mechanic

Granary progress

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Well the granary situation has improved dramatically. It was going to cost almost $700 in sheet metal and welding wire to make another 5x5x5’ bin and one of the nephews sent me a link for a local person selling two large upright bins! I did not need both of them despite their willingness to sell me both. So for $750 they delivered it to the house on Friday. I had cleared a spot and dropped a bunch of gravel in place but after looking at the container I think I need to level the area and then drill five holes in the ground, add some wire and fill them up with concrete. I can take a piece of all thread and put it into the concrete when it’s wet. I don’t think I will try and line up the holes with the grain bin. I will just weld some plates and bolt them in place.

I also managed to get some paint sprayed on the finished bin I repaired and got the slider door installed. Of course when I used a chain to roll the bin I bent the brand new door. I crawled inside and beat it back into shape with a hammer. It works now, it’s a little stiff but that is not a bad thing as I want opening the door to be an intentional act. It looks like the bin has a ladder built into its side so someone can climb the bin and open the top when filling it. This is a good thing as long as you are not scared of heights. I will have to get the cap removal process down before we lift it into the air. I would like to stand on the ground while learning, not holding onto the ladder with one arm 25’ into the air while fighting the lid with the other.

The Naked Gardener called on Thursday to say that he thinks his field is ready to cut again. I swung by on Friday and he is right, it is ready. So I spent most of the day Friday tearing the baler apart. I figured out that it is a lot easier to work on if you remove the front arms and some extra pieces. It took about an hour to disassemble the front but it was a lot easier getting to everything else. There was one guide piece I could not remove but I just worked around it. I was going to have to grind the nuts off and it is just not necessary as I am not replacing it. I replaced about 1/3 of the pickups and tubes. Anything that was bent got tossed in the trash. I have about an hour left to get the races lined up and then I can spend another hour putting the front all back together. I also need to replace a hydraulic hose. The entire thing is covered in hydraulic fluid. It needs a wash down.

Unfortunately, I am on a timer now. I went over and cut the field this evening. So the new tractor “Juicy” has had a flat tire for two weeks in the upper field, I had to go up and remove the tire tonight so it can be fixed. The hay turner is on the back and it needs about 45 minutes of TLC before I can go turn the hay. Once that is done then I will need to spend three hours with the baler to get it up and running so I can bale the hay!

I also will need to install the two new gates on our stairs to prevent the grandchild from crawling up and falling down from the bottom or falling down the stairs from the top. This is what happens when your grandparents work in the hospital and see bad stuff all the time.

The new chickens area settling in nicely. All of them are staying out of the yard which is good for them as being a play toy for the dog tends to an eventual slow death.

We now have three kittens living under the old house porch. We have installed a temporary fence to keep Mouse away from them as he is a definite kitten killer. He only comes on weekends with the kids. Of course, the kittens don’t know this so they were going through the fence as they are now starting to become very active. So we now have a plastic chicken netting zip tied to the fence so the kittens cannot get through the fence. Milo likes the kittens so we will work on socializing him to them. He still does not like their mother and barks at her whenever he sees her.

Mechanic blood sacrifice

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Sunday I spent all day repairing equipment. The eight tines that I replaced on the power rake did not take too long. I was missing a bolt and had to dig through a three gallon bucket to find the correct size bolt and nut. I had cut late Saturday morning but the hay would not be ready to turn until Monday. It would have to wait until after I got off of work.

I do like the Abbriata M50 round baler but I snapped off two pickup tines on the same support bar and they created a stopping pin effect. The tines cannot be turned. I don’t have an overhead lift so I have to just lay on the ground and work on it. I also can crawl between the arms and reach inside the machine. It is not super comfortable and requires a lot of crawling around and stomach crunches to lift your upper body 6-8” off of the ground. I of course could not get three of the hay guides removed and my large 60V DeWalt grinder would not fit inside the opening and allow me to move it around enough to grind the heads off. I ended up driving to Pendleton and buying a 20V DeWalt grinder that is much smaller and fits inside the baler opening. I had all three bolt heads ground down in ten minutes. Of course once I got the guides out of the way I could hand turn the stubs of the bolts out of their retaining nuts. I was able to change out and install the new rake teeth and support bar.

There was a lot of swearing and I kept tearing up my hands and bleeding all over the equipment. I actually had to stop working and slide my hand into a leather glove so the blood would quit running down my knuckle. The leather glove absorbs blood and puts pressure on the wound. Eventually, I found a first aid kit on one of the tractors and used a bandage and some cleaning solution to treat the injury. There was more swearing before I was done. Once my abdominal muscles started to cramp up on me while I was reassembling the equipment I wanted to quit. But I knew I would just have to get it done eventually anyways so I might as well just get it done. My abdominal muscles still hurt two days later.

Monday I came home and spent four hours rowing hay. I had plans to row hay Sunday evening but the hay was still wet and instead I rolled bales that were on the ground in field #1. They were getting a wet spot on the bottom. I cannot pickup hay bales yet until I get them all cut. One the neighbors offered to have me come cut one of their grass fields so it doesn’t go to waste. I am still figuring out how to squeeze it in.

I did go out and work on making some bales today after work. I have about 1/3 of the hay put up but I was running out of shear bolts. The hay is in large rows and it keeps sucking in too much and snapping the shear bolt when I am close to full. I think I just need to dump lighter bales to avoid this issue. I will pick up more bolts tomorrow and hopefully finish tomorrow.

Sickness cannot halt progress

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Sickness cannot halt production on the farm, it can merely sideline it! I was very ill last week and ended up catching pneumonia. Ever since that first bought of Covid my lungs have not snapped back and I get pneumonia pretty easily now. Of course I got it and finally had to reach out to my PCP when my oxygen saturations started to drop into the mid 80% range. This caused several days of missed work but Mr. Rainman was coming out for the weekend last week and I needed to take advantage of the help. The plan was to get the sand down and compacted in the Gazebo so that we could lay the pavers. There are about 1200 pavers that have to go down to fill up the space. This does seem like a lot but they just have to lay down then we can put special grout down and seal them all in place.

The real problem was we had still not managed to get the compactor to function correctly. We have done multiple things to get it going. We ended up having to change the oil as this model somehow gets fuel into the oil which then causes the motor to kill itself when it gets up to speed. Once we did that it worked but the throttle cable was still not working correctly and Mr Rainman ended up touching the hot exhaust plat and burning a couple of bolt patterns into his palm. We decided that this project was going to have to wait until the spring. We need to fix the throttle cable again and we need some water available to water down the sand as we compact it. I managed to find a throttle cable that is used on a concrete cutter that allows you to set it at various locations and the cable will not retract with vibrations. I have ordered said cable and it should be here this week. I am sure I will have to fabricate some type of holder to hold it in place but if the throttle cable stays in place it will be worth it. I just need to get a tarp and cover up the compactor for the winter. This chewed up five hours trying to get things up and going before we finally just called uncle and gave up. There is a plan in place and we will pick it up in the spring.

I have several other items that need to get done before the ground freezes so I have to pivot my to do list to get these items knocked out soon. If I were not sick they would have been done now but I have been having to rest. Rest is a four word cuss word when you are talking to a farmer/rancher. It is fairly derogatory and tends to get in the way of all progress. It is not one I like to hear in regard to my work output. I have been hearing it a lot lately from a lot of different directions. Ultimately, despite my will I have been forced to rest and recuperate.

Haying season is here

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As in all wise things one should probably look both ways before opening your mouth. I had finished putting together the baler, unfortunately, I missed a lower sprocket that drives the entire front end of the baler. It took an hour to extend the chain and fish it through the correct route. The route I had actually marked with arrows on the machine. Now we were ready to do until I tried to open the dump back and the hydraulic line blew a hole in it! It was the weekend so I had to wait until Tuesday to get the part built in Pendleton, it was Memorial Day weekend. I ordered the correct part first thing Tuesday morning from the Midwest and found a place in Pendleton that actually had metric fittings. Unfortunately, the new hose is bigger and it has a more robust end that means it’s more rigid. We had to put it on three times to find a way to feed it to the correct spot where it did not get pinched when the dump was raised and were it actually fit through the gaps. I had purchased a wrap to go around the outside. We had to remove that over a portion of the hose to get it to fit. We also had to stabilize it with some zip ties as it would not feed through the small opening the original tubing did. It works and it works like a champ! It sounds so much better and I only had to dig it out twice while making 300 bales (6 ton).

We have loaded 112 bales into the barn already, 100 bales went to Sarah and Gingerman for their horses. We have about another 150 bales that need to be picked up and put into the barn. We were pretty picky this year. The cheat grass is bad this year. So we only cut the good stuff. The Rejuvra is working, field one had some bare spots where no cheat grass grew this year. The orchard grass will slowly keep filling in. We are going to spray field 2, all around the machine shed and down by the school house with Rejuvra in the fall.

I think we are going to have to actually plow under the cheat grass. We could burn it but the risk is so high of it taking off that we will just turn it under, disc it then smooth it out.

I finished baling field two yesterday. I wanted to get started on cutting field 1 but I had no sooner gotten into the field when I hit a hidden piece of metal. This caused the blade to bind up as two teeth had popped off and lodged in place crooked to seize the blade in place. I had to go back to the shop, pull out the tooth bar and loosen up all of the clamps. I had the new teeth but the wrong size rivet. I was hoping that D & B carried the correct rivet as I knew that they had some over in fastener section. I found the rivets, they were longer than necessary but I was going to grind them down anyways so it didn’t matter. They had five different sizes of teeth for the mower and none of them will work, they are all too short. Luckily, I only needed the rivets.

I have never had to install teeth onto the bar before. I know you just pound out the rivet, set the new one, put it on a firm surface and bang on it with a big hammer, once flat then just grind it smooth on both sides. Sounds easy. We had an extra bar that got replaced last year so I went ahead and repaired them both. I had to use a 2.5” crescent wrench as a lever attached to a 22mm end wrench on bar guide nuts. They were incredibly stuck and would not come loose. I of course do not have a socket in metric bigger than 20mm. I managed to get the bar in place without cutting my fingers or gloves and it sounded great.

I managed to get once around the field before a different blade popped off and bound up the blade. I drove back, took it apart and was back in the field in under 45 minutes! Not bad, when you figure it takes me almost 8 minutes to drive out to the field. I managed to continue cutting all of field one until 2300. Half of the field is thin and the other half is very thick.

The mower has a guide on the end that is supposed to push the cut hay back into the middle but it was not working and my weld job lasted about ten minutes the first time. I struggled with it the entire time I was cutting field one. So this morning, Gingerman helped me out, I took it off, he welded the bolt in place from the other side and I straightened the piece out with a vice and 3# hammer. Then cut a support and bent it to fit. He welded the crack in the guide then welded the patch in place. He also welded the bolt hole smaller. I drilled the hole back out and put it all together again. It looks like it did originally and it appears that it will work accordingly. We just use any color of spray paint after any welding or repair job, it just so happens that there are a few cans of black out in the shop.

Mr Rainman should be able to get all of field one baled this week. A couple of the fields look good enough that we may be able to get a second cutting on them if we can get a little rain soon. Preferably after Thursday of this week.

Lambing progresses while haying goes on hold

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Annmarie says I need to quit complaining about there being too much hay this year, since last year I complained that there was not enough hay! I told her I am embracing my inner farmer it has just taken me a while to internalize the dialogue. We were going to leave the farm for a whole week and I was super nervous that the hay would just lay on the ground an not get baled. Luckily for me a nasty weather front moved in and it has rained for the last three days! This has put the haying process off at least several days so now I can enjoy my time away from the farm guilt free. Our lavender patch is really shaping up this year. The bees from our hive love it and no plants died this last winter. We are hoping that by next year the plants will be nice and mature. Every year they get a little bigger.

The baler had a broken pickup tooth, so on Saturday first thing in the morning I decided to be a mechanic. Now honestly I don’t like to mechanic, but I do realize that it is a necessary evil. Mr Professional usually does all of the repair work. It was too early to bale so I decided to take on changing out one set of pickup rakes as that was what I was told was broken. Well after having broken a bolt and breaking out the grinder, hammering a piece straight on the anvil and discovering a second broken pickup rake I was two hours into the repair before I had them both changed out. I decided, after searching YouTube for a repair video and finding nothing, that I needed to start recording repair videos and posting them for everyone else who cannot find anything. So I took snippets of videos while I was doing my repair and now I just need to learn how to edit and mash all the snippets together into one video. I may even have to do voice over on the videos even though I did talk while filming the snippets. I am trying to work on a TikTok channel but I am not sure if I can figure that out or not. Somethings I don’t understand well but daughter #1 tells me I need to get with the times.

The girls are managing things while we are away. So daughter #1 and daughter #2 are in charge! Daughter #2 has been watching the sheep and so far it is going amazingly well. We have had triplets, twins, single, twins, twins, triplets. The last set of triplets today the single mother took over one of them! We are so keeping her, if she will foster out an extra baby every year she is worth the effort to hold onto her. It is hard to find a non-picky ewe and having 1-3 of them in the flock is a true blessing. Lambs don’t go hungry when you have a few in the herd. So far this year our lamb productivity is at 200%! This is the best start we have ever had.

Daughter #2 could not start the John Deere tractor this morning. She texted me and I was sure that the battery was acting up again, nope, she did not have it in neutral!