ray...
The happy Nada Farmer, stumbling around trying to keep up withthe demands of "nada farming."
Keep coming back , page Twenty One follows......soon, as I can snatch the camera for a couple days..
April Shower Bring May Flowers ?
May is half over and I still have a ton to do ?
I've been trying to get the lawn arranged so that it isn't such a chore to mow it, well I think I have an answer. The neighbor bought a self powered tow behind mower deck, that needed a little work. Well I've become 'handy' around here, so it ended up in my garage for three days. I made a couple parts and adjusted a couple areas and generally returned it to it's original state.
A little plasma torch work, a little welding, lots of grinding, a few new screws and, well it confirmed my suspicions of a 'tow behind' being 'the way' to mow the major portions of the property. I have been offered access to it anytime I want it, which is great, and I have been inspired to make one for myself, which I had planned anyway, but it just moved to the top of the short list.
I think I have everything I need to do it, so it fits the criteria, useful and free, with only time and labor involved! I spent a whole day trying to get the clutch off this engine. I've had it for about twenty years, it was said to have come off a county salt spreader truck, so there is a little rust involved. I'm not sure if the clutch will ever work properly again. But I got it off without melting it, and hammered it back into a rough semblance of it's original shape. The engine started on the second pull ,on ether, but it did give me hope of it's being salvageable. It smoked, but it had been on it's head for most of the day, with me hammering on the clutch, drilling out the set screws, driving out the key, and generally going gorilla with a couple sets of wood wedges. It did finally work, but the clutch was twisted pretty significantly, I guess I'll worry about it later.
This is what I came up with. I recreated the mounting system of the Cub Cadet, and used the deck from the other mower I bought on Ebay last year. I had intended it to use only the pneumatic wheels on the rear, but found it needed the "front swivel" wheel for stability. Basically it is a 12 horse direct drive mower deck, I'm going to do a little fine adjusting yet, but it did make the yard mowable in one day, rather than two and a half.
Chris, and a couple of her sisters, spent a day starting The Garden. Four days later, Chris is still planting things, through the rain, cold days, and a goat attack, well, stray goat visit, might be more appropriate. As you can see the Goat (George I later found out) was looking at the garden and trying to decide if it was worth a confrontation with a crazy woman with a rake or whether he'd rather take a stroll with me up the road to find his actual owners? 
He was a nice fellow, as old goats go, and after we worked our way past the neighbors very noisy and unhappy dog, which caused about a fifteen minute delay, I finally got him to stay with me pretty well. As we were walking down the road to where I thought he might live, a blue SUV approached us. The neighbor girl slowed way down, and asked me, where I was taking George, (her grandfather's goat, it turns out)? I really didn't have a snappy answer, so I told her the truth. That he had come to visit, and I was just going for a walk with him as a neighborly thing to do. Or that I thought he belonged on the next farm, over the hill, and was taking him back there. Or that we had just finished our rumba class with the dog down the street and now we were enjoying a celebratory cha cha. Or something of that nature.
She parked the car and we took George back to the barn he had escaped from. We moved a couple large barrels to support the fenced in area he had pushed his way through, with the hopes of keeping him from wandering off again. And I met a couple more neighbors.
Meanwhile Chris is still planting things, but she is a little more mindful of the positions she gets herself into, if the goat had been about ten minutes earlier, she is sure she would have ended up on her face in the mud.
As the weather has stabilized a little I have ventured into the fields again. With the intent of smoothing the devastation left by the septic crew. One portion of this operation involves removing all the rocks big enough to be a problem from the field as I go. As this field was a pasture, fenced for cows, it wasn't farmed or gardened or , well anyway, they didn't run a plow through it , ever, as nearly as I can tell, so it has it's share of rocks turning up. So I have a couple areas I can use rocks, for a base for the parking area I created East of the garage, to build flower pots out of and to line the walls of that same parking area. There were also a considerable number of "white" bricks in a partially buried pile in the field, and a few in a stack near the little house. So I spent a few hours creating a border of used bricks in front of the little house. This was possible/necessary because I moved the "parts donor Jeep Cherokee" out into the field, West of the red barn, and out of view from the house, ( trying to get some points here you know). That left a clear view of the abandoned flower bed in front of the little house, and I had some little flowers that needed to be planted before they went bad... so I did.
I can't wear a wrist watch, never been able to. I always lose them through machinery, or great heights, or depths. And sometimes combinations, once had a watch get ripped off my arm and fall a couple stories into a running machine that simply pulverized it. I lost one Scuba Diving. I just can't keep one alive, but I have had better luck with pocket watches, but they need to be more shock and water proof, the washing machine has claimed the last two I had, and it's always when I wash my bibs that it happens. Chris hasn't owned up to washing one yet.
A couple years ago I sent this watch back to the company, COLEMAN to have the light fixed, it glows in the dark so bright I can read by the thing! So I really liked it, but I was heart broken when it quit lighting up. So just for kicks I started writing letters and telling them how much I liked the watch, but missed it's comforting glow, because I can't read the things without my glasses otherwise! Darned if they didn't tell me to send it in, and they fixed it!!
Well, I'm real happy with them obviously, and I had carried the watch very rarely, keeping it for when I was camping or out at night and the time was going to be an issue. However, because my Verizon phones don't get enough signal around the farm to keep the time available, (not so happy with them), I washed my bibs, and there was an extra "clunk" in the dryer, that sounded not so good to me for some reason, the buckles, and buttons, and snaps, make a heck of a racket and rough up the inside of the dryer enough, so any extra noises get my attention pretty quick, after only about an hour I investigated the extra noise. And found my favorite electronic pocket watch had been thoroughly washed and dryed, after I stopped screaming obscenities at myself for being a dumb %#^$#^%&^, I took it completely apart, threw away the two month old batteries, ($13.00) and placed it on a shelf to dry. what's to lose? About a month later, when I went to WalMart, I happened to remember to get new batteries, ($5.00-not from the local jewelry store this time) and whoopee!!! it worked, even the light up feature, I just needed to replace the "O rings" that the dryer ruined, (another $7.00 to the local jeweler, for an O ring about this size 'o') , but now I have my watch back, yet again, and I think it says something about the durability of the "COLEMAN Night Sight Quartz Pocket Watch" If I can keep it running, it's nearly indestructible. So far anyway. It had a really handy leather case, that didn't make it through the muticycle torture test, so I had to throw it away. So now I'm trying to get a fob system arranged, that will keep the watch from falling out of my bibs, unless I'm heading toward the washer again. I'm using a shoe string with pretty good luck, as I can hook it over the "strap buttons" on my bibs, and it hasn't gotten away yet.
Well as this page is about four months late I better get it on the web, so I can get on to the next months page. I am having a little trouble getting the pictures I need as Chris has broken her camera she has reclaimed the one I had been using for my pictures and she always " needs it " so I have to sneak it out, and get the pictures I want for the website, when she isn't looking. I'm going to have to get some thing else soon I'm four months behind at this point and I know my faithful readers are in dire need of updates!
Man, are we happy out here!
