Five acres to go...

It is like that song where the cowboy dies within five feet of the house...
We have five acres of grass to mow and chop. The mower had a serious bearing failure. I bought a Hesston 1340 disk mower some years ago. It has been a good mower but it tends towards yearly bearing failures. I think this has less to do with the mower design and more to do with buying a used disk mower-and then keeping it for a decade. It needed to be upgraded as soon as it was paid off. Of course I bought a 12ft Hesston and everyone in this neighborhood has either 14ft or 9ft New Hollands.  I know of only one other 1340 in the county.
Anyway, we would have nearly finished last night. Instead we pulled off the outboard disk and replaced a bearing. I should have taken photos. It nearly ruined the hub. Never heard it go bad but it severely wore down the hub to the point that we could not get the snapring out. I handed it over to my brother who chucked it in the lathe and Bill and I went and chopped the three loads we had cut. We returned at 10:30 p.m. to see that the brother had somehow repaired the hub and even had the bearing pressed in correctly. I usually press it in upside down and ruin a $100 bearing.
We pretty much accept these catastrophic failures as general everyday events. By contrast, the whole silage chopping operation came to a halt yesterday when the dairy fellow broke a 2" u-bolt. Bill was dispatched to the farm to make a new one. It took him half an hour but I suspect he spent 15 minutes in the bathroom...
I guess us bottom feeders just have to have the technology!

Note: I think I was wrong on my understanding of the ethanol incentives. See the Corn, beans, spent brass blog for someone who knows what he is talking about. Of course if you had news organizations that actually reported any real info and not just headlines a person could actually understand what is going on in the world...