a mouse downstairs in the laundry room but I had been unsuccessful at catching it in a trap. I finally put out some bait poison in the closet where we keep the animal food. The mouse must have eaten some poison on their way to the all you can eat buffet. The lesson here is to not get greedy!

Annmarie vowed to never again feed the dogs. As this was no treasonable she now refuses to reach into the dog food container until she has shined a light in it to check for any mice. When I heard her yelp I thought the mouse was alive! The dog, Mouse, thought he was in trouble.

The house is getting sided. We thought they were at a standstill but had not noticed that the fascia was getting installed. This week our new double hung window for the master closet should be installed and they can get the trim up on that side of the house. Pretty quick the new siding should be going up. It’s starting to look like progress now!

A lot of little things

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Saturday was a full day for us and farm work was not going to happen. Mr Rainman came out and spent the day catching up a lot of little things. I had purchased 20 bags of sand, 15 stepping stones and 12 bags of pea gravel the day before for the projects. He started by working in 18 bags of sand into our future asparagus/strawberry elevated bed out in the lavender area. Our two year asparagus crowns had just arrived on Wednesday and they needed to be planted. He had two bags left over and I used those when I planted the 24 crowns that evening. We don’t get to do anything but hope they survive this year and maybe next year we will get to harvest some asparagus as it will be three years old by then. The Gingerman is bringing us some strawberry starts next month and we will put those right on top. The Lavender only gets watered twice a week so we are going to put the asparagus on the same circuit as them.

Annmarie has been wanting to be able to feed the cats barefoot but now that we have to walk across eight feet of rough gravel she has been requesting stepping stones. He got a channel dug and then the concrete steps set. Once he got the gravel around everything he watered it really well and then reapplied gravel. The extra gravel went outside the fence on the yard side. We are going to make a small gravel area by the gate so the extra gravel went there. It turned out very nice. The only thing left is to extend the cat rain roof so their food gets better protection when it rains. I need to extend the sides down and put a front on so the snow cannot blow in as easily.

The next project is purely a Mr Rainman idea. We had been talking about various ways to fill in the old flower beds in the mud room. He had suggested filling them up with pea gravel. This was a wonderful idea so I picked up 12 bags. The only real problem is even though it was bagged it was still pretty dirty. So he brought the cement mixer over and washed the pea gravel in it. When it was clean he dumped it out on the ground and scooped it up for the mud room. It looks great! I decided it needed a little help drying before we moved the cabinet and shoes back in place. So I started up a small electric heater and cracked open the window. It’s been 24 hours and I think it will take 3-4 days to get the pea gravel all dried out! Once it is then all of the stuff can be put back in place. Mouse is grumpy because his food area is cluttered and he does not like it.

The last thing he did for the day was gets all of the garden beds cleaned out and an old wooden barrel cleaned out and tossed onto the burn pile. It was too far gone and had a large hole in it. We are still holding off on planting the garden due to the freezing temperatures

The contractor came out and installed two of the three windows but they were not double hung. He had ordered double hung but was not given them. New ones are on order. Our new siding should be delivered May 13, 2024. They will start on the sides away from where the windows need replaced.

Our cows started having calves 2 days ago! We now have two calves on the ground and healthy. There are 7-9 to go, I am unclear on how many cows are pregnant.

Getting caught up

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I spent most of the day just puttering around doing little things. Sometimes it seems like I don’t do much on those days but it all needs to be done eventually. I watered our three new fruit trees, two apricots and a peach tree. They are still in buckets and I will get them in the ground next week. They are all blooming so I will have to pick off the fruit as soon as it shows up. I don’t want them to produce fruit this first year, I want them to grow and spread their roots.

We had already moved our chive plant up to the front porch entrance pots. I split it in half so we could have some in each pot. So today I split our edible creeping thyme into two bunches and put it around the base of the chives. We would like the thyme to grow over the side of the pots. The thyme was in an old half wine barrel in the back garden area. When we moved the barrel the entire back is rotted out so it needs to go away. We will use the soil in the other garden planters then I can burn the rotten barrel. Both planters got a good soaking with water to start them on their way.

I dug thistles on the front hillside. Since we are trying to establish clover we cannot use any type of herbicide on the hillside. So all thistles are dug with a shovel. This took quite a while to get done. As soon as I finished that I went and cut ends for our tomato enclosures. Annmarie wanted panels on the end to keep the cats out so she could plant basil plants between the tomato plants. I almost found enough clips to hold them in place correctly. I need four more small clips. Now that I think about it there may be four out in the old house. I will have to check sometime.

I have been slowly working on the Bell! I run the wire brush over it to clean up the rust then hit it with some Rustoleum spray paint. I have been doing this for over a year. Today I decided to just hit it and make some solid progress. Mr Rainman and I had lifted the bell off its stand a couple of weeks ago so I had a lot better access to the bell. I got both uprights sanded and painted. I ran out of dark blue spray paint so now it is a bright blue. I went over to the old house and found eight more cans of spray paint so I figured the bell was getting whatever color I had on hand. I was able to break loose the bolts holding the ringer gear onto the bell. I cleaned the bolts up and ran the threads over their entire length to make sure I could tighten them on the reassembly. I then worked on the ringer gear and got it all cleaned up. I am not going to paint the bolts until I get them on the bell. I think another two hours and I will have the entire bell body cleaned up and painted. Once that is done I will need to make a new wooden base for the bell. Then I need to buy four 2x8x20’ boards and I can mount the bell in the upper portion of the hay side of the machine shed. This will keep it totally out of the weather.

Since the Gingerman got the Little Dumper running yesterday I figured I had better do my part. I went over to look at the door rubber seals. I ended up having to grind down some rusted screws holding a metal plate to the bottom of the door. It was just one solid horizontal piece of rust. I was able to grind the tops off and pry the metal piece off. I then had to grind down the screws until they were flush and smooth before installing the new rubber seal. I managed to get the seal on and only had to cut about one inch out of the bottom middle and use seal glue to put the gasket back together. I tried to take the screws out of the door so I can gain access to the window but there was one screw I could not budge. I will need to spray some penetrating oil on it and hope I can budge it next week.

I have all of the door seals and the front and back window seals. The front window seal needs to replaced ASAP. It is torn and has multiple holes in it. The rear window seal looks great but since I have a new one I might as well replace the old. I did try and latch the passenger door but it would not seal tightly. One more thing to adjust and repair on the old truck. I suspect the rotating mechanism is not rotating! I know, it took a pure genius to figure that out. When I get the panel off to get at the window I will be able to get at the door lock/handle mechanism at the same time.

Old truck, new project

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I had been talking to Annmarie for years about getting the old truck running. Six flat tires and not having run in over 30 years was a pretty strong deterrent that kept me from moving forward. Well the daughter’s boyfriend likes to mechanic and likes old Chevy trucks. He offered to come over and work on it this weekend. This meant that I had to offer a measly amount of assistance. On the plus side he was able to move the fan on the motor initially with no issues. So after three trips to the parts store, an online order and a solid day we have managed to discover a few things about the truck.

It is old and dirty. The Gingerman hauled the trash can over to the truck and just scooped out trash and stuff from the cab into the can. He then took the leaf blower and fired it up and blew out the cab and motor compartment. At one point he had to go get a metal rake to rake the weeds and leaves around the truck so he could crawl under to jack it up. It was sitting so low, due to flat tires, that he could not remove the oil filter or get to the oil pan plug. I spent about three hours just wiping mud and dirt out of the cab. This time allowed me to compose a list of needed items:

  • 6-new tires (all flat, and front are different size than rear)
  • Windshield gasket (it’s cracked and disintegrating, piles of bugs near the holes)
  • Side door window seals (they are nonexistent and the windows are just rattling around in the door)
  • Door seals (cracked and falling apart, letting weather into the cab)
  • Interior light bulb
  • Side mirrors
  • Sun visor
  • Horn is missing from steering column
  • Brake pedal cover (for anyone who has had a wet shoe and tried to hit the brakes they will know this is essential)
  • Floor mats (I want cheap and so far I am not seeing it, more research)
  • Door window/handle gaskets
  • Boot gaskets for the shifter/E brake/dump bed handle
  • Choke needs a new handle
  • None of the vents move, they have metal cable and its rusted together but I can live without heat
  • Seat covers (seat is cracked and pinpoint pressure causes a tear)
  • Engine belts need replaced also, I think there are two maybe three.
  • Brake lines need purged and filled, master cylinder may need a new gasket.
  • Fuel tank will need flushed and checked for leaks.

The truck is a 1957 Chevy 1 ton, dual rear wheel, 2 WD, with a flat hydraulic lift bed. It has a V8 engine 256 HP which I am told is unusual and it has the same type of engine they put in Corvettes which explains some of the weird hanging hardware for the spark plug wires. It has an oil based air filter that uses 50W oil. This means the entire engine is coated with about 1/8” of caked on dirt and oil. Cleaning that off is going to have to wait until we have gotten the thing running. They put 8 inch 19.5” tires on the front and 7 inch 18” tires on the rear. We could not figure out why.

A few things are a must, door window seals, windshield seal, seat covers and floor mats. There is no question that those need to happen. Oh and the side mirrors, I may want those if I am trying to get around a tight spot.

The engine had no oil in it. So we are uncertain if its due to a bad gasket or it got drained out. Once we get the correct oil filter then we will fill it up and see if the oil leaks out. At most hopefully, it only needs an oil pan gasket. On the plus side the left blinker works and the starter engaged for a split second so the ignition switch works and the starter works! We also installed a dead man switch for the battery under the hood. I had one laying around for an old tractor we sold. This way I can just isolate the battery when we are not going to use the truck.

We really want the truck running so I can efficiently move dirt, rocks, gravel and compost around. Doing it one tractor bucket at a time does not work when you have to go any distance. We have now started down this path so the plan is to continue until we have a working vehicle. I will order tires this week and get that out of the way. It will be the largest single purchase. The goal is to put less than $4000 into it, so far we have spent $592.50.

All things need a name. I am going to call it the “Little Dumper”.