The Useful Duck!

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Friday, April 27, 2012

More fertilizer spreading, a forklift, I get stuck in the lawn

I gave my neighbor his fertilizer spreader back.
I my little helper finished my hay ground fertilizer spreading with the 2-135 and a pull-spreader from the local co-operative. Only it is no longer local and is part of some mega-co-operative somewhere else.
But, I digress...
The usually wet hill ground hay fields were surprisingly dry and I put a little extra fertilizer on Muddyvalley's farm.
Then another neighbor called in somewhat of a panic because his renter was out of money and had not fertilized his wheat. So...we went over and spread fertilizer on his wheat. I am really amazed at the number of people who are on a cash-only basis with the local coperative. We are going to combine this wheat so there is not a lot of risk. Well not that much more risk than anything else in farming. We have worked back and forth with these farmers for a while, as in-as long as I have been a farmer.


We got stuck...
There was some speculation that the box was too heavy... He had just been through the same area and it seemed fine. It wasn't...

We were in luck as the excavating company that is working on the subdivision that is taking this field had a big 4wd loader and the operator offered to pull my helper out. I was a few miles away and was called on to bring cables. Of course someone took the log chain out of tractor cab. Someone always robs the hay hooks out of the truck and the log chains and there is never a grease gun when you need it.

Yesterday I was supposed to be no-tilling a few miles down the road. I started moving the drill and tractor and the sky opened up on me. It was pouring rain. I had hitched a ride to the tractor so I couldn't stop anywhere so I just toughed it out.
I took the back roads to avoid Highway 18 in the rain.
I don't think it rained on the other side of the hill where I am supposed to be Monday. It will be a long drive. I need new tires on my tractor.

The other day a neighbor dropped off a forklift for me.  Now I have two. This one runs. It is an old Pettybone-Mecury with a 3 cylinder Detroit Diesel engine. It took me a while to get it to start. I had to take the starter apart and clean it out inside. It is not an easy task to remove that starter in the mud.
I was so excited to get it running that I decided to take it out in the yard to pickup my wife's lawn mower which had an electrical failure and is really hard to push.

This was not the best decision. I started realizing that I was going to get stuck by the forklift has no brakes and I was going slightly down hill. I pulled it into reverse and floored it and it made a huge amount of noise-and I was stuck. Of course it makes a huge amount of noise what ever you do.
We pulled it out with the M670 super. The lawn suffered.
All in a days work for a bottom feeder such as myself.



4 comments:

  1. Nice little forklift. I'd like one too. One thing I have heard about them is they are very heavy and not much good off cement as they tend to sink in soft ground, no clearance and smooth tires. Now if I could attach one to the front of my Cockshutt 40.......

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  2. At least you keep your neighbors entertained. Mine have gotten bored now that I've got a town job.

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  3. One simply does not get the fork lifts on the muddy lawn. Well you've got a serious problem there dude.

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  4. Maybe you should rename your blog, "The I-Wish-I-Could-Be-Lazy Farmer."

    Why don't you just buy your food at the store like normal people?

    Thanks for what you do.

    Grace and peace.

    ReplyDelete

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