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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Working dirt in March?

It could start raining and not stop till June.
The river could flood and wash everything away.
There is a lessor chance it could not rain till the Rose Festival but that is a long shot.
I have a no-till drill so it seems silly to spend a lot of time working ground but the ground was so stinking rough after being strip-tilled and then no-tilled that you couldn't turn around in the middle of the field.
It looked almost dry enough to work and so I worked it Monday and Tuesday.
First pass was with my vintage Steiger disk that I bought last year. It worked quite nicely.
Second pass was a bit more of a challenge. We don't own any wide equipment. When we went to more horsepower it was to buy a no-till drill and I didn't buy a wide disk or harrow.
I was in a hurry. The 14ft Bush Hog disk had a flat tire and the hydraulic cylinder didn't work.
So I looked around.
I couldn't find the Du-All, made by Forest City Implements in the 1970's. It is my tool of choice. It has danish tines a stalk chopper and a harrow all in one implement. It does a nice level job. I think my helper left it in the field he was working when he didn't come back to work for a while.
I found a vintage Minneapolis-Moline 12ft disk, a very old 16ft spring tooth chisel we call a "Glenco," and a 14ft drag harrow.

It worked.
Last night I found a harrow and roller and packed it all back down.
Today I shall attempt to plant.
Things that went wrong yesterday...
The taper-lock duals came loose on the tractor Orin should have.
My helper discovered that a 6-71 detroit will run backwards and if that happens you will be stranded at the fertilizer plant until your boss drives a mile at 5 mph and then walks a quarter mile to the pickup and then finds a squeeze bottle with a spout that fits in the hold on the fuel filter base so that you can re-prime the injector pump.
I may have ruined a tire on the tractor Orin should have when I ran over a cow bone in the dark.
I cannot tell you why there are cow bones in our field but I know why and I am annoyed.
Orin's tractor is leaking oil down the side of the engine.
The 2-135 puts out a huge amount of vapor out the breather tube and dribbles oil. It also leaks out the front and rear main seals. Then it quits leaking and steaming. Then it may start again.
I have no clue. I think I pulled it too hard without warming up the engine properly when grinding feed.
The air conditioning didn't work in the tractor Orin should have.
I charged it. Now the a/c pump won't shut off.
I got another 180 acres of planting. Of course that is in two jobs which are 15 miles apart over hill and over dale.
And I most likely have a flat tire and it needs to be done by Wednesday.
I think I'll go back to bed.

2 comments:

  1. Oh, the joys of being a farmer! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I bet you miss the good old days, when all it took was a couple of mules and a shovel to hit the hired hand with.

    ReplyDelete

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