I ignore the obvious and waste several days on complicated solutions to a simple problem

I have been working on my under the sink water filter. I broke down and ordered a different on-demand 110v pump which I put in front of the water filter to pressurize the system. 

It was very noisy. It ran all day.

I decided the pump was not getting enough water so I drove in to Lowes to get fittings to go to 3/8" tubing instead of 1/4" tubing. 

A the stoplight to turn into Lowes I saw the hay customer I had forgotten about and I discovered I had left my cell phone at home. So I turned around.

After selling three bales of hay I returned to lowes.

This was an exercise in frustration as is every encounter I have experience at Lowes.

Everything is now push on and PEX fittings and nothing was right. Finally a very nice you man asked me if I needed help, and then kept trying to help me until I we actually found a brass t-fitting that should have worked. 

The problem is that I need a female to female ferrule type thread adapter. The t-fitting for the water filter has a female swivel on one end and male threads on the other and the center fitting goes to a valve and direct to 1/4" tubing and a different ferrule than I can find.

The replacement T-fitting had male 3/8 ferrule type threads on all three ends which required more adaptation. 

Then I discovered the fitting on the filter was no removable and that fitting was 1/4".  So I decided to cut some of the extra feed line off and at least fit things in better.

Which is when I made my most important discovery. I ofter wonder what is wrong with my mind. I can do in depth trouble shooting, but I often miss the obvious. I am probably getting dementia.

The feed line was plugged with sediment.

Of course I did not have a new ferrule for the valve end so I cut if off short, cleaned the line, spliced a clear 1/4" line to the filters. 

I could have done that two weeks ago...

This is what the inside of the 1/4" feed line looked like when I cut it open.

In other news...

Someone has been actually reading old posts from this blog. I can see it on the analytics page. It must be someone with a national service provider as I can't actually tell what city they are from. It could be someone in Ireland. It is actually kind of neat to see what they are reading. I used to post a lot more and I think I did more interesting things back in 2011. I think life was better back in 2011.

If you are reading old posts I want to say thanks and I hope you enjoy them!

I ramble about politics and don't have any good pictures.

Next week is going to be interesting. 

I wish I would have kept up with current events on this blog and made it more of a journal than a discussion of farm equipment and offensive commentary on my old job. 

My second favorite Democrat has taken to sending me links to news stories that are supposedly showing that DT is a racist, is in cognitive decline, does weird sex things.

Its funny because of well... Joe Biden...

But, I wish I would have written down what was going on five years ago. The evening I was listening to Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis and he said the only way Trump would not be elected was if there was a major pandemic, and three months later we got the WuFlu epidemic. 

Or noted the uproar when DT attempted the most basic measures in restricting flights from China. Or noted the obstruction by Democrats to all the efforts made by Trump in the early days of the "pandemic." I remember talking about it with my wife but I never saw the point in documenting it.

Looking back however, I think about George Bush's reaction to 911. I wonder now if his odd reaction when first told was more of a realization that Dick Cheney owned him and DT's reaction to the WuFlu was a realization that you can't fight the "Deep State."

But, I digress...

The crazy stuff that mainstream journalists are putting out at the last minute would be funny if DT had a chance in winning. It is crazy desperate propaganda and it works!

I saw the interview with Tucker and DT did not call for the execution of Liz Cheney...

People who keep sending me slightly edited videos that purport to show DT doing a "Monica" on a microphone and utterly miss the irony of how Kamala got to be in California politics amuse me but its sad to see they are really serious.

The idea that Joe Biden was a model of mental sharpness for the past six years but DT has early dementia is amazing in that I think the people are making a joke and I kind of laugh and then I realize they are serious. 

I want to laugh that Kamala and DT are facing off for President because they are both rather poor communicators. DT has Adult Attention Deficit Disorder so bad it is hard to follow what he says and Kamala just strings words together and leaves the ending open so that her supporters can fill in what ever they wish she was saying. I mean really, Kamala was the vice president based on the fact that she was the only person that wouldn't upstage Joe and DT ran in the first place because Republicans were to incompetent to come up with a challenger to Hilary.  This race is absurd. The only person who can actually formulate a sentence that makes any sense at all is Vance.

Obviously us right-wing crazies have our own fake stories about the Democrats and I happily promote those stories as truth when ever I can piss someone off. It is scary when both sides actually believe their own propaganda.

I have come to realize that progressives are just really awful people. Anyone who has a Love equals Love sign in their yard is actually a very hateful person. It took a while for me to understand this.

In fact I voted for a "progressive," for a non-partisan position on the local county board of commissioners. I talked to him in person. He sounded very sensible. In fact he got me by stating that he got into politics because he was tired of the government telling him no on everything he wanted to do.  I didn't realize what he wanted to do was vastly different from what I wanted to do. 

I am watching the current commissioner race which has a Man-Bun progressive in a flannel shirt and short pants who has a pet raccoon go up against a slightly nutty conservative woman. The progressives are bitter and mean people who profess love and kindness but instantly go angry and snarky when anyone says, "wait a minute, you may not be entirely in the right on this issue..."

You just simply must realize that progressives are in the right and you are in the wrong. Politics are their religion and they are doing "god's" work and their god comes with pronouns and you better not misuse them..,.,

Random Farming picture

I change injectors on White 2-155 and try to fix stuff

I changed the injectors in my White 2-155. It has been smoking quite a bit at idle. I bought the two hole injectors for a LDS-465 Hercules Army Truck engine off of eBay. They were supposed to be tested and NOS.

It seems to run better, less smoke, but I get an occasional engine miss. I asked a couple young fellows who work on diesel engines a lot and they think it is the injector pump. They suspect Bio-Diesel. The suggestion was to fill the filters up with Automatic Transmission fluid and run it for a while. The high detergent oil will clean out the injector pump. I tried it and I really don't know.

LDS or LDT465 Hercules, I should check the engine tag. The LDS is the engine you want as it has the extra piston rings. I don't hear a miss in this video.

In other exciting farm news I am attempting to re-plumb the liquid fertilizer on my Great Plains 1500 drill. I have the Center Pivot Hitch and not the hitch with mounting spots for fertilizer tanks. I am limited to 200 gallons as that is all I can lift with 2200lbs of wheat in the drill box.

I am trying to get all the plumbing the same size at 1 1/2" for suction and pressure out. I thought my three way valve had 1 1/2" threads until I started putting everything together. It was 1 1/4" which is not a good size for finding hose. Common hose size is 1 1/2.

The main problem is I have made things complicated by wanting to be able to use the fertilizer pump to load and unload the tank. I should have just bought a cheap Harbor Freight trash pump and paid for a three year warrantee. Then bolted the pump to the drill frame so no one could borrow it.

Somehow there is a way to put this together in a neat and efficient manner!

I will be glad when this election is over. People are waiting to see how to compensate economically and are not spending money. I can see the propaganda stops being pulled just with the lie that Trump wants to execute Liz Cheney. I heard the interview myself and know what he said. I suspect she will win. Must continue the corruption. 

The wonders of under the sink water filter systems when they get to be ten years old.

It has been pouring down rain all day. 

I have been working on our water filtration system. This is better than putting farm equipment away in the rain.  Or blowing leaves in the. rain. 

We have a five stage filtration system by by iSpring. It has its own pressure tank and it's own faucet. Our water is full of mud and who knows what else as we have a not super deep well located in a flood plain. The tank is not filling properly. I suspect a lack of pressure.

The lack of pressure is cause by two things. First we have smaller pipes in our house and share a well with the rest of the farm. Secondly, the primary filter keeps plugging. When I take it out it is covered in red clayish mud.

So I bought a pump to pressurize the filtration system. Of course I bought the wrong one. My plan was sound. I will spend a little more on quiet and shielded pump that has a pressure regulator and will activate the water shut off when the tank is full. It is also supposed to shut off if I loose water pressure. It cost $110.

I should have just bought a 110v diaphragm, on demand, RV pump for $65 delivered though Amazon. That just gets plumbed in before the filter system and when the pressure hits 45lbs it shuts off. I suspect that is what I am going to have to buy anyway.

I actually drove in to Lowe's mega hardware store to buy that very pump as I saw the it was listed on the Lowe's Website. It was not actually in stock. I couldn't read the fine print.

I really just need to buy a large single filter to get out the mud. One with an easy to find filter and a lot of capacity. However, water filter systems are one of the most popular scams in the book. I think they are all similar to the iSpring system but just have different labels and accordingly different prices based on the company who applies the labels and their particular scam.

This is nothing against iSpring. This is the system we have and the system works very well and was not crazy expensive when we purchased ours. I do think the reverse osmosis and charcoal filtered water does taste better.  I do wish I would have spent the extra $100 on a pump because of our lack of water pressure. Also because they have a very nicely put together system and I am terrible at doing neat and tidy plumbing or electrical jobs.

I just need to figure out a really big prefilter and write the filter number on the outside with a Sharpie so I can remember which filter to buy. This would save a lot as the best iSpring deal is on a bundle of five filters and the only filter that actually makes a difference in pressure is filter number one. I think I could easily cut my filter changes in half. 

Edit: I looked up the iSpring pump setup. They are also taking the water for the pump out of the primary filters so that wouldn't work any better than the set up I have. Mine has a gauge and pressure regulator.

Also, the booster pump came from Express Water Systems and I see that they are cheaper than iSpring and I think the filter system looks identical. Go figure...

The Birdsfoot Trefoil actually came up

I am always amazed when what I planted comes up. I may be conditioned to farming failures. 

This fall I planted Timothy grass for hay and I also added Birdsfoot Trefoil as an experiment.

The Trefoil, (or lotus major) is a legume which adapts well to lower pH soils, fixes Nitrogen, and is not supposed to cause bloat like alfalfa can do. Although, this will never be a pasture so I don't think this matters. 

I planted Trefoil mostly because my friend that owns the 3.5 acre field wanted to plant it years ago and only three plants made it though the summer.

I planted this a couple weeks ago somewhat against the recommendations of the seed salesman. I probably should have listened to the seed guy a fifty pound bag cost me almost $300.

Yesterday I checked on the field and I saw little broadleaf sprouts in with the Timothy. 

This was a no-tilled field so I may have trouble with frost heave if there is a lot of freezing nights. But, we shall see what we shall see.

Trefoil is the broadleaf in the center of the furrow. You can see little Timothy sprouts if you look closely. I am choosing to believe that the more mature grass plants are Timothy plants left over from the first planting.  Sprouts between the rows are no what I planted...

I prepared this field in the spring. It was disked twice and the harrowed and rolled four times. I then waited for a sprout and applied Glyphosate. After the sprout died I used my no-till drill to plant Timothy seed at 1/4" deep. There was a good rain afterwards and I think a lot of seed sprouted. However, it never rained for the next three months. 

I controlled summer annuals (sort of) by mowing so I will very likely have a lot of late summer weeds next year.

I replanted in late October into a damp seed bed. I planted the Timothy at 10lbs per acre and the Trefoil at five pounds per acre on every other row. (Although if you look at my photo you will see Trefoil on every row so it appears my plugs were leaking.)

My planting depth was supposed to be 1/4." The Great Plains 1500 with the CPH hitch is hard to set to a shallow depth. I put the Trefoil in the main box and the Timothy was in the smalls seeds box. The Trefoil was a coated seed so it was about the size of clover seed. Timothy is much smaller and lighter.

The small seed set up on by GP 1500 drops the seed behind the V-opener and right in front of the press wheel. Generally this means that the small seed plants in about a one inch wide band a little more shallow than what goes through the main seed box and out though the openers. The small seeds are covered by the action of the press wheels. 

There is also a floating harrow but I raised the harrow up. I wanted to leave a trench which holds moisture in dry weather.

I applied 6 gallons per acre of 10-34 liquid fertilizer which is banded in the row with the seed. This should help the plant grow through the cold wet winter.

This is the back of the Great Plains 1500. It is a rather poor view but I suppose you get the idea of how it works.

The Fescue is coming up, Timothy is coming up, Annual Ryegrass is up, Orchard grass is not, rows are crooked and I am lazy.

Global warming, or is it climate change, or is it man-made global cooling, or is it just the crazy cycles of nature, has resulted in a warm wet two weeks. 

The Great Plains 1500 is a really nice drill. It has liquid fertilizer, row monitors, and 15 foot is a good size. But... It is a constant battle to not bury the seed three inches deep when planting into worked ground. I think I am going to buy a new set of down pressure springs and then cut an inch or two off of the old springs and use the shorter springs for worked ground. It is kind of a pain to change the springs but I very rarely do the sort of no-till where you are drilling Wheat seed into ground that is as hard as concrete. (Which is what I used to do every fall)  I have thought about mounting air shocks on the openers so I could easily change the pressure but that would be a lot of work. I think it could be done with mounting brackets from Great Plains. Of course there would be buying 24 air shocks and mounting an air compressor....

My grass seed plantings are coming up. Checking them every day makes them come up faster. There was zero difference in the side of the drill that had the fancy seed inoculant. (See Realgrowers, Recharge inoculant) 

I am really disappointed that I cannot tell which side of the drill had the special treatment. It all seemed like a great idea. The seed is putting down roots really well but I can't see that one side of the drill has better roots than the other. I guess I should have planted an isolated test strip and flagged it off.

I am also disappointed in my driving. I cannot seem to drive straight with this Great Plains CPH-15 hitch.  The PFH-15 that I had on my original Great Plains 1500 was a much better design. It had a rock shaft for lifting the drill and the lift wheels stayed in alignment much better. There was also a better lock system for locking the center pivot when doing long straight rows in loose soil. 

This CPH-15 hitch has always wandered and every twitch of the steering wheel transmits back though the drill. I do wish I could afford auto-steer.

Or better yet, a new drill, a White 195 Workhorse, and Autosteer. 

I was talking about needed farm equipment with my nephew yesterday. He is pretty frustrated with the lack of a loader tractor grapple set up for loading hay. I was trying to get him to have his brother look for White 2-105 or 2-85 or 2-110 tractors where he is teaching school in Colorado. I see those on Tractorhouse with front end loaders fairly ofter for under $10,000. 

The Nephew is determined to put proper beds on three trucks. He has one almost done and is ready to start on the second. 

I was noting the list of tractors to repair this winter... Hesston 4690 baler with a bad engine, White 2-135 with a major water leak under the turbo and three speed issues, Minneapolis-Moline G-1355 with three speed issues, White 2-150 with injector pump issues, Minneapolis-Moline G-706 with engine swap and transmission issues, IH 656 hydro with PTO out and hydraulics issues, MM M-670 super with engine problems, Mercury-Pettibone Hay Squeeze engine swap, Mercury-Pittibone Hay Squeeze with bad mast lift cylinder and bent clamp, and an 806 IH that needs an engine rebuild....

Plus, his uncle is lazy...

The government is not there to help you, moving a friend, planting rye

Yesterday I helped a friend move some toolboxes. Every time I go down his driveway I get pissed at government and it makes me want to vote trump just out of spite. Not that Trump will actually fire the local head of NRCS or probably even have an affect on funding. Just because I want to see government plunged into Chaos.

My friend (who shall remain nameless at this point) sold his farm (in good faith) to the local soil conservation district and they screwed him. It took a decade. It took until there was a new head of the district. It took until the apparent the contact high that comes from spending your life with a pretty decent pothead farmer husband wore off for the chairman of the county board, but it happened.

You can tell from the sign. Look at that No-Trespassing sign. It is not "your/our" property, it is theirs. 

The county only took the best and cleanest ground to turn into the fabled Oak Savannah. They are letting the rest of the acres become over-run with teasel, thistle, blackberries. And of COURSE, they restrict access.

I came home and no-tilled Rye into Barley ground. This is not that great an idea as you can't control the volunteer Barley other than winter kill. However, our neighbor really wanted five acres of Rye for his whiskey project and so we did it. 

I planted 600lbs and the counter read 7 acres when I stopped. I was hoping for 600lb to 4 acres ratio as I wanted a higher crop density. Unfortunately, I went by the chart under the grain drill lid instead of measuring the drill output like I should have done.

Haste makes was every time. After spending an hour or so cleaning and setting up the drill it would seem I could have taken an extra ten minutes to check the seed rate. But, it was cold, and it started to shower, and I am a Lazy Farmer...

It was my 26 year anniversary and I was supposed to have started a fire and turned on the porch light for my wife who was working late.

I am a bad husband. 

I decided not to give her this chainsaw and tell her I purchased it for her as an anniversary gift. No sense adding insult to injury...

My friend explained that it had been setting for years since he got a heat pump mini-split and didn't burn wood anymore. Plus, it is a bugger to start as all newer Stihl saws tend to be. So I had to try it when I got home. Rosco is not completely impressed. He was strongly suggesting a pickup ride and did not give a rat's bottom about chainsaws. It did not start on the first pull.