The Last Field, (located at Gopher Valley.)
The Last Stack
This is not the best hay I have ever made. There are some weeds. Somehow I have to get it home...
My landlady's stepson is obsessed about closing the gate. I closed the gates. He cruised slowly by in his Land Rover. I have no idea why he doesn't stop. I've got to go see my landlady and her stepson. She is nice but he seems to think I am going to bite him. And there is that lingering resentment that I don't shut the gates. I had a nice chat with him this spring but who knows.
The neighbor girl is afraid of him-sort of. She won't go visit the nice lady as she says the stepson creeps her out. I suggested that he is probably an ax murderer so that she would get all giggly and animated. Then I implied that she was younger and cuter than she actually is and tried to get her to bring me cookies. I like cookies. And chocolate cake with fresh cherries.
What I need to do is get her to run the rake for me. I helped her brother bale his hay and the deal was that she was supposed to come and rake at Muddy Valley. Instead her brother sent his weird little minion who crapped in the field and Bill got the blame.
But, I digress.
I got a call from a chicken feed customer that he had 30 bags of raw soy curls. So I zipped a few miles down Hwy 18 to Hebo Road and picked them up. Who would have thought there was a soy curl factor a few miles past the old Indian School. It is in the middle of nowhere!
Then I made chicken feed.
I have a new tractor. It is an 806 IH, WITH A TURBO! We can't figure out if this was a factory add on or stolen off an other IH or if it is an M&W. It seems to have a lot of power. No gauges and the wiring is very messed up. Most of the hard to find sheet metal is missing. Employees on the previous owner tweeked it all away for scrap. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, other than leave it on the feed mill. After I add temp and oil pressure gauges. I think the clutch slips a bit. I have a loader to fit it and perhaps a hay grapple. It was a very good price. I don't see cash exchanging hands on this one.
However, I also can't sell it for a respectable amount of time. I'd say 2-3 years.
I had no intentions of becoming an IH collector but the collection grows.
(Note: the entire feed grinding operation consists of equipment that should have been scrapped-and was free or almost free)
Pathetic or resourceful?
You don't need to answer that one!
Posts
Definitely resourceful. Old, paid for machinery doing the same job as new leased or line of credit machinery is as good as money in the bank. But it only works if you really are resourceful. *(And have a brother that is a mechanic)
ReplyDeleteI really don't know.
DeleteNow when it's too late, I find out I could have had the ravishing farmer's daughter here raking the fields? instead I had some weird little minion.
ReplyDeleteIf you want the cherry-chocolate cake to keep coming, you better improve the scenery around here next hay season.
Yeah, I'm charging the bum for making his hay. I expected Boobies For Bill (our new campaign slogan) and instead I get a random pooper. Just my luck.
DeleteI like cake...
Hey, do what ya gotta do!
ReplyDeleteRetire?
DeleteOhhhhh.......I see how it is! You have time to acquire another IH tractor but not another MF combine, huh?
ReplyDeleteMaybe if I put a cherry laden chocolate cake in the cab as bait, the combine would disappear? If the mice didn't get it first!
Well, if you would lure me to JC with promises of hundreds of acres to no-till or bales to pick up or straw to bale and then not get around to paying me or if you found a young and attractive girl to make me cookies and giggle while listening to stupid jokes OR if you had that chocolate cake with cherries baked into it....
DeleteBut, do you?
Minions. Gotta love em. I'd hold out for the young lass next time. And have a cake on standby.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the IH. About time you opened a museum and charged the folks to entertain you.
Bobby
I think this whole agri-tourism is wave of the future. With the advent of those sanitary 6,000 acre farms the traditional under capitalized on the verge of going broke American farm is virtually gone. That was the type of farm that built the country. Baling wire, stubbornness, and ingenuity is what kept them going.
DeleteThe kids who grew up on those farms wanted out so bad that they went to college and built the nation. Of course there kids turned out to be worthless, but perhaps the grandkids want to get back to their roots?
I have not idea just talking...
I don't remember ever seeing a turbo on an 806 until the M&W kit then many said voila and started adapting anything they thought might work. That is the tractor I drove in the 9000 lb class in the 70's when my 300 lb friend and tractor weighed too much. I was a skinny 175 or so then and closer to his weight now. I became a turbo dealer and put one of the first Scweitzer 3LM turbos on it, he put on a P pump and big lines and we got about 325 hp out of her and made many wealthier people with bigger tractors very mad or at least scratch their heads and I guess that could include cylinder heads!
ReplyDeleteEd, The 806 seems to have a lot of horsepower. It seems to pull down on the hammer mill about the same as the 2-135.
DeleteSo you are saying I could start a career as a tractor puller?
We do host a tractor pull on one of our fields close to town.